Tag: Europe

Not-So-Innocents Abroad

In 1869, Mark Twain published a book called Innocents Abroad that is still regarded as one of the best travel accounts ever written. Two years earlier, he and a group of similarly adventure-minded people had taken a steamship across the ocean to the Mediterranean, explored that area, took a locomotive up to Paris and back down to Italy, before visiting the Holy Land and Black Sea area and returning home. The book remains an entertaining read today because of Twain’s clever wit, acerbic commentary, and keen eye for the colorful anecdote.

This month, Kathleen and I, along with children Ben and Kristin and Ben’s wife Amber, retraced some of Twain’s steps on a Viking ocean cruise that included several stops along the Western Mediterranean. Along the way, we spent time in Barcelona (with a side trip to Montserrat), Spain, Avignon, Monaco, Tuscany and Firenze (Florence), Italy, before flying home from Rome. After three Viking river cruises, this was our first cruise on one of their larger ocean-sailing ships. The service, quality, and attention to detail that marked the river cruises was also present on the big ship, and we decided there were plusses and minuses to each of the different ships. While the ocean ship was much larger than the river boat (900 passengers, compared to about 200), the ratio of passengers to crew members, servers, etc. remained the same (2-1), which meant there was impeccable service at all times. At one point, I finished my coffee while strolling around the ship, and I looked around for a place to dispose of the paper cup. Surprisingly, I could not find a trash receptacle. However, when I accidently dropped the cup, it never hit the ground. I sensed a flash in the corner of my eye, but never saw an actual person. I later determined that a shadowy crew member must have swept in and caught the cup in midair, spiriting it away before it could clutter the immaculate deck. Moreover, if we left our cabin for five minutes in the morning, when we returned, the room had been completely cleaned, the bed made, towels changed out, and the mini-bar restocked, as if by fast-working fairies. Speaking of the mini-bar, we had somehow been upgraded for this cruise, so we were given a spacious cabin and a few on-board perks, including free access to the mini-bar.

Kathleen and I have now taken about a dozen cruises, including six since I have retired (Rhine, Alaska, Danube, Caribbean, Main/Moselle in Germany, and this one). Therefore, I feel qualified to offer a few Dos and Don’ts on foreign travel.

Do, whenever possible, travel to Europe in the off-season. This is easier to do after retirement, so we tend to travel in winter, spring or fall, rather than the crowded and hot summer months. On this trip, we found few lines or hordes of tourists. On top of that, the weather was consistently comfortable and sunny, with temperatures ranging from the mid-forties to about 60 degrees.

Don’t act in such a way that reinforces the stereotype of the demanding and entitled American tourist. On our stop at Séte, a port town a short distance from Montpellier, France, we had a young tour guide who spoke poor English, and seemed to know little about history or culture of his home town. He was charming, however, and kept us entertained with anecdotes about local places and people. At every bar or cafe we passed, someone would see him and call out his name, giving an indication of how he spent most of his time. In the middle of our tour, at about 1:30, a sixtyish woman from our ship grabbed his arm and interrupted his description of a summer festival. “I was supposed to be on the 10:40 tour,” she announced, “but I overslept, so I’ll just join yours.” Kristin whispered, “Oh no! It’s the Ugly American!” Our guide shrugged and picked up where he left off. She broke in again after a minute or so, saying, “I’m bored; where can I buy a tee-shirt?” He pointed to one of the numerous souvenir shops along street, and she disappeared in her quest for a shirt to commemorate her spiritual connection to the charming port town. Later that day, we were in a large lounge area of the ship enjoying tea, snacks, and classical music played by a female piano player. The UA appeared again, interrupting the musician in mid-song and making a request. When the pianist began playing the song she wanted, the UA crowded into our small sitting area in order to film and record the song on her phone. Kathleen gently said, “We’re actually saving that seat for someone.” She just rolled her eyes and said, “They’ll have to find another seat, then, won’t they?” A day or two later, while visiting the national church of Monaco, she appeared again as part of our small tour group. I thought, “With 900 people on this ship, how the hell do we always end up with her?” As we were looking at the graves of Prince Ranier and Grace Kelly in the quiet church, she loudly asked the guide if we could end the tour early and go shopping for tee-shirts. By that point, I was looking around and wondering if there was a third hole available for dead bodies in that church.

