May 25
Today was a wonderful day of adventure as we went underground for two separate tours presented by Berliner Unterwelten E.V. (Berlin underworld) - the same organization that had provided the exhibit of Germania yesterday.
Our first tour in the morning was called Dunkle Welten (Dark World) which was a tour of a still-existing bunker built during WW II to be used by the citizens of Berlin in times of air raid attacks. It was most eerie. Our tour group of English speakers gathered at the entry of a currently-working U-Bahn station. We were met by our tour guide a wonderfully energetic Greek woman married to a German citizen. She unlocked a non-descript doorway which we hadn’t noticed, we walked in, and presto we had been taken back sixty-eight years to the time of the Third Reich.
Nothing had been touched – the walls, the signs, the paint, the stairways. We were immediately warned not to touch the walls, especially where it was painted yellow – this was a phosphorescent paint which had the amazing quality that in perfect darkness it still showed itself light. Thus it was used to guide people to doorways and stairwells, but it is incredibly poisonous and it was suggested that “licking the walls” would not be good for our health, and that a good scrub of our hands later would also be useful. What a beginning for a tour.
Next we were shown two signs: Frauen Abort and Herren Abort. While normally the word “toilet” would have been used instead of Abort, during the war no words which were derivative of French or English were to be used in public places. So the word “Abort” which is derived from Latin and means to rid oneself, was used instead. We were then led down three levels into the depth of the shelter. It turns out that this was not built uniquely for the war, but rather they took space which had existed between the ground level and the trains below and turned it into a three-level bunker. The citizens at that time were told that this was perfectly safe, but in actuality they would have been just as safe had they stayed in their own basements.
Naturally the military had fortified bunkers which would withstand a hit, but then, what were a few citizens more or less.
The group - Berliner Unterwelten - have a long-term lease from the train authorities to use this bunker which is one of the deepest in Berlin. Their organization has cleaned-up and resurrected this site borrowing pieces and objects from other places to help to tell the a more complete story of life in a German bunker. Some of the pieces of information which we found interesting were:
Every German during the war was asked to purchase a blue light which was not inexpensive. It was not able to be spotted from the air, nor by the British cloud-penetrating radar.
When people would come down to the shelters they would wear all their jewelry and fine clothing in layers, and put water and food in the suitcases which they carried. Thus the few photographs of people in the underground appear to show very well dressed citizens.
People who died in the bunker died not from gas attacks, but from the dirty and polluted air shared by others; the constrained space which led people to commit suicide or to go mad; and suffocation when the air got too dense to breath.
At the end of the war women would go into the Women’s Abort and break the mirror glass and commit suicide rather than be raped by the incoming Russian troops. The mirrors were removed and women hung themselves from the water pipes.
Originally the rooms were designed to hold bunk beds and appropriate places to sleep since it was assumed they would not need to be used very often. As the war progressed beds were removed except for new mothers and children (those who were to procreate the master race), and people simply sat on hard benches, crammed together in very tight spaces. We were asked to sit in such a room with the lights out and imagine sitting there with the fetid air; the people crying or moaning; people going to the bathroom in the room if they couldn’t get out; the coughing of people who were sick, and the sound of planes overhead. Not a pretty story.
We were shown objects that would have been below – games for children showing the victorious German army conquering the world, and children living in a happier future.
We were shown an example of an object not from the bunker, but from a factory where there was a card-data-base of all slave workers assigned to the factory. This material was helpful after the war to track the location of many missing people.
We were shown a bunker that was used by an official of the government which was of course quite nice – table, Bavarian carved wooden chairs, and a real place to sleep.
We were shown what happens if you put a person against one of the phosphorous-painted walls and shine a bright light at him. When you turned off the lights, the shadow of the person still existed as if painted on the wall…and it would remain that way for many hours. It ensured that none of us were touching those walls.
The best ventilation in the bunker occurred when a train went by below – a beach ball which lay inside an airshaft would suddenly rise up with the gusts of air provided as the trains passed by and that would be all the fresh air that came through.
Since all the men were at war, women were left to do a lot of hard labor in the city of Berlin. This included cleaning bricks from fallen buildings so that they could be re-used. And even today when an old building is torn down, this patchwork of bricks is still visible.
One very sad story we learned was that during the war Ukraine citizens arrested when Germany went East, were used as slaves in Berlin. When the war ended and the Russians came into Berlin, these same people were treated as traitors and collaborators and send to Siberia. Thus they had no life, and only recently have their families been compensated for their misery.
We learned that like in Belgium there remains under the ground a good deal of unexploded ammunition. When Potsdammer Platz was rebuilt it took special crews to clear the ammunition, and only recently during excavations, bombs exploded and killed construction workers.
The whole experience was chilling. To think that this still existed, as if in a time capsule, and probably other unexcavated sites do as well. It was truly going back to another time and when one finally came out again into the train station it took a minute to shake off sixty-eight years and realize that all was well and safe.
No sooner were we above ground than we were met for our second tour called U-Bahn, Bunker und Kalter Krieg (cold war). This tour was led by an Ecuadorian woman whose last name was Morales. She was less emotional than our Greek guide, but very dramatic in her presentation. As Bob said, she had the character of a teacher who knew what she needed to tell us, how she wanted it told, and when it was necessary to be dramatic or stern. This time, our tour guide led us out into the sunshine through the square of Gesundbrunnen to a non-descript cement structure covered in vines where there was an above ground entrance into another former WW II bunker which was to be used during the cold war in case of nuclear attack.
Once inside, with the door slammed behind us, we stepped back forty-five years to the time when East Germany was controlled by the communists. Our tour guide sat us down on benches, asked us where we were all from, and then gave us a preliminary history of the cold war and why the bunker was constructed. Our tour was made up of a school group from Denmark, and people from Spain, Canada, France, Germany, Poland and Belgium. We were the only Americans in the crowd.
This tour had less dramatic objects to show, but was as chilling. Not only was the tour about the usage of the underground as a place to hide from nuclear attack, but also it was about the use of the underground, as well as the sewer systems that were used by people to try and escape when the wall had been erected in 1962.
The daring and frightening risks that people took to escape were told in chilling detail by our guide. She explained how the East German guards tricked people who were up to their wastes in sewage. As the escapee arrived at various barriers they would snip the wire or saw the bars, but inside these bars would be a trip-wire which signaled people above ground. As the escapee arose on what he thought was a safe exit, there were the guards ready to pick him off. At one point rather than shooting them on the spot, they were hauled off to Leipzig, where they were guillotined. A new and most frightening piece of data. This went on until the 1980’s, and only recently has the address in Leipzig been discovered.
This series of nuclear shelters had been rebuilt in the early ‘70s by the French government (we were in the former French Zone) at a time when Soviet ‘saber-rattling’ threatened an attack on Berlin. The complex had been filled with tons of pre-packaged food, water, and medical supplies. The food was to be cycled every three years to ensure it was safe, but of course, some creative entrepreneurs decided to sell the ‘old food’ which resulted in a wave of food poisoning until this little business was closed.
What was eerie was when our group had to go from one underground bunker to another, we simply poked out of another non-descript door into a modern-day U-Bahn station , took the train one stop, got off, and poked back into another non-descript door. A million Berliners must go past these doors every day and yet there is nothing to tell people what lies behind them. It leads one to wonder just how many such doors and hiding places still exist below ground.
After we passed through the second non-descript door in the wall of the Parkstrasse station, a huge, thick, air-tight door was opened. Once our group was all inside, the door was sealed, and for a minute we were in a small room caught between two doors. (Not good for those with claustrophobia). In case of an attack, people would have stripped off all clothing, and been sprayed with de-contaminating chemicals. Then a second hermetically sealed door on the opposite wall was opened and we went through into a large medical facility. The entry room where we had first entered was obviously also where one would be sealed off and checked to see how ‘radio-active’ you were before being led to a deeper and cleaner room.
In America there were places just as secretive, such as the ones in the mountains of Virginia, which were meant to hold vast amounts of VIP’s and government officials during a time of nuclear war, but I certainly have never seen them. All I remember in the 1950’s was our famous air-raid alarm exercises in Hartford Avenue Elementary School: all children were led into the basement, told to face the wall with our head against our folded arms. And we would be saved. Right!!
As our tour guide pointed out, the disaster in Chernobyl illustrated just how impossible it would be to survive a direct nuclear attack. What I didn’t know was that the USSR tried to hide the impact of Chernobyl by taking those who had been affected and shipping them to Russia where they were hidden from view. Only when the number of affected grew too large to hide did the real impact become known to the world.
We came away from our second tour equally impressed. We have seen Churchill’s bunker in London, but it was prettied-up and made into an historic site. These two tours in Berlin were raw and very real. Nothing was made pretty and the horror of both periods in German history made our re-entry into the modern day Germany just a wee bit weird.
We headed to a wonderful square where we sat at a restaurant named Rocco and talked about what we had seen while in the background there was a weird trio made up of a trumpet, bongo drums and an accordion. Thoroughly back in the 21st century and quite foot-weary we returned to the Hotel Adlon to bone up on the sites we were going to see the next day.
May 26
We awoke and ordered our room-service breakfast while watching a HUGE bike race which went past our hotel. They let the stars start out alone as they do in all races, but then for the next hour, in waves of 100 riders at a time, they peeled away from the starting area, went under the Brandenburg Gate and off down Unter Den Linden. It was a sunny day and everyone, spectators and riders alike, was in high spirits.
Once the race had passed and traffic was moving again, we took off to visit the sites along Wilhelmstrasse – mostly small signs indicating where some significant building had once been. The only building standing is the old Ministry of Aviation (Luftwaffe headquarters) which is now the Finance Ministry. In its first incarnation it was part of the Third Reich; during the GDR it had a huge mural added lauding the power of the state and strong healthy communist workers… and now it simply collects taxes from the citizenry.
Not too far from this huge fortress-like-building is an outdoor display located at the basement ruins of what was once the Gestapo Headquarters, also running along a last remaining segment of the Berlin Wall. It is called the Topography of Terror and provided a photographic time-line of the Third Reich from start to finish. It was housed under a shed-roof along the cellar prison walls of the now-demolished building. This seems to be a temporary location for the exhibit until a proper museum is built. It seemed to repeat a lot of what one had already seen in books, other museums or sites and so we spent only a moderate amount of time. But it was quite crowded for a Sunday morning with all manner of curious people.
At this point most Germans were born at the end of the war or after and I truly wonder how many museums need to exist to remind everyone of this hideous time. It certainly is important that no one forget it, but I somehow think that in about 25 years, once the Wall itself is history, that all these sites will be no more than a small plaque on a wall similar to all the plaques one sees in other cities.
Germany certainly needed to go through some form of cathartic atonement, but what is the right measure of remembrance?
To cap off our own museum tour, we went in the afternoon to the Jewish Museum of Berlin. It is the largest museum of its type anywhere and covers the entire history of Judaism from the middle ages to the present. The building itself presents a story. One enters through an old Baroque museum of what was once the old Jewish Musuem, where one goes through a scanner, buys tickets and an audio tour on a real iPod. Then one goes into the new building built by Daniel Libeskind. The building, which was opened in 2001 is a story in itself with its austere walls, jagged window treatments, confusing layout and threatening mood. It took quite a few wrong turns to find oneself at the exhibits of interest and this too seemed intentional. Once we had found the main exhibit which follows a time-line progression, we found it very interesting. The exhibits are made up of video, photographs, memorabilia, Q &A quizzes, and text. Depending on one’s curiosity one could spend an hour or simply 5 minutes in each time period. Bob and I went quickly to the displays of Jews in Germany in the 1800’s and onward because that was the period I could relate to more easily.
There was a very interesting exhibit which explained that since Jews were not accepted into many parts of city life that they chose to convert to Christianity hoping that this would open more doors. But as the exhibit made clear, conversion left one neither an accepted Christian nor a practicing Jew, but simply a converted ‘three-day’ Jew who might remember the three holidays of the year. This is what Daddy and Walter’s family did and the exhibits showed that for a brief period there were opportunities in government, medicine, academia as well as the ‘traditional careers for Jews which were trade and finance. But this was a brief period, and in the 1930’s it all ended in Germany. It is the period that I think all my family remembered when the life of a middle-class Jew was almost normal. But as privileges were taken away and people were stripped of property and career, the message was quite clear. It leaves me again with the question of why my family waited so long. Unfortunately, I’ll never know the answers since all those who have that information have passed on and I didn’t know that I should have asked the questions sooner.
Accompanying us through our visit to the museum was Sylvie Ivery, the secretary of Frau Keinen, our lawyer in Berlin. She and her ten year old son had never been to the museum and since Sylvie works for a law firm which is trying to make reparations to Jews, I think she felt this would be an opportunity to learn things herself. After three+ hours we left filled with knowledge and headed out for a beer before parting ways. We learned that Sylvie had lived in California, Australia and England at different times, and thus had acquired quite excellent English, though she herself had been brought up in eastern Berlin. She told some stories of life under the communists…some which were down-right chilling.
Bob and I went off for an early dinner where I had my last opportunity for white asparagus – this time with new potatoes and hollandaise sauce and then we headed to the hotel amidst all the other Sunday evening strollers.
May 27 – Last day in Berlin
We are almost ‘touristed-out’. We had only one appointment in the late afternoon but we could hardly think of what else we wanted to do. Amidst a combination of travel weariness, sore feet and a kind of malaise we chose to visit the huge department store of Berlin – Ka De We – eat a late lunch along the K’damm, and then head to the lawyers office for a last visit with Frau Keinen, Herr Von Trott and Dr. Monika Tatzkow.
It was an appropriate ending to our trip since it was the work of these three that allowed me to write and publish the book of the boy’s journey, and to make this trip itself. They summarized all the work that has gone on over the last six years tracking down the properties of various members of my family, I thanked them profusely for all the work which they had done on our behalf, and after a formal 'Lawyer-Hour', we left for our hotel to pack and get ready for our very early wake-up tomorrow at 4:45 am.
May 28th – Berlin to London
Other than the fact that neither the wake up call or my alarm worked, things went well. We woke later than planned, raced around like mad people, and were at the Hauptbahnhof with time to spare. While Bob guarded luggage I scurried around for a carry-away breakfast for the train. And off we went. Our last train trip with two changes in Cologne and Brussels… and I think, as Bob said, we’re ‘trained-out’. We counted that on this trip we’ve been on 17 different trains, hauling luggage on and off platforms, and I think it may be awhile until we’re ready for the next adventure. I would never have wanted to do this with airplanes, but next time it will be less luggage, and perhaps a hired butler to do the heavy lifting.
We arrived at St. Pancras station, hopped into a cab, and voila – we’re in London for a few days of theater and shopping before heading back to The Queen for our sail home.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
Berlin - Part I
May 21 - Berlin
Arrival in the huge, shiny, spankingly new Hauptbahnhoff of Berlin. What an elegant and welcoming place with every known store and food emporium a traveler could hope for. And it was a sunny day, praise the lord.
We took a taxi to the Hotel Adlon, and noted at the front door that the official ‘greeters’ wore tall gray top-hats. We had just seen such a uniform at the train station where one of these gentlemen was picking up an elegant woman, taking her luggage and leading her, we now understood, to the hotel. Why hadn’t we thought to do that? Or was it something provided only to the very wealthy or ‘special’ people associated with the Adlon? In any case, we had arrived at another Kempinski Hotel – a sister to our lovely hotel in Dresden. We noted that like in Dresden, all the staff seemed open, friendly, helpful and truly trained to be service personnel. It is one thing to show a quick smile and then return to one’s grumpy state, but these people actually appear to enjoy their jobs and relish being helpful.
We were escorted to our room by a gentleman who described every button and switch (of which there are many), volunteered to help us with any little request, and as we were being introduced to our room, a maid came in with water and a display of fresh fruit, and another gentleman delivered our bags. While the room lacks that obscenely spacious feeling we had in Dresden, it certainly doesn’t lack in any other way…. Except they could provide a bit more storage for our clothes.
We learned that the original Adlon built in 1907, which Walter mentioned in the letters, was used as a bunker area and a hospital during the war. It was bombed out in 1945 and remained an empty hulk through the period of the GDR. In the early 90’s the Kempinski chain chose to rebuild the hotel in a model similar to the original, but with the incorporation of all modern luxuries and conveniences which are now expected. The result, like in Dresden is delightful.
We are in what was East Germany, next to the Brandenburg Gate which during the period of the GDR was a barren no-man’s land between the East and the West. The famous Blue sewage pipes we first noted in Dresden are prominent here in the old eastern sector, and we have yet to get somebody to accurately tell us why they exist. As we look out our window we see the new Berlin rising before our eyes. It is one huge construction site with cranes dotting the sky line in all directions. It appears that any vestige of the gray dull Communist-era construction is being torn down to make way for shiny glass tall modern buildings housing the new offices of the federal government which has moved from Bonn back to Berlin. Businesses choosing to set up headquarters in the new capital of Germany, and retailers here to take advantage of the rising economy are incented to help make this city a new and lively place. It would appear that if one is in the construction business there is no lack of opportunity, and I would think employment figures would be quite robust.
