by Ralf Höke, Helge May / Low German translation by Heino Buerhoop / Directed by Claudia Iden Marquard
It's New Year's Eve. Captain Hansen's much-anticipated, romantic nostalgia cruise is threatening to turn into a fiasco. All the passengers have fled at the sight of the dilapidated vessel, as has the newly hired crew. So he only has his old, loyal, and naive friend and engineer, Alfred, left to attend to the few remaining guests.
Star reporter Benno and his girlfriend Silvia are settling into cabin 13, the very cabin where a tragedy occurred 100 years ago: Princess Fanny and opera singer Willem were married on board – only to die shortly afterwards from the ship's cook's specialty, "Hawaiian pufferfish." Since then, it has been said that the ship is haunted.
The shrewd captain doesn't believe in ghosts, but uses the legend to advertise his small cruise company. Too bad the ghosts really do exist! Doomed to an eternal honeymoon, the once-loving couple can no longer stand each other and long for nothing more than to be separated.
Once a year, on New Year's Eve, they are allowed to assume human form. Only if they manage to persuade another couple to get married at midnight can the curse be broken. Benno and Silvia are the perfect victims.
And so a multitude of comical entanglements ensue: Silvia and Benno find the increasingly intoxicated crew ever more Spanish, while the unsuspecting captain and his crewmate wonder who the two guests keep talking to! The ghosts' quarrelsome nature, in turn, ensures that they achieve the opposite of what they actually want:
The couple has a major falling out and must now be reunited using all the magic of ghosts. Time is running out and midnight is approaching; the antique ship's engine is starting to show signs of trouble. Just when everything seems to be turning out well, Alfred decides to recreate and serve the famous specialty from the maiden voyage's menu as a celebratory finale: "Potatofish Hawaii"...
