Friday, August 17, 2007

A moment of high drama

The MS Amsterdam is at the moment on the way from Stockholm to Warnemunde, Germany, so many of its passengers can take an all-day tour to Berlin. But for a while last night it didn't look like we would be leaving.

We'd spent a pleasant day in Stockholm on various tours or shopping - great city; Ron and I had an hour at the Vasa museum built around a 17th-century ship retrieved from the bottom of the harbour.

The Rotterdam had to leave by 4:30 because it takes a long time to get through the network of islands off Stockholm and it has to be done in daylight. So all the tour buses got back in time, everyone was shepherded into the ship and the gangplank went up. And then we heard the announcement: "Would Emily Smith from cabin 1833 please contact the office?" Waited a few minutes; the announcement came again: "Would Emily Smith or anyone in her party please contact the office!" And still we waited. Quarter to five and the captain's pacing in the wheelhouse (I could see him from my perch on the top deck). And then in the distance we see a little taxi racing down the road to the dock. It nearly drags the security guard at the gate along with it. It screeches up to the ship and out jumps a woman with a Swedish accent: "Someone please help us! Please let Mrs. Smith on board! Please help!" Meanwhile the missing Mrs Smith emerges from the taxi and looks rather dazedly about her.

I have no idea what really happened, but from what I was able to piece together I think the Swedish lady found this somewhat elderly and scattered foreigner wandering around lost. Being a good and kind person, as most Swedes I've met are, she found out that the lady was looking for her bus back to the ship and had to be back by 4:30. At this point it was something like 3:45 and the last bus had left. No problem - call a taxi and everything would be all right. But the taxi took 20 minutes to come and there were traffic jams all over Stockholm (built on 16 islands with 53 bridges, some of them closed for repairs). So the dear helper was in a proper panic seeing the gangplank up and the ship nearly untied.

A small gangplank came down and the lost passenger was helped on board, to the cheers of the passengers. And some of us even remembered to shout "Thank you" to the helpful Swedish lady, who was left standing on the dock waving as we sailed away.

We got to Stockholm via Copenhagen, where we caught the ship last Friday, and Tallinn, St. Petersburg and Helsinki. I have never been this far north before, and the short nights and cool air are really wonderful. We enjoyed Tallinn, a life-filled town with a good balance of old and new, history and creativity. St. Petersburg appealed somewhat less - it still feels closed and unfriendly. The eighteenth-century buildings are marvelous, though, and we enjoyed a great Russian song-and-dance show. We spent most of a day at the Hermitage and I was quite disappointed. Our guide just showed us Western European art, and we saw nothing that was up to the standards of what we'd seen at the Louvre or Prado or Vatican. What I'd have liked to see was Russian stuff - artifacts from prehistory or uniquely Russian works. But we saw the Hermitage - one more tick-mark.

Helsinki was as pleasant as Tallinn. We didn't do a ship-organized tour but took a city tram around the town centre. Our best discovery was a Lutheran church built into the rock. What a wonderful feeling it had! A real church. And at Stockmann's department store I finally found the right dress (bright red - I hope that doesn't violate wedding etiquette) for Evan and Anna's wedding - I like Helsinki.

A week from today we'll be back in Canada. Seems hard to believe, but our gypsy life is coming to an end. We're already trying to decide what we'll do next year, but it will be kind of nice to settle down in one place for the winter.

Tuesday, August 14, 2007

North to south and north again

So here I am lounging in a comfy chair on board the MS Amsterdam - one of the Holland America line's lovely boats - somewhere between St. Petersburg and Helsinki, while Ron uses another hotspot somewhere on the boat. What on earth are we doing here?

We left Izmir for good (or not - who knows?) towards the middle of July. First stop was Warsaw, to catch the last two shows in the Warsaw Chamber Opera's annual Mozart festival: Magic Flute, and Don Giovanni. As far as I'm concerned there's no such thing as too many Magic Flutes, and this one was another completely different and wonderful experience. We sat in the second row of the 150-seat hall and felt like we were right in the middle of it all. DG the next night was less wonderful but still very good.