We had read a fairly bitter article in the Int’l Herald Tribune that could make the reader believe that Berlin is failing as a new capital. It implied that the incentive ‘packages’ aren’t working, and that there is a feeling of despair. We certainly aren’t seeing that and we wondered if there weren’t some sour grapes being expressed. Like in Dresden and Leipzig and other eastern cities, we are watching a work-in-progress and it will take years for us to see the end result. The Germans are working very hard to erase most of the history from 1933 – 1990, and replace it with the new Germany which is open, thriving and democratic.
For dinner we chose a concierge-recommended typical Bavarian restaurant called Maximillian, which was a bit of a hike but gave us a chance to become familiar with the neighborhood and to stretch our legs after a long day on trains. We noted plenty of Starbucks, and Dunkin Donuts along with Berlin’s direct competition to them – Einstein’s - which is trying to bring back the old coffee house atmosphere. Good luck to them. We ended our busy day with drinks in our very elegant hotel lobby watching the world and being watched in return.
May 22 - Berlin To get our bearings, we chose, as we always do, to take an open-top bus tour starting at the Brandenburg Gate. With headsets glued to our ears, and sunshine streaming on our faces, we drove around the city for 2.5 hours while the ‘tour guide’ told us what we were seeing. There are still large open expanses where buildings either were torn down after the war, or after the GDR, there are on the back-streets the gloomy gray functional cubes which housed people and businesses But the speaker in our ear spoke to new roads, new buildings, new attitudes, a new ‘Athens’ rising to meet the 21st century. After a few grid-lock situations and a few detours around construction we headed back to the hotel to recoup.
Next, off to thee Opernpalais Restaurant, next to the StaatsOpera, on Unter Den Linden – a few blocks down from our hotel, past the Russian Embassy and Aeroflot Airlines – two reminders that this part of Berlin was definitely in the eastern zone. We sat outside under an awning, people-watching, sipping beer and enjoying the warm weather. The language range is rich – Italian, French, German, British, assorted eastern and Russian… and occasionally 'American'. I keep reminding myself that we are in the heart of the Nazi and Communist world, where street names still in existence conjure up a different time, when life was a lot less relaxed and pleasant.
For Bob, Berlin holds a special interest since when he was here working in the 1980’s, most of this area was off limits except for very carefully structured bus tours which were extolling the wonders of the GDR. To be able to now stroll freely through the old eastern zone of Berlin as well as the former Nazi government district along the streets he’s read so much about brings a lot of the history alive.
Over the next days there will be a lot of sites to visit and we’ll earn our meals.
May 23 Awaking to a semi-sunny day, we hopped on the S-bahn train and headed to one of the Berlin Underground tours only to discover that we had been given incorrect information about the time of the English tour and we’d have to wait until tomorrow. To salve our unhappiness, we walked to Museum Island to see the Pergamon Museum. This is a museum which I’d heard about while studying Greek antiquity but which had been in the eastern sector and thus less available. The entire Museum Island is a construction site as the newly merged Germany is trying to bring the island back to its former glory. The Pergamon like all the museums had been seriously bombed during WW II, and not well maintained during the time of the GDR.
Many galleries and sites were therefore under scaffolding and plastic, but the two large and impressive exhibits were available for viewing. The altar from Pergamon (in Turkey) is one of the largest constructions I’ve ever seen under the roof of any museum. The frieze sculptures which went around the entire base of the original altar represent the battle between the gods and the titans with Athena and Zeus leading the charge. When standing at the base of the long steep flight of marble stairs leading up to the sacrificial altar one feels a little of the awe which must have been felt by the inhabitants as they came forward to present their sacrificial animals. With our audio tour we were told about the entire altar, the frieze and the associated sculptures. In addition there was a very well made model of what Pergamon must have looked like in 160 b.c., so one saw how the altar fit amidst all the other important libraries, shopping arcades, and temples. While one of the other large monuments – the Militas Gate - was behind plastic and scaffolding we were able to enjoy the other impressive display, almost as massive – the Ishtar temple and processional walkway from the time of Nebuchadnezzar, in Babylon (now Iraq).
The entire structure is made of beautiful enameled tiles of brilliant blue, yellow and green with enamel lions and dragons in bas relief against the tile. The enamel colors were so primary that they reminded me in a simple way of Mexican tile work – just a few centuries earlier. These two massive structures the Pergamon Altar and walls of Ishtar were all that was truly available to be seen at this museum. I keep remembering Eckhart telling me that the Germans never just stole and plundered sites of antiquity, but rather they purchased them. Hmmmm, thought I, that must have been one heck of a price tag paid to Turkey and Iraq to make these acquisitions. The bigger question is: had they not been acquired would they remain to this day to be seen in their original locations, or would they have been plundered and sold in pieces such that one would never get a sense of their massive splendor?
Our next museum stop closer to our hotel, which Bob wanted to see, is called Mythos Germania. It is a very small, private museum which is trying to keep alive the ‘shadows and traces of the ‘Imperial Capital’ imagined by Hitler and Speer during the time of the Third Reich. The museum which is a rough-built structure sits very close to the bunker where Hitler died, and kitty-corner to the Holocaust Memorial which lies on top of the remains of Goebbels quarters, and personal bunker. A most pleasant neighborhood. The main exhibits show the plans which Hitler had to build a city that would surpass Paris in its grandeur. The buildings were all to be huge; the roads which were to be built were to be wide, massive and impressive. Everything was to be of a size to inspire awe and fear.
Unfortunately for the Nazis, the war reduced their plans to nothing, and what was a grand plan remained exactly that. Entire neighborhoods were to be flattened for this grand scheme and 60000 Jews were to be ‘un-tenanted’. Berlin was ultimately flattened – but by allied bombs. The gruesome part was that to build these sites would require more cement, steel and brick than was able to be produced by any manufacturing site, so Speer arranged to create additional manufacturing factories which depended on slave prisoners for its labor. In addition to the displays there were videos - all in German - from both the newsreels, and from propaganda films, extolling the Nazi regime. The original project was planned to be completed by 1950…as soon as the ‘current unpleasantness’ was concluded, and Germany was victorious.
Having taken in that cheerful site, we then walked over to the Holocaust Memorial which covers a few acres of land. This entire memorial has been a source of discussion as to its purpose and place. It is made up of 2711 gray stelae cubes each about a metre by 3 metres. They are of different heights (the tallest being 15 feet in height), and on undulating land so that one sees a person walking in to this area and as they progress towards the center their head disappears as the stelae get taller and the land slopes downward. In addition to this memorial above ground there is a museum underground with an excellent walking tour that gives you the history of the holocaust, provides statistics as to how many people from each country were exterminated (Poland the most, Belgium the least) as well as written testimonials of people writing to their families. Perhaps the most compelling exhibits were the individual stories of fifteen Jewish families from different parts of the world. For each family there was a large family photograph taken when the world was more sane. Then they displayed documents and photographs that followed the individual members of the family to their fate. For each person they showed their birth, death and location of death.
Some lived and went to Israel, America or Latin America. More of them died in one camp or another. In all cases it made a very personal statement about very real people which made the large numbers of dead become more intimate and concrete. This for me was the most emotional of all the exhibits because it was so personal. While the museum was small, it was powerful and we would have stayed longer but it was closing hour. So having spent a day amidst war, we went off for a beer and some food along the lively bustling streets of Berlin on a Friday evening. What incongruity!! One has to remember that not too long ago this was the heart of the Nazi world. Every street name carries an ominous overtone of death and insanity. For Bob who has read so much of this period, every address carried a meaning. Since 1945 much of these physical sites have been destroyed either by the bombings of the war or by the victors of the war who wanted all sites associated with this atrocity to be obliterated. Now when one walks these streets there are lovely open parks, tall apartment complexes, or new roads filled with cafes and ice cream stands. War? What war? Someone born after 1975 would be hard pressed to see any remnant of the war except in small plaques which tell what stood in a particular spot… or memorials such as the ones we visited.
In one sense the Germans want to give full remembrance to this period, such that it won’t happen again, and yet on the other they don’t want to wallow in the past. For example the site of the bunker where Hitler died was totally destroyed by the Russians and until recently the German government wanted no indication of the site for fear that neo-Nazis might make this a memorial to their dead Fuhrer. But others wanted to at least have a marker to note the spot since it has an historical significance. And that’s what there is – a small marker. When we walked Wilhelmstrasse, the street with all the famously ghoulish addresses, there was almost no one there. It is not part of any bus tour, and only those with knowledge of the history would know where to look for these small indications of a very large disaster.
Arrival in the huge, shiny, spankingly new Hauptbahnhoff of Berlin. What an elegant and welcoming place with every known store and food emporium a traveler could hope for. And it was a sunny day, praise the lord.
We took a taxi to the Hotel Adlon, and noted at the front door that the official ‘greeters’ wore tall gray top-hats. We had just seen such a uniform at the train station where one of these gentlemen was picking up an elegant woman, taking her luggage and leading her, we now understood, to the hotel. Why hadn’t we thought to do that? Or was it something provided only to the very wealthy or ‘special’ people associated with the Adlon? In any case, we had arrived at another Kempinski Hotel – a sister to our lovely hotel in Dresden. We noted that like in Dresden, all the staff seemed open, friendly, helpful and truly trained to be service personnel. It is one thing to show a quick smile and then return to one’s grumpy state, but these people actually appear to enjoy their jobs and relish being helpful.
We were escorted to our room by a gentleman who described every button and switch (of which there are many), volunteered to help us with any little request, and as we were being introduced to our room, a maid came in with water and a display of fresh fruit, and another gentleman delivered our bags. While the room lacks that obscenely spacious feeling we had in Dresden, it certainly doesn’t lack in any other way…. Except they could provide a bit more storage for our clothes.
We learned that the original Adlon built in 1907, which Walter mentioned in the letters, was used as a bunker area and a hospital during the war. It was bombed out in 1945 and remained an empty hulk through the period of the GDR. In the early 90’s the Kempinski chain chose to rebuild the hotel in a model similar to the original, but with the incorporation of all modern luxuries and conveniences which are now expected. The result, like in Dresden is delightful.
We are in what was East Germany, next to the Brandenburg Gate which during the period of the GDR was a barren no-man’s land between the East and the West. The famous Blue sewage pipes we first noted in Dresden are prominent here in the old eastern sector, and we have yet to get somebody to accurately tell us why they exist. As we look out our window we see the new Berlin rising before our eyes. It is one huge construction site with cranes dotting the sky line in all directions. It appears that any vestige of the gray dull Communist-era construction is being torn down to make way for shiny glass tall modern buildings housing the new offices of the federal government which has moved from Bonn back to Berlin. Businesses choosing to set up headquarters in the new capital of Germany, and retailers here to take advantage of the rising economy are incented to help make this city a new and lively place. It would appear that if one is in the construction business there is no lack of opportunity, and I would think employment figures would be quite robust.
We had read a fairly bitter article in the Int’l Herald Tribune that could make the reader believe that Berlin is failing as a new capital. It implied that the incentive ‘packages’ aren’t working, and that there is a feeling of despair. We certainly aren’t seeing that and we wondered if there weren’t some sour grapes being expressed. Like in Dresden and Leipzig and other eastern cities, we are watching a work-in-progress and it will take years for us to see the end result. The Germans are working very hard to erase most of the history from 1933 – 1990, and replace it with the new Germany which is open, thriving and democratic.
For dinner we chose a concierge-recommended typical Bavarian restaurant called Maximillian, which was a bit of a hike but gave us a chance to become familiar with the neighborhood and to stretch our legs after a long day on trains. We noted plenty of Starbucks, and Dunkin Donuts along with Berlin’s direct competition to them – Einstein’s - which is trying to bring back the old coffee house atmosphere. Good luck to them. We ended our busy day with drinks in our very elegant hotel lobby watching the world and being watched in return.
May 22 - Berlin To get our bearings, we chose, as we always do, to take an open-top bus tour starting at the Brandenburg Gate. With headsets glued to our ears, and sunshine streaming on our faces, we drove around the city for 2.5 hours while the ‘tour guide’ told us what we were seeing. There are still large open expanses where buildings either were torn down after the war, or after the GDR, there are on the back-streets the gloomy gray functional cubes which housed people and businesses But the speaker in our ear spoke to new roads, new buildings, new attitudes, a new ‘Athens’ rising to meet the 21st century. After a few grid-lock situations and a few detours around construction we headed back to the hotel to recoup.
Next, off to thee Opernpalais Restaurant, next to the StaatsOpera, on Unter Den Linden – a few blocks down from our hotel, past the Russian Embassy and Aeroflot Airlines – two reminders that this part of Berlin was definitely in the eastern zone. We sat outside under an awning, people-watching, sipping beer and enjoying the warm weather. The language range is rich – Italian, French, German, British, assorted eastern and Russian… and occasionally 'American'. I keep reminding myself that we are in the heart of the Nazi and Communist world, where street names still in existence conjure up a different time, when life was a lot less relaxed and pleasant.
For Bob, Berlin holds a special interest since when he was here working in the 1980’s, most of this area was off limits except for very carefully structured bus tours which were extolling the wonders of the GDR. To be able to now stroll freely through the old eastern zone of Berlin as well as the former Nazi government district along the streets he’s read so much about brings a lot of the history alive.
Over the next days there will be a lot of sites to visit and we’ll earn our meals.
May 23 Awaking to a semi-sunny day, we hopped on the S-bahn train and headed to one of the Berlin Underground tours only to discover that we had been given incorrect information about the time of the English tour and we’d have to wait until tomorrow. To salve our unhappiness, we walked to Museum Island to see the Pergamon Museum. This is a museum which I’d heard about while studying Greek antiquity but which had been in the eastern sector and thus less available. The entire Museum Island is a construction site as the newly merged Germany is trying to bring the island back to its former glory. The Pergamon like all the museums had been seriously bombed during WW II, and not well maintained during the time of the GDR.
Many galleries and sites were therefore under scaffolding and plastic, but the two large and impressive exhibits were available for viewing. The altar from Pergamon (in Turkey) is one of the largest constructions I’ve ever seen under the roof of any museum. The frieze sculptures which went around the entire base of the original altar represent the battle between the gods and the titans with Athena and Zeus leading the charge. When standing at the base of the long steep flight of marble stairs leading up to the sacrificial altar one feels a little of the awe which must have been felt by the inhabitants as they came forward to present their sacrificial animals. With our audio tour we were told about the entire altar, the frieze and the associated sculptures. In addition there was a very well made model of what Pergamon must have looked like in 160 b.c., so one saw how the altar fit amidst all the other important libraries, shopping arcades, and temples. While one of the other large monuments – the Militas Gate - was behind plastic and scaffolding we were able to enjoy the other impressive display, almost as massive – the Ishtar temple and processional walkway from the time of Nebuchadnezzar, in Babylon (now Iraq).
The entire structure is made of beautiful enameled tiles of brilliant blue, yellow and green with enamel lions and dragons in bas relief against the tile. The enamel colors were so primary that they reminded me in a simple way of Mexican tile work – just a few centuries earlier. These two massive structures the Pergamon Altar and walls of Ishtar were all that was truly available to be seen at this museum. I keep remembering Eckhart telling me that the Germans never just stole and plundered sites of antiquity, but rather they purchased them. Hmmmm, thought I, that must have been one heck of a price tag paid to Turkey and Iraq to make these acquisitions. The bigger question is: had they not been acquired would they remain to this day to be seen in their original locations, or would they have been plundered and sold in pieces such that one would never get a sense of their massive splendor?
Our next museum stop closer to our hotel, which Bob wanted to see, is called Mythos Germania. It is a very small, private museum which is trying to keep alive the ‘shadows and traces of the ‘Imperial Capital’ imagined by Hitler and Speer during the time of the Third Reich. The museum which is a rough-built structure sits very close to the bunker where Hitler died, and kitty-corner to the Holocaust Memorial which lies on top of the remains of Goebbels quarters, and personal bunker. A most pleasant neighborhood. The main exhibits show the plans which Hitler had to build a city that would surpass Paris in its grandeur. The buildings were all to be huge; the roads which were to be built were to be wide, massive and impressive. Everything was to be of a size to inspire awe and fear.
