Arjan Post – Page 2 – Northern Exposure

July 7: Akureyri, Iceland

We crossed the Arctic Circle during the night and almost simultaneously the sky cleared and the sun came out. Not only did we have no darkness to speak of, but as “night fell” it actually became brighter which threw off my circadian rhythms a bit. Sailing into the fjord early the next morning many people were already up and about and we were greeted by a pod of whales and beautiful sunshine. The whole day was lovely, albeit a bit chilly. The first time in eleven days we did not have any rain!

We were in Akureyri two years ago but then we did not see much of the town because we were out on an excursion most of the day. This time we had no shore excursions so we took a stroll around town. We visited a beautiful church with a very interesting architecture. Then we walked to a botanical garden with a wealth of brightly colored flowers and a nice café. It was good to sit outside in the sunshine, after so many gloomy and/or showery days. Later we walked around town and had another little snack at a café downtown. Ah, the café life!

We walked past a municipal open air swimming pool. In Iceland most every town has one or more year-around geothermally heated pools and Icelanders make lots of use of it. We may try it ourselves when we are in Reykjavik. Heat and hot water are plentiful in most of Iceland and piped throughout Akureyri and also Reykjavik. No need to meter it; it comes out of the ground continuously. Years ago, when we stayed in a hotel in Reykjavik our room was very warm. When we complained they told us the way to control the heat is to open the window. The environment is very clean. Almost all energy is either geothermal or hydro-electric. And the country also leads in the use of electric cars, with charging stations all around.

July 6: On to Iceland

Today we are sailing towards Akureyri, Iceland. It is gray and the wind is only moderate but there is a long swell which causes some discomfort to P.J. That’s why she has not been writing much lately. I do hope she does get a chance to upload some pictures later. Tonight we cross the Arctic Circle and the sun will only go below the horizon for about two hours.

We will be in three different Icelandic ports for the next four days. We’ve been to Iceland many times now. This is our second time on a cruise and we’ve also made stop-overs in Reykjavik on our way to and from Europe. Every time I visit, I want more. I look forward to this visit, hoping for sunny weather for a change. Tomorrow looks to be promising.

We went to a lecture by an Icelandic geologist. According to him, they repurposed their only prison, but they are building a new one! Right now there’s no prison and there’s a waiting list to get in.

July 5: Shetland Islands

There are no trees on the Shetland Islands. The reason is shallow acidic soil and high winds. Plenty of grass though, which is great for sheep which outnumber humans more than twenty to one (not counting tourists).

I went on an excursion to Mousa Island (Moss Island), an island off Shetland’s “Mainland”. It is uninhabited by humans today, but about 2500 years ago people there built one of many stone brocs, cylindrical stone towers. The one on Mousa Island is the best preserved. There is some argument among archeologists about their exact purpose(s) but they were probably used for food storage, community gatherings and protection from attackers, like the Romans. They were all built within sight of each other, so they may also have been used for signaling or other communications.

No people on the island, but plenty of sea birds. I saw puffins, storm petrels, loons (a Shetland variety), guillemots, arctic terns, and others whose names I forgot, and all kinds of gulls. We also saw porpoises, apparently rare around the Shetlands, and seals which are not so rare. Sheep graze on the island with a sense of ownership that is very inconsiderate to the nesting terns. Terns are extremely aggressive in defending their nesting site. When a sheep gets near-by, terns dive-bomb the sheep, pecking at their heads. A woman in our party also got attacked by a tern, pecking her jacket.

My excursion was blessed by calm weather and placid seas, rare in Shetland. But some time into our walk we had a downpour. No place to hide in the open Shetland landscape. Our party started to resemble a collection of drowned cats. I will walk in freezing cold, howling winds and blizzards, but somehow I never enjoyed walking in the rain because I don’t like getting home in wet clothes. But I learned something new … if you keep walking until after the rain has stopped, you will dry out.

July 4: Bergen, Norway

Two years ago, when we were in Bergen, Norway, I went back to the ship early because it was too hot. I wrote in our blog: “Be careful what you wish for, you might get it!” referring to the sunny, hot weather. This year we went back to the ship early because of rain. Before the rain started, however, we went up the Mount Fløien funicular, one of the main attractions of Bergen. There was a waiting line, but not nearly as long as two years ago when there was also a tall ships event in town and the crowds were horrendous. I skipped it then. This morning it was cool and visibility from Mount Fløien was excellent, probably better than two years ago when it was hazy.

But around lunch time the rain came. We made our way down, stopped in a café to have a small lunch in the hope it would stop, but finally we just walked back to the ship in the rain. Still, we were lucky to get to the mountain before the rain, and all-in-all I found this visit to Bergen to be more enjoyable than two years ago. When we left Bergen harbor we sailed out from under the rain and into the late day sun on the Atlantic from where we could see the rain clouds still hanging over Bergen.

