Month: July 2017

It is 2am and sleep currently eludes me, so I am writing my report of the day with only the sunrise and a bright star for company.

The star is probably a planet, I’ll be able to look up which one when I have a better internet connection. And yes, I am so far north that sunrise is at 2am. The last fading light of the day is visible at 11:30pm. On the horizon I see lights from two other ships. One is definitely another cruise ship. The other may be a freighter. Between me and that horizon is water gently reflecting that early light with the tops of the waves and looking black where the light doesn’t touch. I feel the motion of those waves and the vibration of the ocean. It is a gentle rocking that I don’t notice unless I’m paying attention. I like the feel of it, and watching the water flow by is deeply peaceful. This moment was part of what I longed for: water, peace, rocking, and solitude. Though I didn’t need it to occur at 2 am when I am supposed to be sleeping.

The day just past was a sea day, which meant more classes and teaching because no one exited the ship. I have to consult my devices to confirm that it was Monday. It is so easy to lose track when I’m detached from my usual life patterns. This ship does not have the days of the week helpfully printed on the floors of the elevators. I miss that. I miss other things about the prior ships as well. This one has some questionable furniture choices. These chairs were obviously chosen for appearance not comfort.

And I’m not even sure what to say about these. I think that the silver loop is supposed to be used as a back to lean on. It doesn’t quite work.

There are many lovely things about this ship, one of the things that I prefer is the way our venues are clumped together in close proximity to my room. Every place I need to go is aft. I haven’t been to the fore of the ship since the first day. Which is good because the pathways between fore and aft still feel more convoluted than necessary.

Sea day was the day I taught my family class, which went well. I’m glad of that. I was worried before the class because I was unfocused at breakfast time. In the evening we had our formal night & costume party. I had a beautiful flowing dress that had some unfortunate design flaws which I did not realize until the third hour of wearing it when it began to be significantly uncomfortable. I ended up leaving the dinner table to go change. Fortunately the flaws are things I can likely correct before I wear the dress again and I have a different dress I can wear for the second formal night.

In a few hours we’ll make port in Stockholm. I have tickets to a tour, but right now I think I might skip it and stay on the ship. I think I need an introvert day where I re-center myself rather than filling my head with even more new input. There is a part of my brain that says I should go, I may never be in Sweden again. This is true, but if I my effort not to miss everything pushes me into exhaustion and overload, I will enjoy everything less. It is better to simply wave at Sweden from the ship and recharge for further adventures than to end up in a crying heap who just wants to run home and hide. I miss home and my familiar things. And I love being here away from my usual responsibilities. Both of those feelings co-exist without needing to fight for primacy.

Sun rise is gradual. It is 3am now and the sky is only marginally lighter. The band of red is thicker than it was and the planet is higher in the sky. I’ve attempted photographs, but the quality is poor with my cell phone camera.

I would pull out the better camera, but it beeps every time I push a button and I don’t want to wake Howard. He managed to find sleep and I don’t want to disturb him. According to the navigation notes that are placed on our bed each evening, the sun will rise above the horizon at around 4:20 am. Around 3:30am we are supposed to enter the Stockholm Fjord which the paper says have spectacular landscapes. At this point I’ll probably stay up to see them. I can sleep later since I’m skipping the tour and will have all day available to me. We’ll go back through the Fjord again in the evening, which is likely when most people will watch the landscape.

For now, I’m going to post this and wait for the Fjord.

We signed up for “City Tour and Christianborg Palace” I like tours because it is someone else’s job to figure out how to get me places. I dislike tours because someone else dictates how long I stay in those places. They even give us big stickers, like I’ve seen done for young school children on field trips. The sticker says MSC 13, but the unspoken meaning of the sticker is: if lost, please return this person to MSC tour bus number 13. Or maybe just back to the MSC ship. Sometimes I like hearing all the trivia and history that the tour guide shares. Other times I find that being with a group and listening to a lecture interferes with me experiencing the places themselves.

Our tour had two quick photo stops at the Little Mermaid statue and a gothic church. Both places were heavily populated by tourists. The Little Mermaid is fascinating because you can get a picture like this one, where it looks like she is solitarily over looking the harbor.

But the reality of seeing here is more like this.

I was fine with it because I had no desire to emotionally connect with the statue. But if I really wanted a moment alone with her, I think I’d have to come after dark or some other time when the tour busses have all headed back to their ships.

