Category Archives: Random Blogging

What I Learned on My Summer Vacation

This is the last full day of our cruise, and it is raining–something that distresses Tom, who tells me that climate change has affected weather patterns in Croatia. He insists it never rained two days in a row during the summer season until very recently. (We have had rain on this cruise, but so far, at night or a brief shower.)

Tomorrow, we go to Split, where we will have three days before heading home via Rome.

Bob and I are both glad we came to Croatia. There may be a more beautiful place somewhere on the planet, but somehow I doubt it. Certainly, there can’t be one with nicer people.

This has been our longest trip ever. So–as our adventure nears conclusion, what have I learned on my summer vacation?

Well,  first, there is the obvious: people in Europe are much thinner, and if looks can be trusted, much healthier. They are also far more likely to be bi or tri-lingual, probably as a result of living closer together, and the demands of tourism and commerce.

Then there are more impressionistic lessons, with the caveat that the plural of anecdote is not data, and the people with whom we interacted cannot be assumed to be representative.

Unlike in the US, we have encountered no one who expressed contempt for education; no one who sneeringly dismissed expertise or intellect as ‘elitist.’ I have also been struck by the nature of informal political discussion and debate–I have heard lots of “these people make a good point, but those who disagree also have a point”–arguments employing much  less name-calling and much more consideration of the merits of competing arguments and points of view.

Then there were the issues we were questioned about repeatedly: American gun laws, the large numbers of people who reject evolution and global climate change, and America’s incomprehensible lack of a universal medical system. These aspects of American culture do not evoke admiration, to put it mildly–although people are generally too polite to criticize  directly. Instead, they ask questions, trying to understand why we haven’t joined the rest of the western world.

These questions have reminded me once again that ‘American exceptionalism’ originally referred to our outlier status, to sociological distinctiveness– not to some assumed superiority. Heretical as it may seem, there is the possibility there are some things we could learn from others.

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The Old (Wo)man and the Sea

I am learning–painfully–to exist in a world of intermittent internet, and to seek out hot spots and internet cafes when possible (i.e., when in port.) In Dubrovnik, we found a small cafe in what would have been an alley at home, but in this city of small warrens perched precariously on hills, was a thriving commercial way. 

The price for an hour’s connectivity was 20 kuna (seems high until you realize that converts to around 3 dollars), and the young man in charge could not have been more helpful. That made me feel even worse when I threw up in the only bathroom–I evidently caught a bug, and that episode began a rather embarrassing series of times I proceeded to “decorate” the Aegean coast.

I was still feeling uneasy when we boarded our boat,The Atlantia. We settled into our cabin (approximately the size of our bedroom’s walk-in closet) and were sitting on the back deck getting acquainted with the other passengers, when the boat took off in what I was to learn was a (thankfully) unusually rough sea. Let me just say I did NOT make it to my tiny en-suite bathroom.
The crew could not have been nicer or more helpful, and later that day, I would discover that one of our fellow passengers is a doctor. Thanks to her tube of magic pills and a much calmer sea (and the evident passage of whatever it was I’d caught), things on that front improved dramatically.

Every trip has its surprises; in this case, it has been the boat and crew of the Atlantia, and the surprises have all been wonderful.

If the crew of three has a motto, it is “no problem.” Whatever we need, whatever we ask, is “no problem.” Moreover, they are all amicable, personable, and just plain nice. Dom, the captain, and Ivan (who may be his brother, we aren’t sure) are handsome young men who seem to speak a number of languages, as does Tom, the cook.

Tom is older, and the biggest surprise. To call him a cook is an insult; even calling him a chef doesn’t do him justice. We found out that this trip isn’t his day job–off-season, he and his son run a large catering operation out of Zagreb. The ship provides breakfast and lunch, and the quality of the meals has been absolutely superb; local seafood, homemade pastas, wonderful fresh breads….we think they are missing a potential market by failing to advertise this as a gourmet cruise!

Another pleasant surprise has been the other passengers. As I noted in my last post, there are 11 of us: five French, four Australians, and us. The French include Natalie (the miracle doctor), her husband Bruno and son Paul, and two single women friends, Isabel and Michelle. Bruno and the other women are all in pharmaceuticals and evidently worked together for many years at Pfizer. The women look  just like we all think French women look like–not just slender, but svelte, with great figures. If they weren’t all so nice, I’d hate them. Paul, Bruno and Natalie’s 14 year old, is one of the most pleasant children I’ve been around–sunny and polite. All the French speak halting English–much better than the rest of us speak French.

One Australian couple is young–both engineers. The other is a couple a bit younger than Bob and I. Neil is a retired engineer, and against all odds, Barbara is a retired professor of public administration! We have had a great time comparing governmental structures and public policies.

(Speaking of policy, discussions with our fellow passengers–as well as the student I mentioned in my last post-have all included questions about US gun laws, which all other people seem to find absolutely mystifying. It is hard to explain the concerns of the NRA to civilized people .)

Our daily routine is as follows: we have breakfast at 8, then most of us lie sunning on the white mattresses on the ship’s bow. Others read or kibbutz. Most take swims in the sea, which is crystal-clear (Paul dives right off the bow). Yesterday, Ivan lost his cell-phone overboard, and they all dived for it. They could see it clearly on the bottom, although it was too deep to reach. 