Today is Independence Day at home. Our ship is decorated with American flags. Happy 4^th every one!

July 3: Day on the North Sea

Today we are sailing to Bergen, Norway, where we will arrive tomorrow. We’re in the middle of the North Sea where it is a bit windy, approaching gale force. Last night we had a brief thunderstorm. The ship is very stable, but does rock a little. The rocking motion made for a good night’s sleep for me, but P.J. felt a little bit sea sick when she got up. She took a pill and felt better but now she’s drowsy.

This morning P.J. went to a presentation in the ship’s theater. They featured a slide show and to her surprise one of the slides was a picture of me walking around in Iceland. She is now negotiating for cruise benefits in exchange for retroactive copyright permission. We, and apparently they, don’t know how that picture ended up in the slide show. As for me, I am flattered that I can still do modeling at my age. Did not know I had it in me.

Our cabin is at the stern of the ship. We have an oversize balcony with a beautiful view over the ship’s wake, but I easily get cabin fever and go out regularly to walk on the deck. I love walking around the deck, especially in windy weather. The sky and the sea are always changing and when the weather is not typically Caribbean it is very quiet on the deck of a cruise ship.

July 2: Departure from Holland

On July 12, 1960, I sailed on the SS Rotterdam from Rotterdam to New York with my mom. I was 14 years old. It was for only a summer visit to my dad in America. I emigrated later, in 1968. Yesterday, July 2, 2016, I sailed on the MS Rotterdam from Rotterdam to Boston— from the city where I was born and raised, to the city where I have spent my adult life so far.

Holland America Line has had several generations of ships called the Rotterdam. But the one I sailed on in 1960 was revolutionary for its time. After Holland America sold it, the old SS Rotterdam sailed under a different name for a time: the Rembrandt. When she was finally about to be scrapped, she was rescued, restored, and turned into a museum, tourist attraction, and hotel. She is now permanently docked in the city of Rotterdam, not far from our cruise terminal.

When we sailed on the new MS Rotterdam, we passed right by the old SS Rotterdam. Our cruise ship greeted the old ship with three very loud blasts of its horn. To my surprise, the old SS Rotterdam responded with its ship’s horn, and the two, almost playfully, went back and forth for a while, our ship even producing two-tone sounds somehow.

I found this very moving. As if I (the new ship) was saying good-bye to my old country and to my youth, and my youth (the old ship) inexplicably responding.

June 17 – 27: An American Dutchman in Holland

My apologies to our regular readers for not writing in ten days, but visiting old friends in the country I was raised in provides less material than visiting new places. Holland has changed, though, since I left many years ago. For one, there are no more post offices. Post office services are now provided by supermarkets and various licensed specialty shops.

Public transportation was always good, but now, to get onto public transportation you need a chip card, which is sold at a limited number of locations. Catch 22! Not very tourist-friendly. Once you have a chip card, you’re all set, though. You can use it on buses, subways, trolleys, and trains, local or national.

For my Vermont and Colorado skiing friends, you should know that Holland has year-round skiing on what my friend Jeff calls “Mount Rotter” (not its real name), a former garbage pile near Rotterdam that has been transformed into a ski hill. The term “man-made snow” has new meaning here. Holland is fully prepared for climate change, from dealing with rising sea levels to lack of snow. So, you Vermonters and Coloradans, pack your bags and move to Holland right now!

This is the first time I rented a house in Holland, actually Friesland in the northern part of the Netherlands. Friesland is the Vermont of the Netherlands, meaning idiosyncratic and with an independent streak, including its own language. I always wanted to vacation in Friesland. Unfortunately, our vacation home is in a gated vacation community, which I think is an oxymoron: any community that separates itself, isn’t. The second language here is German, not Frisian. So, I am a little disappointed, no offense to the Germans.

But the house does overlook a nature preserve. Noisy shore birds provide entertainment. A local duck comes by regularly, tapping on the porch door demanding hand-outs. There is a partial view of the IJsselmeer (formerly Zuiderzee) where I saw an unexpected sight on Saturday: for the first time in my life, I witnessed a funnel cloud, more accurately, a waterspout. Unlike tornadoes, which reach down from super-cell thunderstorms, waterspouts originate from the water up and are less destructive than tornadoes. But they are very “scenic”. I snapped a phone picture of it from far away, but it is too fuzzy for the blog.

The house is well equipped with very modern appliances with obscure user interfaces. I do not understand why any kitchen appliance needs a forty-eight page user guide. The user guide for the combination washer / dryer (what’s next, combination refrigerator / oven?) says that it will work better after you get some experience with it—except I am on vacation and I just want my clothes clean.