Do, when visiting Barcelona, make sure to include a visit to the spectacular Sacrada Familia. We spent two days in Barcelona before beginning the actual cruise, and while I loved the city, the Gaudi church was the highlight. I had previously read about the idiosyncratic architect, Antoni Gaudi, in the past, and I knew a little about his masterpiece church, the unfinished Sacrada Familia, but never really appreciated his work before this trip. After numerous excursions to Europe, moreover, I had pretty much reached “Gothic Cathedral Overload,” an affliction that makes the many medieval structures across Europe begin to run together in the mind, and I wasn’t sure that I wanted to spend several hours touring this one. Most of those other incredible edifices were built in the 1100-1300 time-period, using similar technology, and having essentially analogous designs. While impressive for their day, they tend to be dark and ponderous places today. Gaudi’s church emulates those ancient cathedrals to a degree, but incorporates modern ideas and engineering techniques. Construction began in 1882, with his involvement running from about 1883 until his death in 1926. Thus, he had access to new technology, such as steel and concrete, to take the idea of the Gothic Cathedral to new levels. The result is a much brighter and cleaner version of the “Cathedral,” infused with light, nature, and color in an incredible combination designed to awe the visitor with the presence of God. Gaudi loved nature, and, as a devout Catholic, he saw the hand of the divine in the living world around him. Thus, instead of heavy, static columns and flying buttresses to support the roof and walls, a series of columns designed to look like growing trees give the impression of an organic structure that is a product of the Earth, rather than something standing apart from the natural world. Indeed, the church is literally organic and still growing, as it remains unfinished a century after Gaudi’s death. Barcelona has a lot to offer tourists, but this building should top any visitor’s list.

Don’t be afraid to develop your own, distinctive travelling style. We had travelled with Ben and Amber before, and with Kristin several times in recent years, but this was only the third time we had all travelled together. Kathleen and I have developed our preferred manner of travel over many years. In essence, it involves getting off of the ship or leaving the hotel, walking a short distance, and stopping in a street café for coffee or a glass of wine. Then we might visit one of the local museums or other attractions for a while, and stop at another café. Rinse and repeat. It’s clearly not a style designed for everyone, but it works for us, and Kristin has fallen into our leisurely rhythm when visiting a new place. Ben and Amber, however, are busy doctors and parents who like to make the most of every moment they have on vacation. That means they are constantly in motion, rushing from one place to another with little down time. They crossed paths with us occasionally as we sat in a restaurant enjoying a pastry with some local wine, but they rejected invitations to join us because they had read about some landmark, such as a toilet designed by Gaudi, and rushed off to see it. The thing that makes these opposing manners of travelling work, is that there is no judgement expressed about how to properly visit a new place: they do their thing and we do ours.

The only time our contrasting styles collided was in the middle of our trip. That day, our ship was docked at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, a strip of densely populated land stretching from Cannes in the west to Italy in the east. Kathleen and I decided to take a bus to the walking tour of Monaco, Ben and Amber wanted to visit Nice (pronounced Neese), several miles to the west of our docking position, and Kristin opted for a relaxing day in the spa on the ship, sitting in the warm, massaging waters of the pool while sipping a gin and tonic, and dipping into a snow-filled room on occasion to enjoy the Scandinavian tradition of alternating hot-and-cold temperatures. At dinner, we asked Kristin how her relaxing day had gone. She told us that the energetic and athletic Ben and Amber invited her to join them on their exploration of Nice just as she was getting ready to go to the spa. She went along, not knowing that Ben had decided they would eschew public transportation and simply walk over the small mountain that separated Villefranche from Nice. It looked like a good idea on the map, but it turned out that it involved a steep climb, no direct path to the other side, and a lot of switchbacks, making it a longer, more strenuous, and more taxing hike than Kristin had anticipated. She ended the day, sore, tired, and cursing her brother.