We then have lunch, and sail to our next scheduled port. We go into the island (so far, they are magnificent–old, old cities, flowers everywhere, shops and restaurants), returning to the boat at our leisure, since it stays moored until the next day, when we do it all again.

Umm…remind me why I am coming home? 

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The Kindness of Strangers

What was that line from A Streetcar Named Desire about “always depending on the kindness of strangers?” Over the last day or so, that’s what we’ve done–and the strangers have been very kind.

We took a coach train from Berlin’s utterly magnificent new train station to Bologne, where we changed to a sleeper going overnight to Florence. Both trains were very nice–the 1st class coach was particulary spiffy. The sleeper itself evidently had been redone recently and would have been perfect had we not experienced what my family calls “the curse of Sheila”–no matter where we go, if there is a crying baby, it will be next to me. There was a very unhappy baby with excellent lungs in the next compartment; I could hear the parents desperately trying to “shush” him, but he cried most of the night. Needless to say, we slept fitfully.

We were pretty beat when we got to Florence, and (I hate to admit this) feeling stressed by our extended absence from wifi. This time, the trains didn’t offer internet access! (My god, how do they expect you to cope?) We saw an obviously high-end hotel, and had an overpriced breakfast in its restaurant in order to use the complimentary wifi.

Then our adventure began. We had the name of the Villa that daughter Kelly had booked, and the address shown on its internet site. It seemed clear that we should take a bus to the small town of Greve-in-Chianti, and a taxi to the Villa. We managed the bus, and thanks to kind strangers riding with us, also managed to disembark in the correct village (I tend to panic and get off too soon when I don’t know what I am doing and am inept at the language — both of which problems were present.)

Our first clue that we might have miscalculated came when we realized that there was no bus station. We walked across the street from where we had disembarked, to a bar/cafe, and asked the waiter whether there were any taxis that we might engage. He spoke halting English (a lot less halting than my Italian, admittedly). It turned out that there are two taxis in Greve, and neither was available. As we ate our lunch–delicious–he called the Villa for directions, and informed us that it was approximately 15 Kilometers.

We certainly weren’t going to walk, and our waiter said he could call a taxi from the next town, but that it would take an hour to arrive. So he called his father, who came a few minutes later and drove us to what proved to be a nearly-impossible-to-locate villa high in the hills around the neighboring village of–I think–S.Paolo. He had to stop four times to ask directions, and we made more than one wrong turn. He spoke no English, we speak no Italian except “gratzsi” (which I repeated fervently as we drove). I only hope the tip I pressed on him–he didn’t charge us–was sufficient.

Talk about the kindness of strangers!

I am writing this in a villa that has been restored and turned into seven or eight guest quarters of varying sizes, and waiting for the rest of the clan to arrive via rental cars. (Having driven in Italy before, Bob and I opted not to rent a car.) I hope they find this place; I’m not too confident!

We only got here because kind strangers took pity on two very tired, bewildered, elderly tourists.

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What Makes a City Liveable?

I have never been to Berlin before, although I have been to Germany several times, and if I thought about it at all, I suppose I expected a rather “monumental” and forbidding Germanic landscape.

I was wrong. This is first and foremost a livable city.

We spent time today doing the usual touristy things: the bus tour with running commentary in several languages, the obligatory looks at famous landmarks–I even bought a sweatshirt at Checkpoint Charlie (it was cold!) But the real highpoint of our too-short visit was the experience of walking around the neighborhood of our hotel.

We walked to a restaurant several blocks away that had been recommended by our son (aka the Tech God). He has been everywhere, and his restaurant recommendations are always flawless-he’s a real foodie. We strolled through streets lined with 4 and 5 story apartment buildings, a mix of restorations and new construction. There were pocket parks everywhere, with children on swings and slides, young people playing table tennis (and in one case, older men playing bocce ball). Bikes were everywhere–and Berlin has the same bike-share/rental that we’ve seen elsewhere. At street level, there was cafe after art gallery (dozens of them, as we are in the arts/gallery district) after retail shop after grocery market after “wein cafe”–all at small, human scale, and all very inviting.

Berlin has an enormous amount of green space–large urban parks and the ubiquitous small “pocket” parks. What it doesn’t have is the monotony of the US suburbs. There were no quarter-acre lots with grass; instead, there were flowerpots and small potted trees on balconies–and the density that makes all of the wonderful urban amenities sustainable.

Once again, mass transit was evident everywhere. The subway, we are told, runs on minute and a half headways. Buses are everywhere. There are plenty of cars and bicycles, of course, but you can get anywhere in short order on public transit.

What really impressed me was the general attention to quality–beautiful windows and doors, etc., rather than the large, poor quality construction that characterizes so many of America’s “McMansions.” (Contrary to what all those “make yours bigger” emails we all get, size ISN’T everything.)

Finally, we remarked upon the sophistication that comes with diversity; as our waiter tonight noted with pride, Berlin is a truly international city–home, he assured us, to over 250 nationalities.

There are remarkable museums and fantastic architecture here, but it is the scale and variety of the built environment, the prevalence of the art and music, and the investment in infrastructure that makes this so livable-and delightful.

If we Americans weren’t so smugly convinced that we know everything we need to know and that we are “exceptional” (in the good sense), we could learn a lot from cities like Berlin.

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