Our Cruise to the Land of Herring and Other Smelly People
They’re Off
Things started off well enough. Ms. Linda, Madi and Sarah and I made it to the airport parking lot and headed to the check-in for KLM while Linda was still on her first roll of film, I mean, Linda was on her first camera disc and had stopped for washroom breaks only 23.5 times. The .5 adjustment was due to one rest stop to adjust her camera strap privately which really, in all fairness, should not be recorded as a full -fledged rest room break.
We managed to fly through the check-in and security lines, thanks to a generous bribe paid to our KLM flight attendant for a sitting in the executive lounge, a wise move from your kindly writer. This seemed to make all hands on deck, including Misses Madi and Sarah, quite content.
The flight was fairly innocuous. OK, there was one incident involving a mean spirited Damian-type two year old seated behind Ms. Linda, regrettably well within kicking range. When asked by the latter to resist the apparent temptation, (he could resist everything but that, apologies to Oscar..) to boot Ms. Linda into perpetual lunar orbit, his maternal influence replied “well, he is a two year old”, apparently merging her mental and chronological age with his, in a bad way. “Yes”, Ms. Linda replied, “he is two year old and you, madam, are an utter ass%%%”.
Amsterdam
We landed safely in Amsterdam, all bodies intact, and after a mere 3 or 4 bathroom breaks, Ms. Linda was ready to rock and roll….that is, roll her bags through the streets and over the canals of Amsterdam looking for our hotel after descending from the bus yet. It always happens that at the precise moment you need the GPS in fighting form, it seems to be whacked out on some psychedelic drug trip, as it took us pretty well right past Hotel d’Amsterdam, our intended resting place, over a few more canals, a couple of dozen wrong turns and voila – somehow our hotel appeared in front of our tired and wet faces.
If anyone tells you that pushing bags through the dreary and rainy streets of Amsterdam at 7 am after a night of no sleep traveling across the ocean, and then waiting in a stupor for 4 hours for a warm bed, well even a cold bed, is a great way to start the day, run for the hills, I mean, canals, right away. Better still – toss them in the nearest canal – it will be only four feet deep by the way, in the centre yet.
Never confused with the Ritz, but nonetheless our dearly beloved resting spot
The canals were all dug out in the 1700’s when Holland was an international trading power, as hard as that may be to believe today. And yes, the red light district dates back to the same era. It seems that when the Dutch men set out for sea, the ladies they left behind were equally entrepreneurial and …well, when one boat went out, another one came in.
The canals, much like the one on the Rideau, do freeze over in the winter and do so quickly as they are quite shallow. It would actually be quite fun to see Holland in the winter, I suspect. Let me know how that goes – I will be in the Barbados. The zillions of bikes apparently keep on wheeling through every snow flake.
You see all shapes and sizes of human life on bikes. Not just dikes on bikes…(sorry, my apologies to all our LBGTQRS, I keep forgetting these letters, friends… could not resist that one…it is Holland). There are babies with moms, girls on the handle bars, cross bars and pretty well at every bar. There are business people, men out for a gala evening sporting black tie and tuxedos, women in gowns, track clothes, short skirts, long robes, moms with fresh bread, cheese and wine, three year old kids learning to bike hanging onto dad’s hand, musicians with bass fiddles ( Ok, I made that one up but I did see one guy with a drum), construction guys, professorial looking guys and gals, lovers holding hands….all on bikes..holding hands, that is..put those crazy thoughts away.
The phenomenum is culturally embedded. A great and wonderfully healthy way to travel. There is no parallel to Toronto. In Amsterdam, there are dedicated bike lines everywhere. In TO, the bikers is taking his or her life in his hands every time he goes down Jarvis Street, which is complete madness. In Amsterdam, it is the pedestrian trying to cross the street who is at the same risk of immediate death. First, lanes of bikers whiz by, then 2 lanes of cars, followed yet by another flash of more bikes coming at you from both directions for that little unexpected bit of extra added fun. You can get a repetitive neck strain very quickly by crossing just one street.
A familiar site…there must be a good restaurant close by….
Our hotel was up and over to the right
King Bike Rules
He definitely knows something his passenger does not
Precious Cargo
Head out on the highway….looking for adventure…
These solemn faces are obviously debating the Kessel trade
We enjoyed a lovely cruise through the canals directed by Butch Beau, as she spoke of the history of the canal system quite grandly so of the Dutch by-gone empire of the East Indies, Surinam and what a great deal they made selling “New Amsterdam” to the Yankees, the stupidity of which was paralleled only the Russian sale of Alaska. My Dutch friend Roel told me last night that when the British arrived they needed a Dutch translator as the Indians spoke only Dutch !
Imagine the Dutch running the land to our southern borders – There would be canals from New York to San Francisco. This would definitely have been a step and more up from the monster size food portions and gun culture of the Excited States.
