ASTORIA - Anybody know about her??

[Sweet Honey Bee]

Have been reading about a Italy/Greece cruise offered by Educational Opportunities Tours on the cruise ship Astoria. Anyone know anything about this ship? Would appreciate any information you may have.

[dougnewmanatsea]

Is this Educational Opportunity Tours an English-speaking company?

 

The reason I ask is that ASTORIA is generally aimed at the German-speaking market. For this reason, it isn't very easy to find information about her in English.

 

She is a smallish (18,000 GT ship), older ship, built in Germany in 1980. She is aimed at the upper-middle segment of the German market. Keep in mind that the German market is very different from the North American market: many Germans (or at least the ones who cruise on German-market-specific ships; many also cruise on and enjoy American, British, and other "international" vessels) enjoy smaller, older ships, and generally a more formal, traditional cruise experience than is now common on ships of other nationalities. They also tend to be very loyal to specific ships. The Carnival-owned Aida brand has jumped in with new, mid-sized (about 42,000 GT), very casual ships (think Freestyle taken to the extreme), but this is very separate from the "traditional" German market which is dominated by operators like Transocean Tours (ASTORIA and her newer sister ASTOR), Phoenix Reisen (ALBATROS, MAXIM GORKIY, ALEXANDER VAN HUMBOLDT, and soon AMADEA), and Hansa Kreuzfahrten (DELPHIN), among others. All of the aforementioned ships are, at most, 25,000 GT, and except for ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, they're all at least 15 years old. And this is the way many of their loyal passengers like it!

 

Most of these ships are in a size range that in the North American market, is largely limited to very expensive cruise lines. What they lack in glitz and in amenities such as balconies and the like, they make up for with an intimate size that many seasoned cruisers in North America and elsewhere wish we still had ready access to.

 

ASTORIA is a ship with an interesting history. She was built in 1980 in (then West) Germany as ASTOR for the newly-formed Hadag Cruise Line, owned by the City of Hamburg. She was unprofitable and was sold to the South African Marine Corporation (Safmarine) who wished to revive the liner service between Europe and South Africa. Unfortunately, Safmarine found her unsuitable for this application - designed for cruises, her engines were simply not able to sustain the kind of speeds necessary on this service for prolonged periods of time. So Safmarine went out and ordered a similar, more powerful sistership, also named ASTOR (this ship, delivered in 1987, is the present ASTOR; Safmarine's liner venture was a failure and she soon became the Soviet FEDOR DOTSOYEVSKY and then, still owned by the Russian shipping company Sovcomflot, was renamed ASTOR and chartered to a German tour operator, with Transocean taking over her charter in 1998). To make way for the new ASTOR, in 1985 Safmarine sold the original vessel to the East German state-owned enterprise Deutfracht Seereederi by way of a third party to avoid embarrassment to the communist government in East Germany for doing business with the apartheid regime in South Africa. She was renamed ARKONA, and was sometimes chartered to Western tour operators; at other times she operated cruises for "deserving socialists". After reunification in 1990, Deutfracht Seereederi became Deutsche Seereederi and ARKONA was chartered to the (formerly West) German tour operator Seetours, becoming a popular ship on the German market. In 1996, Seetours introduced AIDA (described above). This caught the eye of P&O, who bought out Seetours and expanded the Aida brand. The more traditional Arkona brand did not figure into P&O's plans for the company, and in 2001, ARKONA was retired from the Seetours fleet (subsequently, the Seetours name disappeared; by way of the P&O Princess merger with Carnival, Aida became a unit of Costa as Carnival consolidated their Continental European operations). Deutsche Seereederi, now having no use for her, sold her to the Russian shipowner Sovcomflot who already owned her sister, the newer ASTOR, and chartered that ship to Transocean Tours. ARKONA was renamed ASTORIA and in 2002 began to run alongside her sister for the very first time as the second ship in the Transocean Tours fleet.