Do start planning your next journey as soon as you get home. We didn’t plan to do that as quickly as we did, but a few hours after we got home, still jet-lagged and bleary eyed from a twenty-hour trip home, we found 13-year-old granddaughter Abigail knocking on our door. She rode her bike to our house, but we weren’t sure what she wanted to talk about. She unpacked several boxes of snacks and a water bottle, a clear indication that the ensuing discussion would not be a brief one. We had promised her and her brother Lucas a trip to Disney World in June, but told her we would talk about it when we returned from Europe–I just didn’t think it would be the very minute we returned. She had apparently spent the entire time we were gone researching the hotels, parks and restaurants in the massive Disney complex in Orlando. She had purchased a fancy new notebook for this research project, and it was organized by subject and color-coded in her perfect hand-writing. She had lists of prices and which hotels offered enough beds so that she would not have to share sleeping space with her little brother, along with a description of how the Disney app worked. Finally, she had a comprehensive list of rides and attractions in each of the four parks, prioritized into categories of “Must,” “Maybe,” and “If we have time.” This girl clearly has inherited her parent’s zeal for travel and does not intend to waste a second of our time in Orlando.

Now, if only her grandparents have the energy to keep up with her.

European Vacation

After a 14-day journey which took us to Paris, Riems, Luxembourg, several German cities, and Prague, we returned home only to discover that we had contracted Covid. Even a week of illness, though, could not diminish the memories Kathleen and I accumulated while traveling with daughter Kristin and her husband Kevin. We saw incredible works of art and architecture, but also learned quite a bit about the cultures of the various places we stopped.

I won’t bore you with a slide show of “What I did on my summer vacation.” In fact, I left my phone home and didn’t take a single picture. Here are a few highlights though: First, we spent four days in Paris and saw an amazing cemetery in the Montparnasse neighborhood (with the graves of Alfred Dreyfus, Guy de Maupassant, Jean Paul Sartre, and his lover, Simone de Beauvoir, the first modern feminist); ate dinner at several wonderful outdoor cafes; visited St. Denis, the first Gothic cathedral and burial place of most of the kings of France; the Rodin Museum; the Musee d’Orsay with a special exhibition of the work of Edgar Degas and Eduoard Manet, along with many other impressionist works (I even discovered a new favorite impressionist, Gustave Caillebotte, about whom I had known little before); a night cruise on the Siene; and a full day at Claude Monet’s Giverny gardens where he conducted his spectacular artistic experiments with light and color. The Notre Dame Cathedral was under massive repairs following the tragic fire of a few years ago, so we were not able to get inside. The French were working feverishly to finish those repairs and many others in time for next year’s Olympic Games to be held in Paris. In fact, we ran into construction and preparations everywhere we went, and our hotel was host to Olympic committees from countries around the world.

We experienced a minor disappointment because, instead of the rude Parisians we expected to find, we encountered only helpful and pleasant waiters and clerks everywhere we went in the city. Viking picked us up at the hotel and took us by bus to the Rhine on our fifth day. We stopped at Reims to see the incredible cathedral where the kings of France were crowned and, at lunch, we finally met the waiter of those legendary anecdotes. He spoke only French, but took our orders in an aggressive way that left us wondering what it was we had actually ordered. When Kristin tried to clarify her order, he grew angry and began shouting. I’m not sure what he said, but I caught the words “Non, non, non! Imbecile! Vous ne pouvez pas modifier votre commande!” After that, we quietly sipped champaign and cheerfully ate whatever the hell he wanted to bring us, knowing that we had now enjoyed the full French experience. And yes, I still tipped the man far more than he deserved.

More highlights: the American cemetery in Luxembourg, where many of the US soldiers killed in the Battle of the Bulge rest; the city of Trier, Germany, with Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance architecture sitting next door to modern office buildings; so many castles and palaces along the Rhine, Moselle, and Main Rivers that they began to run together in our minds; lunch in Heidelberg with a charming, English-speaking college student; a stop in Nuremburg with the Nazi parade ground (If you have seen Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, you know the one in question) only a short distance from the court building where the war criminal trials were held after the war; a tour of the city of Prague, complete with a naked woman posing for pictures in the Old Town section of the city.