Unfortunately for the Nazis, the war reduced their plans to nothing, and what was a grand plan remained exactly that. Entire neighborhoods were to be flattened for this grand scheme and 60000 Jews were to be ‘un-tenanted’. Berlin was ultimately flattened – but by allied bombs. The gruesome part was that to build these sites would require more cement, steel and brick than was able to be produced by any manufacturing site, so Speer arranged to create additional manufacturing factories which depended on slave prisoners for its labor. In addition to the displays there were videos - all in German - from both the newsreels, and from propaganda films, extolling the Nazi regime. The original project was planned to be completed by 1950…as soon as the ‘current unpleasantness’ was concluded, and Germany was victorious.
Having taken in that cheerful site, we then walked over to the Holocaust Memorial which covers a few acres of land. This entire memorial has been a source of discussion as to its purpose and place. It is made up of 2711 gray stelae cubes each about a metre by 3 metres. They are of different heights (the tallest being 15 feet in height), and on undulating land so that one sees a person walking in to this area and as they progress towards the center their head disappears as the stelae get taller and the land slopes downward. In addition to this memorial above ground there is a museum underground with an excellent walking tour that gives you the history of the holocaust, provides statistics as to how many people from each country were exterminated (Poland the most, Belgium the least) as well as written testimonials of people writing to their families. Perhaps the most compelling exhibits were the individual stories of fifteen Jewish families from different parts of the world. For each family there was a large family photograph taken when the world was more sane. Then they displayed documents and photographs that followed the individual members of the family to their fate. For each person they showed their birth, death and location of death.
Some lived and went to Israel, America or Latin America. More of them died in one camp or another. In all cases it made a very personal statement about very real people which made the large numbers of dead become more intimate and concrete. This for me was the most emotional of all the exhibits because it was so personal. While the museum was small, it was powerful and we would have stayed longer but it was closing hour. So having spent a day amidst war, we went off for a beer and some food along the lively bustling streets of Berlin on a Friday evening. What incongruity!! One has to remember that not too long ago this was the heart of the Nazi world. Every street name carries an ominous overtone of death and insanity. For Bob who has read so much of this period, every address carried a meaning. Since 1945 much of these physical sites have been destroyed either by the bombings of the war or by the victors of the war who wanted all sites associated with this atrocity to be obliterated. Now when one walks these streets there are lovely open parks, tall apartment complexes, or new roads filled with cafes and ice cream stands. War? What war? Someone born after 1975 would be hard pressed to see any remnant of the war except in small plaques which tell what stood in a particular spot… or memorials such as the ones we visited.
In one sense the Germans want to give full remembrance to this period, such that it won’t happen again, and yet on the other they don’t want to wallow in the past. For example the site of the bunker where Hitler died was totally destroyed by the Russians and until recently the German government wanted no indication of the site for fear that neo-Nazis might make this a memorial to their dead Fuhrer. But others wanted to at least have a marker to note the spot since it has an historical significance. And that’s what there is – a small marker. When we walked Wilhelmstrasse, the street with all the famously ghoulish addresses, there was almost no one there. It is not part of any bus tour, and only those with knowledge of the history would know where to look for these small indications of a very large disaster.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
Switzerland
May 18th – Barcelona to Zurich
A long day on trains, heading for Zurich. We left Barcelona’s old Franca station early in the morning on the 8 a.m.“Talgo”, after breakfast in a classic old, three story high, railway restaurant…the kind that doesn’t exist in the States anymore. Our fellow travelers on this Sunday seemed to be mostly tourists like ourselves, back-packers, and a few business people heading out early. We changed in Montpellier, France (to a TGV), and again in Geneva (ah, the joy of hefting suitcases on and off platforms and finding adequate storage spaces for them). By 8:30 p.m. we arrived at the Hauptbahnof in the heart of Zurich… where we enjoyed a dinner of Bratwurst, potatoes, and beer (another restaurant out of a ‘30s movie), before heading out in the rain to find our hotel.
The Steigenberger Bellerive Au Lac is located right on Lake Zurich across from a swim house and boat harbor. We were greeted with wonderful Zurich-accented-English, which sang to us as we registered. Unfortunately, we were informed, rain was in our future. But since Zurich was to be a respite between heavy touring, we didn’t care. We both know the city well, have stayed here numerous times, and really just wanted days to rest, ride boats, walk streets and sleep. All the Steigenberger hotels have a theme of healthy foods and natural products which were advertised in all their literature which coated the room. Many of their hotels are spas and this one in the heart of Zurich also offered a spa and massage center. The four Steigenberger women (couldn’t tell which were daughters or mothers) have created a cookbook (also in our room), and their restaurant menus focus on the healthy life style. “Scmeckt gut, tut gut” is their motto.
The room itself was modern and a little sterile, but perfectly comfortable once we’d ordered a few extra pillows. (Maybe having one flat pillow is part of being healthy?). As a slight aside: my only question is why do all European hotels, no matter how simple or elegant believe that sandpaper is the best kind of toilet paper to be provided? Is it the problem of recycled paper losing its softness? Or is it some sort of barbaric custom to ensure that one has a truly uncomfortable experience? It harks back to the 60’s when we both first traveled here, and at that point I thought it still was recovery from the war, but now I think it’s just the way they like it. Ah, the travails of travel in foreign lands and how I miss a good roll of Scotts or Charmin.
Before falling wearily into our bed we looked out from our balcony to the lovely view at night of tour boats lit up as they glided down the lake, and sail boats at anchor… backlit by the city lights.
May 19th – Zurich, Switzerland
An overcast day, as promised, which meant that steamboat rides to see the mountains were out of the question since the mountains were hidden in clouds or fog. Instead we ambled through the town re-acquainting ourselves with old haunts, having a bite to eat, window shopping along the Bahnhofstrasse and enjoying a delightful Italian meal at Frascati, a restaurant ‘chain’ in Switzerland serving superb Italian food. I love listening to the Swiss speak German with their broad accent and their guttural inflections. I think I speak fairly reasonable German, but I was hard pressed to understand people even when they were simply counting to ten. I kept thinking of the wonderful friend of Mother’s – Heidi Kaplan from Ann Arbor – the wife of a well known mathematician who’d grown up in Zurich and had the same wonderful lilt and sing-song quality when she spoke English. Swiss-German is as close as one can get to making German almost melodic, and that’s going some. I remember Heidi learning Italian, which she thought was the most melodic of all the European tongues, and the combination of Swiss-spoken Italian was delightful to hear as she would read aloud from Dante and other of her favorite poets.
We also noted as we meandered the streets that the people of Zurich, like those we saw in Barcelona, are really quite attractive. Bob is focused more on the young ladies, and I tend to watch the fashion statements being made by people shopping at the COOP or sitting in the cafes – tailored, muted colors but stylish. Absolutely everyone seems glued to a cell phone which has become the major jewelry adornment worn by all. It is hard to think that there was a time when one actually used hard-wired telephones, or as we tourists often found, going to the post office to make calls. Ah, those days of yore.
But then one thinks about the boys a mere eighty years ago and their major means of communication was letters and very slow telegrams. I’m not so sure I don’t miss that means of communication. You could truly disappear from the world for weeks on end, and no one expected to hear from you. And when you wrote a letter you took the time to think about what you wanted to say and how you wanted to say it. It was a more measured form of communication without the ‘looseness’ brought about by the cell-phone and e-mail, with the benefit and all the drawbacks of immediacy. I’m not sure I would like to have letters taking months to reach their destination, because by the time a parent or friend had received, read, and replied to that letter, and you received their answer, it could be a month and their concerns voiced about your travels would already be ancient history.
All those lovely books and letters of travelers experiencing the grand tour – for the most part they have become bloggers – of which I too have become an aficionado. The benefit of this blog is that I capture impressions and thoughts every day, which serves as my own diary, and by making it available to others, I write once for all without having to repeat myself over and over again. The negative is that perhaps for some there is more detail than they need, and unfortunately no one gets those wonderful postcards which are later attached to the refrigerator as the recipient thinks “ah, that’s where they are” – which of course is wrong, because by the time the post card reaches the reader, the traveler is already home.
May 20th – Zurich
We awoke praying for a good day but were met with the same raw, cold, clammy weather that makes one want to stay under the duvet all day long. But we gathered our wits and our umbrellas and decided to walk around the ‘old town’, doing more window shopping and people-watching. Both proved successful.
Zurich is not a town endowed with a ton of interesting museums or sites. It’s like many towns in Switzerland focused on the out-of-doors, and business. After vibrant Barcelona, it reminded us more of Vienna – an old town that serves its citizens well, but does not depend on tourism for its basic existence.
Since Switzerland was ‘neutral’ during WW II (or so they wanted us to believe) nothing was bombed, leaving all the lovely old buildings proudly intact and able to proudly identify the date that they were built… which often goes back to the 16th or 17th century. It is an amazingly clean and orderly city and you know immediately that the Swiss- and not just our hotel chain - care about their health since it seemed that every third store on the side streets or ‘gasse’ was an apothecary or health food store. Along the main Bahnhofstrasse interspersed between all the high end fashion stores were beautiful jewelry and watch shops with wonderful modern, incredibly expensive bijou for the well-heeled visitor. This is the street where one definitely window-shops and leaves one’s VISA card safely tucked away.
Bob noted that while Switzerland was always an expensive country, it seemed exceptionally expensive now. He rightly concluded that the very inflationary prices which Switzerland is obliged to charge exist because Switzerland chooses to remain outside the EU and to continue using the Swiss Franc. Their Franc is pegged to the dollar, but since their surrounding neighbors are all on the Euro, they have to inflate their prices to keep on a par with the rest of Europe. As a result a cup of coffee in the EU countries is ‘equally priced’ with a cup of coffee in Switzerland…but it does give one heart palpitations when a breakfast of juice, coffee and pastry costs thirty Swiss Francs (or American dollars), and a Starbucks regular coffee starts at 4.5 Swiss Francs (almost 8 for a latte!). Switzerland was always pricy, but right now it seems downright prohibitive. And we’re outta here!
Tomorrow is another full day on trains. We love our train rides where we have plenty of time to enjoy the scenery, read books, bone up on the sites to see in the next city, or just listen to our iPods or nap. And, there are only two long travel days left on our agenda…which means that this Journey is coming to an end as well. We have very mixed reactions to that.
A long day on trains, heading for Zurich. We left Barcelona’s old Franca station early in the morning on the 8 a.m.“Talgo”, after breakfast in a classic old, three story high, railway restaurant…the kind that doesn’t exist in the States anymore. Our fellow travelers on this Sunday seemed to be mostly tourists like ourselves, back-packers, and a few business people heading out early. We changed in Montpellier, France (to a TGV), and again in Geneva (ah, the joy of hefting suitcases on and off platforms and finding adequate storage spaces for them). By 8:30 p.m. we arrived at the Hauptbahnof in the heart of Zurich… where we enjoyed a dinner of Bratwurst, potatoes, and beer (another restaurant out of a ‘30s movie), before heading out in the rain to find our hotel.
The Steigenberger Bellerive Au Lac is located right on Lake Zurich across from a swim house and boat harbor. We were greeted with wonderful Zurich-accented-English, which sang to us as we registered. Unfortunately, we were informed, rain was in our future. But since Zurich was to be a respite between heavy touring, we didn’t care. We both know the city well, have stayed here numerous times, and really just wanted days to rest, ride boats, walk streets and sleep. All the Steigenberger hotels have a theme of healthy foods and natural products which were advertised in all their literature which coated the room. Many of their hotels are spas and this one in the heart of Zurich also offered a spa and massage center. The four Steigenberger women (couldn’t tell which were daughters or mothers) have created a cookbook (also in our room), and their restaurant menus focus on the healthy life style. “Scmeckt gut, tut gut” is their motto.
The room itself was modern and a little sterile, but perfectly comfortable once we’d ordered a few extra pillows. (Maybe having one flat pillow is part of being healthy?). As a slight aside: my only question is why do all European hotels, no matter how simple or elegant believe that sandpaper is the best kind of toilet paper to be provided? Is it the problem of recycled paper losing its softness? Or is it some sort of barbaric custom to ensure that one has a truly uncomfortable experience? It harks back to the 60’s when we both first traveled here, and at that point I thought it still was recovery from the war, but now I think it’s just the way they like it. Ah, the travails of travel in foreign lands and how I miss a good roll of Scotts or Charmin.
Before falling wearily into our bed we looked out from our balcony to the lovely view at night of tour boats lit up as they glided down the lake, and sail boats at anchor… backlit by the city lights.
May 19th – Zurich, Switzerland
An overcast day, as promised, which meant that steamboat rides to see the mountains were out of the question since the mountains were hidden in clouds or fog. Instead we ambled through the town re-acquainting ourselves with old haunts, having a bite to eat, window shopping along the Bahnhofstrasse and enjoying a delightful Italian meal at Frascati, a restaurant ‘chain’ in Switzerland serving superb Italian food. I love listening to the Swiss speak German with their broad accent and their guttural inflections. I think I speak fairly reasonable German, but I was hard pressed to understand people even when they were simply counting to ten. I kept thinking of the wonderful friend of Mother’s – Heidi Kaplan from Ann Arbor – the wife of a well known mathematician who’d grown up in Zurich and had the same wonderful lilt and sing-song quality when she spoke English. Swiss-German is as close as one can get to making German almost melodic, and that’s going some. I remember Heidi learning Italian, which she thought was the most melodic of all the European tongues, and the combination of Swiss-spoken Italian was delightful to hear as she would read aloud from Dante and other of her favorite poets.
We also noted as we meandered the streets that the people of Zurich, like those we saw in Barcelona, are really quite attractive. Bob is focused more on the young ladies, and I tend to watch the fashion statements being made by people shopping at the COOP or sitting in the cafes – tailored, muted colors but stylish. Absolutely everyone seems glued to a cell phone which has become the major jewelry adornment worn by all. It is hard to think that there was a time when one actually used hard-wired telephones, or as we tourists often found, going to the post office to make calls. Ah, those days of yore.
But then one thinks about the boys a mere eighty years ago and their major means of communication was letters and very slow telegrams. I’m not so sure I don’t miss that means of communication. You could truly disappear from the world for weeks on end, and no one expected to hear from you. And when you wrote a letter you took the time to think about what you wanted to say and how you wanted to say it. It was a more measured form of communication without the ‘looseness’ brought about by the cell-phone and e-mail, with the benefit and all the drawbacks of immediacy. I’m not sure I would like to have letters taking months to reach their destination, because by the time a parent or friend had received, read, and replied to that letter, and you received their answer, it could be a month and their concerns voiced about your travels would already be ancient history.
All those lovely books and letters of travelers experiencing the grand tour – for the most part they have become bloggers – of which I too have become an aficionado. The benefit of this blog is that I capture impressions and thoughts every day, which serves as my own diary, and by making it available to others, I write once for all without having to repeat myself over and over again. The negative is that perhaps for some there is more detail than they need, and unfortunately no one gets those wonderful postcards which are later attached to the refrigerator as the recipient thinks “ah, that’s where they are” – which of course is wrong, because by the time the post card reaches the reader, the traveler is already home.
May 20th – Zurich
We awoke praying for a good day but were met with the same raw, cold, clammy weather that makes one want to stay under the duvet all day long. But we gathered our wits and our umbrellas and decided to walk around the ‘old town’, doing more window shopping and people-watching. Both proved successful.
Zurich is not a town endowed with a ton of interesting museums or sites. It’s like many towns in Switzerland focused on the out-of-doors, and business. After vibrant Barcelona, it reminded us more of Vienna – an old town that serves its citizens well, but does not depend on tourism for its basic existence.
Since Switzerland was ‘neutral’ during WW II (or so they wanted us to believe) nothing was bombed, leaving all the lovely old buildings proudly intact and able to proudly identify the date that they were built… which often goes back to the 16th or 17th century. It is an amazingly clean and orderly city and you know immediately that the Swiss- and not just our hotel chain - care about their health since it seemed that every third store on the side streets or ‘gasse’ was an apothecary or health food store. Along the main Bahnhofstrasse interspersed between all the high end fashion stores were beautiful jewelry and watch shops with wonderful modern, incredibly expensive bijou for the well-heeled visitor. This is the street where one definitely window-shops and leaves one’s VISA card safely tucked away.
Bob noted that while Switzerland was always an expensive country, it seemed exceptionally expensive now. He rightly concluded that the very inflationary prices which Switzerland is obliged to charge exist because Switzerland chooses to remain outside the EU and to continue using the Swiss Franc. Their Franc is pegged to the dollar, but since their surrounding neighbors are all on the Euro, they have to inflate their prices to keep on a par with the rest of Europe. As a result a cup of coffee in the EU countries is ‘equally priced’ with a cup of coffee in Switzerland…but it does give one heart palpitations when a breakfast of juice, coffee and pastry costs thirty Swiss Francs (or American dollars), and a Starbucks regular coffee starts at 4.5 Swiss Francs (almost 8 for a latte!). Switzerland was always pricy, but right now it seems downright prohibitive. And we’re outta here!