I would have liked to spend more time with the gothic church and bridge next to a canal. That was a place where I could have sat and absorbed the surroundings, but we only had five minutes to snap some quick pictures.

Outside the Christianborg palace we had half an hour, fifteen minutes of which were a lecture. I wandered over to the walkway by the harbor. Howard and I don’t take the sorts of tourist pictures you’d expect. Howard gets up close to things and captures textures. I get up close because I notice (and am delighted by) small details like the moss growing between cobble stones.

Or the fact that the “bricks” in the entrance to the reception hall were actually made of wood.

Or this wooden flooring that I loved.

And this chest of drawers that I would love to take home.

Howard and I noticed a hot dog vendor on the harbor walk, but she didn’t take cards and didn’t have change for euros. This was quite sad because my sister (who lived in Germany for years) told me to make sure we got a Dutch hot dog while in Copenhagen.

The frustration of no hot dog combined with stuffy rooms and over stimulation meant that Howard and I were starting to be cranky with the portion of the tour which was an hour long look at the formal reception halls of Christianborg Palace. We ditched the tour group and walked on ahead. This was wise because I found I enjoyed seeing the lavish rooms more when they were quiet and I could think my own thoughts. We exited the building and had half an hour before we were due back at the bus. Down the road we could see what looked to be shops, so we went questing for a hot dog. We found a vendor and the trip got way better.

“Hot dog” does not correctly convey this food to an American audience. What we got was a foot long, narrower than an American hot dog, with a flavor that was much yummier and more nuanced. A bratwurst is closer, but still not the same flavor. One of the hot dogs had been wrapped in a thin layer of bacon. They were placed in buns that had a physical resemblance to the buns seen in the states, but a better bread flavor. Then the hot dog was buried under ketchup, a tangy Dijon-ish mustard, crispy-oniony things, and several sweet dill pickles sliced paper thin. I can see why my sister suggested it.

We sat outside in the quiet and watched tour groups and locals going about their day. Then we re-joined the group at our bus and returned to the ship. On the way home I wished that the guide would have just let me watch out the window in silence, but that wasn’t her job. Instead she pointed out buildings of interest, spouted historical details, and praised her city. While I continued to snap pictures of things she didn’t point out, but which pleased me.

Such as this sign, because I’m really glad that slotsplads is a real word even though I don’t know for sure what it means

Or this red post box that made me think of the little red mail boxes in the Zelda games.

Or the roof of the terminal building we had to pass through to get back on the ship because it had moss growing on the roof. On purpose.

Walking around, I could see that this was definitely the world of Hans Christian Andersen. Once again, landscape shapes the culture and stories.

It was a small paragraph in the daily bulletin that is delivered to the cabins. “Around 23:30 we will pass under the famous bridge of Oster-Renden that has a total length of 9 miles and is the longest bridge in Europe, it connects the two Danish islands of Selandia and Fionia.” I paused and re-read, yes it said under. I’m on a ship that is twenty stories tall and we were going to pass under a bridge. Howard and I agreed that this was something we wanted to be on deck to see. A couple of friends accompanied us at the right time and we went to the highest open deck. The bridge was already visible in the distance. It looked like many other bridges I’d seen with towers and suspension cables swooping down to the surface where cars moved across.

But as our ship drew closer I began to realize this bridge was far larger than others I’ve seen. Then I turned and realized that the span of the bridge was visible on both sides of the ship.

It got larger and larger. There was a target on the side of the bridge, which was apparently what the pilot was to aim for.

Then the underside of the bridge was above us. It soared over where we stood, appearing to be mere feet above the highest lights of the ship.

Some how our brains couldn’t parse what we were seeing, because no bridge should be large enough for a twenty story building to sail underneath it, yet there we were. In less than a minute it passed over head. The lights from our ship illuminated the under side.

And then it was receding behind us.

My words here don’t do justice to the awe-inspiring sight. Even the pictures are woefully inadequate. We all vocalized in amazement. As soon it was receding, Howard needed to get off the top deck because the combination of visuals had triggered an attack of vertigo. So we went downstairs, very glad we’d taken the time to go and see.

Note: We went back under the following night, and it was every bit as impressive.