Finally, with apologies to English and Scottish readers, whatever their votes were and whatever their opinions are or may have been, I am very disappointed about “Brexit”, even though it is none of my business. I see it as a manifestation of the larger political malaise in western countries, where populist movements try to tear things down without putting anything else in their place.

June 17: Random Impressions of Berlin and Germany

Everything is under construction. The Germans can spend plenty on their infrastructure because they do not have a large military and they are not (too) afraid to pay taxes. They did not have a military after World War II (remember, they were occupied!) until they entered NATO in 1955. That greatly helped their post-World War II recovery. After reunification, they inherited a large army from the DDR. They have been downsizing ever since, and now the military is a fraction of what it was before.

One humorous commentary I heard on a German newscast was about Donald Trump’s remark about Belgium: “Belgium is a beautiful city”.

All of Europe is soccer (football) crazy with the European championships, which are held every four years. After we walked past the crowds watching soccer on outside TV screens, we strolled to the banks of the river Spree, which in the daytime is teeming with tourists, but now was peaceful and quiet. Somehow that was a fitting good-bye to the city.

The train trip from Berlin to Rotterdam went smoothly. We had a scheduled change of trains in Holland. Our next train was scheduled to depart two minutes after arrival of our first train. But our first train arrived three minutes early, so we had a whole five minutes!

June 14: Berlin

Yesterday we left rainy Edinburgh for a two-hour flight with a school group of excitable teenagers who kept on bumping into the back of our chairs. After we landed in Berlin we took a taxi to our hotel downtown. The taxi driver, a third generation Turk, was very happy having been born and raised in Berlin. He reveled in the multi-cultural character of his city and practically gave us a guided tour as he drove us from the airport.

Berlin is a city with a lot of tragic history, which it honestly embraces, like a parent embracing a child after being sorry for hurting it. I love this city because of that. We first went to the Berlin Wall Memorial on the Bernauer Strasse. This street was in the French zone; the apartment buildings on the south side were in the Russian zone.

When East Germany put up the wall, in August 1961, they bricked up the apartment street entrances while people were still living in them. On August 22, 1961, Ida Siekmann became the first recorded casualty of the wall by trying to jump from her apartment window, three stories up, down into the street where she lived. She did not survive. An extreme and poignant illustration of the cruel silliness of building walls to stop people from living where they want to live, and still very relevant in today’s politics.

Next we went to the Brandenburger Tor. I had fond memories of visiting it three years earlier. The monument used to be right on the border between the East and West zone and was a symbol of German division. After German reunification, you could finally walk all around the Tor again, and many interesting historical plaques about its history were erected nearby. Imagine my disgust when we arrived and found the entire site roped off for a giant TV screen to follow the European soccer/football championships, sponsored by Coca Cola. I have nothing against soccer or Coca Cola, at least not until now. Crass commercialism at its worst, and I do not understand how this could have been allowed. The monument looked much more dignified under soviet control. Boycott Coca Cola!!!

Next we went to the holocaust monument. When I first visited it, three years ago, I did not know what to expect. As soon as I saw it, I was very moved. It immediately conveyed the magnitude of this monumental tragedy. Art at its best. These pictures say it best, no further comment needed.

We finished the day with a boat tour on the river Spree, giving a nice overview of the city.

June 12: Scotland in Review

After our escape from Strathpeffer, the next evening we ended up in a small boutique hotel in Pitlochry. I picked that town because it was on the way to Edinburgh, and Fiona Graham, our hostess in Doune, had recommended it for shopping and lunch. Even though we were going to Pitlochry to sleep and have dinner, I figured it might be a nice town because Fiona had not steered us wrong yet. We were happy to discover that we landed in a charming boutique hotel with an excellent restaurant. What a difference from the night before!

Now we’re back in Edinburgh for our last night before flying to Berlin, Germany, tomorrow.

Our first six days in Scotland were sunny and warm, the last three days were cool, under gray skies. Scotland is big. We did not nearly see everything we wanted to see. I want to come back and spend time in the highlands, but there are many places in the world I want to see where I’ve never been at all, so we’ll have to see.

Highlights: Staying in the Garden Studio in Doune and just being in that general area. Our dinner at the Graham’s, beginning with a bagpipe serenade, was wonderful. I could say the six days of sunny warm weather were a high point, but so was traveling through Glencoe under gray skies. And going to the dentist turned out to be an interesting experience, something you don’t get from a travel agency. Only low point: Strathpeffer, but no regrets. To get the feel of a country you need to have good and not so good experiences. That’s what makes me feel like a traveler instead of a tourist.