Tomorrow is another full day on trains. We love our train rides where we have plenty of time to enjoy the scenery, read books, bone up on the sites to see in the next city, or just listen to our iPods or nap. And, there are only two long travel days left on our agenda…which means that this Journey is coming to an end as well. We have very mixed reactions to that.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Barcelona
May 15, 2008 – Marseilles
A rainy and blustery day…a good day to stay aboard. And that’s exactly what we did. Enjoyed the ship, packed and had dinner with our Lake Bled companions. As always there was a large exchange of email addresses and promises to keep in touch. Who knows, we may even do that.
May 16, 2008 – Arrival in Barcelona
The entire debarkation went smoothly. We left the ship at the new cruise terminal and stood on what seemed to be an interminable line waiting for a taxi which would take us to our hotel – the Monte Carlo located right on La Rambla. My immediate reaction to the city was that of a busy ‘happening’ place: people strolling, sitting in cafés, riding bicycles, scooters, mopeds, chatting, laughing, honking their horns. Our hotel which is so perfectly located in the midst of everything is still wonderfully quiet. Our suite was large and provided every known amenity we could want: a sitting room with wet-bar and TV; a dressing room; a large bedroom with another TV and a little nook holding a desk with FREE WIFI…a major bonus which we had not encountered until now; the tiled bathroom with its clear glass-enclosed shower providing more nozzles and spray outlets than anyone could ever imagine and the largest Jacuzzi I’ve seen since our hotel in Dresden. But with the severe water shortage in Barcelona requiring water to be brought in, we couldn’t quite see ourselves availing ourselves of all these sybaritic pleasures. So instead we unpacked and headed out to walk La Rambla from one end to the other on a sunny, warm afternoon…what a scene!!
It’s been compared to the Champs Elysee, but that doesn’t begin to describe this one mile of tree-lined boulevard that runs from the harbor to Place Catalunya. The Champs is an old stodgy lady compared to this spritely, energetic vamp. Within that one mile we saw all manner of small animals for sale (baby rabbits, chickens, iguanas, turtles, and singing birds), all manner of tourist stands selling soccer paraphernalia, post cards, magnets, brochures, travel books and newspapers), and best of all a vast variety of costumed characters frozen in position until encouraged to move by someone putting a Euro in the contribution-pot that sat at their feet.
We saw a valentine with a lovely red nose that hugged any manner of person who approached; an ethereal bare breasted sprite that manipulated a clear glass globe with a smoothness and dexterity that had us staring in awe;
there was a small black dog-like monster with a huge gaping mouth that scared little children, but if one was brave enough to approach and throw a coin near it, it would act quite docile; there was a totally gold person who was frozen until paid, and who would then flip the pages of a magical gold book whose pages appeared empty when first flipped, but when flipped again had etchings in pencil and when flipped a third time had pictures in full color; there was a silver-coated medusa with silver snakes as its hair that leered in a menacing way until paid, and would then hug a person in a still threatening manner; a large Dracula like creature which hugged people under its caped wings; a truly skilled soccer player who could bauble a ball endlessly on his thigh, then toss it from toe to toe with never a pause in action; and on and on and on. Of course, one was obliged to stop, and while distracted one became a prime victim for the many pick-pockets that roam the street.
We had been warned by the hotel reception, previous visitors, and all manner of literature to be wary of these people who while not dangerous, were most adept at taking your belongings. So Bob and I were prepared, and had stripped off all important objects and left them in the hotel safe. Feeling a wee bit thirsty and hungry, with breakfast on the ship seeming eons ago, we found ourselves in a lovely Plaza Real surrounded by sunny cafes and people watching people or simply absorbing the sun. A quick beer (Guiness and Duvel) and some snacks, and we were re-energized and ready to wander around again as tourists. When we were finally exhausted, we found our hotel and our magical bed whose head and feet could be raised automatically to any odd position one could want….and that was it.
May 17, 2008
The hotel breakfast room located off the lobby provided a wonderful spread made to match any nationality’s desires. There were meats and cheeses, Danish or toast, eggs and sausage and freshly squeezed orange juice that tasted magnificent. Well fortified, we headed to the tourist bus – one of the great recommendations we had received from the internet. When we arrive new to a city, we find that these open-topped busses, where one can hop on and off whenever and wherever they stop, are the best way to get one’s bearings. The Barcelona bus tour provided three distinct routes (Blue, Red and Green) and we decided we’d try at least two of them. We bought our bus pass, found the blue line, boarded, plugged in our ear-pods, and off we went listening to the background music which was a dull repetitive new-age theme and as we approached an intersection or important site, a voice would tell us the salient information about what we were viewing.
Our enthusiasm for our blue tour was somewhat dampened as it started to sprinkle and then to rain, but we just covered up, took less pictures, and enjoyed it as best we could. As with all such audio tours, the narrator is very proud of his city and tells the important history which is filled with bravery and valor, or great artistic skill. For example at one intersection dedicated to Pablo Casals, we heard about 4 measures of one of his famous cello concerti; we learned that one street was named after the first governor of a briefly free Catalan before the civil war and Franco. This governor served exactly two years. (We surmised that Peacham should be filled with the monuments to our selectmen who served longer terms for less fame and glory. Maybe we need to re-think the naming of our town roads.)
My over-all impressions of Barcelona were far more enthusiastic and laudatory than I had ever expected. Somehow I had linked Mexico and Spain into one type of place and I had imagined a manana attitude, poverty, dirt, and somehow second-world environment. What did I know!!
For all these years I never visited Spain because of fore-gone impressions and suddenly here I was in a vibrant, energetic, clean city that reminded me over and over of Paris. There were beautiful open squares with either a statue or piece of art in its center (most described by the narrator); wide, tree-lined avenues which provided shade in hot summer, and were just beginning to leaf out; row upon row of lovely well-kept apartment buildings with their varied wrought-iron railings; painted fresco work on walls which added a unique un-Parisian neighborhood charm; cafes located at most streets with people enjoying their morning strong coffee; and everywhere people walking, shopping, chatting, exercising dogs or children. I’m not sure that life here would have been like this in the days of Franco, when Catalan as a language was forbidden and their unique cultural mores were prohibited, but it is now a city I would gladly come back to.
Having gotten fairly soaked and feeling clammy and cold, we stopped back at the hotel, changed into more appropriate clothing and before starting on the red tour we decided to have some tapas. Our hotel concierge gave us the recommendation to go to Ciudad Condal (or in Catalan Ciutat Comtal) assuring us that it was authentic and not a tourist trap. And it wasn’t. It being Saturday (or maybe it’s any day), the Catalan were out in number. The chance of eating indoors at the actual tapas bar was impossible. It was jammed to the rafters and it required one to be able to converse quickly and accurately with the man behind the bar to order. Speaking not a word of Spanish, much less Catalan, we opted for the outside portion of the restaurant where we waited thirty+ minutes for a table which was located on the boulevard across from the actual restaurant itself.
We decided on a wonderful array including: A large pitcher of Sangria; fried potatoes with mayonnaise and hot red sauce; Grilled asparagus; small fried fish like Greek barbounia; squid Andalusia; grilled mushrooms; and toasted bruschetta with tomatoes and oil. It was a wonderful sampler, and had we been able to decipher the specials of the day, we might have done even more, but we were satisfied with every bite, and ended it with two cappuccino coffees before heading to the red bus route.
The red bus tour was equally delightful, mainly because it wasn’t as crowded and it wasn’t raining. Instead of showing us the main highlights nearer the harbor, it took us more into the suburbs where we saw some of Gaudi’s main buildings and churches; the soccer stadium where the team was described in such glowing terms that I’d believe they were the king of sports; some of the more wealthy suburbs where large houses were protected with cameras and alarms; the Olympic village from 1992 where the housing of that time is now the up and coming trendy neighborhood near the harbor; and enough churches, parks, and monasteries to satisfy anyone. We enjoyed every minute of our tours and really felt that through these two routes we had seen the highlights of the town and gotten our bearings.
On our next visit with more than one day to see it all, we’ll visit some of the sights in more detail… and that alone is a huge statement when I say we’ll visit again. In one twenty-four hour period my entire impression of a city, and a country, have been turned around and I only regret that I never came here before. Bob who had twice been here forty-two years ago while serving in the Navy remembered some of the sites well, but for him too it was a new and exciting city. (I think every major city should host an Olympics… it helps one spruce things up and gives pride to all inhabitants. Proof being: Athens, Barcelona, Munich, Montreal, to name just a few.)
Our only problem is that with every new city we say to each other, “well, we’ll see more of that the next time!” Our list of future travel plans may far surpass our available years, but we can certainly make a stab at checking items off over the next 10-15 years. But before I return to Spain, I’ll need to at least learn to count to ten, and be able to read a menu instead of using the point and gesture sign language that we employed today. Tomorrow is a long train-travel day as we head to Zurich. Twelve hours with three different trains, so once more we packed our bags and fell into bed with the alarm set to wake us entirely too early for two people on vacation.
A rainy and blustery day…a good day to stay aboard. And that’s exactly what we did. Enjoyed the ship, packed and had dinner with our Lake Bled companions. As always there was a large exchange of email addresses and promises to keep in touch. Who knows, we may even do that.
May 16, 2008 – Arrival in Barcelona
The entire debarkation went smoothly. We left the ship at the new cruise terminal and stood on what seemed to be an interminable line waiting for a taxi which would take us to our hotel – the Monte Carlo located right on La Rambla. My immediate reaction to the city was that of a busy ‘happening’ place: people strolling, sitting in cafés, riding bicycles, scooters, mopeds, chatting, laughing, honking their horns. Our hotel which is so perfectly located in the midst of everything is still wonderfully quiet. Our suite was large and provided every known amenity we could want: a sitting room with wet-bar and TV; a dressing room; a large bedroom with another TV and a little nook holding a desk with FREE WIFI…a major bonus which we had not encountered until now; the tiled bathroom with its clear glass-enclosed shower providing more nozzles and spray outlets than anyone could ever imagine and the largest Jacuzzi I’ve seen since our hotel in Dresden. But with the severe water shortage in Barcelona requiring water to be brought in, we couldn’t quite see ourselves availing ourselves of all these sybaritic pleasures. So instead we unpacked and headed out to walk La Rambla from one end to the other on a sunny, warm afternoon…what a scene!!
It’s been compared to the Champs Elysee, but that doesn’t begin to describe this one mile of tree-lined boulevard that runs from the harbor to Place Catalunya. The Champs is an old stodgy lady compared to this spritely, energetic vamp. Within that one mile we saw all manner of small animals for sale (baby rabbits, chickens, iguanas, turtles, and singing birds), all manner of tourist stands selling soccer paraphernalia, post cards, magnets, brochures, travel books and newspapers), and best of all a vast variety of costumed characters frozen in position until encouraged to move by someone putting a Euro in the contribution-pot that sat at their feet.
We saw a valentine with a lovely red nose that hugged any manner of person who approached; an ethereal bare breasted sprite that manipulated a clear glass globe with a smoothness and dexterity that had us staring in awe;
We had been warned by the hotel reception, previous visitors, and all manner of literature to be wary of these people who while not dangerous, were most adept at taking your belongings. So Bob and I were prepared, and had stripped off all important objects and left them in the hotel safe. Feeling a wee bit thirsty and hungry, with breakfast on the ship seeming eons ago, we found ourselves in a lovely Plaza Real surrounded by sunny cafes and people watching people or simply absorbing the sun. A quick beer (Guiness and Duvel) and some snacks, and we were re-energized and ready to wander around again as tourists. When we were finally exhausted, we found our hotel and our magical bed whose head and feet could be raised automatically to any odd position one could want….and that was it.
May 17, 2008
The hotel breakfast room located off the lobby provided a wonderful spread made to match any nationality’s desires. There were meats and cheeses, Danish or toast, eggs and sausage and freshly squeezed orange juice that tasted magnificent. Well fortified, we headed to the tourist bus – one of the great recommendations we had received from the internet. When we arrive new to a city, we find that these open-topped busses, where one can hop on and off whenever and wherever they stop, are the best way to get one’s bearings. The Barcelona bus tour provided three distinct routes (Blue, Red and Green) and we decided we’d try at least two of them. We bought our bus pass, found the blue line, boarded, plugged in our ear-pods, and off we went listening to the background music which was a dull repetitive new-age theme and as we approached an intersection or important site, a voice would tell us the salient information about what we were viewing.
Our enthusiasm for our blue tour was somewhat dampened as it started to sprinkle and then to rain, but we just covered up, took less pictures, and enjoyed it as best we could. As with all such audio tours, the narrator is very proud of his city and tells the important history which is filled with bravery and valor, or great artistic skill. For example at one intersection dedicated to Pablo Casals, we heard about 4 measures of one of his famous cello concerti; we learned that one street was named after the first governor of a briefly free Catalan before the civil war and Franco. This governor served exactly two years. (We surmised that Peacham should be filled with the monuments to our selectmen who served longer terms for less fame and glory. Maybe we need to re-think the naming of our town roads.)
My over-all impressions of Barcelona were far more enthusiastic and laudatory than I had ever expected. Somehow I had linked Mexico and Spain into one type of place and I had imagined a manana attitude, poverty, dirt, and somehow second-world environment. What did I know!!
For all these years I never visited Spain because of fore-gone impressions and suddenly here I was in a vibrant, energetic, clean city that reminded me over and over of Paris. There were beautiful open squares with either a statue or piece of art in its center (most described by the narrator); wide, tree-lined avenues which provided shade in hot summer, and were just beginning to leaf out; row upon row of lovely well-kept apartment buildings with their varied wrought-iron railings; painted fresco work on walls which added a unique un-Parisian neighborhood charm; cafes located at most streets with people enjoying their morning strong coffee; and everywhere people walking, shopping, chatting, exercising dogs or children. I’m not sure that life here would have been like this in the days of Franco, when Catalan as a language was forbidden and their unique cultural mores were prohibited, but it is now a city I would gladly come back to.
Having gotten fairly soaked and feeling clammy and cold, we stopped back at the hotel, changed into more appropriate clothing and before starting on the red tour we decided to have some tapas. Our hotel concierge gave us the recommendation to go to Ciudad Condal (or in Catalan Ciutat Comtal) assuring us that it was authentic and not a tourist trap. And it wasn’t. It being Saturday (or maybe it’s any day), the Catalan were out in number. The chance of eating indoors at the actual tapas bar was impossible. It was jammed to the rafters and it required one to be able to converse quickly and accurately with the man behind the bar to order. Speaking not a word of Spanish, much less Catalan, we opted for the outside portion of the restaurant where we waited thirty+ minutes for a table which was located on the boulevard across from the actual restaurant itself.
We decided on a wonderful array including: A large pitcher of Sangria; fried potatoes with mayonnaise and hot red sauce; Grilled asparagus; small fried fish like Greek barbounia; squid Andalusia; grilled mushrooms; and toasted bruschetta with tomatoes and oil. It was a wonderful sampler, and had we been able to decipher the specials of the day, we might have done even more, but we were satisfied with every bite, and ended it with two cappuccino coffees before heading to the red bus route.
The red bus tour was equally delightful, mainly because it wasn’t as crowded and it wasn’t raining. Instead of showing us the main highlights nearer the harbor, it took us more into the suburbs where we saw some of Gaudi’s main buildings and churches; the soccer stadium where the team was described in such glowing terms that I’d believe they were the king of sports; some of the more wealthy suburbs where large houses were protected with cameras and alarms; the Olympic village from 1992 where the housing of that time is now the up and coming trendy neighborhood near the harbor; and enough churches, parks, and monasteries to satisfy anyone. We enjoyed every minute of our tours and really felt that through these two routes we had seen the highlights of the town and gotten our bearings.
On our next visit with more than one day to see it all, we’ll visit some of the sights in more detail… and that alone is a huge statement when I say we’ll visit again. In one twenty-four hour period my entire impression of a city, and a country, have been turned around and I only regret that I never came here before. Bob who had twice been here forty-two years ago while serving in the Navy remembered some of the sites well, but for him too it was a new and exciting city. (I think every major city should host an Olympics… it helps one spruce things up and gives pride to all inhabitants. Proof being: Athens, Barcelona, Munich, Montreal, to name just a few.)