Then on to Kiev to catch the MS Dniepr Princess for a cruise down the Dniepr to the Black Sea and on to Romania. We'd booked this through the UBC alumni association and found it most pleasant to be among a bunch of alumni from various universities getting a somewhat deeper view of the life and history of the people we were sailing past. The boat was built in East Germany in the communist era and had some eccentricities (whole-bathroom shower, for example) but was seaworthy. The staff was definitely not Holland-America trained; you had to pysically grab a restaurant server to get some coffee in the morning, and the notion that one might want a second cup was not one that had occurred to any of them, but those were not significant problems. It was most interesting seeing Kiev and the site of its Orange Revolution, where the people hoped to have won their democracy back from the oligarchs - whether they have or not remains to be seen. The Ukraine makes Turkey look affluent, but they're trying as hard as they can to get on their feet again. Still, there's been a lot of psychic damage done by war and communism, and it may take another generation or two before people learn again how to really work and create. I wandered through a department store where everything was protected behind glass counters and the clerks didn't seem interested in getting things out for you to buy. (Tried on a sun hat that was too small. Told the clerk it was too small and she said, "Yes, it's too small." End of transaction. Why would she want to find a bigger one for me?) So it's a very different place from Turkey, and it's got a lot further to go to join the developed world I fear.

We cruised down the Dniepr through vast reservoirs behind huge dams, great wetlands for flocks and flocks of waterfowl. Once Kiev's wastes had been diluted the algae blooms disappeared and the water seemed clean and full of fish for most of the distance, except around Dniepropetrovsk. We passed that area in the late evening, sailing through clouds of coal smoke lit by the glow of steel mills and other factories - "dark satanic mills". The next day we visited a Stalin-era industrial town that also celebrated the Cossack heritage with a museum and a show of riding and dancing. The contrast nearly made my brain crack with the shock. The Dniepr delta was another peaceful green place where we visited dachas for traditional meals and admired handicrafts - another contrast with the dirty port city our ship was moored in.

Then across the Black Sea to Sevastopol, a place full of history where the guns of the Crimean war are still warm. We saw the valley of Balaclava ("into the valley of death rode the 500") on our way to the palace of the khan of the Crimean Tatars, where we felt for a moment that we were back home in Turkey. As we were leaving we heard someone saying "Hoş geldiniz" - "Welcome" in Turkish. We instinctively replied "Hoş bulduk" and ended up buying some local baklava in Turkish - the Tatar language is so close to Turkish we had no problem communicating with the lovely old woman selling the stuff. She was quite tickled to be dealing with a couple of Canadians in her own language.

From Sevastopol we also toured Yalta and the summer palace of the Romanovs, where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met towards the end of WW II. The building reeked with history - you could almost believe Nicholas and Alexandra and their kids had just left the upstairs room, and the rooms downstairs still seemed to smell of Churchill's cigars. Beautiful views of the sea, too, both from that place and from the road all along the coast.

Back across the black sea after that to the mouth of the Danube in Romania. If the Ukraine made Turkey look modern and developed, Romania makes it look as rich as Las Vegas. Another country with a long, long way to go - I can't believe the EU could accept Romania ahead of Turkey. There's still a feeling about the place that makes me want to check for bugs and spies and watch what I say in public. I guess there are still a few ghosts around. We had a boat trip through part of the Danube delta, another bird-filled place if you didn't mind the piles of garbage. And then off to Bucharest, which still feels a little like Paris east even after Ceauşescu demolished a large area of elegant old buildings for his horrendously huge People's Palace (the second-biggest building in the world after the Pentagon). We had a look at the place and left feeling the Romanians would go bankrupt trying to heat the place, let alone maintaining it.

Anyway, it was a worthwhile trip and I'm glad we took it. We'll probably try another alumni tour sometime.

Ooops - out of battery. More tommorow, with any luck

Thursday, August 02, 2007

Alive and well in Sebastopol

We have 10 minutes at the post office internet facility in Sebastopol - just long enough to say we still exist and we're having a great time on a cruise down the Dniepr River from Kiev to the Black Sea. Last night was a little bumpy - we were crossing a chunk of the Black Sea just as a major weather front seemed to be going through with lots of flashing and banging. Only complaint with the cruise so far: no contact with the outside world. I have no idea what's going on out there or even if there is a world outside. I assume since the internet still seems to be functioning there is someone alive in North America. I'm going to use the remaining few minutes to try to catch up on the news. More later.