The Viking cruise itself was wonderful, as it has been on all three trips we have taken with them. Kristin and I, the cynical ones, developed nicknames for those on the cruise who annoyed us the most. “Anchorwoman” was the newswoman from Kansas City who brought four suitcases full of clothes so that she never had to wear the same outfit twice (I’m not sure where she kept them in our tiny staterooms). “Sticks,” a loud and obnoxious man, had bad knees and walked with two canes at all times. Yet, as a former marine, he could not admit weakness, so he insisted that he could keep up with the faster walking-tour groups. Thus, we were constantly waiting for him while he leaned on his crutches and lit another cigarette. “The Magpies” were three insufferable women who talked and cackled at great volume at the bar through every speaker’s presentation. Finally, “Single Malt” was the Scotch connoisseur who loudly ordered a “single-malt Scotch” at the bar. We were sitting nearby, and heard the exchange which followed. Jason, the bartender (yes, I was on a first-name basis with him), nodded and said, “Scotch whiskey; yes sir.” The guy said, “No. I don’t want whiskey; I want a single-malt Scotch.” Jason tried to explain that Scotch was whiskey, but the man would have none of it. Jason surrendered the field and prepared to pour the Scotch when the man said, “Mix it with Sprite.” Again, Jason winced and explained that the expensive whiskey is best enjoyed when sipped straight up or with a few drops of water, and to dilute it in such a way would destroy its taste, but the man insisted. Kristin looked at me and whispered, “He will forever be known as ‘Single Malt.’”

I was especially fascinated by the cultural differences we encountered. Visiting Europe, it always boggles my mind to be in one country for a while, with one type of currency, cuisine, music, language, and customs, then, after a short drive, be in a completely different country with a new language, money, food, and culture. The best guides we had wove together historical elements of a particular place or building with explanations of the culture of their country. In Nuremberg, our guide Andreas spoke passionately about the post-WWII years, in which the old guard—some of them former Nazis—still controlled Germany and preferred to brush the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes under the rug and pretend they had never happened. After the global student unrest of 1968, however, a new generation of leaders emerged who believed that all history, good and bad, needed to be taught and understood if those horrors were to be avoided in the future. Today, he said, all German students are required to learn about the Holocaust and visit one of the Death Camps. I was able to have a private conversation with him in which I explained the way in which conservatives in the US are similarly trying to expunge the teaching of the Holocaust or slavery from textbooks, libraries, and schools, under the misguided belief that students should never encounter uncomfortable facts about their history.

I also found the presentation of news in Europe to be interesting. In many places we stayed, and on the Viking ship, the only live, English-language TV shows available were newscasts of the BBC from England. First, it was a relief to escape the daily accounts of Trump’s latest indictments for his never-ending crimes against the people of the US. In fact, they rarely mentioned the disgraced former president. Second, as you might expect, the focus was different—they concentrated on Europe more than the US, the economy, and the Ukraine War. For the economy, I learned that inflation is much worse there than it is in the US. They blamed inflation, correctly, on supply-line issues resulting from Covid and Vladimir Putin’s war which reduced the amount of oil available world-wide and drove up costs of transporting goods. Surprisingly, they also praised Joe Biden’s aggressive approach to reducing inflation and pointed out that the US inflation rate is currently at 4.1%, while in England and much of Europe, it was still twice as high, above 8%.

They talked much more about the Ukraine War than we do, and acknowledged the fact that, should Putin be allowed to annex the Ukraine, there is no telling where he might stop. They regarded Russia’s threat as similar to that posed by Hitler in the 1930s and recognized the need to stop him in Ukraine. They also gave credit to Biden for repairing Trump’s damage to NATO and other alliances and applauded him for making the US and Europe more secure than they have been in decades. Thus, it is interesting that Biden gets more credit around the world for his successes than he does in the media of his own country.

All in all, it was a fun and enriching two-week trip. I might complain about the long, uncomfortable flights and the inconvenience of travel every time we cross the ocean, but I always return feeling grateful that we took the trip. I also begin looking forward to the next journey. Next up: our first ocean cruise with Viking in February, going from Barcelona to Rome.