– Are you sitting down? Anna is on the phone from Gothenburg. 
– Yes? Why? The potential-catastrophic-scenarios-creating-center (pCCCC) of mine is normally working hard 24/7, but this time it was caught completely off guard…
– I just got a phone call from a truck driver on his way to deliver scientific instrumentation to me from Germany; and the only instrumentation I have in Germany is the one that is supposed to go with you on Polarstern.
You might remember that we had major trouble getting Anna’s instrumentation (that I’m to deploy in the Weddell sea this winter) through customs in Germany (if not, read about it here). Well, despite all our efforts (and prayers) and German documents we failed. To get the instrumentation onto Polarstern we would have to send everything back to Sweden and start over, we were told… and then we would have missed the deadline. Luckily Hartmut (the cruise leader) entered the scene and saved the situation by kindly “adopting” our packages onto his freight lists (don’t tell anyone!) and the problem that seemed impossible to solve was suddenly solved.
But now it seemed like Anna’s boxes had been returned to Sweden after all? What had gone wrong? What should we do? Would there be time enough to do anything? When was Polarstern leaving?
Anna’s desperate attempts to get the truck driver to turn around and return to AWI and Germany obviously didn’t work out…
At AWI they claimed that Anna’s boxes were still there. Maybe some of the boxes that had been unloaded from Mosaic had been sent to her by mistake?
My pCCCC wasn’t fully satisfied with that explanation… but that’s likely what had happened. Puh!
– or like a friend of mine used to say: “Another good worry wasted!”