A Disaster Becomes a Gift

This is not strictly about my upcoming world cruise, but it's something I definitely want to document, and here is as good a place as any.

In 2009, I spent nine weeks in Russia trying to improve my Russian language skills. As I approached the Lufthansa gate to return home, I reached into my purse for my passport. It wasn't there. It wasn't there the next five times I reached for it, shuffling through the contents, emptying them onto a nearby chair, unzipping every zipper, opening every fold, shaking the upside-down purse frantically, looking into the empty purse as if somehow if I just looked harder ... no passport. "You cannot travel without a passport," the Germanically courteous Lufthansa attendant informed me. And a few hours later, the airplane to which I held a ticket took off without me.

I was in Russia without a passport. I freaked out. I then, in freak-out mode, managed to lose my cash card in an ATM. And then my cell phone, with the contact information for the dozen or so people I knew in Russia, died.

And yet here I am. Clearly I did not get sent to Siberia. I did not disappear into a Russian jail or end up wandering the streets of Moscow, one of innumerable old women begging for kopecks* on a street corner. I eventually climbed down from the freak-out, called the help line for my travel insurance, got temporary documents from the Russian police, a temporary passport from the American embassy,  a new plane ticket, and a hotel room for the interim.

And why am I revisiting this now? Because I just read an essay about how cell phones are preventing young people from the adventure of cutting ties to home and setting off on adventures that let them define themselves. And it occurs to me that you don't have to be young to have self-defining adventures. What a gift that was! Three major crutches -- passport, cash card, phone contacts -- pulled away, and I figured out what to do, did it, and got home.

*A kopeck is worth 1/100 of a ruble. A ruble is worth about 3 cents. And there really are a lot of old women begging for them on Russian streets.

Tim Dorsey on cruises

This is from Tim Dorsey's "Atomic Lobster":


“You’ve taken a cruise, right?” Coleman shook his head.
“You’re kidding. I thought of all people.”
“I haven’t been on one, okay?”
“Familiar with Las Vegas?”
“Of course.”
“Add a rudder and subtract government. The whole country’s into excess, even when fighting excess, and cruises are the nation’s bad habits on steroids. All the things you’re not supposed to do on land you’re supposed to do on a cruise because it’s one of America’s official responsibility-free zones, like Mardi Gras, New Year’s Eve or Courtney Love. Twenty-four-hour free buffets all over the place, raunchy stage shows, countless bars that won’t cut you off as long as you can knee-walk into a casino and blow the mortgage—”

- - - - -

Only correction that I know of is that there are apparently not twenty-four-hour free buffets. Some people on the Holland America forum on Cruise Critics say that the dining facilities shut down around 9 pm -- folks were complaining because they'd get back late from an excursion and couldn't find anywhere to eat except via room service.

Anyway, thank you, Doug Miller, for getting me to read Tim Dorsey.

Pirates

OK, look at the map to the right. One of the highlights for me of my world cruise will be going through the Suez Canal, which is at the end of that rip in eastern Egypt at the northwest end of the Red Sea. There have been news reports of Egyptian protestors threatening to close down the Suez Canal, but I'm assuming the combined forces of the Egyptian military and world-wide commercial interests will keep that from happening.

But I hadn't considered the other end of the Red Sea. See that unlabeled yellow chunk at the bottom right? That's Somalia. Where there is no government, no law, and lots of pirates. I just read an article that, among other things, says:

"In the first six months of 2011, there were 266 piracy attacks compared with 196 incidents over the same period last year, and 60 percent of them were carried out by Somali pirates, the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) said. ... Five years ago, pirates were more often armed with knives. But now ships, including oil and chemical tankers, are being attacked with automatic weapons and rocket propelled grenade launchers, the report said. ... Fourteen ships had been attacked in the South Red Sea since May 20."


Am I dissuaded from the cruise? Of course not! I'm sure Holland America will be extremely conservative in its response to any potential threat -- if only because it would be very bad for business to be the cruise line whose passengers suffered rocket-propelled grenade attacks. Rich old people are not big on rocket-propelled grenade attacks. Can't say as I'm all that enthusiastic about them myself.


