TWILIGHT ZONE ON BOARD...

We noticed him every day.  Always in the same place.  A distinguished gentleman with white hair and a prominent white moustache, a cane resting at his side.  He would sit in the corner of the Constellation Lounge, looking at the panorama view of wherever we were.  He would read the newspaper and occasionally do crossword puzzles.  And never spoke to anyone.  In fact, people appeared to give him a wide berth.

Who was he?  Where did he come from?  More importantly, where was he going?  Finally, I got up enough courage to ask him how many cruises he had been on?  He obviously was alone, or so it appeared. He turned to me, assessed his questioner, and then prepared to answer.

"I live on the ship.  I've lived on Regent ships for 12 years now," he said in measured tones. "My wife and I lived on the Navigator for 5 years, until she passed.  Then I moved to the Voyager and was there for 7 years.  But they aren't going to be going to the U.S. anymore -- just back and forth from Australia to Europe and back to Australia.  So I moved to the Mariner."

"How do you like it," I asked.

He answered, "You know, the Voyager was my home.  It is a little hard.  I'm 88, you see, and change can be hard."

We continued our conversation -- about what ports he liked, what he had done with his life, what ports he disliked.  He had been in the Navy and then ran a company in Monaco. He and his wife owned an apartment in Monaco overlooking the harbor.  They maintained it for years, he said, hating to give up that part of their lives.  What ports did he like?  Well, he would put Australia and New Zealand at the top of the heap.

"I don't like India and the Far East," he continued.  "You know, we are not respected most places anymore.  Japan is okay.  Clean and polite to Americans.  But the rest, well, you can have 'em."

He said, somewhat sadly, "You know, you always think you'll be the one to go, when the time comes. So I put everything, all our assets, in my wife's name.  And, when she passed, I called all the attorneys, the children and grandchildren, the accountants together and started telling them what I wanted done.  The main attorney said, 'Did you ever read your wife's will, Harry?"  I had to tell him I hadn't read it. Why did I need to.  And he said, very succinctly, 'Because she has put everything you and she had -- everything -- in trust with your son as the trustee.' That was quite a shock.  I had control of nothing.  From all my years of work."

My comment seemed a little trite. "Sure hope," I said, "your son likes you a lot."  He answered, "He just visited me for 3 weeks on the ship.  So far so good."

I asked him if he got an allowance or something, how he paid his bills.  And he told me his son took care of all of that.  And he really didn't need money anymore.  He had a credit card.  The ship provided him with all the meals he needed, the maid service he needed, and even looking after.  "After all," he pointed out, "they all know me by now!  And it's better than a nursing home."

After he left the lounge, another guest turned to me and said he had seen the gentleman for years on all his cruises and had never seen him talking to anyone.  People seemed to give him wide berth, afraid to break his privacy.  I treasured the compliment and yet I was still disturbed.

I keep thinking of him, all alone sitting in that corner, staring out at the water.  And I wonder.  Is he happy?  Does he miss his kids, grandkids, friends, etc?  Or is a really just a lone wandering gentleman, waiting for the next chapter... Warehoused until the end.

Mediterranean 0, Epizoodic 1

So what good is it if a vacation goes off without a hitch?!  Not very, you say.  And you would be right.  So for the past two days we have been floating in and out of various "seas" attached to the Mediterranean that all look like one big body of water with different names -- and coughing coughing coughing away.  I'd like to blame someone for this -- and I have my suspicions.  But I can't point the fickle finger of fate absolutely to one person (unless it is that very attractive lady with blonde smooth hair and long fingernails named "Rickie" from D.C. -- oops, I said I wouldn't do that!)  BTW  I am sure she has had a facelift or at the very least, botox.  Because she told me the ages of her kids and they are OLDER than mine.   And she looks way better than me.  Been married 3 times.  But I can tell you Bos looks way better than #3!  Oh well.

In any case, tomorrow is the day we are supposed to go to Florence.  It means a 2-1/2 hour bus ride and, since we've been there before and have commented on the sculpture "David" whose hands are wayyy too big for his body (so who says Michelangelo always got it right?!), so we opted to go to Lucca, a little hill town that is a way shorter trip.  It's all Tuscany, after all.  And this is all dependent on whether I keep honking away or not.

Before you ask, yes, I do have antibiotics along.  But I don't have a fever.  So I am prolonging the agony of feeling icky while floating.  But we watched 10 episodes of Dickens' "Dombey and Son" that we brought along in 2 days.  And are heading into "Ethan Frome" from Eliot next.  Oh well. Yawn.

