Berlin Crew Tour

Berlin: 189 Kilometers from the Sea

22 July 06

So, there we went.

It cost (well, is it that important what it cost?) $55 (yes, I guess it is). For that we had a long bus ride out and back, a lucid and informative guide whose non-summer job is going to grad school (for an MBA in marketing) in Atlanta. After a turn around the city, pointing out the main sites of interest, of which there are too many to mention, we were dropped at the holocaust memorial and turned loose on the city for 4 hours.



Here is a snap of Daniel doing the Funky Chicken as Nick looks on in horror from the front of the bus and one of the photogs offers him crisps she can’t eat because of food allergy.

Not really. Just a lucky shot.

The three hour bus ride through the former East German countryside was very relaxing. The bus was a Setra with all the European appointments. If ony American busses were this fancy people would get over the stigma associated with riding a bus. Thanks for that, Greyhound.



There was plenty of farmland between the port ad Berlin in all its late summer splendor. The hay was mown, and most of the fields had elevated huts for hunting, an old world tradition for the swells. Daniel said that you have to take psychological tests to get a gun permit here in Germany. (He also said it costs 1500 Euros to take the training necessary to get a driver’s license, which might explain some of the folks we saw whizzing by us on the Autobahn, who looked like they knew what they were doing.)

The bus made a perfunctory photo stop at the remains of the wall as we entered the former East Berlin. I took some pictures of my crew mates taking pictures. The wall is 15 feet tall, covered with its last coat of graffiti from the late eighties, and now encloses beer gardens and a hostel instead of an unhappy populace controlled by a humorless dictatorship.
The changes that have happened since the rest of the wall came down have been astonishing. Urban art is pervasive, which can be a curse and a blessing. The overall vibe in the area near to the wall is really popping. Maybe there should be more walls.



A couple days ago I tripped on an uneven sidewalk in Tallinn and fell flat on my face in front of two horrified natives.I scuffed up two knees and an elbow but by Saturday I was stiff from Thursday’s fall, so I knew I wasn’t up for my usual Bataan Death March through new territory.




I knew what I wanted out of Berlin, and that was broadband and plenty of it. And coffee. That can only mean one thing. Starbucks, of which there are plenty in the former Russian sector. So, after parking the bus, off I tromped to the first one we passed coming in. Tagging along was our new bass player, young Erick from Halifax, Nova Scocia.




The first Starbucks I noticed there were language difficulties. No English among the barristas, Even more serious: no broadband. I downed a cup of Joe, and a strong one at that, we packed up our laptop bags and headed off to the famous Brandenburg Gate. where we heard there was plenty broadband at THAT Starbucks. Well, call me Ishmael, they were right.
Actually the referral came from Daniel. He was born on the eastern side of the wall, but seems to have made the adjustment all right to capitalism. You have to have some commitment to go for a marketing MBA. Utopian notions aren’t enough to get you through that one, especially when you’re in Georgia.

We shot a couple photos at the Brandenburg Gate and noticed crowds starting to gather for the annual Gay/Lesbian parade. The Gate is very beautiful, if a bit smaller than it seemed to me from how it was represented to us in the USA.
Once I was ensconced at a blond wood circular table and I’d gone through the log on procedure, that was IT for me, though.
It does cost a bundle to go online in the Berlin Starbucks, but what the hell. You’re only in Berlin at this very moment, and you’re doing what you like to do, namely sucking up the bandwidth with podcasts, music downloads, Skyping home and my brother Jimmy (who didn’t answer), having a look at 180 emails and checking out the weather, the stuff on Austin’s Craigslist, and a hundred other useless but relatively harmless things.



By the time Erick returned from buying souvenir spoons for his grandmother and a cap for his mother, I could have been anywhere. Erick wanted a piece of the broadband action, so I set him up, because, like most sensible young musicians, he doesn’t have a charge card.

I spent my last hour in Berlin wandering around, looking for a bite to eat. Settled on a brotwurst washed down with a Berlin Pilsner, waiting around for a gays and lesbians file by, but except for a couple recumbent bicyclists there was nothing flamboyant passing by. The only indication that there was something about to go on was the police, the blocked streets, and the bar in a tent in the park playing persistent disco music.

But it was time to load up the bus by then, because there was some question as to how long it might take to return to the ship. Traffic heading the other was was really congested going the other way in the morning and there was road construction, so Daniel decided that we should head out early, around 4:30. I’d like to come back when I’m not so stiff and rushed to spend more time looking the place over.