Now if they could arrange for the pirates to be led by Captain Jack Sparrow ...

my sweet little cruise ship

This is a picture of two Holland America cruise ships. The big one on the left is the ms Nieuw Amsterdam. The little one on the right is the ms Amsterdam, on which I will be sailing around the world next January through April. Isn't it cute?

My future home

Thanks to the generosity of a man who, I suspect, woke up from a nap to answer my knock on his door, I got to see the stateroom I'll have for the world cruise. It's on the third deck, the "lower promenade deck", with a window looking out at the ocean. The view is "partly obstructed" by the graceful sweep of a column of the ship's external superstructure, and the obstruction is maybe 15% of what I'd see if it weren't there -- absolutely no problem. The exterior of the window is covered with a mirror-like substance, so I can stare out at people walking by without having them stare back in at me.

You can see what the space looks like by going here, then clicking on "Staterooms" and "Oceanview". I'm going to see if I can get the room configured with only one twin-size bed against the left-hand wall -- that's all the space I need to sleep in, and it would be nice to have more floorspace, plus that second bed will, guaranteed, end up being where I throw all my stuff, which the housekeepers will dutifully fold and stack for me and which I will regularly unfold and unstack to get to random items of stuff that I think I want. They will come to hate me.

The stateroom (I keep wanting to write "cabin", which I think I will do in future) is close to a door out onto the external walkway that goes all the way around the ship. I meant to find out how long that walk would be, but I forgot. There are lots of chairs on the deck, and Nanette assures me that, should the weather be chilly, they come around with cups of absolutely delicious split pea soup for anyone sitting outside.

I'm spending a lot of time thinking about being in that cabin or walking around on the deck. I've been assured that even when the ocean is fairly rough, the ship is engineered so that walking around will be possible. Here I am, looking out to sea, watching waves crash and blow in the stiff breeze, sipping my soup. And smiling. There's a lot of smiling in these fantasies. Can't think why.

Doom looms

From a Weight Watchers article on how to control weight gain on vacations:

Beware of cruises. A cruise is a lot like a giant, floating buffet. Sure, there's usually a gym at your disposal, but barbells are no match for the endless supply of daiquiris and midnight spreads.


And to confirm that, one feature of ms Amsterdam I have not yet mentioned is the ice cream bar with half a dozen flavors where you just walk up, ask for what you want, and saunter away licking happily. 

Disappointments

1. The food was good but not spectacular. Holland-America brags about their gourmet chef, so I was expecting Really Great Food. It wasn't. On the other hand, what we had was one room service meal plus a small mid-evening snack in the buffet restaurant, plus which they were dealing with a couple hundred people who were on the ship only overnight. So I won't enter a final judgment on this matter just yet. And I suppose it's really hypocritical to complain that the food is not irresistably good when I'm also worried about gaining back my lost weight.
2. The string quartet was mediocre at best. And they only played arrangements of Broadway tunes. I had had visions of relaxing every evening in the company of new friends to the strains of Bach and Beethoven. Not if this was any indication.
3. We really were not well-treated during the embarkation process. Not having access to food was partly our fault -- we should have had lunch before entering the cruise terminal -- but sitting us for a couple hours on plastic chairs in a warehouse room, and not giving us information about how long we'd be there was callous. "It usually takes an hour from now until you have to check in" would have freed us to seek out restrooms and vending machines, and would not have cost HAL anything.
4. If the man who made general announcements on the mini-cruise is a permanent part of the staff of ms
Amsterdam, I may return with a homicide indictment hanging over my head. I like Australian accents generally, but this man sounded like a parody of the jolly Aussie tossing another shrimp on the barbie. That, and I always hate being urged to enjoy myself. If someone feels the need to say, "Aren't we all having a wonderful  time?", in my experience it is only because we aren't.
5. And they made us get off the ship just because our mini-cruise was over. I liked being on the ship. I liked wandering around the ship. I liked sleeping on the ship. After less than a day, I was tuned in to being on the ship. Why should we have to leave just because we were in Seattle and our tickets said "Seattle"? If that's the way HAL treats its paying customers, I may have to reconsider future plans to sail with them. After I get back next April, that is. (And yes, you have permission to throw this paragraph in my face when I blog about how desperate I am to get off the damned boat after the fifth or sixth day at sea next February.)