Malta and the Knights...

Port of Valletta and castle
and yachts!

Cute carriages for tourists.

Main gate and bridge over
moat to Mdina

We'd been here before -- Malta and all the romance of the Knights of Malta, the Hospitaliers, the Crusades, etc.  But it was a beautiful chilly sunny day and maybe that is why it made a difference.  In any case, we fell in love with Malta.  You may not know where Malta is, especially if you live in the Midwest.  It seems too far away and too foreign to care!

Church and square inside Mdina

Plazza in Mdina

But the story is interesting.  You see, it wraps up the entire Ottoman (read:Turkish) empire, the Crusades, those pesky Knights who seemed to be everywhere in the Dark Ages.  All the drama of a good movie really.  You see, the Knights that were left after the bloody crusades (most of them had disbanded and straggled back to wherever they had been from!) had decided to stay on the island of Rhodes. They were a ragtag group, some of whom did have some booty from their efforts, but they were sick and tired of being chased off places by Suleiman the Magnificent. You see, he was a pretty impressive and fearsome figure. He wore this cone type hat that was really really really high and left me wondering how he kept it on his head at all! And he had, after all, an EMPIRE with armies, navies, and lots of riches.  His name alone was enough to scare entire countries!  Sulieman had chased those Knights away from Jerusalem, from Constantinople, from Greece and they had settled down contentedly on little Rhodes, off the coast of Greece, with their booty from the wars.  They were happy.  But Suleiman was NOT!  So he got his ships and his soldiers together and chased them off Rhodes as well.  Where to go??  Where to go??!!  They sailed away, with their fake armor on and their real armor stashed in the hold, and ended up about as far away as they could imagine -- to the northern coast of Africa off a little group of 3 islands called Malta.  It seemed to be far enough away and lo and behold, it was the perfect location for the Knights to go into business.  You see, Malta is the gateway to the Mediterranean Sea -- 60 miles from Sicily and 90 miles from Africa.  Right there in the middle.  Perfect for stopping shipping boats and collecting cash money or goods in order to let the boats go past.  Sounds a little like pirates, but really legal army-like pirates!

Plazza inside Mdina

Maltese balconies, common

And, tucked into their new home,they were NOT going to let Suleiman or anyone else take it away.  So they built a formidle castle around the entire edge of the island.  That's right.  All around the edge of the island.  So Suleiman would be so impressed and scared he would stay away for good! And then they proceeded to built castle-like homes inside the Big Outside Castle. Big enough and impressive enough to  impress each other and those occasional visitors to the island.  And, because they were supposed to be Knights that did good, they built hospitals and called themselves Hospitaliers to take care of all those Knights/soldiers who were injured!  And, with the warm Mediterranean winds blowing, and the fortress like protection, people began to migrate there and build homes and apartments. And now, amidst all the fallderol of past crusades and Knights, there are tourists, high rises, and yet charm that includes cultures from Italy, Spain, Africa, Middle East, etc etc.  They even have their own language, made up of words from all those cultures, although the residents mosty speak English.

It surprised me that, as close to Africa as we were, the culture and the people all looked "English."  And, with all the uprisings in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, etc, there were not more refugees from those areas.  When asked, our tour guide said they are very careful to keep their borders closed -- it must be those forbiding castle walls surrounding the island, with the spectre of Suleiman and his hat always threatening.

Maltese Cross

Maltese cross again

And Again

Split

Our Guide

Morning break in Trogir

Trogir plazza cafe

St. Martin with
his grill!
(Look it up!)

Island town on coast

Oyster beds along the coast.

And There But For a Little Girl, Go We…

Monument to those executed by the Nazis

Serbia, Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Slobodan Milosovic, Marshal Tito,ethnic cleansing … all these were words that flowed through my brain during the late 80’s and 90’s.  The words didn’t mean a whole lot, except there were people way across the globe fighting and killing each other for some reason or other.  But, tucked away in Middle America, it really didn’t affect me one way or the other.  At least, not directly.  And, in the 2000’s, when we in St. Louis were told we had the largest group of Bosnians resettled during and after “the war”, I felt vaguely proud that the government thought enough of St. Louis to send them here.  I heard they were great stonemasons and bricklayers.  And they were Muslim.  But then, who cares about things like that in America.

