Today we had the opportunity to tour the Piraeus Container Terminal from our bus. As our tour started, we saw the terminal’s enormous inventory of empty containers, as well as a railway system used for deliveries throughout continental Europe. Our tour guide explained some useful definitions for the site tour, such as TEU, or a 20-foot container. To give us a sense of the scale of the terminal, we were informed that it has a capacity of 6.2 million TEU.

As we made our way toward the ocean, we saw a few feeder vessels and various useful technologies. For instance, there were semiautonomous cranes used for loading, along with hatch covers for placing containers on the vessel. Toward the end of the tour, we saw a gigantic mother vessel being unloaded.

We also learned a bit about the construction of the terminal itself. Since the preconstruction landscape was basically just dirt surrounded by deep water, the site needed large concrete blocks to be dropped into the ocean to create a base for further construction. This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime visit, and I am very glad we had this opportunity.

Monastiraki Cat: