How different can twins be? Interview with our apprentices Piet and Harm Gevers
As identical twins, Piet and Harm Gevers are like two peas in a pod. They can’t even tell each other apart in baby photos. At first glance, their interests also seem to mirror each other: Both have been sailing since they were young boys, both love seafaring, and both are currently apprentices at Hapag-Lloyd. But that’s where the similarities stop: Piet has chosen a traditional office job and is training to become a shipping agent at the company’s headquarters in Hamburg. Drawn to the sea, Harm is now sailing around the world on our vessels as a ship’s mechanic. In our conversation with the two, we tried to understand just how different twins can really be – and learned how their shared love of the sea can be expressed in very different ways.
Harm is the older one. He was born one minute before Piet. And if you look closely, you can see a few things about the 21-years-olds that make them different from each other. For example, while Piet is thinner, Harm’s hair is curlier and you can see that he likes to work with his hands. But you might also only think that because of the overalls he put on for our interview, which he always wears on board as a ship’s mechanic.
Earlier, it actually happened that even their parents would occasionally have problems telling them apart. But they were never the kind of twins who always did everything together and even wore the same clothes. “We thought that was childish and silly,” Piet says. But they wouldn’t be two crafty fellows if they had never taken advantage of being twins. Take, for example, the time that Harm had to write a chemistry exam in year 10. Although they were attending the same school, they had different courses. While Harm didn’t like chemistry, Piet did. So Piet wrote the exam for Harm. The teacher never noticed and probably just wondered why Harm had done so well on it.
They feel like “normal” siblings, just ones that grew up at the same time. “We’ve never been in competition,” Harm says. “Sometimes I took the lead, and sometimes my brother did. Each of us has his own strengths. And we both need our own space for ourselves and to develop.”
Their childhood in Jork, a small town just west of Hamburg, had a major influence on their development. “We grew up right on the Elbe,” Piet says. “We always took the Finkenwerder ferry. And we started sailing when we were 8 years old. Our mum had a dinghy that we both enjoyed using. That had an influence on us. If we had grown up in Munich, we probably wouldn’t be at Hapag-Lloyd now.”
Another formative influence was their family. Their father went to sea as a nautical officer’s assistant (NOA), and he was even with Hapag-Lloyd on the “Tokyo Express”. And their grandfather, who was also a seafarer, had a workshop in his garage where he always took the boys to work with tools. And this is precisely where their different interests became increasingly apparent: While Harm could keep himself occupied for hours, Piet would get bored. “I realised it wasn’t making me happy,” Piet says. “My brother, on the other hand, really enjoyed these times. At that point, we started going a bit more in different directions.”
Then, when Harm was able to do an internship at the Hamburg-based mechanical engineering company MAK, he made up his mind. “I knew I wanted to work on the water, but it also needed to have something to do with machines,” he says. “During my internship at MAK, I was able to work on marine engines. That’s when something clicked: An office job is not for me; I need to work with my hands. Now, with my apprenticeship to qualify as a ship’s mechanic, I’m combining the two things that are important to me: machines and water.”
Piet also knew that he definitely wanted his career to have something to do with the sea. “We both love the water, we both love seafaring, and we both love being active,” he notes. “But each of us in our own way.” With his apprenticeship to qualify as a shipping agent, Piet has chosen a different approach to seafaring. “I find shipping super exciting as a field of business,” he continues. “Global trade – that’s something I find cool.”
As with many things, they also had the same idea about the company they wanted to be apprentices at. “Honestly, for us, Hapag-Lloyd is the best company we can imagine,” says Harm. “This isn’t marketing; it’s what we really believe. We both think that what Hapag-Lloyd is offering us as apprentices is fantastic – both on land and at sea.” In keeping with their personalities, they applied to Hapag-Lloyd without each other’s knowledge. In fact, Erik Hirsch, Senior Training & Education Manager at Marine Human Resources, was quite surprised to suddenly see another Gevers at the start of the shore-based apprenticeship programme.
And even if both have decided on their own path and are happy with their decisions, there are always moments when they would like to switch roles – just like they did for the chemistry exam.
“Harm is flying to Taiwan now,” Piet says. “I do envy him for his travels around the world – especially when he is packing his things. Sometimes, I’d also like to go to sea. But not for that long and really only to travel, not to work.”
Harm knows this feeling, too. “If Piet has the occasional bad day in the office, he can go home and forget about work for a while,” he says. “But I’m still on board after work and can’t switch off that easily. On top of that, there are a few days a year when I find it hard not be with my family, such as on Christmas or our birthday.” To which Piet adds: “Yeah, if Harm isn’t at home on our birthday, there’s naturally something missing.”
But couldn’t they just switch rolls? Never. And that’s because one thing is clear to them both: “Even if we look the same, in the end, we are two different people,” Piet says.
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