One of the ubiqutous shrines

What I found out when we stopped in Split, Croatia, is that they really DID care about that in the former
 Yugoslavia.  In fact, the ethnic divisions, from Christians to Jews to Muslims and everything in between, was enough to cause a war.  And the war was deadly enough that hundreds of thousands of people were annihilated.  You see, the Serbs felt they were strong enough to have their own ethnically pure country.  To heck with the other non-Serbian groups.  They were weaklings anyway.  They had no armies or weapons, so the Serbs, under Milosovic’s leadership, decided to eliminate the others.  Especially the other ethnic groups.  And why not just eliminate those that had “mixed” blood too?  And why not eliminate the children of mixed marriages, so the new Serbia would be “pure”?! 

Food with local wine (after grappa!)

So they set about annihilating everyone not Serbian.  And they annihilated the countryside as well.  Families were separated, parts of them killed, surviving on whatever they could find in garbage heaps, or, if they were lucky, rotting in the fields of vacant farms.

How did it end?  Well, we, the US, joined the UN to bomb the area enough to end the war as, T.S. Eliot so eloquently wrote, “not with a bang but a whimper.”  With the country destroyed, the war stumbled to a close.  And Yugoslavia was gone, Croatia was born.

Nov. 12, 2011.  Flash Forward.  We Americans land via cruise ship in Split, Croatia.  It looks much like any modern city, except for the walls where they point out the bullet holes.  And the new buildings.  We all climb into a touring bus, like good dobies. 

  

It's a 20 month old girl.

And as we careen through the countryside, we notice fields of grape vines, vegetables.  Even vegetable fields in the front yards of the scattered homes.  There seemed to be an abundance of homegrown veggies everywhere!  And, after we had traveled about an hour climbing ever higher into the hills/mountains, we reached a small village that appeared to be hundreds of years old.  All the homes were made of rocks piled on each other.  And the roofs were slate, roughly cut, laid on top of wood branches.  So, when you looked up, you could see sun peeking through the home-made slate shingles.

We climbed up a dirt road to a complex of stone hut/houses where we were to see how a typical village family lived.  When I asked how old the homes (because there was a collection of “rooms/houses”), the grandmotherly looking owner said it was at least 300 years old.  And she and her family and their ancestors, for that matter, had always lived there!  They were so far from any town that they were born in the houses with mid-wives and were, for the most part, totally self-sufficient. 

Stone "igloo"

Our lunch, which was cooked in the cookhouse over open fires, still used, included homemade grappa (that’s the drink Princess Diana’s driver was drinking the night she was killed!) with figs, since figs don’t preserve well.  And we had air-dried prosciutto along with homemade cheese and homemade bread.  In that moment, we went back in our brains 300 years.  But, so we wouldn’t forget, we stopped at a little Catholic monument on the road, where names were crudely carved into the stones – names of all the people who were slaughtered on that spot during the war!

Wandering around, we saw the chicken house and yard, with not only chickens, but also ducks.  Where were the cows and pigs?  That I can’t tell you, but I know they were there somewhere!  And, next to the chicken house was a, for a better description, an “igloo” made of stone with that same round door.  That structure, they told us, was the first “house” on the site and it was 1,000 years old.  Yup.  One thousand years.

Living in this complex were grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, children – and Lucia.  Lucia was exactly 20 months old, the same age as my Iris.  And she was climbing all over the stone walls, stairs, fences, in and out of structures.  No helmets.  No gates.  No playpens.  No restrictions.  No toys, actually, except for a little homemade table and chairs.  And she was laughing, loving the influx of new people.  And, as the local musicians played a guitar, she whirled and twirled and clapped her hands.  Children are the same all over.  And Lucia was just like Iris.

As we left, Lucia was waving goodbye – to her Mama.  “Bye-bye, Mama!  Bye-bye, she laughed.  And the war seemed so far away. Hard to imagine a decade ago these peaceful people were fearful for their families, friends and neighbors. But then our guide, who explained that now all ethnic groups live peacefully together, said, “We can forgive, but we should never forget.” 

Murano and Burano (And I Mean It)

Murano Glass Blower

No, I didn't misspell it.  Murano and Burano are two of the 140 or so islands that make up Venice.  I guess they just feel it is easier to say "Venice" and skip the rest.  And, there is a church -- at least, one -- on each of those islands.  Unless it is a temple, because there is one island called Judaica where all the Jewish residents had to live and they had their temple on that island.  In fact, did you know that the word "ghetto" came from Venice??  They seem quite proud, but I'd be ashamed of that fact!  However, the Jewish folk were not alone.  You see, the Armenians ALSO were relegated to their own island as well.  And I suppose this was a time before they built all those hundreds of bridges that appear so quaint now.

Burano the Beautiful!

Lace making grandmother!

In any case, bridges or no, the area we know as Venice was really the escape route for those poor "Italians" who were chased into the marshes by the barbarians, who took over all the good land!  The Italians (who became Venetians) decided they were sick to death of being invaded every year by Goths and Visigoths and odd and assorted Barbarians, who took all their food, clothes, valuables and not so valuables and then burned up their villages.  What to do? Escape.  Forward!  To the marshes??  Live on those crummy islands where noone else could possibly want to go!  And escape they did.  Enough ancient history.

From there, they built up one of the wealthiest city-states in Europe.  With those fancy bridges.  And gondolas and gondoliers.  And palaces with their front doors on the canals.  And they partied away with fancy dresses, lots of jewelry, lots of sex, and lots of tribute money and goods going to Rome and the pope.  In fact, the Pope sent them an edict that they needed to build more churches -- and the Venetians sent back a message that they ALREADY had too many churches -- 140+ -- and they didn't have enough people to take care of what they had!  It reminded us of Monty Python and the lupines sketch. "Please, Mr Pope, no more churches!  We'll send you gold and riches, but no more churches!"
 Too bad, Mr. Pope.

On to Murano and Burano.  They are islands.  But kinda specialty islands.  How do you get there?  By boat.  That's how you get EVERYWHERE in Venice!  In any case, the glass makers peopled Murano.  And if you think about it, you probably have heart about Venetian glass.  Blown by hand. And every kind of glass stuff you can think of, from chandeliers, wine glasses, statues, necklaces, etc etc.  Beautiful sparkly glass, rainbow colored glass.  And, as you might expect, glass-blowing is a dying art.  To become a glass blower, you need to start at age 9 and, by age 24, you can call yourself a glass blower extraordinaire.  Many of the glass factories have closed.  The Chinese have driven them out of business.  They maintain the glass produce in the Far East is not as fine, but it is certainly cheaper!

Burano.  This is the lace island.  And you really do have little old ladies who do the fine lace making by hand, as you watch.  In fact, we indulged a little too much in the lace things!  And, as we browsed, we saw a crowd of island residents, complete with baby carriages, old people, young people and a myriad of kids -- because it was "St. Mark's" Day.  Which is kind of like our Halloween, only nicer and not scary.  St. Mark, lo those many centuries ago, had a red cape and it was cold.  So he gave half his red cape to a beggar to keep him warm.  So on that particular day, children on Burano go door to door or store to store to person to person, wearing their red capes, singing songs and dancing, -- and asking for candy and money.  The parade was lovely.  A nice memory from Venice.  As we licked our gelati cones  and smiled.

Airport At Start

Airport Musings…

I was bored.  Bored and kinda excited.  We were about to take off on our next adventure – to Venice.  But the waiting waiting waiting for a plane to arrive, fill up with us, and take off  seems to drag on and on, clocks and watches ticking much to slowly.  But, sitting next to me in the waiting area was a good looking young man, busily reading one of the new kindles.  He was tall, sort of gangly, and probably about 35.  So, being myself, I asked him if that was the $79 kindle with advertising or one of the fancy new ones without keyboards.  It was a start of a conversation, at any rate. 

In any case, he turned to me and, with a heavy Slavic accent, told me it was the former, the $79 variety. 

“Where are you from?” I continued the conversation.

“Russia”, he answered. “Moscow”. 

“Really,” I returned. “What are you doing waiting for a plane in St Louis?”

“I was working in Quincy,” he responded. “I’ve been there for two months now. But I have to go home.  My wife is having a baby.”

So, as we settled into a more and more familiar friendship, I was able to ask him questions about his homeland – and how he viewed America.

Could he download books to his kindle in Russia, I asked him.  Of course, he answered.  And he had a iPod and an iPad as well.   

He admired America.  He really did.   But he loved Mother Russia.  And, while he didn’t exactly trust Putin, he was resigned to having him become the next President. Because, you see, they were a “democracy.”  That’s right.  He felt he lived in a democracy, a free state. On the other hand, he thought the US’s political issues were so messy and people so outspoken, it made him nervous.   He had a Ph.D. in some science or other, but seldom told people about it as then, he felt, they would not hire him because they would have to pay him more. But he enjoyed the small town of Quincy – because it was small! 

