Throughout human history there have been numerous Fridays. But why have so many been black? Total utter instrument destruction - brought on by just a bit of innocent watersports. A thousand times set out, a thousand times returned - and this time the cable shears. At 4000 m. Neptune knows why. Once a chief scientist, who was also a miner, said: off the pickaxe it is dark. We puzzle, but the instrument remains in darkness. The spare CTD is called off the bench. Than the multicorer (MUC) comes back showing an interesting phenomenon: some tubes are half empty, some half full. Horizontal? Easy. No - vertical! We puzzle anew. There is nothing scientists can discuss as well as a puzzle. Presumably someone has already taken a MUC on this spot; perhaps the same - no a similar station. The same again! Then sparks sputter around. The Flex screech about. Too audacious the attempt, too long the corer, the lead head pulled up crooked, by the heaving, directly bent, lost for further coring. Someone asks how such an interesting kink came to be the in the pipe. Seven meters of sediment are inside, knock-knees at least do no damage to the reliability of the corer. How should such a day end? With a bridge full of perplexed searchers in the darkness. The last departed lobster and the CTD will carry on together through the next subduction zone. 22-1=21. All conversations die away. Around midnight we unfasten ourselves and quit this inhospitable position forever.

Good morning! New day- new luck. The sun, in a very early pale blue-grey, fights its way through the haze, reflecting off a smooth rolling wave into the eyes of the observer. What does he see? Silhouettes in red. They move themselves in an experienced, coordinated fashion on the working deck, this wire towards the front, that cable towards the stern, sliding beams slide, frame set down, the winch head rotates, heaves, grows slack, shackles are secured, the gravity corer goes into the water. There are two technically simple and correspondingly reliable instruments on this research cruise: the bucket on a rope and the pipe on a wire. One lead weight pushes the gravity corer into the mud and, voila, we have got new raw material for an advanced degree. (Following a presentation given on the maiden voyage: How does one do a PhD on mud?) The younger seafloor near the surface is still soft and reacts friendly to sampling. Over a very short geological time frame this is what comes together: 10 km of cores taken over Polarstern's life time residing now at AWI in a comprehensive geological library of polar Earth history. And everyone can read in it, presuming one has had a language course in geology. The neglected sandbox doesn't count.

What exactly is a sediment core? A steel tube lined with a plastic tube, 12 cm in diameter, which will be pressed down into the ground by the weight of 1.5 tons of lead. At depth a practical mechanism lets the mud in but prevents it from sliding back out - a one-way sediment valve, better known as ‚core catcher‘. Filled with between one and twenty meters of mud, back on deck, the liner will be cut into manageable one-meter pieces. They give up their guts after a lengthwise incision splices them into two halves. The geologist pokes with syringes, bottles, spatulas, and toothpicks and what remains sticking will become science. Semper aliquid haeret. That takes times. Sediment is a mysterious mixture of everything that the ocean doesn't want any longer. Near the poles the garbage from passing icebergs is added. A continent finely ground into bits from a millionth of a meter to war memorial size. The Lord's composition of the continental stones contains about 20 different minerals that are found in the sediments including its various chemical alterations. There come two times more esoterically outsiders, also made for the joy of mineral collectors. This terrigenous stuff will be increasingly interesting through dilution, the compost pile of nature: the leftover peels. No - not potato peels - we take all garbage back home. In sediments the hard shells of dead plankton can be found, calcareous or siliceous, in abundances between one shell per square mile to 100%. Some organisms are too lazy to crystallize; they simply glue sand together- living in a house of grains. Nature is inventive, and geologists are part of nature. The wild mixture of grains must be unmixed, sieved, de-mudded, ordered, and, at the end of the analyses, written as a heap of counts against the time of Earth history. The interpretation of this require a geology diploma with a four dimensional (space and time) power of imagination that, in the end, produces a publication for posterity. And so we come to know our good Earth through many small steps. Also through sediment cores.

While they rage inside the battle of mud, new minerals crystallize outside. A simple composition: H2O. Weren't we here already just three weeks ago? In the interim, the surface waters of the bay have grown hard. The ship divides its way variably through a freezing ocean. For breakfast on board, pancakes are a daily standard, something to accompany the Antarctic autumn: pancake ice is becoming the author of fresh ice sheets, ranging in size from hands to tables, rounded by the movements of the waves, and the edges lightly tucked up by the edges of the pan. Nilas is also a lovely word. Holding the water molecules still, a closed ice skin can build itself. Thin and transparent and still elastic and actually only cut from the horizon. But we must go through. Rent in fits and starts through the skin like lightning, the polar peels fall to pieces. They hide themselves under the uninjured edges and looking back from the ships aft one can even imagine a road in this strange part of Earth. The more ripe and stable state of development breaks into icy fingers that slide together in prayer... lacking an Inuit's rich vocabulary for ice and snow, we are denied here speech. Lunchtime dessert promises today, "Maple-Walnut"- the ice (cream) speech we understand.

This ship has four propellers, two for normal travelling and two "thrusters" in shoulder and rear, transverse to the long axis of the ship. These thrusters are useful if you are interested in a particular point in the ocean (e.g. a coring site) or if you would like to fish out a valuable object (e.g. an OBS). Rear thrusters switch melts. Who in 25 years must manage 20,000 stations with 1,000 amps is sometimes allowed to meltdown. But this would make the positioning of further stations problematic. It is characteristic of the expertise on this ship slumbering in the background that a day later, the rear thruster works again. The science is heartily thankful!

Polarstern likes to write history. In the course of this cruise she has become the first German ship in this (lightly Australian) neighbourhood. We take advantage of the occasion and send out invitations to the first Antarctic 4-nation IPY summit. Skurrilous meeting in a seafaring environment. The sun shines on a coast of contrasting ice-stone alternations. Our helicopters whiz out to bring in the guests. The captain and the chief scientist speak before an extraordinary assembly of physiognomes behind beards and polar outfits on a dark blue carpet. The stewardesses pass out cool drinks, the cooks serve canapes. The gifts are strangely-lovely, inflammable or kind-hearted - each land with its own style (China, Australia, Russia). Short tours for the courteous and impressed guests (they all also have big ships) end the warm socializing in the spirit of Antarctic scientific cooperation. Who says that IPY will not be proclaimed also in the Antarctic?

Revenge follows the next day. With a flood of red Tempex (polar overalls) we fall on the Australians' Davis Station, stony reaches, and house pets. The station suffers no doubts concerning professional Antarctic management. Marginally hidden under the impressive buildings, the 50 year old huts from the founding time, one asbestos insulated memorial of the Australian steps in the direction of the pole. The base commander, a "professional leader," practices on us. The presumption that the gymnasium-sized warehouse with motorized shelves is appropriate for the whole Antarctic will be contradicted. Stationary. The weather station with balloon room has the size of a hangar. The red fire station with well shaped fire "trucks" prophylactically intimidated every catastrophe already through its solid tread. During the crowning closure we have the choice between letting the elephant seal bulls with stinky odem burp at us on the beach or should we try the beer home brewed at the base. The last of us, broadly in the testing phase, had to be hauled out in the taxi boat to the ship.

Someone had preferred a visit to Amanda Bay - and no one knows why. We heartily greet all children of those unnatural parents- and parents of those rare children - that headed so far south.

Prof. Dr. H.-W. Hubberten (Chief Scientist), Dr. Hannes Grobe, and the participants of the expedition

(Translation: Christina de la  Rocha)