I’ve gone on two cruises before, both were on Royal Caribbean. On those, they funneled us through lines, made us fill out papers, took our pictures, then handed us a sea pass. On MSC the sea passes are in the rooms for us to find when we arrive. There are other small differences which made the first day a little bewildering and overwhelming. On the first day, the ship feels like a maze. I don’t yet know how to get from one end to the other. It will only take a day or two to sort out, but the first day is always long. The difference that is going to have the biggest impact on me is that MSC has a much stricter limit on data usage even for the highest levels of internet access. I’m not going to be able to blog as I go the way I did earlier, which makes me sad. I was enjoying that process quite a bit. I may still be able to blog words. In fact this post is a test to see how much data is used when I upload a blog post full of words.

This isn’t a particularly good picture of the ship. I took it through the window of a shuttle bus and it was raining. But it was the only real view I got of the ship before boarding. Perhaps there will be better photography opportunities later.
Right off my stateroom balcony was a view of the German Naval Yard, which I found interesting because there was a ship docked there.

One of the nice things about being part of a large conference group who are all wearing badges, we can identify each other in the crowds and help each other get oriented to the ship. It was from a fellow staff member that I learned where to find the little maps of the ship. Then I was able to walk both of the through decks to orient myself. On a cruise ship there are only a couple of decks where it is possible to walk from the front of the ship to the back of the ship. Most of the decks don’t go all the way through without obstruction. And sometimes the routes are … odd. For example: the dining room where we eat dinner is on deck 6. However the only way to get to it is to use the aft elevators or stairs. This means that if you’re in the fore, you have to use deck 5, 7, or 14 to transit to the aft of the ship and then use elevators or stairs to get to the dining room. Once I learn where things are, it isn’t a problem, but on the first day it is confusing.

Once the ship leaves port, the feeling of being misplaced/confused/lost subsides a bit. I’m not sure why that is, but somehow being under way changes the feeling. And then we have our first writing class of the trip and having all of the writers gathered together is even more reassuring. Today was the first day when part of my brain started freaking out because I’m so far away from my home. Being with the other writers sets that aside and gives me new thoughts to think. Of course the down side is that when I go to bed, my brain keeps thinking them, which is how I end up awake at 2:18 am wondering how things are going at home and writing up the rest of a scattered blog post. I’m afraid I won’t be editing these travel posts as carefully as I try to do usually. I feel fortunate to find brain to write them at all.

I have achieved hotel with bed, wifi, and the correct amperage of power for my devices. Soon I will go to sleep and hope to wake in the morning with my body convinced that this schedule shifted by eight hours is okay.

The first day of this trip involves 18 hours of travel which crossed a night during which I got maybe thirty minutes of sleep. In theory the staying up will allow me to fall asleep at an appropriate local time. We’ll see if biorhythms cooperate. In Charles De Gaul airport Howard and I found this little sushi place that has a conveyor to bring food around.

I knew these places existed, and it was charming to sit at one. The actual food was underwhelming, which shouldn’t be surprising for what is essentially a sushi cafeteria. I’m glad we stopped anyway.

The airport also had a piano sitting in an open area, which apparently exists so that travelers can sit down to play. When we first walked by a woman was playing and singing opera, apparently just to pass the time while waiting for her plane. The airport also had a complete lack of TV screens broadcasting news, which is a common feature of American airports. I wish more airports would do pianos instead of TV screens. Piano is much nicer than endless rounds of talking heads discussing the American healthcare system to no avail.

Plane for Hamburg boards in fifteen minutes.

The day before travel is a strange mix of urgent tasks and waiting. I’ve already wrapped up most of my work that I needed to get done before the trip. I don’t want to start anything that I’d have to put on hold for ten days, so I end up spending time idling. The suitcase is packed, but still open for when I remember one more thing to put into it. The people staying home have all been briefed on proper house maintinence (like taking out the trash and doing the dishes.) I’ve handed over permissions and medical cards for the minors in the house. And both Howard and I have written up notes about how to manage if we don’t return on schedule.

That last item takes up a pretty big emotional footprint. I found myself writing pages of instructions for the shipping that is left to do. I showed my adult kids where all the important documents and emergency resources are. I wrote up notes on accounts, bills, passwords, and procedures. One thing that is of great comfort to me is that our family is surrounded by an extensive net of relatives and friends, all of whom would jump to help my kids sort things out should that become necessary. It reminds me, yet again, that I need to contact an estate lawyer and get some paperwork that is more official than my notes. Put that on the calendar for October.

For now, it is time to do the last few tasks that need to be done before we leave.