\u201cThis journey began with a simple link in an e-mail and grew up to one of the most sensational weeks in my life.\u201c
\nEvery earth scientist student has heard about the German research fleet with vessels like Meteor, Polarstern, Poseidon and Sonne, and dreaming occurs in every single mind to be a part of one of these cruises in the future. The GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel invited 26 young scientists from Germany and Namibia to this cruise for Training and Capacity Building. I decided to try my luck and applied to the SPACES program because of my previous knowledge about the oceanic crust, which I gleaned during my work as student assistant. And this was worth it. The cruise started at Walvis Bay in Namibia and ended in Durban, South Africa. On board, two research teams gathered together, with totally different interests in the beginning, but after a few days the biologists helped the earth scientists by dredging basalt samples from 3,500 meters, and the other way around, they received help with setting up nets for fish samples in depth of about 800 meters, like angler fishes.
\nAll together our groups learned a lot from each other, and this is a quite positive point on this cruise. First rock descriptions and fish dissections took place right on the vessel, while all the samples have been prepared for more complicated analyses in the labs onshore. For all the students, the main focus on this cruise included \u201ehands-on\u201c experience and \u201elearning by doing\u201c under supervision of the more experienced members, in day- and night shifts. We fought against difficult weather conditions concerning sampling with our equipment, the initially fear against the rough sea, one meter away on the boats hatch, and all the smaller problems with our stomachs. But we managed all the challenges with feat, and after a long shift of work we fell into bed and got dandled into sleep by an uneasy sea.
\nA lot of ideas and impressions have been collected in intercultural discussions, and of course, the time in between all the lab work was fun and folksy. All together I don\u2019t want to miss this time with these lucky moments and the challenges given by nature and science. For me, this SONNE cruise 234\/1 is an interpersonal and scientific enrichment, which is only possible on board of the \u201cold\u201d SONNE, built in 1969.<\/p>\n
Stefan Andreas Linsler
\nLeibniz University of Hanover, Germany<\/p>\n\n\n\t