And, while all of America seemed well-developed, he moaned about the lack of navigable roads outside of Moscow and the undeveloped countryside. And what a huge diverse country, he continued.  How do you meld a country that big?  That was why the USSR failed. An iron fist cannot make people change their beliefs easily.  Even during the USSR period, religion played a part, hidden within each person’s home or heart.  Now it was in the open.  But so many religions in such a big country!! He couldn’t understand our lack of a national healthcare plan, as in Russia, they are all covered through the government.  But he was ashamed of the lack of development of towns and villages outside the major cities.  But it was home.  And he would never leave.  His family was there.  His wife, a scientist, was there.  And her family was there.  Which goes to prove, you live where your roots are – no matter what.

So my Russian friend, smiling, got on the plane to go back to Russia. “I’m flying Delta because Aeroflot is much more expensive, “ he explained.  So, at least in that, he had become “Americanized.”  I wonder how his flight went, if his wife had her baby.  I just wonder…”

Venice!

Night View From Our Room

Day view From Our Room

St. Marks Square... Wet!

Tourists and Everybody Above The Water

Venice:  It’s So Annoying!

We had never been to Venice.  Seems strange, since we’ve dotted in and out of Italy through the years.  What you’ve heard about Tuscany is true.  So is the buzz about Sicily and Rome.  But Venice?  The buzz about Venice is that it is romantic, with canals and gondolas and gondoliers singing, masked balls, decadence and the easy life!  Right?  I knew that was what you were thinking.   And it is what we were thinking too, when we booked this pretty much “all-Italy” cruise starting in Venice!

Canal Scene

St. Mark's Sq. Water Side

I guess I never thought too deeply about Venice – or at least, what it must be like to live in Venice – day in and day out living.  Like it is our forever home or something.  Well, the first thing I will tell you is it isn’t romantic at all. It is horribly inconvenient!! Yes, there are gondoliers and gondolas all over.  And canals all over also.  BUT you just can’t get there from here.  And that is very annoying.  At home, you can walk out your front door and cross the street to get to the other side.  OR you can hop in the car and drive to a spot, quickly and easily.  Just park that car and off to shopping or whatever.  Not in Venice.  No, in Venice you can look longingly across the “canal”, but if you want to go there – think again.  You have to go out some door and walk until you find a bridge.  And that could be miles.  Or you can walk to a terminal for a water taxi.  Or you can marcha-marcha to a gondolier stand to “hail” a gondola to get you there.  Only, unlike taxis in NYC, none of these forms of transportation get you “there”—not exactly “there”, in any case.  But they might, if you last long enough, get you close enough to your target.  You see, there are no cars or roads in Venice. (No trees or grass either, but that is another story!)  So anything you want, from a head of lettuce or loaf of bread, has to be picked up, after planning an intricate route map, and brought home – on a daily basis, since—well, that’s another story.  But do you see what I mean about annoying?? 

And we never thought about it in our convenience-oriented state-side life.  As an example, we looked longingly from our very elegant hotel at the Peggy Guggenheim palace museum, world-noted for her collection of contemporary art. And it was really truly just across the canal!  You could probably swim there pretty easily! We really wanted to go there for a quick peek at the art.  BUT we couldn’t figure out how to get there easily, even though there were gondolas parked at our hotel (which were NOT for just going across the canal).  So we had to evaluate.  Was it worth it to walk for miles to find a bridge?  Did we really NEED to see the Guggenheim collection or could we just look at pictures on the internet?  Seems to me one shouldn’t have to think this hard about going across a canal!?  But we opted for the internet.

Now, why the shopping every day for Viennese residents?  It’s because they live in flats, mostly called “palaces” but really just tall buildings.  And there are no elevators.  Our guide lived on the 5^th floor of her “palace”.  Her mother was on the 4^th floor and her two sisters were on 3 and 2.  That’s family closeness.  But they need to shop daily because they have to lug everything up 5 sets of stairs.  Up and down.  Up and down.  And when it is laundry day, the residents don’t have clothes dryers.  So everyone, and I do mean everyone, hangs their wet laundry on pulleys out their windows or off the balcony to get dry.

Now, onto the touristy things.  St. Mark’s Square.  Almost the entire world has heard of St. Mark’s Square.  BUT not everyone knows that you can get your feet wet on a twice daily basis.  So the residents set up risers so people can walk around the square, into and out of the church, into and out of the shops.  Darn inconvenient!!

So our guide was bemoaning the fact that all the young people, as soon as they are old enough, leave Venice for other places.  I can see why.  Really, I can.  Venice is annoying…very annoying! In fact, old as I am, I’d leave Venice even in my wheelchair, if need be?  Come to think of it, what do people in wheel chairs do about the stairs??  Oh – and if you have a heart attack or something, you need to wait for an ambulance water taxi to take you to the hospital!  Outta there…