The first time I saw our cabines I thought it would be impossible to store all our things in these small rooms, but after we moved in I had to admit that it’s not that hard. On the Thor Heyerdahl there are cabines for two persons, four persons or six persons. Before the journey started everybody had received a long list with all the things we would need for the six months and before we moved in the project manager had controlled our luggage to avoid that the students were taking too much stuff. In the evening we took the rooms which the project manager gave to us. This way we couldn’t decide whom we would be living with for the first part of our journey. Later that day we had one hour to move into our cabines. No one thought that this would be possible – but it was. Everybody managed to move into their cabine within this hour. I’m living in a cabine with three other girls until we arrive in Tenerife. Everybody has three small shelfs and a big one under the bed that has to be shared with the others. There we put our backpacks and things that won’t be needed in the next few weeks. Since we all don’t have that much stuff with us so it’s not that hard to store everything. When we packed our things for the journey and we looked on the list we were given, nobody thought that this would be enough for the following six months, but, after spending two weeks on the Thor Heyerdahl, everybody has to admit that it is definitely enough.
Nobody stays in their cabine for a long time, just to go to sleep. Most of the time we are in the messroom, our place to eat, to work, to sit together and to meet everybody of the ship.
One of the biggest problems of these small cabines is that you don’t have your own privacy. Of course you have your own bunk where you can put photos and private things but you are rarely alone. There are not many times when everybody is in their own cabine and all persons of one cabine are in this small room at the same time, because two persons per cabine are divided in different watches.
If everybody was in the room at the same time it would be impossible to move even a centimeter. The people whose watch is in the middle of the night have to be waken up by the students of the watch before so they walk into the room in the middle of the night in complete darkness to wake up the person and when the cabine isn’t cleaned up they fall over the shoes and things that are lying on the floor. Another problem is that when there are waves and the ship is shaking all the things fall out of the shelves.
In the end I think that everybody is able to arrange his new life here on our ship. Of course it’s a great difference between our rooms here and at home but after we got used to it, it’s okay and funny, too.