Our only problem is that with every new city we say to each other, “well, we’ll see more of that the next time!” Our list of future travel plans may far surpass our available years, but we can certainly make a stab at checking items off over the next 10-15 years. But before I return to Spain, I’ll need to at least learn to count to ten, and be able to read a menu instead of using the point and gesture sign language that we employed today. Tomorrow is a long train-travel day as we head to Zurich. Twelve hours with three different trains, so once more we packed our bags and fell into bed with the alarm set to wake us entirely too early for two people on vacation.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Rome & Monaco
May 13th – Port outside of Rome
A hideously rainy day. The very expensive tours were taking people armed with their umbrellas for a two hour ride to Rome to see the sites and to shop. We chose to stay on-board, having a manicure, doing loads of laundry or reading in the library. A dull down-day, but one which is needed when one is on the road for two months. Both of us are a little bored with the ship and ready to move on to more stimulating experiences.
Dinner tonight at a table for eight only emphasized this point. We had a brand new set of people with whom to become acquainted: two widowed friends from Arizona; two widowed friends from Edinburgh, Scotland who had known each other since the time that they were switchboard operators together (Ernestine where are you?); Richard, a fairly bombastic hog-the-conversation realtor from Portsmouth, New Hampshire and his very diminutive, quiet friend Rachel, a nurse from the south.
We had the usual tier-one conversations and the rest of the meal was dominated by what could be bought in what port; where one shopped when at home; how many brilliant grandchildren one had, etc. We excused ourselves after dessert, retired to the aft deck for a drink and then to bed.
May 14th – Monaco/Monte Carlo
We were rewarded with a blue sky warm day which lured us off the ship as soon as it had anchored off the port at noon. With Beatrice, rather than radar-nose leading the way, we found ourselves taking a more circuitous route to our destination - climbing our way to the top of the rock to see the old town, the aquarium and the palace of the Grimaldi family.
Monaco is a beautifully situated harbor where it is obvious that wealth has no limits. The ships which we could see in the harbor below, both yachts and sailing vessels were for the most part large and impressive. The town has changed significantly since Bob was here 40+ years ago, and even though we drove through here together less than 18 years ago, we felt as if we were visiting a new place. The old town which was once so prominent is almost lost amidst high rises, fancy hotels and an entire new city where business buildings and high rises dominate the skyline.
It would appear that it is only a few days before the Monte Carlo road race and the whole town has been rearranged for the event. Roads had detours or were cut off and being re-lined with markings for the racers; blue bleachers were being set up along the roadway for observers to see probably two minutes of the event as the drivers whipped by; trailers were being set up at various places to provide supplies; piles of tires were collected near the pit stop area; and every wall or bridge way had a prominent advertisement painted on for Bridgestone, Pirelli, ING and others. From the heights we could observe it all and we tried to lay out the route in our imaginations.
It seems we visit Monaco at about the same time because on our last visit similar rearrangements were underway and we actually drove part of what would be the race course on our way from Nice to Portofino. (We took lots of pictures to ask Dart Thalman about when we get home to Peacham. Last year his brother participated and Dart was his pit-assistant.)
We took the proverbial tourist pictures of ourselves outside the palace where we watched a very casual guard walking back and forth in front of the main entrance in a most sloppy parade march with his submachine gun held in position. Either the Grimaldis don’t care about formality, or he hadn’t yet learned the ropes. He was an embarrassment to all proud guards – be they Greek Evzones or American soldiers. {Bob suggested that he learned to march in the Navy…or the Coast Guard ;-) } But he did look lovely dressed in white, set against a blue sky and a pale palace. Only the seriously modern gun gave one pause.
Having completed our circuitous route we once more went down to the level of the harbor where we caught the #100 bus which, fora mere one Euro each, would carry us to Nice and lunch. The bus was crowded, so we were obliged to stand for most of the 13 kilometer ride, but who cared. The view outside the window was breathtaking as we drove the shoreline Cornich, passing the through towns of Eze, Villefranche, and Beaulieu looking down at an azure sea, sailboats, and elegant homes.
The conversation around us was French but with a distinctly southern accent and while we looked like Americans, we felt momentarily as if we were part of the local scene. Once in the old Port section of Nice, Radar-Nose took over and led us right back to our favorite Cours Saleya. In the early mornings this is a thriving fish, vegetable and flower market, with awnings down the middle of the road to protect from rain and sun, and water drainage ditches on both sides to wash down the smell of fish at the end of the sales day.
In the afternoon and evening it is transformed into a bustling, noisy restaurant ‘scene’ with nightclubs, disco, up-scale and simple fish restaurants, plus shops and stands appealing to locals and the tourists alike. It being 3:00 PM the conversion from fish market to restaurant row was almost complete and instead of fish stands, chairs and tables were put out under the awnings preparing for the evening activities. We sat at a lovely little restaurant where our parched and weary bodies sucked in ‘1664’ beer as if it were water while sitting on huge cushioned cast-iron chairs that looked like mini-thrones. Around us were the youth of Nice smoking like fiends, jabbering on cell phones, sunbathing and staring at the passersby. It always astounds me on a working afternoon to find so many people out and about, relaxing and enjoying life…where is the work ethic?…where is the time-focused need to quickly grab a meal and return to work? There’s something deliciously wrong with a culture that can luxuriate over a meal with friends without the guilt that pleasure should not be part of the workday experience. Or maybe they’re all students, or unemployed, or simply living off the wealth of their parents, with no need to work. We could observe this world for hours wondering what the story is behind each person sitting in a chair.
Having satisfied our hunger and thirst, we ambled across the city towards the railroad station, poking in windows on the main shopping drag – Gallerie Lafayette, H&M, all the main stores as well as the smaller boutiques are available. I limited myself to one Provencal tablecloth with poppies and lavender, my two favorite symbols of spring in Europe.
The streets were crowded with shoppers of all nationalities and we noted quite a few Muslims in their scarves and long gowns who are obviously part of the working world of Nice; there were a few too many beggars for my liking asking for alms, and I noticed that the new look of fashion seems to be just this side of sloppy. Where are those lovely French ladies with their sense of savoir-faire and nonchalant glamour? I miss that simple elegance where a silk scarf thrown dramatically around the shoulder, the well coifed hair and that hauteur which comes from knowing you look elegant makes the rest of us peons feel we haven’t a chance at graciousness.
I remember on my early trips to France when I’d shop like mad for scarves and try to look the part knowing that there was something just too American in my stance, my walk, my shoes, my attitude which would leave me revealed as an imposter. But what’s the fun, if you don’t try. This time I felt we were the better dressed but then, maybe we just don’t ‘get’ the new style.
Our train ride back was uneventful but our walk from the new Monaco train station to our ships’ tender was an odyssey. The train station is brand new, has three levels, and lacks signage at the critical junctures where one needs to know exactly where to go. Once out of the station, we knew where the port was, but getting there wasn’t obvious. It didn’t help to have half the roads chained off for the race, so that only those who lived in the town could find their way without error. Even Radar-Nose had his doubts as we went up and over bridge ways laid out for the race, walked in the area reserved for the car pits, found ourselves at some fairly chaotic intersection where to try and cross would mean taking ones life in one’s hand. We doubled back, went places we knew we shouldn’t be, and eventually found our way to the tender and to the ship, where we had a beer at our favorite aft deck bar to celebrate our safe return.
Every bone in our body told us we’d walked entirely too many city streets, climbed too many stairs, up and down, and we were very glad to find our comfortable bed…all that was missing was the masseuse to rub us down and take the kinks out of our aching limbs. Eight miles in the countryside goes by fairly easily, city walking with the need to be constantly alert to lights, bustling people, pick pockets, beggars and people hawking their wares, curbs, cobbled streets etc. is a different kind of walking. I love it because my senses get stimulated from all the things to be observed, but I do get weary at the end of a day.
Tomorrow will be a quiet day on board in the harbor of Marseilles. It is a seriously industrial port, so we will relax on the ship, do our packing and have a lovely dinner with our friends from the day at Lake Bled.
A hideously rainy day. The very expensive tours were taking people armed with their umbrellas for a two hour ride to Rome to see the sites and to shop. We chose to stay on-board, having a manicure, doing loads of laundry or reading in the library. A dull down-day, but one which is needed when one is on the road for two months. Both of us are a little bored with the ship and ready to move on to more stimulating experiences.
Dinner tonight at a table for eight only emphasized this point. We had a brand new set of people with whom to become acquainted: two widowed friends from Arizona; two widowed friends from Edinburgh, Scotland who had known each other since the time that they were switchboard operators together (Ernestine where are you?); Richard, a fairly bombastic hog-the-conversation realtor from Portsmouth, New Hampshire and his very diminutive, quiet friend Rachel, a nurse from the south.
We had the usual tier-one conversations and the rest of the meal was dominated by what could be bought in what port; where one shopped when at home; how many brilliant grandchildren one had, etc. We excused ourselves after dessert, retired to the aft deck for a drink and then to bed.
May 14th – Monaco/Monte Carlo
We were rewarded with a blue sky warm day which lured us off the ship as soon as it had anchored off the port at noon. With Beatrice, rather than radar-nose leading the way, we found ourselves taking a more circuitous route to our destination - climbing our way to the top of the rock to see the old town, the aquarium and the palace of the Grimaldi family.
Monaco is a beautifully situated harbor where it is obvious that wealth has no limits. The ships which we could see in the harbor below, both yachts and sailing vessels were for the most part large and impressive. The town has changed significantly since Bob was here 40+ years ago, and even though we drove through here together less than 18 years ago, we felt as if we were visiting a new place. The old town which was once so prominent is almost lost amidst high rises, fancy hotels and an entire new city where business buildings and high rises dominate the skyline.
It would appear that it is only a few days before the Monte Carlo road race and the whole town has been rearranged for the event. Roads had detours or were cut off and being re-lined with markings for the racers; blue bleachers were being set up along the roadway for observers to see probably two minutes of the event as the drivers whipped by; trailers were being set up at various places to provide supplies; piles of tires were collected near the pit stop area; and every wall or bridge way had a prominent advertisement painted on for Bridgestone, Pirelli, ING and others. From the heights we could observe it all and we tried to lay out the route in our imaginations.
It seems we visit Monaco at about the same time because on our last visit similar rearrangements were underway and we actually drove part of what would be the race course on our way from Nice to Portofino. (We took lots of pictures to ask Dart Thalman about when we get home to Peacham. Last year his brother participated and Dart was his pit-assistant.)
We took the proverbial tourist pictures of ourselves outside the palace where we watched a very casual guard walking back and forth in front of the main entrance in a most sloppy parade march with his submachine gun held in position. Either the Grimaldis don’t care about formality, or he hadn’t yet learned the ropes. He was an embarrassment to all proud guards – be they Greek Evzones or American soldiers. {Bob suggested that he learned to march in the Navy…or the Coast Guard ;-) } But he did look lovely dressed in white, set against a blue sky and a pale palace. Only the seriously modern gun gave one pause.
Having completed our circuitous route we once more went down to the level of the harbor where we caught the #100 bus which, fora mere one Euro each, would carry us to Nice and lunch. The bus was crowded, so we were obliged to stand for most of the 13 kilometer ride, but who cared. The view outside the window was breathtaking as we drove the shoreline Cornich, passing the through towns of Eze, Villefranche, and Beaulieu looking down at an azure sea, sailboats, and elegant homes.
The conversation around us was French but with a distinctly southern accent and while we looked like Americans, we felt momentarily as if we were part of the local scene. Once in the old Port section of Nice, Radar-Nose took over and led us right back to our favorite Cours Saleya. In the early mornings this is a thriving fish, vegetable and flower market, with awnings down the middle of the road to protect from rain and sun, and water drainage ditches on both sides to wash down the smell of fish at the end of the sales day.
In the afternoon and evening it is transformed into a bustling, noisy restaurant ‘scene’ with nightclubs, disco, up-scale and simple fish restaurants, plus shops and stands appealing to locals and the tourists alike. It being 3:00 PM the conversion from fish market to restaurant row was almost complete and instead of fish stands, chairs and tables were put out under the awnings preparing for the evening activities. We sat at a lovely little restaurant where our parched and weary bodies sucked in ‘1664’ beer as if it were water while sitting on huge cushioned cast-iron chairs that looked like mini-thrones. Around us were the youth of Nice smoking like fiends, jabbering on cell phones, sunbathing and staring at the passersby. It always astounds me on a working afternoon to find so many people out and about, relaxing and enjoying life…where is the work ethic?…where is the time-focused need to quickly grab a meal and return to work? There’s something deliciously wrong with a culture that can luxuriate over a meal with friends without the guilt that pleasure should not be part of the workday experience. Or maybe they’re all students, or unemployed, or simply living off the wealth of their parents, with no need to work. We could observe this world for hours wondering what the story is behind each person sitting in a chair.
Having satisfied our hunger and thirst, we ambled across the city towards the railroad station, poking in windows on the main shopping drag – Gallerie Lafayette, H&M, all the main stores as well as the smaller boutiques are available. I limited myself to one Provencal tablecloth with poppies and lavender, my two favorite symbols of spring in Europe.
The streets were crowded with shoppers of all nationalities and we noted quite a few Muslims in their scarves and long gowns who are obviously part of the working world of Nice; there were a few too many beggars for my liking asking for alms, and I noticed that the new look of fashion seems to be just this side of sloppy. Where are those lovely French ladies with their sense of savoir-faire and nonchalant glamour? I miss that simple elegance where a silk scarf thrown dramatically around the shoulder, the well coifed hair and that hauteur which comes from knowing you look elegant makes the rest of us peons feel we haven’t a chance at graciousness.
I remember on my early trips to France when I’d shop like mad for scarves and try to look the part knowing that there was something just too American in my stance, my walk, my shoes, my attitude which would leave me revealed as an imposter. But what’s the fun, if you don’t try. This time I felt we were the better dressed but then, maybe we just don’t ‘get’ the new style.
Our train ride back was uneventful but our walk from the new Monaco train station to our ships’ tender was an odyssey. The train station is brand new, has three levels, and lacks signage at the critical junctures where one needs to know exactly where to go. Once out of the station, we knew where the port was, but getting there wasn’t obvious. It didn’t help to have half the roads chained off for the race, so that only those who lived in the town could find their way without error. Even Radar-Nose had his doubts as we went up and over bridge ways laid out for the race, walked in the area reserved for the car pits, found ourselves at some fairly chaotic intersection where to try and cross would mean taking ones life in one’s hand. We doubled back, went places we knew we shouldn’t be, and eventually found our way to the tender and to the ship, where we had a beer at our favorite aft deck bar to celebrate our safe return.
Every bone in our body told us we’d walked entirely too many city streets, climbed too many stairs, up and down, and we were very glad to find our comfortable bed…all that was missing was the masseuse to rub us down and take the kinks out of our aching limbs. Eight miles in the countryside goes by fairly easily, city walking with the need to be constantly alert to lights, bustling people, pick pockets, beggars and people hawking their wares, curbs, cobbled streets etc. is a different kind of walking. I love it because my senses get stimulated from all the things to be observed, but I do get weary at the end of a day.
Tomorrow will be a quiet day on board in the harbor of Marseilles. It is a seriously industrial port, so we will relax on the ship, do our packing and have a lovely dinner with our friends from the day at Lake Bled.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Day at Sea & Pompeii
May 11, 2008 – Day at Sea
Last night for the first time, we had rough seas. Not enough to bother we two seasoned sailors, but enough to leave many guests whining about how rough it was – which makes me wonder why they come on a ship in the first place.
The day was over-cast so people spent their day playing cards, reading, sitting by the pool or in all manner possible enjoying a relaxing day with no where to go. That evening we passed through the straits of Messina, a narrow two-mile wide area important because:
Soon after passing through the straits the pilot left our ship. This departure of the pilot is something we both love to observe. In every harbor a ship is required to take on a local pilot who is familiar with the water and surrounding landscape. It is that pilot’s job to get the ship safely in, or out of the harbor. Once he has completed this task, a small motor launch comes up along side of the moving ship, keeping pace with the ship’s speed, and at just the right moment, as the little launch and the very large ship are hugging each other and moving through the waves together, the pilot jumps from the ship to the launch. It is not a task for the faint of heart, and we watch it each time with our heart in our throat. If he misses he could be crushed between the two moving vehicles, or fall onto the deck of his pilot boat, or simply dangle between the two. We are told that these pilots are very well paid, and for our money they’re well worth it. We cheered and he waved once safely on his launch.
While we ate dinner the Captain (Mr. Squeaky, as Bob calls him) told us we were passing the island of Stromboli, and its active volcano. Everyone leaped up to take a look, and the captain promised that since it wasn’t quite dark, that we’d pass slowly to its north so that we might watch it spewing lava glowing in the evening sky. We learned later that it did exactly that, but we missed that opportunity choosing instead to go to a very bad piano concert given by a Russian woman. Between the microphone heightened acoustics, and her very sloppy playing, it was a painful experience … and we could have been watching Stromboli instead!!