 

The best description of the ship that I can find, in English, is here from a German friend, Raoul Feibig. It is a description of the ship as ARKONA in 2000, towards the end of her Seetours career, so it is a little obsolete and in particular I wouldn't pay attention to the bits about food, service, etc. as naturally all this "software" may well have changed now that she has new owners. The ship herself, however, should be pretty much the same as when Raoul visited her, so hopefully his descriptions of her public areas, decks, cabins, etc. will be helpful to you, along with his photos.

 

If you can read German, you might be interested in this fairly recent review of the ship by a German-language web magazine on cruising. (If not, you may want to run it through a translator like Babelfish but be warned, the results from these can be a bit dodgy.) I don't read German myself, but from the machine translation, it seems like a thorough review and it also includes a few good photos.

 

You can also see loads of superb photos of the ship by another German friend, Stephan Giesen, here. The text is in German, but fortunately the photos need no translation.

 

I'm sure there's also a lot of other information out there in German - try a Google for 'transocean astoria' (minus the quotes) and you may come up with something... But of course, if you don't speak German, you'll have to deal with those dodgy machine translations.

 

Anyhow, hope the above helps. Assuming this is in fact an English-speaking group, I'd be fascinated to know more about it, how you found out about it, etc. It's certainly rare that an English-speaking group would book that virtually never caters to English-spekaing passengers, though it could be a very interesting experience.

[Sweet Honey Bee]

Thanks so much for the in-depth information. WOW! What a history she has! I'm not sure how I feel about being on an older ship -- I suppose it depends on how well she has been maintained, but how does one know that.

 

I just read about this cruise on a "limited information" (my term) brochure. It was in English, so I'm assuming that at least some of the passengers would be English-speaking.

[ruderhaus]

Sweet Honey Bee,

 

I have just been made aware of this thread by a fellow German cruiser, so here's a bit more on the "Astoria":

 

First of all, while ships on the German market tend to be older and smaller, maintenance is often much better than on comparable U.S. market ships. Many German ships - including "Astoria" - are drydocked once every year for refurbishment. And while she does lack balconies, her cabins are comfortable and the ambience on board is warm and friendly.

 

What's also great about German ships is that the onboard costs for drinks etc. are MUCH lower than on ships catering to American passengers. Additionally, gratuities onboard "Astoria" are inlcluded in the fare.

 

I have not been aboard this ship since her "Arkona" days, but I hope to be able to visit her next year.

 

Any more questions, just ask. ;)

 

 

Regards,

 

Raoul Fiebig

[Capt.Harry]

Sirs/Madam

I live in Dover (by the sea, can see the Cruise terminal) the Cruise Ship "Astoria" iks sitting there now (Saturday 27th August 2005) and I can not find any infomation about her on the web, where see comes from, who owns here, where she is going??

It is unusual for a Cruise ship to sit over night here, normally they arrive early in the morning, and leave around 5,6 9 the same day.

 

Questions??

Who owns her, where is she bound

 

Capt Harry

[PaganView]

Resurrecting a really old thread to answer Host Doug's questions...

 

My husband will probably be on the Astoria in November 2007 with a group from Educational Opportunities. EO charters the ship at least twice a year to run a cruise of the Journeys of Paul (Christian cruise). This one will be mostly United Methodists from Virginia and Alabama I think. They will travel around Italy, Greece and Turkey (can't remember the exact ports) with an overnight at Rome (Citavecchia I guess).

 

Thanks for linking to pictures. The brochures for the trip are somewhat limited and we don't speak German!

[Aplmac]

Astoria just sailed into Bridgetown Port, BARBADOS, today!

 

here's a pic.

 

___________________________________

a slightly larger image(same shot)

can be seen at

http://www.angelfire.com/wizard2/cncisland/bigships/astoria.html

 

as part of my larger Cruise Ships visiting Barbados website at

http://www.angelfire.com/wizard2/cncisland/bigships/btown.html