Slowly the pictures from those with land adventures form in the eyes of the just-shipboard-passengers. A sudden surging enthusiasm through shining eyes seizes everyone while presenting. Talking about snow drifts and strongest wind speeds good for running high up mountains with 7-league boots or simply to be blown into the corner, nights with green polar lights over red tomatoes, about daily excursions to glaciers and hills with panoramic views of exotic archipelagos, just for a short time in possession of the Larsemen and -women. Sorrow resonates from the departure. The photographic overview in the evening seminar shows a colourful camp of Antarctic-proof tents huddled together on a slope. Only one stands apart from the others - who knows why. One hears also of drafty sleeping bags and chilly awakenings in chicken feathers; an additional vest had to guarantees a good night. We have attempted to explain the geologists' fascination in No 7, but how one could have collected these weights of iron bearing, often outstandingly heavy crumbs of rocks. Now they are lined up together sleepily in barrels along the corridor and await a comfortable retirement in the warm drawers of Potsdam University. With the experience of billions of years old seniors, the rocks will teach several generations of students what wonders the geology of the Antarctic can contain.

In parallel with the geological excursions, the geomicrobiologists hacked themselves through what the Antarctic presented in terms of soil and permafrost. Repeatedly chopped and sometimes not easy to break up, the resulting profiles were taken; one in a seemingly dried up lake, hiding half a meter deep, another in a hypersaline pond with a water temperature of minus 4.3°C! Liquid water in turquoise blue, its colour lasting for only the short term, obliterated by red rubber biohazard suits. One wants samples with native bacteria and they are tiny and in their polar minimalist survival mode, they are hard to take. It isn't just the landscape that brings extraterrestrial settings to mind, but also the bacteria themselves. These organisms were, together with their immediate surroundings, be shut in containers for its long journey to the laboratory, labelled by script girls. (They play a double role also as garbage women, insuring that not one crumb of garbage remains behind on land.) One hears that the successful work of the day was rewarded in the evenings with an aperitif of "glacier water," cooled down with ice from the "house glacier" in the vicinity of the camp. After that followed a delicious convenient kitchen plate to compensate the energy loss of the day, improved with ideas from the Swiss kitchen. Only cheese fondue there absolutely wasn’t. So one hears.

The geophysicists sit now well cleaned up at the computer and pursuing, with ray-tracing algorithms, the beams of their air guns through world history in order to locate the crust-mantle boundary. The lobsters slumber dataless and cleanly washed in their living containers awaiting new adventures. Meanwhile the geologists root around still in “dirt of the high latitudes” (to quote Neptune, who has announced himself) and snatch from the seafloor decimetre sized sedimentary sequences. On the Kerguelen Plateau the core lengths are no longer absolutely measured, kust in the new unit “meters per hour”. As of press time we can report 10 meters per hour. One length must also be stated: 28.15 meters.

Safety excursion: Also a reliably recurring occurrence is the practice of safety. Once with scientists, most times without. Researchers must only know where their lifevest lays and their lifeboat hangs; the crew, however, tests, with helmets and vests, the locking doors and the functioning of the lifeboats or trains with self contained breathing apparatuses the rescue of a pretend comatose person from virtual smoke. Every one is encouraged to find the way out with closed eyes. Whoever has experienced a smokey room knows how astonishingly quickly the aisles and stairs darken to absolute orientationlessness. And how does one steer a ship full of electronic steering devices when these fail? Today working the rudder by analog will be practiced. 12 men shove themselves around the 2-meter thick cylinder at the stern in which, hydraulically, the rudder is moved. One communicates with the bridge over a pleasantly antique headset, two set in motion the hydraulics by hand and another reannounces in very clear speech, the position of the rudder in degrees. It works!

In one of these million-heavy TV quiz shows to better the pocket money situation, an answer would not count very much when asking for Big Ben. Much more valuable would be the right answer on a question concerning the single active volcano of Australia: also Big Ben. The island, “Heard,” presented itself during our passage through one northerly and one southerly edge with fog and clouds between them. One imposing volcano, concealed by vapor, named after the clock tower on the Thames, flanked by some smaller ones. The Swiss were here as well? One is called “Matterhorn”. The peak towers above the clouds and spills lava out: 2745 meters high above the ocean, hot earth competes with ice and snow. The breath of Vulcan’s workshop can be seen far from here. Upon a pitch black beach lounge elephant seals, seals, and hoards of penguins by standing convention. Older places of lava flows already have a cover of juicy green, velvety vegetation growing over them - very pleasing to the eyes after weeks in white, grey, and brown. Other corners are reminiscent of fresh eruptions. The contrast of white-blue glacier ice versus black-red Lapilli and lava bombs cannot be topped. The island is strictly a nature reserve and treading there is allowed only with aseptic soles. We keep our distance. Only the box corer, dunked within in range of its sight, brings us a handful of mementos in ash.

To the Kerguelen Plateau under water belongs a volcanically-born archipelago with 400 islands above water - split between famous latitudes, the roaring forties and the furious fifties: storms 150 days per year, hurricanes 40 days per year, some days of sun, the rest damp, grey, cold soup with wind. Here it is so windy that even insects refuse to fly. We make a cooperation-and-friendship visit to the French and storm Port-aux-Français. The anchor rattles in the ground in cosy temperatures, sun, and calm in the “Bay of the Aurora Australis” (Baie de L’aurore astrales)! Our meteorological team in combination with the navigators are unbeatable. The station of the southern hemisphere presence in the French overseas territories houses 60 overwinterers, and in summer, twice that number of people. A swarm of crew and scientists quits the ship by zodiac shuttle, to stretch the legs on green ground. Elephant seals sprawl in green troughs, jackass penguins mask green with pink (krill shit), cormorans clean themselves on rocks over green, but why does the green have some many gaping holes? The long eared animals that don’t belong here and represent the ignorant wishes of man to influence nature. For the naturalized bunnies themselves, this must be a paradise and an ascorbic kills none of them. The vitamin C- rich, native Kerguelen cabbage (Pringlea antiscorbutica) would, had no steps been taken, be already completely eaten; today it mostly greens and blooms behind fences.

Operations from the French polar base: around flagpole and signpost scattered buildings arrange themselves with the awkward charm of a remote settlement, concrete streets with genuine autos, a picturesque boules pitch housed in an old shed (we are on French ground here), two greenhouses, one church, a post office, between them from time to time, a big old bone. One whispers in front of a neighbouring whaling station. But who is interested in the rendering tub of the martyrdom of whales? After shopping for keepsakes and souvenirs, deciding which stamps to stick on the greetings sent home (this year the albatross motif is in), and eating one salad with Kerguelen grown tomatoes, we leave this island too quickly, looking forward to lurking swell and its friends, the cyclones off the bay of polar light. Easter ahead: we have been given 8 sheep, killed of course, and already skinned and fit for eating. We give our thanks gladly.

We greet you this time in two parts: The first licensed by Neptune for residence in his high latitudes and looking forward to the visit from the water world. The other, fully of dirt and stinking of sulfurous substances invoking trembling, and this not only out of respect.

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

(Translation: Christina de la  Rocha)