May 12, 2008 – Sorrento/Pompeii
Once again we awoke without having heard the anchor being lowered (can we really be drinking that much at night) but we were definitely resting on our anchor outside the lovely harbor of Sorrento. We had eschewed the ship-provided tours which were very expensive and were meant for those who like to have their information ‘pre-chewed’ (or at least that’s my opinion). Instead we headed for the local Sorrento Statione to catch the train that runs every 30 minutes to Pompeii.
We bought our tickets for 3.80 Euro (round trip) and hopped on to the ‘Long Island ‘local’. And I mean local. The whole distance was less than 19 kilometers but it took us about 40 minutes, stopping at every little town along the way, standing in the middle of the train, hemmed in on all sides and crushed in amidst crowds of tourists, locals and gypsies. It was distinctly a local experience which those on the cruise bus tours had the misfortune of missing. But then, they might also have missed the fields of poppies, and the fruit trees which bordered both sides of the tracks, and the feeling of conviviality amongst all us tourists who de-trained en masse at the Pompeii-Scavi train stop.
The train left us less than 300 feet from the entrance to the historic precinct. We walked past the many vendors selling water, guides, personal tours and umbrellas. (The day still looked a bit threatening so that we had rain slickers at the ready). I was last here 20+ years ago with Connie and Lynne, but if you’d put a gun to my head I wouldn’t have recognized anything. (Then again, as Bob reminds me, many sites look new to me when I might have seen them just four months ago…not to mention twenty years).
There has been a significant amount of excavation going on through this period, and the site itself has a new entry way, audio walking tours and a very rich book store to enhance the tourists’ experience. Since we were early into the season the place was amazingly empty. The three cruise ships in port certainly added to the crowd effect, but we overheard one guide saying that lines to walk into one particular house could be one hour in length during the height of the season, and we just marched in and out with no problems.
Springtime, with poppies in season is the right time to visit ruins. Since there is little shade cover, and the heat can be intense, it was almost perfect to have a cool day with an overcast sky. Bob and I had downloaded an iPod walking tour from iJourneys, which was excellent! We were guided from spot to spot with very precise instructions, and told exactly what we were seeing and why it was important. The benefit of this kind of tour was that we were on our own and were not dependent on tour guides with their flags held high in the air in order to herd their chickens to the next spot. Instead of fighting for space to see some particular item, we were on our own and there were times when we were the only people standing in front of a particular home, or display.
Granted we missed the amusing stories which the guides tell to keep otherwise bored clients happy, or the interesting and odd statistics that they keep in their head (or make up) to astound the crowds. We are not always pleased with human guided tours, and are usually happier with the ability to visit sites on our own – either with a good guidebook, or as in this case, with our iPods. We were leisurely in our approach, stopping and watching people if we needed a rest, and probably were at the sight for 4+ hours. It is an astounding place. Not that it was so opulent in its time…after all it was just another Roman town…but rather by the sheer happenstance that it found itself in the direct path of an exploding volcano, thus allowing us to examine an entire town, almost as if it had been built yesterday.
In the year 79 a.d. within a thirty hour period, over thirty feet of fiery ash rained down on the town, burying everything and everyone in a cataclysm no one had foreseen. Locals had thought of Vesuvius as just another mountain and had never figured out just why the soil was so rich around their homes. And so, after 1700+ years of lying dormant, and with the writings of Pliny the Elder to guide them, the site began to be excavated and the digging continues to this day. For archaeologists this is pure gold to work at such a site where everything remains intact. It wais somewhat eerie to walk streets, poke into people’s homes, and look at frozen-in-time-objects… from a dog that had been chained to his home and died writhing in agony; to people cowering with their faces covered, only to be completely covered in ash. The number of human figures found in all manner of agonizing poses gives one pause. (Most of these are now in the Naples Museum) An explanation was provided to explain how archaeologists were able to preserve these figures: by taking the hardened lava that surrounded the original corpse and using it as a mold, they would pour a material into the mold which when extracted is able to show the exact detail of every person, animal or object:
Of course the house that all tour guides pointed out, and which we too examined, was the brothel - complete with very explicit illustrations above the doors. One guide was overheard saying “It’s kinda like McDonalds – place your order by looking at the various pictures”. And of course, the favorite stop for all tours: the house of the Vettii, owned by two bachelor brothers. In the entryway is an illustration of Priapus, holding a scale: on one side of the scale is a large sack of gold and the other side as a balance is his much enlarged penis. We were told by our iPod tour guide that it was a way to measure the brothers’ importance in the community. (Yeah, right!) Of course everyone had to stop to take that picture. And later as we walked past the tourist stands located outside the precinct, that picture, along with a lot of the brothel illustrations, was being sold in vivid color…not to mention the penis-bottle-openers and other assorted phallic paraphernalia to bring home to one’s grandmother.
After four hours we were brain and leg weary… so after a cooling beer, we once more boarded our train back to Sorrento, headed back to the ship for a brief rest and a beautiful sunset sail-a-way past Capri. Then off to dinner. Having spent in incredibly boring evening the night before, talking with a pair of sisters living in Chicago whose ‘tier one’ stories were painfully uninteresting, and a couple from Korea whose command of English was limited…we chose to go back to the buffet, and eat outdoors on the 9th deck aft, where Bob enjoyed sushi and I had a plate of pasta. (Some nights one finds the most interesting people at ones table with whom to strike up a conversation, and on other nights you wish you could just excuse yourself and move on – the nature of open seating on a cruise ship.) It makes me miss our octet from the Queen Mary, who we got to know so well after six nights of dining together.
One of the most delightful and extraordinary events of our day came as we stood on our balcony watching the town of Sorrento spread out before us. We looked up at the bridge wing which looms over our balcony. Normally this wing is devoid of humans since its purpose is to provide good sight lines of the port side of the ship when in the process of maneuvering an arrival or departure. We looked up and the captain waved. For a minute we weren’t sure he was waving at us, but we waved back at which point he asked us how we had spent our day. We chatted about our visit to Pompeii, a place he had yet to visit. He explained that it was difficult to go ashore for an excursion when at anchor, because were he not to be able to get back to the ship quickly, the entire sail away might be in jeopardy. The fact that he was so open to engaging in a conversation when he normally is sequestered and busy on the bridge before departure, was both a surprise and a delight for the both of us. (Though we continue to call him Mr. Squeaky based on his high pitched, very earnest, young voice).
Last night for the first time, we had rough seas. Not enough to bother we two seasoned sailors, but enough to leave many guests whining about how rough it was – which makes me wonder why they come on a ship in the first place.
The day was over-cast so people spent their day playing cards, reading, sitting by the pool or in all manner possible enjoying a relaxing day with no where to go. That evening we passed through the straits of Messina, a narrow two-mile wide area important because:
- · in the tales of Homer, Odysseus passed this site and the sirens tried to lure him to his death;
- · in WW II it was the site where the Allies let a German Army escape from Sicily
- · Bob had passed through this exact location 42 years ago, standing on the Bridge of his Carrier, during his sailor days in the Navy.
Soon after passing through the straits the pilot left our ship. This departure of the pilot is something we both love to observe. In every harbor a ship is required to take on a local pilot who is familiar with the water and surrounding landscape. It is that pilot’s job to get the ship safely in, or out of the harbor. Once he has completed this task, a small motor launch comes up along side of the moving ship, keeping pace with the ship’s speed, and at just the right moment, as the little launch and the very large ship are hugging each other and moving through the waves together, the pilot jumps from the ship to the launch. It is not a task for the faint of heart, and we watch it each time with our heart in our throat. If he misses he could be crushed between the two moving vehicles, or fall onto the deck of his pilot boat, or simply dangle between the two. We are told that these pilots are very well paid, and for our money they’re well worth it. We cheered and he waved once safely on his launch.
While we ate dinner the Captain (Mr. Squeaky, as Bob calls him) told us we were passing the island of Stromboli, and its active volcano. Everyone leaped up to take a look, and the captain promised that since it wasn’t quite dark, that we’d pass slowly to its north so that we might watch it spewing lava glowing in the evening sky. We learned later that it did exactly that, but we missed that opportunity choosing instead to go to a very bad piano concert given by a Russian woman. Between the microphone heightened acoustics, and her very sloppy playing, it was a painful experience … and we could have been watching Stromboli instead!!
May 12, 2008 – Sorrento/Pompeii
Once again we awoke without having heard the anchor being lowered (can we really be drinking that much at night) but we were definitely resting on our anchor outside the lovely harbor of Sorrento. We had eschewed the ship-provided tours which were very expensive and were meant for those who like to have their information ‘pre-chewed’ (or at least that’s my opinion). Instead we headed for the local Sorrento Statione to catch the train that runs every 30 minutes to Pompeii.
We bought our tickets for 3.80 Euro (round trip) and hopped on to the ‘Long Island ‘local’. And I mean local. The whole distance was less than 19 kilometers but it took us about 40 minutes, stopping at every little town along the way, standing in the middle of the train, hemmed in on all sides and crushed in amidst crowds of tourists, locals and gypsies. It was distinctly a local experience which those on the cruise bus tours had the misfortune of missing. But then, they might also have missed the fields of poppies, and the fruit trees which bordered both sides of the tracks, and the feeling of conviviality amongst all us tourists who de-trained en masse at the Pompeii-Scavi train stop.
The train left us less than 300 feet from the entrance to the historic precinct. We walked past the many vendors selling water, guides, personal tours and umbrellas. (The day still looked a bit threatening so that we had rain slickers at the ready). I was last here 20+ years ago with Connie and Lynne, but if you’d put a gun to my head I wouldn’t have recognized anything. (Then again, as Bob reminds me, many sites look new to me when I might have seen them just four months ago…not to mention twenty years).
There has been a significant amount of excavation going on through this period, and the site itself has a new entry way, audio walking tours and a very rich book store to enhance the tourists’ experience. Since we were early into the season the place was amazingly empty. The three cruise ships in port certainly added to the crowd effect, but we overheard one guide saying that lines to walk into one particular house could be one hour in length during the height of the season, and we just marched in and out with no problems.
Springtime, with poppies in season is the right time to visit ruins. Since there is little shade cover, and the heat can be intense, it was almost perfect to have a cool day with an overcast sky. Bob and I had downloaded an iPod walking tour from iJourneys, which was excellent! We were guided from spot to spot with very precise instructions, and told exactly what we were seeing and why it was important. The benefit of this kind of tour was that we were on our own and were not dependent on tour guides with their flags held high in the air in order to herd their chickens to the next spot. Instead of fighting for space to see some particular item, we were on our own and there were times when we were the only people standing in front of a particular home, or display.
Granted we missed the amusing stories which the guides tell to keep otherwise bored clients happy, or the interesting and odd statistics that they keep in their head (or make up) to astound the crowds. We are not always pleased with human guided tours, and are usually happier with the ability to visit sites on our own – either with a good guidebook, or as in this case, with our iPods. We were leisurely in our approach, stopping and watching people if we needed a rest, and probably were at the sight for 4+ hours. It is an astounding place. Not that it was so opulent in its time…after all it was just another Roman town…but rather by the sheer happenstance that it found itself in the direct path of an exploding volcano, thus allowing us to examine an entire town, almost as if it had been built yesterday.
In the year 79 a.d. within a thirty hour period, over thirty feet of fiery ash rained down on the town, burying everything and everyone in a cataclysm no one had foreseen. Locals had thought of Vesuvius as just another mountain and had never figured out just why the soil was so rich around their homes. And so, after 1700+ years of lying dormant, and with the writings of Pliny the Elder to guide them, the site began to be excavated and the digging continues to this day. For archaeologists this is pure gold to work at such a site where everything remains intact. It wais somewhat eerie to walk streets, poke into people’s homes, and look at frozen-in-time-objects… from a dog that had been chained to his home and died writhing in agony; to people cowering with their faces covered, only to be completely covered in ash. The number of human figures found in all manner of agonizing poses gives one pause. (Most of these are now in the Naples Museum) An explanation was provided to explain how archaeologists were able to preserve these figures: by taking the hardened lava that surrounded the original corpse and using it as a mold, they would pour a material into the mold which when extracted is able to show the exact detail of every person, animal or object:
- · The bakery where loaves of bread were found intact it all happened so quickly;
- · the large homes of the well-to-do, with walls covered in beautiful pastel illustrations and their inner grassed-in courtyard providing a cool oasis to the outer world;
- · the home in whose entryway a mosaic showed a fierce snarling dog, and the words “beware of the dog” (in Latin);
- · the taverna or restaurant with its places to keep food warm, and dispense ‘take-out’ orders.
Of course the house that all tour guides pointed out, and which we too examined, was the brothel - complete with very explicit illustrations above the doors. One guide was overheard saying “It’s kinda like McDonalds – place your order by looking at the various pictures”. And of course, the favorite stop for all tours: the house of the Vettii, owned by two bachelor brothers. In the entryway is an illustration of Priapus, holding a scale: on one side of the scale is a large sack of gold and the other side as a balance is his much enlarged penis. We were told by our iPod tour guide that it was a way to measure the brothers’ importance in the community. (Yeah, right!) Of course everyone had to stop to take that picture. And later as we walked past the tourist stands located outside the precinct, that picture, along with a lot of the brothel illustrations, was being sold in vivid color…not to mention the penis-bottle-openers and other assorted phallic paraphernalia to bring home to one’s grandmother.
After four hours we were brain and leg weary… so after a cooling beer, we once more boarded our train back to Sorrento, headed back to the ship for a brief rest and a beautiful sunset sail-a-way past Capri. Then off to dinner. Having spent in incredibly boring evening the night before, talking with a pair of sisters living in Chicago whose ‘tier one’ stories were painfully uninteresting, and a couple from Korea whose command of English was limited…we chose to go back to the buffet, and eat outdoors on the 9th deck aft, where Bob enjoyed sushi and I had a plate of pasta. (Some nights one finds the most interesting people at ones table with whom to strike up a conversation, and on other nights you wish you could just excuse yourself and move on – the nature of open seating on a cruise ship.) It makes me miss our octet from the Queen Mary, who we got to know so well after six nights of dining together.
One of the most delightful and extraordinary events of our day came as we stood on our balcony watching the town of Sorrento spread out before us. We looked up at the bridge wing which looms over our balcony. Normally this wing is devoid of humans since its purpose is to provide good sight lines of the port side of the ship when in the process of maneuvering an arrival or departure. We looked up and the captain waved. For a minute we weren’t sure he was waving at us, but we waved back at which point he asked us how we had spent our day. We chatted about our visit to Pompeii, a place he had yet to visit. He explained that it was difficult to go ashore for an excursion when at anchor, because were he not to be able to get back to the ship quickly, the entire sail away might be in jeopardy. The fact that he was so open to engaging in a conversation when he normally is sequestered and busy on the bridge before departure, was both a surprise and a delight for the both of us. (Though we continue to call him Mr. Squeaky based on his high pitched, very earnest, young voice).
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Dubrovnick and Bari
May 9, 2008 – Dubrovnik, Croatia
As always we landed at our port early in the morning. Normally, Bob would be up to ensure that all the lines were made fast in the correct fashion, but I think they’ve put sleeping drugs in the vents on the ship. Nothing else can explain this lethargy which has overtaken us and leaves us crawling out of bed at 8:00 or later. It’s not like we’re exactly exhausting ourselves, unless it’s moving the hand from plate to mouth. Whatever it is, we’ve missed a lot of port arrivals. Today we awaken to find Dubrovnik harbor outside awaiting us. Our second stop in Croatia, and one which I think Daddy visited when his father was the consul of Yugoslavia.for Leipzig. (I will have to look when I get home, but I think we have a photo album of them visiting Split and Dubrovnik - also called Ragusa then).
Today we had to anchor south of the port rather than pulling up to a pier. But on a regular basis, ship tenders are being provided to take us to and from the small harbor. Here is one place in which I did absolutely no pre-trip ‘homework’ and I felt it. I was walking through a town which I know was filled with history and I was simply ambling along in the lovely warm sunshine enjoying the crowds, the stores and the restaurants. We knew there was a wall we should climb and walk around, but we were not inspired to do that …. It was just a day for being typical American schmoozers – we could have been in Rhodes, Corfu or any other ancient, fortified town.
Having taken the requisite pictures, seen the highlights and eaten a seafood meal at Ragusa II founded in 1929 (propitious), we headed through the city walls to the harbor, and caught a tender back to the ship. Before dinner we enjoyed a cocktail in the Cabaret theater while listening to one of the lectures being provided by an on-board professor from Harvard. He gave a small preview about our next port of call – Bari, Italy – and covered three important topics:
May 10th – Bari, Italy
Once more we awake to find a very busy harbor outside our windows: Bob is up early in his robe, watching the approach from our balcony. Ships, cranes, trucks loaded with cargo, hustle and bustle and little charm. Ferries from Greece and Albania are unloading beside our docked ship. There seem to be two kinds of harbors in the world, those where one finds beauty, quaint shops and cafes along the quay and those where you know immediately that it is a working port. Bari is distinctly the latter. Since nothing in the literature provided under our door, or the lecture provided last evening made us feel a need to rush out, we had room service, lazed about, and finally took a shuttle bus provided by the ship to take us to the heart of Bari.
