For our only company visit on Wednesday, we were given a tour through the Bernhard Schulte Shipmanagement (BSM) Maritime Training Center. The center trains students for four years in order to prepare them for working on a ship. The students are given typical classroom lectures, but they mostly work with a variety of simulators to prepare for any situation that may arise while they are at sea. The BSM Maritime Training Center has a control room simulator and an engine room simulator. In the control room, students navigate a ship around several different obstacles that are in their way. One of the main focuses of this is to give them the chance to practice determining the most important obstacles that they must pay attention to. Several students are in the room at once, and they each have a different role. In the engine room, students are able to see the engine controls of a ship and interact with it to practice responding to the many scenarios that they may be faced with at sea.

The BSM Maritime Training Center also has a kitchen, which is called a galley on a ship, that cooks use to train in order to make sure that they can make food to the necessary standard. While we were given a tour of these areas, we were explained many interesting facts about ships and the training process. For example, the left and right sides of the ship are called port and starboard, respectively, and we were given the history behind these names. We were also shown some of the lifeboat equipment, as shown in the picture. I really enjoyed getting to see the ways that sailors are trained because it is something that I knew very little about.

After lunch, we were given time to explore Omodos Village. I took the chance to visit the Timios Stavros Monastery. The architecture of the outside was beautiful, and the inside had detailed carvings in the wood and several frescos.