The view across the street from our hotel
While we traveled, nine people were shot to death by a white supremacy maniac in South Carolina. Some 65 years after Harper Lee wrote her splendid novel depicting the South’s and America’s treatment of blacks, the beat still repeats endlessly. The Dutch abolished slavery even in their colonies in 1733. It was never allowed in Holland. Having the Dutch for our southern neighbours would have been a definite improvement. We could also get decent deals on those neato wooden shoes, cool racing skates, Edam cheese, tulip bulbs, cigars and gin.
The museums of all things Dutch were also must-see. The Van Gogh was pretty cool to see, even without Starry Night and Irises and the Café at Arles.
Me and my cousin Vinnie
The Rijks museum was a big hit as well, apart from that tedious Rembrandt guy. The cannons the Netherlands guys stole from the natives in Malayasia, or wherever, were crazily ornate. These natives must have been very sophisticated, check out this cannon design:
Now this is a cannon
Even before Vinnie, irises rocked
The inner city was full of friendly how-can-I-help-you locals, climbing roses, old world charm, narrow cobbled streets, Dutch pride, a zillion and one sidewalks bars and cafes all serving the nation’s drinking water discreetly camouflaged as beer in Heineken green bottles, and yes, the occasional rude server. (ok, twice but who is counting) It is a beautiful city, sans doute. Our lunch time sidewalk restaurant allowed its owner’s brown lab to roam around the clientel. Dutch, the affable canine, had a particular affection for brie cheese on a sesame cracker.
The fact that we endured a constant drizzle and coolish no-patio weather most of our stay did not diminish our “must-come-back” view of Amsterdam. The girls were quite good travelers and apart from the occasional mysterious disappearance, were oddly well behaved.
There is a rose in Spanish, I mean, Dutch Harlem..it is a special one..Harlem by the way is a derivative of Haarlem, as is Brooklyn.
The Dutch are typically blond, tall and attractive people. Most are warm and friendly. Here is a photo of their warm and openly smiley personalities:
I am pretty sure that the middle one was the server who told Linda her water bottles were verboten.
No reference to Amsterdam would be complete without mentioning the ever pervasive “coffee shops”. Now why would anyone be checking for ID for people to get a “coffee”:
Not sure why they sell so many brownies here
Germany
We came aboard the Celebrity Silhouette in Amsterdam, all agog with the voyage that lay ahead. This was followed by a day at sea en route to our first stop in Berlin. When we first looked at this cruise, it did come to mind that Berlin was not quite a port city, a fact which was re-entrenched as we docked on the Baltic Sea in northern Germany. Who knew Germany bordered on Denmark to the north ? I must plead complete stupidity to this one.
Berlin happens to be a mere three and one-half hours’ drive from our port. The reader with astute math skills will quickly know that this means at least seven hours in transit, presuming one wishes to arrive back on the boat before its departure. Leaving the boat at 10 am and arriving back at 11 pm will leave your travelers with maybe five hours of “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” time. Keep this in mind for the next time you are doing this cruise.
Well after we decided to take the train in, waited one and half hour for the connecting train, we had three hours in Deutscheland’s Das Kapital.
We did tour Rostock, the first train stop en route, with a friendly taxi driver. Who knew that East Germany, well the former Commie part, was all the way up to the Baltic Sea. To tell you the truth I had never really mapped out where Commie Krautland was. I had always envisaged East Germany being way to the east, next to one of those dark and dingy Soviet commie countries. Nope, here it is sitting on the Baltic next to Denmark and a stone’s throw from Dover and Amstersdam. That was a shocker.
It was a quaint port city with a beautiful harbour landing heavy freight from America and elsewhere, small sail boats and cruises to the nearby Baltic countries. I could not see anyone unloading crates of blackberries from Waterloo…perhaps it was an off-day for Mr. Chen.
Our driver was a wonderful fellow, who toured us through his port city. It was a pretty place, not nearly as devastated by the Russians as the rest of East Germany which was soon to follow. It owed its economic existence mostly to due to the tourists from the boat cruises, who presumably had already endured the seven hour drive to see Berlin on their first visit.
Our friendly driver offered the view that life after unification was definitely comme ci, comme ca, which was surprising. East Berlin has definitely been rebuilt but the hinterlands seem to be resisting economic advancement quite noticeably.
Downtown Rostock – at last
Not a laboratory for weird rodent experiments – City Hall
No idea what this is
Roman grandeur in small town Germany – you can imagine what Berlin is like !
We arrived at Berlin at its amazingly magnificent train station. All trains are electric, quiet and needless to say, on time. We had but three hours to spend in Berlin and fortuitously found a tour bus to reveal to us its majestic and historic sites.