For the first time neither of us carried a camera. For a moment I feared I might miss some very beautiful photograph, but it turned out that this was one town where I would have had to look deeply to find a picture worth taking. What should I say: charming it wasn’t. Bari is a busy harbor town with a somewhat quaint older town which has been turned over to pedestrians, tourists and motor scooters. Bob and I headed to this old part of town where in a gaudy main square framed by sugary filigrees of lights which at night must have looked amazingly tacky we saw the statue of St. Nicolas who had just had a three-day celebration in his name. He was kept behind barricades where people prayed, left roses and admired him still. We then meandered through back streets with our trusty map. Radar-Nose-Ring kept us from being hopelessly lost in streets that twisted and turned, ended suddenly in a piazza, and where street names changed every few blocks.
It was a series of working neighborhoods with people getting their groceries for the evening, doing their laundry, which was strung across the walkways high above our heads, and boys playing ‘football’ in the small squares. We worked our way slowly back to our shuttle bus and returned to our ship wondering why we had even made the effort. But as Bob said, if we hadn’t gone, we’d be sure we’d missed some gem. My question is: what could those very expensive ship-provided tours have told us that we didn’t see? There wasn’t a tour for less than $150.00 and that is a wee bit expensive, to put it mildly. We probably missed a ‘fine/authentic’ Italian meal.
One of the amusing parts of returning to the ship after going ashore is the return procedure: first one is offered a cleansing anti-bacterial towelette (to cut down on disease); next some iced water or iced fruit punch to cool you down as you wait on line; next you put your id card into a card reader where the security person can actually see your picture pop up on the screen to ensure that there’s a match between the picture they see and the you standing before him (and not someone who’s stolen your card); next you are welcomed with the saccharine phrase “welcome home, home sweet home”, as you put your purse, parcels or camera through a scanner to ensure that you left your bombs and stiletto knives on shore; and finally you are back on board. Not quite like the experience of the boys 80 years ago.
Having missed out on finding any small, cute restaurant on shore we went up to our favorite outdoor Aft restaurant – Windows Café - for a quick sandwich, and beer, before retiring to our cabin to relax. I finished a book while Bob took a nap. And that’s Bari. Tomorrow is a day at sea as we sail around the heel and toe of Italy aiming for Sorrento.
As always we landed at our port early in the morning. Normally, Bob would be up to ensure that all the lines were made fast in the correct fashion, but I think they’ve put sleeping drugs in the vents on the ship. Nothing else can explain this lethargy which has overtaken us and leaves us crawling out of bed at 8:00 or later. It’s not like we’re exactly exhausting ourselves, unless it’s moving the hand from plate to mouth. Whatever it is, we’ve missed a lot of port arrivals. Today we awaken to find Dubrovnik harbor outside awaiting us. Our second stop in Croatia, and one which I think Daddy visited when his father was the consul of Yugoslavia.for Leipzig. (I will have to look when I get home, but I think we have a photo album of them visiting Split and Dubrovnik - also called Ragusa then).
Today we had to anchor south of the port rather than pulling up to a pier. But on a regular basis, ship tenders are being provided to take us to and from the small harbor. Here is one place in which I did absolutely no pre-trip ‘homework’ and I felt it. I was walking through a town which I know was filled with history and I was simply ambling along in the lovely warm sunshine enjoying the crowds, the stores and the restaurants. We knew there was a wall we should climb and walk around, but we were not inspired to do that …. It was just a day for being typical American schmoozers – we could have been in Rhodes, Corfu or any other ancient, fortified town.
Having taken the requisite pictures, seen the highlights and eaten a seafood meal at Ragusa II founded in 1929 (propitious), we headed through the city walls to the harbor, and caught a tender back to the ship. Before dinner we enjoyed a cocktail in the Cabaret theater while listening to one of the lectures being provided by an on-board professor from Harvard. He gave a small preview about our next port of call – Bari, Italy – and covered three important topics:
- (1) St. Nicolas, the patron saint of the sea, whose body and relics were stolen from the Turks, is theoretically housed in Bari. In olden times this provided a large source of revenue to the town as knights on their way to the crusades would stop to see the relics. He was supposedly a feisty five-foot saint who saved three young women of Bari from prostitution by paying for their dowry.In time he became the St. Nicolas celebrated by the Dutch in early December; and ultimately became St. Nick/Santa Claus whom we all adore in America, and where Coca-Cola gave him his lovely Coke Red coat, black belt and hefty beard
- .(2) The WW II disaster of 1944 when a series of American ships docked in the harbor of Bari (one filled with illegal mustard gas) were attacked and exploded in the harbor causing one of the more secret and hideous aspects of the war which was covered up until 1959.
- (3)The general history of the Apulia/Puglia region from early Greeks, through the Venetians, to the present.
May 10th – Bari, Italy
Once more we awake to find a very busy harbor outside our windows: Bob is up early in his robe, watching the approach from our balcony. Ships, cranes, trucks loaded with cargo, hustle and bustle and little charm. Ferries from Greece and Albania are unloading beside our docked ship. There seem to be two kinds of harbors in the world, those where one finds beauty, quaint shops and cafes along the quay and those where you know immediately that it is a working port. Bari is distinctly the latter. Since nothing in the literature provided under our door, or the lecture provided last evening made us feel a need to rush out, we had room service, lazed about, and finally took a shuttle bus provided by the ship to take us to the heart of Bari.
For the first time neither of us carried a camera. For a moment I feared I might miss some very beautiful photograph, but it turned out that this was one town where I would have had to look deeply to find a picture worth taking. What should I say: charming it wasn’t. Bari is a busy harbor town with a somewhat quaint older town which has been turned over to pedestrians, tourists and motor scooters. Bob and I headed to this old part of town where in a gaudy main square framed by sugary filigrees of lights which at night must have looked amazingly tacky we saw the statue of St. Nicolas who had just had a three-day celebration in his name. He was kept behind barricades where people prayed, left roses and admired him still. We then meandered through back streets with our trusty map. Radar-Nose-Ring kept us from being hopelessly lost in streets that twisted and turned, ended suddenly in a piazza, and where street names changed every few blocks.
It was a series of working neighborhoods with people getting their groceries for the evening, doing their laundry, which was strung across the walkways high above our heads, and boys playing ‘football’ in the small squares. We worked our way slowly back to our shuttle bus and returned to our ship wondering why we had even made the effort. But as Bob said, if we hadn’t gone, we’d be sure we’d missed some gem. My question is: what could those very expensive ship-provided tours have told us that we didn’t see? There wasn’t a tour for less than $150.00 and that is a wee bit expensive, to put it mildly. We probably missed a ‘fine/authentic’ Italian meal.
One of the amusing parts of returning to the ship after going ashore is the return procedure: first one is offered a cleansing anti-bacterial towelette (to cut down on disease); next some iced water or iced fruit punch to cool you down as you wait on line; next you put your id card into a card reader where the security person can actually see your picture pop up on the screen to ensure that there’s a match between the picture they see and the you standing before him (and not someone who’s stolen your card); next you are welcomed with the saccharine phrase “welcome home, home sweet home”, as you put your purse, parcels or camera through a scanner to ensure that you left your bombs and stiletto knives on shore; and finally you are back on board. Not quite like the experience of the boys 80 years ago.
Having missed out on finding any small, cute restaurant on shore we went up to our favorite outdoor Aft restaurant – Windows Café - for a quick sandwich, and beer, before retiring to our cabin to relax. I finished a book while Bob took a nap. And that’s Bari. Tomorrow is a day at sea as we sail around the heel and toe of Italy aiming for Sorrento.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Lake Bled and Split
May 7, 2008
A day of totally new discoveries.
We arrived early in Koper, Slovenia a mere 60 miles from Venice. Neither of us had ever been to Slovenia so before we left America we chatted with Barry Lawson who gave us some thoughts of this country in which he once lived and studied. In addition Bob had arranged with fellow Cruise Critic aficionados to rent a van to Lake Bled. There were six of us (David & Terry – both cruise travel agents from San Francisco and London); Mitzi and Mike Buechele from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and us) and while we waited for the delayed arrival of our driver we chatted amicably about travel in general. When our driver arrived finally with great excuses as to why he was late, we headed through the suburbs of Koper and headed in the direction of Ljubljana.
What impressed me most as we drove along, was the superb quality of the infrastructure: roads, tunnels, toll booths and fields all looked impeccably clean and well designed. Even the livestock seemed orderly and well built. Our driver, recently graduated in ‘tourism’ seemed neither aware of the sites around him nor had much information to impart about Slovenia. He did acknowledge that for many, Tito was still considered a good person and he had made life much easier for all – jobs, housing etc. (not unlike what we heard about life in East Germany before reunification). It seems to be a theme during this time of transition – life wasn’t ideal under communism, but it was easier on a day-to-day basis.
I realized that prior to this trip, though I consider myself pretty well traveled, I had never been in a communist country. On this trip alone we’re visiting six or seven locations all of which were in communist control. To think that when Daddy traveled, none of these places were communist… and within 80 years it came and went. Not that long a period of time in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly held our attention the entire time as we in America watched the unfolding and the collapse of the iron curtain. Perspective is a glorious thing…. It even allows me to believe that Bush is just a Blip in our lives and that Hitler’s 1000 year Reich lasted a mere 12 years. One can do a hell of a lot of damage in short periods, but they are just that – short periods, and if you can survive them and keep a balanced view hopefully better environments follow. Or so I think as I’m waxing poetical on the Azamara cruise ship.
After 1.5 hours, climbing gradually into the foothills of the Julian Alps (named after Julius Caesar) we arrived at the castle of Lake Bled where we were met by Graeme Chuter a lovely British gentleman who is now a permanent resident of Slovenia, having married a young Slovene girl and producing a new son, Eric, less than two weeks ago. (He reminded me of the gentleman on the British version of The Office, and he sounded the same as swell.) Graeame gave us all the critical information about the area: this is one of the lakes where Tito had one of his summer palaces; the rowers who practice here did quite well in the last Olympics and hope to compete successfully in the Chinese Olympics; the little Church of the Assumption, in the center of the lake, dates back to the 9th century and on one side are 98 steps where young grooms must prove their masculinity by carrying their new brides up the stairs; the castle itself is very old, but not very interesting inside; Lake Bled is a very popular resort situated very close to Austria and Italy and was fought over in almost every war; etc. Once filled with information he allowed us time to take pictures of the incredible views in all directions and then led us back to our bus driver who would take us into the town of Bled for a few hours before heading back to our waiting ship.
Meanwhile he was off on his next business transaction. Bob and I enjoyed a lunch alone overlooking the lake. We chose not to try the specialty of the area – a dessert called kremna rezina (custard and whipped cream). With time to spare and no shopping worth stopping for we wandered around the little town that is very much like any mountain lake resort be it Swiss, American or Italian – tourist shops, kiosks, hotels overlooking the water, and mountains. The whole built in tiered streets. We walked partially around the lake on the footpath and then returned to our van to be swept back again to our ship in Koper.
I never saw Koper proper or any other parts of Slovenia, so it’s an excuse to come back to this pretty part of the world again. The town had pulled out all the stops for our ship and had provided a delightful 15-piece high school band which played tunes at the foot of the ship, which I assumed to be Slovene ‘golden oldies’. We listened, applauded, had our passports stamped at Immigration, and retreated to the ship to relax before dinner. Our favorite spot to dine is the buffet on the aft deck. Sitting through many courses in a totally enclosed room just doesn’t compare to sitting and watching the stern wake as you sail into sunsets eating sushi, stir fry or some form of roast meat (beef, pork, lamb). The bar tender, Rastislov (Rusty, for short), seems to always recognize us, and knows our preferences, which makes for a relaxing experience. While there are also two ‘specialty’ dining rooms on board, it’s a question if we feel like dressing to the occasion. We might just hang out on our aft bar with Rastislov before falling under our duvet for the night. One could do a lot worse.
I find that I am just totally uninterested in meeting my fellow shipmates. I enjoy reading, relaxing, staring at water, exploring the towns we visit, and that’s enough for me. There are just as many guests who are happy sitting by the pool reading, chatting, absorbing some ‘rays’. Everyone comes to this experience with different objectives, and so far I think all are being met. The real world is not too close at hand. There are no papers in English at the local kiosks, and our only hints about the outside world is an 8-page supplement slipped into our daily schedule each evening which tells us, from the New York Times Digest, what happened in business, sports and news. CNN International is available from our room TV so we can keep current but until there’s a buzz throughout the ship that something ‘big’ has happened, I’m happy being oblivious for a few days. The only real news of note was the cyclone in Myanmar - which has taken 4,000, 20,000, or 100,000 lives – whatever number, was hideous. I enter this piece of news only because it gives some specificity of what’s happening.
It was frustrating in reading Daddy’s diaries that while he was kept current to some degree we really don’t know what was going on in the world while he and Walter floated around the world. Not that any of us could influence events, but giving some time-marker seems useful.
May 8, 2008
Having again sailed ‘donuts’ through the night, we arrived at our next port of call – Split, Croatia. We awoke at the piers, lined up amidst at least a dozen ferries which shuttle people to Italy, Greece, Albania, and other towns along the coastline….in this case the Dalmatian coast. Of course, it’s another perfect-weather day so once all the tours had debarked, and we had acquired some Kruna at the ATM machine, we headed into the town of Split.
As one always does, one compares a town to one’s base of knowledge, so for me the harbor and town of Split reminded me of Rhodes: a busy harbor; a lovely quay with shops and cafes; and inside a magnificent old town dating back in history. This part of the world has had a variety of rulers starting with the Greeks and moving through the Romans (Diocletian in the 4th century), the Venetians, the Austrians, the French, the Italians and of course Yugoslavia. It is the Romans who truly left their mark with the palace, the cathedrals and the temple of Jupiter. The old fortress walls surrounding these sites now hold shops, housing and markets. A wonderful hodge-podge of centuries so that when one took a photograph there was everything from a roman column to a modern chic boutique.
We ambled through the town, snapped pictures, sat in a large square to drink a bitter lemon and watch the world pass by. Because I had not done enough research on this town, I felt that I was probably walking past many important historic places, but for a first visit, I got a ‘sense of place’ and know that I’d like to return here for a more lengthy visit. (My only problem is that there are too many places where I want to return, and I’m not sure there’s time enough to do them all…but I have to give it a try). This town could have been in Greece, but it was in Croatia and the language being spoken was totally mystifying. I couldn’t tell which people were speaking the local dialect and which ones were speaking Slovene, Bosnian, or Russian. Luckily many of the young people speak English so one could always ask those critical questions and be understood to a certain degree. There is enough English to cover the basics when one asks questions, as long as one sticks to the basics.
I like to think that our every pore does not ooze ‘American’ but when I stopped in a small grocery to buy a bar of chocolate, the cashier just by looking at me, informed me in English that I owed 15 Kruna. I hadn’t said a word to give myself away, but I guess I didn’t look or act Croatian. (Or maybe there’s a secret handshake one gives in a grocery that I was unaware of). In any case the transaction went smoothly and we headed back to the ship for another beautiful sunset as we sailed off to our next port. I like this cruising concept for getting an over-view of a place, but in all cases, I sense I need repeat visits to be able to wander beyond the small arena provided by a port city.
Our dinner was once more on the aft deck with a British couple sitting next door. They too seem to like being away from the world. They both are reading quietly, chatting and have sat there for the last three nights, like us. Who knows, I may even say hello at some point.
We arrived early in Koper, Slovenia a mere 60 miles from Venice. Neither of us had ever been to Slovenia so before we left America we chatted with Barry Lawson who gave us some thoughts of this country in which he once lived and studied. In addition Bob had arranged with fellow Cruise Critic aficionados to rent a van to Lake Bled. There were six of us (David & Terry – both cruise travel agents from San Francisco and London); Mitzi and Mike Buechele from Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and us) and while we waited for the delayed arrival of our driver we chatted amicably about travel in general. When our driver arrived finally with great excuses as to why he was late, we headed through the suburbs of Koper and headed in the direction of Ljubljana.
What impressed me most as we drove along, was the superb quality of the infrastructure: roads, tunnels, toll booths and fields all looked impeccably clean and well designed. Even the livestock seemed orderly and well built. Our driver, recently graduated in ‘tourism’ seemed neither aware of the sites around him nor had much information to impart about Slovenia. He did acknowledge that for many, Tito was still considered a good person and he had made life much easier for all – jobs, housing etc. (not unlike what we heard about life in East Germany before reunification). It seems to be a theme during this time of transition – life wasn’t ideal under communism, but it was easier on a day-to-day basis.
