Shipping accompanies him all the way home
Early, when hans schnos drinks his coffee and looks out the window "i know how the store runs", and in the evenings, he does have a chat with those who sail the rough waterways from the danube to the north sea every day. The man from limbach has been in the service of the federal waterway and shipping administration for 50 years, and in particular he is the head of the control center for the locks from viereth to ottendorf.
Officially, the head of the department, heinrich schoppmann, acknowledged the "excellent work done" by hans schnos and presented the certificate of thanks.
He remembers his first day on 1. September 1967 hans schnos remembers well. The 14-year-old's apprenticeship as a hydraulic engineer at the schweinfurt waterways and shipping authority (WSA) began on a floating dredger in schweinfurt harbor, where he had to help remove rust. But, he says with a smile, the weather was right and so were his colleagues – the cordial contact continues to this day.
In 1972 the civil service training followed, hans schnos came as a young man to all locks on the main between frankfurt and nurnberg on the main-danube canal. From 1974, he was a lock keeper in limbach, and in 1990 he became head of operations at the knetzgau lock.
Since 2007 in habfurt central
Since the major restructuring in march 2007, when the habfurt control center was put into operation, hans schnos has been head of operations here. The viereth, limbach, knetzgau and ottendorf locks are remote-controlled from habfurt.
Hans schnos didn't live to see the flober, but he did experience an immense development in technology. "Remote control was unthinkable before", he remembers. In the 17 years at the limbach lock and the 16 years in knetzgau he knew the skippers and their families, the sailors and the whole crew down to the ship's dog personally.
In the last ten years in the control center this has given way to telephone and radio contact: the main language on the main is german, but in the long-distance languages you need a good ear to understand the international staff, the captains and crew from croatia, bulgaria, often from countries bordering the danube.
On you and you
Hans Schnos is still on a first-name basis with the people on the main, and he will remain that way even in retirement: he lives right next to the limbach lock, it's a heart-to-heart connection, and after work he sometimes goes outside the lock to chat with the boats that are just stopping in limbach. "You have a beer or a drink together", means schnos. Dutch, belgians, other nationalities, they talk about the work on the water and about some problems, for example, about the deadline freight.
The control center is manned 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and the navigation never rests. "Some people mourn the loss of the steering wheel in the driver's cabin", female schnos, it has given way to the joystick today, the room is crammed with technology. With all the work made easier by radar and electronics, it's not really that much better, because the work demands a high level of concentration. But one thing has remained that inland waterway skippers like hans schnos love: the scent of the water, the freedom on the river and the beauty of the landscape. Kra