It is startling to see the façade of the building, since rebuilt post war with a cool modern-ish dome yet, where Hitler spoke to the assembled masses in 1939. We passed by Checkpoint Charlie, saw remnants of The Wall, and noted the continual brick remnants of the same wall at ground level as it snaked its path through the city. We saw the headquartered building of the Gestapo and SS where all major war decisions were made. We saw the steps where Kennedy proclaimed “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” to the welcoming masses in West Berlin in 1961 as those in the East listened to the cheers across the Wall, very close to the Brandenburg Gates where Reagan shouted to Gorbachev to “tear down this wall” some seventeen years later.
Reading of history in newspapers and books is one step, but living and breathing in the same pages of history opens your mind and more importantly, your heart.
It is hard to imagine any person witnessing the destruction of such beauty and life. What pain such decisions of war must have caused is simply unbearable to contemplate, never mind the intentional destruction of innocent people.
Hopefully the next generation of these fifteen year olds will learn from the obvious sins of earlier generations.
We saw the glamorous daring powerful architecture of the city, clearly connecting its citizens to the Roman gods and empire of a by-gone era. Berlin is an exciting, beautiful, engaging city. Hitler was not the first German, well Austrian actually, to see the Germans as the master race – their architecture and monuments tell you so. This city speaks to you of its seemingly eternal existence, yet also of the horrors to humanity its people created. It is with mixed emotions our brief glimpse of its life that we departed, but soon, no doubt to return.
All that is fine and well, but what’s with the pay-one-euro-for-the-toilet stuff ?
Estonia
Estonia soon followed, also once a Soviet republic. Tallin is one of those three thousand and twenty cutesy mediaeval towns selling ketchy tourista stuff, café lattes and lots of photo opportunities. I am pretty sure I saw the same lady from Kosovo a few years ago knitting the same woolen sweaters there.
Not quite downtown Schomberg but still cute
Cute Red Roof
An omen of Russian things to come
Russia
St. Petersburg followed the next day. Yes, the imperial palaces of the Tsars and the Hermitage, the former home of one of those Catherines, this one being the greatest – not sure if she is a blood relative of Wayne….shows its glamour and splendour and that is just the waiting line to get in. The joint is crazily ornate. Next time I am slitting my throat before taking this tour. Did she really need every hairbrush to be 24 carat gold ? No wonder there was a revolution in 1917. Catie was a devoted art collector. I always thought the Russians stole the art from the Germans who stole it from the Flemish and the Dutch, which is likely still true, but Catie apparently actually bought her Rembrandt collection at least for real rubles.
I can just imagine her doing a few somersaults in her crypt, which, by the way, is in the Bleeding Heart (real name, no keeding) Church, as she watches the vendors selling tee shirts and tourista junk at the summer palace. Rumour has it when the royal entourage left in their carriages from St. Pete’s to the summer playground, about 50 miles ahead, the first carriage arrived while others were just leaving the winter palace. Nicholas, the last tsar, et la famille got their heads chopped off for good reason.
By the way, when the revolution took place in 1917 and the Great War was ending one year later, did anyone here vote for the Canadian troops stationed in Europe to stay on and go off to Russia and fight in the defence of these royal abusers ? It is hard to imagine but that allied forces were enlisted to help mother Russia. See where that story lies in our history books – likely right next to the abuse given to the Chinese in western Canada after the railroad was built in 1867, but that is another story.
All of this should not detract from the beauty of St. Petersburg. It is truly spectacular. The canal system was intended to duplicate those of Venice but after a few of these suckers were dug, Peter-not-so-great-after-all finally figured out that St. Pete’s has a severe winter, 9 months of it yet, so the canal plan was shelved after a few were constructed. Pete liked to paint the buildings yellow, which he did as the winters were so long and dark – do you actually think he fooled anyone ?
SP was the capital from 1703 to 1917, sometimes called Petrograd and after the revolution, Leningrad. It regained its original SP after the 1989 end of the Soviet republics. Apparently there has been some movement to rename it, hard to believe, Putinburg. How bizarre is this ? Putin is immensely popular in Russia, with apparently 80% popular support.
Just because I know you must be wondering, Stalingrad was initially Tsaritsyn for roughly 300 years. The Tsar reference was a tad unpopular after the occasional execution of the Tsar guys and it was renamed after Stalin. Butcherville may have been more appropriate. It was S-grad for only 27 years and then became, to the horror of the Swedish automotive industry, Volvograd. In case you have forgotten Putin is a throw back to the Russian dictatorship movement, he is now supporting a return to the name Stalingrad.
The monumental architecture is entirely spectacular but life on the street for average Joe Ivanovski looks pretty bleak. Our friendly guide told us that after the revolution, churches were determined to be not-so-mother-russia-like. One beautiful Russian Orthodox church we passed by was used, if you can believe this, as a hockey rink for training the Red Army team, post-putsch.