I realized that prior to this trip, though I consider myself pretty well traveled, I had never been in a communist country. On this trip alone we’re visiting six or seven locations all of which were in communist control. To think that when Daddy traveled, none of these places were communist… and within 80 years it came and went. Not that long a period of time in the grand scheme of things, but it certainly held our attention the entire time as we in America watched the unfolding and the collapse of the iron curtain. Perspective is a glorious thing…. It even allows me to believe that Bush is just a Blip in our lives and that Hitler’s 1000 year Reich lasted a mere 12 years. One can do a hell of a lot of damage in short periods, but they are just that – short periods, and if you can survive them and keep a balanced view hopefully better environments follow. Or so I think as I’m waxing poetical on the Azamara cruise ship.
After 1.5 hours, climbing gradually into the foothills of the Julian Alps (named after Julius Caesar) we arrived at the castle of Lake Bled where we were met by Graeme Chuter a lovely British gentleman who is now a permanent resident of Slovenia, having married a young Slovene girl and producing a new son, Eric, less than two weeks ago. (He reminded me of the gentleman on the British version of The Office, and he sounded the same as swell.) Graeame gave us all the critical information about the area: this is one of the lakes where Tito had one of his summer palaces; the rowers who practice here did quite well in the last Olympics and hope to compete successfully in the Chinese Olympics; the little Church of the Assumption, in the center of the lake, dates back to the 9th century and on one side are 98 steps where young grooms must prove their masculinity by carrying their new brides up the stairs; the castle itself is very old, but not very interesting inside; Lake Bled is a very popular resort situated very close to Austria and Italy and was fought over in almost every war; etc. Once filled with information he allowed us time to take pictures of the incredible views in all directions and then led us back to our bus driver who would take us into the town of Bled for a few hours before heading back to our waiting ship.
Meanwhile he was off on his next business transaction. Bob and I enjoyed a lunch alone overlooking the lake. We chose not to try the specialty of the area – a dessert called kremna rezina (custard and whipped cream). With time to spare and no shopping worth stopping for we wandered around the little town that is very much like any mountain lake resort be it Swiss, American or Italian – tourist shops, kiosks, hotels overlooking the water, and mountains. The whole built in tiered streets. We walked partially around the lake on the footpath and then returned to our van to be swept back again to our ship in Koper.
I never saw Koper proper or any other parts of Slovenia, so it’s an excuse to come back to this pretty part of the world again. The town had pulled out all the stops for our ship and had provided a delightful 15-piece high school band which played tunes at the foot of the ship, which I assumed to be Slovene ‘golden oldies’. We listened, applauded, had our passports stamped at Immigration, and retreated to the ship to relax before dinner. Our favorite spot to dine is the buffet on the aft deck. Sitting through many courses in a totally enclosed room just doesn’t compare to sitting and watching the stern wake as you sail into sunsets eating sushi, stir fry or some form of roast meat (beef, pork, lamb). The bar tender, Rastislov (Rusty, for short), seems to always recognize us, and knows our preferences, which makes for a relaxing experience. While there are also two ‘specialty’ dining rooms on board, it’s a question if we feel like dressing to the occasion. We might just hang out on our aft bar with Rastislov before falling under our duvet for the night. One could do a lot worse.
I find that I am just totally uninterested in meeting my fellow shipmates. I enjoy reading, relaxing, staring at water, exploring the towns we visit, and that’s enough for me. There are just as many guests who are happy sitting by the pool reading, chatting, absorbing some ‘rays’. Everyone comes to this experience with different objectives, and so far I think all are being met. The real world is not too close at hand. There are no papers in English at the local kiosks, and our only hints about the outside world is an 8-page supplement slipped into our daily schedule each evening which tells us, from the New York Times Digest, what happened in business, sports and news. CNN International is available from our room TV so we can keep current but until there’s a buzz throughout the ship that something ‘big’ has happened, I’m happy being oblivious for a few days. The only real news of note was the cyclone in Myanmar - which has taken 4,000, 20,000, or 100,000 lives – whatever number, was hideous. I enter this piece of news only because it gives some specificity of what’s happening.
It was frustrating in reading Daddy’s diaries that while he was kept current to some degree we really don’t know what was going on in the world while he and Walter floated around the world. Not that any of us could influence events, but giving some time-marker seems useful.
May 8, 2008
Having again sailed ‘donuts’ through the night, we arrived at our next port of call – Split, Croatia. We awoke at the piers, lined up amidst at least a dozen ferries which shuttle people to Italy, Greece, Albania, and other towns along the coastline….in this case the Dalmatian coast. Of course, it’s another perfect-weather day so once all the tours had debarked, and we had acquired some Kruna at the ATM machine, we headed into the town of Split.
As one always does, one compares a town to one’s base of knowledge, so for me the harbor and town of Split reminded me of Rhodes: a busy harbor; a lovely quay with shops and cafes; and inside a magnificent old town dating back in history. This part of the world has had a variety of rulers starting with the Greeks and moving through the Romans (Diocletian in the 4th century), the Venetians, the Austrians, the French, the Italians and of course Yugoslavia. It is the Romans who truly left their mark with the palace, the cathedrals and the temple of Jupiter. The old fortress walls surrounding these sites now hold shops, housing and markets. A wonderful hodge-podge of centuries so that when one took a photograph there was everything from a roman column to a modern chic boutique.
We ambled through the town, snapped pictures, sat in a large square to drink a bitter lemon and watch the world pass by. Because I had not done enough research on this town, I felt that I was probably walking past many important historic places, but for a first visit, I got a ‘sense of place’ and know that I’d like to return here for a more lengthy visit. (My only problem is that there are too many places where I want to return, and I’m not sure there’s time enough to do them all…but I have to give it a try). This town could have been in Greece, but it was in Croatia and the language being spoken was totally mystifying. I couldn’t tell which people were speaking the local dialect and which ones were speaking Slovene, Bosnian, or Russian. Luckily many of the young people speak English so one could always ask those critical questions and be understood to a certain degree. There is enough English to cover the basics when one asks questions, as long as one sticks to the basics.
I like to think that our every pore does not ooze ‘American’ but when I stopped in a small grocery to buy a bar of chocolate, the cashier just by looking at me, informed me in English that I owed 15 Kruna. I hadn’t said a word to give myself away, but I guess I didn’t look or act Croatian. (Or maybe there’s a secret handshake one gives in a grocery that I was unaware of). In any case the transaction went smoothly and we headed back to the ship for another beautiful sunset as we sailed off to our next port. I like this cruising concept for getting an over-view of a place, but in all cases, I sense I need repeat visits to be able to wander beyond the small arena provided by a port city.
Our dinner was once more on the aft deck with a British couple sitting next door. They too seem to like being away from the world. They both are reading quietly, chatting and have sat there for the last three nights, like us. Who knows, I may even say hello at some point.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Venice
May 4, 2008
A day to ourselves in Venice, before joining our ship. Since most of the people who are boarding the ship are staying in the ship-designated (and ridiculously expensive) Danielli Hotel, we needed to find our own way to the ship. The brochure spoke of a bus being made available at the bus terminal so Bob and I scouted out where it might be located since obviously we’re not the only cruise line offering such a service in Venice. It took more than a bit of detective work since there was absolutely no signage and every information booth, public bus official and stray individual whom we asked had absolutely no idea where the busses to the maritime terminal would be located.
Having figured out an approach for the next day (arrive and look like dummies), we took off for the island of Murano, which Bob had visited before when working here for a month in 1996.. Murano is known as the home of beautiful glass and thus has the qualities of a natural tourist trap in addition to being a lovely island. No sooner were we off the vaporetto than we were encouraged to watch the glass blowers in action. For a mere two euro we were ushered into a simple warehouse off of the quay where two kilns were glowing – ready for action. We sat on some very rustic bleacher seats as other tourists were ushered in until all available seating had been taken. Finally, in a mixture of French/Italian and English, an audio tape was played that welcomed us and explained the history and the process of glass blowing. Then working in almost perfect silence (not unlike our demonstrations in the Meissen factory) we watched a glass blower actually create magic. Somehow you expect an artisan to look somewhat delicate or at least artistic…. this man could just have easily been making bread or hauling garbage. He looked very much like old time movie actor Wallace Beery. But this rough exterior hid a talent which was obviously learned over many years. In less than a few minutes time he had blown a lovely clear vase with a very ornate handle (which he broke, and threw away as useless) and a glass stallion rearing on its hind legs. We took lots of pictures which he encouraged, oohed and aahed as the ball of hot molten glass took shape under his deft handling, and applauded his talent before being ushered out to the shop next door where we were encouraged to make a purchases upwards of $2000. We looked but I must say the chandeliers, the ornate vases and the fussy glassware was not appealing. The larger more modern pieces – especially one of a sailboat with a large spinnaker caught our eye but the costs even here were prohibitive so we took pictures and escaped to a quiet square for lunch. The entire island is one large manufacturing site where in every corner and backyard there appeared to be either a shop or some ovens for making glass. If I were ever in the market for ornamental glass this would be the place to make a purchase. But, not this time.
We took the #5 vaporetto back to the main part of Venice and searched for two restaurants we had dined at over fifteen years ago. Radar-nose Ring found them almost without trying. He has this amazing sense of direction which even in Venice allows him to get from point A to point B without much map examination. Me, I’d be lost every two seconds. The two restaurants (La Columba and Restaurante de Il Teatro ) are near the Le Fenice Opera House/Theater which has just been rebuilt (again) after a fire. John Berendt in his fiction/fact book The City of Fallen Angels weaves a story about Venice and its society around this fire and its impact on the people of the city.
We stood above one canal near the restaurants for at least ten minutes and watched a whole flotilla of gondolas filled with Japanese tourists go skimming by – in one, they even had an Accordion and a singer which must have set those tourists back a few euro. In one sense the whole ‘gondola scene’ is terribly kitsch and touristy, but there is a wonderful fairy-tale quality to standing on an old stone bridge built centuries ago while watching gondoliers very deftly guide their boats with small, seeming effortless gestures as they dodge other gondolas, assorted motorboat taxis, floating garbage scows and delivery boats all vying for right of way in small areas without much room to maneuver. At times it looked as if there just had to be an accident or ‘gondola-bender’, but no, with a small twist of the oar the gondoliers guided their barques as they slid by each other using the resistance of water, the walls or the underside of bridges to propel themselves and their passengers down the canals. I have no idea how long it takes to learn such a skill but to stand up at the rear of a very slim black boat, going through the chop of motor-churned water, using only one long oar and one’s own placement of weight to maneuver is not a career for the faint of heart. It seemed as though it would be ever so easy to fall into the drink, and that is distinctly one place where no one wants to be. Between flotsam, jetsam, and god knows what else, the canals do not look like the healthiest of water systems. But with tourism being the major economy of Venice, there will always be gondoliers ready to guide fat Americans, romantic honeymooners, and all manner of foreign tour groups through this amazingly beautiful city. (I must say we saw few old gondoliers – it may be a trade for the young and muscular only).
We got back to our hotel via the #41 vaporetto, passing lots of old haunts – including the Pensione Seguso where I had stayed years ago with Connie Miller and Lynne Devnew when we, the BIBS, were younger, slimmer and unmarried. The Pensione seems to be thriving as do any hotels in Venice.
The one thing we’ve noted this time is the distinct lack of Americans, or for that matter any English speakers. I could say it’s the time of the year but I think the power of the euro over the dollar has had an impact. Not that the crowds were any less, if anything the euro has provided an opportunity for many from the old eastern block to visit. We have heard quite a bit of ‘Russian-sounding’ language which we can’t decipher to know if it’s
Slovene or Slovak, Croat or Crimea, Ukraine or Uzbec… or ?. We always liked it when we could go for days without hearing our native tongue, but this time it’s downright remarkable.
May 5, 2008
Off to the bus terminal we went searching for the bus to take us to the Maritime Terminal. It was pouring rain and everyone was looking a wee bit soggy. There was absolutely no Azamara bus to be found, so I asked a young lady holding up a sign saying COSTA (another shipping company) where the bus might be. In her halting English (she was from Argentina !), she suggested we just put our luggage on the COSTA bus, say nothing to anyone and we would get to the terminal without any problems. Which we did. Being very early, we were the only ones on line for Azamara check in so that we got rid of our luggage, got our passcard and voila….onto our ship we went about noon.
The Azamara is a re-constituted ship which was once part of the Renaissance lines. She holds less than 700 guests, is distinctly smaller than most cruise ships being built now and it is another experiment… if I like this size ship – certainly a good deal smaller than the Queen Mary, but a lot larger than our favorite Star Clipper ships. We found our full balcony cabin on the port side, seventh deck, and then began an exploration of the ship. From level to level, from stem to stern we found all the nooks and crannies, restaurants, bars, library and spa facilities. It certainly has all the amenities that anyone could want.
But here are my first impressions: she looks older and sadder; less crisp or fresh; our fellow cruisers are just not as elegant or gracious as those on the QM2, and while there are far fewer canes and walkers than on the QM2, there is an increment in body fat being hauled around the decks. Who knows these could become our new best friends so I’m grabbing impressions before I know what’s in the future.
Pre-sail drinks in the Martini lounge with fellow Cruise-Critic sailors was a delight. We met the people with whom Bob had been emailing and with whom we’ll be going to Lake Bled in a few days. We met a fine pack of women who are either widowed or divorced who call themselves the SLUTS (Southern Ladies Under Tremendous Stress; or Southern Ladies Up To Something). These six ladies from the Atlanta area have sailed together often and their energy and enthusiasm mixed with everyone’s first-meeting-nervousness made for a fairly raucous but happy crowd as names were exchanged, prior sailing stories were told, and what I call the ‘first tier’ stories were told. [Everyone has their polished first tier story to introduce themselves to others - who they are and where they live and why; it takes many further conversations to get deeper into a person’s autobiography and learn the real story – warts and all.] But it’s night one, so we’re just beginning.
Being a little weary, we went to the main dining room for dinner. The Discovery Room is one of three dining rooms; the other two are more formal and one has to make a reservation, though it costs no more. Our table mates were: two Mexican sisters from Mexico City who spoke almost no English but one could tell were lively and enthusiastic about this trip; and a honeymoon couple from Silicon Valley both in their late 30’s and glad to be married to each other. They were all very nice, but conversation was stilted and ‘first tier’, and that ended our day.
May 6, 2008
While we had boarded, unpacked and gotten settled the ship was actually going no where yesterday. The first day of the cruise was an opportunity to explore Venice. For many who had flown directly from their home to Venice in order to board the ship this gave them their only opportunity to explore this wonderful city.
Being an amazingly blue sky, sunny day, Bob and I chose to go in search of the statue of Colleoni which daddy had mentioned in his very first letters from Venice. The statue of a man on a horse is in a square not exactly in the heart of the tourist area. We took a vaporetto around the edges of Venice to the Hospital stop where we then walked with Radar-nose-Ring locating the square without a hitch. I had to take the picture in the exact location where daddy had taken his picture. I kept wondering why was this important to him, and how would he have found it in the first place since it is not that close to either Rialto Bridge or St. Marks Square. I’ll never know, just as I’ll never know a lot about those letters, but it was nice to stand there and think that he’d stood in this exact same place with his trusty Leica and taken the exact same shot in 1927. Having accomplished this very important task, we had a beer and a ham & mozzarella panini at Café Colleone, stared at people walking by in the square, were serenaded by two men with ancient accordions, admired the famous church and the old guildhall and having paid our respects to the past…moved on.
Radar-nose-Ring using our less than perfect maps managed to walk us over bridges and through little alleyways until we found ourselves….right back staring at Colleone. How could this happen? Only in Venice with its winding ways could one stride out so confidently only to find oneself chasing one’s own tail. We made an embarrassing course correction and found our way to the Rialto Bridge – my god what a tourist trap! To go from the peace and quiet of the square to the chaos of hustlers, masks, scarves, kitsch and pushing, picture-snapping crowds was like going from a piece of sanity into total insanity. We quickly boarded a #2 vaporetto and headed back to San Zaccaria to catch the ship-provided vaporetto returning to the Azamara Journey.
Sail-away was breathtaking! A sunny late afternoon sailing, going right past the Campanile, Doge’s Palace, Bridge of Sighs, the Lido, and other monuments with a lecturer on board who relayed what we were seeing as we steamed out to the Adriatic. We passed by (and photographed) the old Termini Maritima, where daddy had sailed from on a foggy day in 1927. It was so gorgeous that Bob and I could not stand to go inside, so we had drinks (huge, perfect Manhattan for Bob) and dinner outdoors on the aft deck until the very last bit of sun had set over Italy…and so to bed.
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