The summer palace of Catherine and her bunch was destroyed by the invading Germans and since rebuilt.
Imagine three on three basketball here
Not the leafs winning in OT, but still….
Art student at the Hermitage – he had studied previously in Chicago
Finland
Finland was definitely a step up. Helsinki is a well-designed modern city with a tip of the hat to art deco architecture and beyond. Yes, it is true, people are full of law and order. They will not cross against a red light, even if you could shoot a cannon down the street and put a gun to their heads. There is much beautiful history here. The people tend to avoid conversation and appear stoically taciturn. It is hard to believe that the Finns had to pay reparations after WW Deux as they were allied with the Nazis.
The Russians invaded neutral Finland three months into the war, apparently intending to capture land that they had ceded to Finland in whatever-that-last-treaty-was four hundred years prior. The Ruskies were kicked out of the League of Nations for starting this fight, a not-so-brutal-sting that somehow they got over.
The Finns then had that romantic war we have all seen in film clips, fighting off the Red Army, schooching down ski hills and constantly knocking off the bad guys with white kinda like a guerilla war on Mt. Blanc. The reality is that the Finns lost this fight, 6 months or so later ceding more land to the Russians than the latter originally demanded. They then, naturally enough, joined the Germans through to the end of the war – who knew all this ? The Finns were also required to pay substantial reparations to the Allies following the end of the war. This seems somehow morally wrong. They get beat up by the Hunns from Russia and then get stung.
Sweden
We arrived at the Port of Stockholm the following day. The introduction was much like Muskoka, pine trees and rock and gorgeous scenery. The city is adorned with ornate historical buildings, much like SP in many aspects.
The Swedes do not use the Euro and they make it as difficult as possible to buy anything, likely not a wise tip for their economic betterment. Unlike SP, which prices its wares in rubles, America dollars and Euros, the stubborn Swedes set prices only in the local currency of kroners. Here we have a zillion tourists shuffling the streets and some magician has to do back stands to figure out what this blue and yellow hat with cool horns costs yet. We did this a few times and contrasted the price which google gave and guess what, the local arab shop keeper was doing a mega rip-off.
I really do love it but I do not “croon” over it…(get it ?….”kroooner” ???)
The Swedes population consists of 30% non-natives which is causing an uproar amongst some. This is much unlike Finland. The Swedes now have a political party dedicated to stopping immigration. Canada, by contrast, has the highest G7 immigration population of (allegedly) 20.7%, a statistic which will make no sense once you visit Scarborough and Asiancourt, I mean, Agincourt.
This is not Borje
The good news is that if I had another day or so, I am sure we could have tracked down Borje Salming. Everyone on the streets recognized his photo and by the time we headed out, I was two hours behind his most recent tracks.
There are at least a zillion of these statues
Ok a zillion and one
Two annoying tourists looking for Borje
Denmark
Copenhagen is right up there in the most-beautiful-baltic cities contest. The downtown centre is close to a tranquil park with fascinating sculpture throughout its greenery. The historic part of the canal district is dotted with restaurants and scenic resting places. Much like Amsterdam, it is a bike culture. Contrary to public opinion, well at least mine, it has a mild climate, infrequently being below freezing and mild in the summer months. The population of most Baltic cities is modest by North American grade, Copenhagen being in the heavy weight class at 500,000, which is really a perfecto size. It, of course, is home field for Hans Christian Anderson and the Little Mermaid. It is a country where there is modest difference in incomes. Like every Baltic country, there have been wars going back to the beginning of the discovery of herring, Sweden invading Denmark, which was invaded by the Russians, who fought the Germans, all well behind the Romans..not so fast, the Romans did not come this far north…they were, of course, stopped by the Celts at Hadrian’s Wall, yet another story.
We all thought the guy in the background was real…
We were here
You may wonder if there were actually real people on this trip. Well, indeed there were. Real enough to forget a purse in Finland. The waitress who found Madi’s forgotten belongings, with cash yet, telephoned Ms. Linda to let her know it was found. Had this happened in SP, there were be at least 10 bottles of vodka easily consumed within the first hour.
A cruise is an ideal setting for two fifteen year olds-going on twenty-something who can comfortably disappear in the morning on sea days, at least, and show up at dinner proving that they still have a pulse and that chasing boys, or being chased, all day, still allows enough energy for dinner. After the compulsory 45 minute max dinner attendance, they were gone for the evening. And yes, Antonio from Brazil did break up with Cindy from Connecticut, his second such terminato yet. It seems Antonio is quite the charmer – who would have thought a smooth talking Spanish kid would be like this ?
The ability to depart from your personal universe to share such a flicker of a moment in time and sense the history of the world around us is nothing short of a wonderment. Jump on a plane, suffer the eight hour journey of bad movies and a few kicks from some brat behind you and you have jumped into a new and engaging world.