On the way back, Daniel pointed out the Asti Market, which was about to expand to 700 stores in the USA. He said that they had very cheap booze there, so cheap that people from Sweden take ferries to buy party supplies. This was sounding awfully like Trader Joes, which was going to have 700 outlets in the USA by the end of the year and was owned by a private German company.

So after I at a snack in the staff mess I went off to see if it could be true. Results were inconclusive. The store had closed by the time I got there (9:00) but all the stuff was piled up in TJ’s fashion. I’ll make another trip when we’re back in 2 weeks, if the creek don’t rise.

St.Petersburg, nowhere near Tampa

St. Petersburg

8 July 2006

Previously, in my other two forays into Russia, I just got on a crew shuttle bus, went into town, did whatever my business was and scampered back. There was no lack of things to do, but the culture was so overwhelmingly alien to me that I couldn’t get comfortable. The signs in Europe are one thing, but in Cyrillic they become impenetrable.

Today was a good day though. The sun was out, the weather sunny and in the eighties (or the twenties if you read Centigrade). It’s one thing to visit a town like Vancouver, where people have a spot of winter and the first sunny day they throw off the yoke of oppressive winter. In St. Petersburg the native face 6 or 7 grim months of ice. Think of all the Russian novels. Think of Napoleon and Hitler standing outside the gates of the Russian cities in winter. That will give you just a whiff on an idea of how these folks feel when the temperature rises above 30 degrees C.

But first things first. I went to the crew office and spent $10 on a shuttle ticket, the only ticket to admission to the city if you don’t have a Seaman’s Book. (Should this ever happen again, I’ll get one.) I loaded up my passport, Laminex, the bright orange bus ticket, and forty dollars US, and headed for the gangway.

The customs shed had an unusually long line, but I thought that might be a function of the first crew shuttle, which was scheduled at 10 a.m.


That’s the shed in the picture, taken from Deck 7. The line stretched out the right hand door.

I joined the line and immediately figured out the problem. There was a large group of Spaniards who had gotten visas from the Russian embassy in Madrid. They had made arrangements for an independent tour with a Spanish-speaking guide, who was waiting on the other side of the Immigration and Customs folks. And, as they had been trying in vain for an hour or so to get out on their tour. Unfortunately, a word I find popping up whenever the rather arcane rules of the Russian government are concerned, the Spaniards were granted Transit Visas by the folks at the Madrid embassy rather than Tourist Visas, which are another thing entirely. And these folks, especially the younger ones, specifically the tallest of the new generation, a 6 foot three 23 year old pompous ass who knows nothing about dealing with Russians. I actually heard him, when the window which the Spaniards were monopolizing almost closed down, shout the F word and then offer the clerk money. Not likely to get results, either of these approaches.

Someone from the Tours desk finally arrived and tried to mediate, but I don’t know how it turned out, because once these Iberian oligarchs no longer blocked traffic, off we went. And I was amazed, totally amazed, that the gal from Tours handled them not like I was taught at my jobs (take them away, listen to the problem all the way through, throw no gas on the fire, etc.) but rather had a confrontational attitude with them, but then again I only heard a fraction of the interchange and was, thankfully, gone.


Once at St. Isaac’s I snapped a couple pictures of the massive cathedral and started to walk toward Nevskiy Prospekt, souvenirs on my mind and forty bucks in my pocket. In the first block I met Michel, the guitar player on the ship from Montreal. So off we went together, looking for a beer (it was almost noon) a meal and souvenirs.
We headed down to the Church of the Spilled Blood, built on the spot where Czar Alexander II was assassinated in 1881. The church is an exceedingly wistful building, with brightly colored onion domes and a central dome of gold.




But first we found a beer garden and had a couple of the local delicacies, and observed the traffic.

That’s Michel over there enjoying his beer, between commentary about the passers-by.



Having heard that there was a black market around the Spilled Blood church we ventured onward after a proper number of beers where had.

The Black Market turned out to be nothing more than kiosks with the usual gimcracks for sale. So off we went, looking for food this time.

But first I found it necessary to have Michel take my picture in front of the Spilled Blood Church showing off my Ruben Ramos t-shirt.




After a couple of aborted examinations of menus, we settled on a buffet lunch for about 10 bucks under a tent in the Stroganoff Palace, home of the Chocolate Museum.

The buffet was great, there was a large party of Japanese students eating there, the service was excellent, and believe it or not the music they were playing was Ella, Frank, Coltrane, Johnny Hodges, and more. We felt obligated to order another beer in celebration.

I started missing the ship, and I know from listening to my shipmates what kind of trouble guys get in if they stay too long in St. Petersburg, so I headed back to St. Isaac’s, where I was hoping I could catch the 4:15 bus back to the ship.

On the way I took this picture of the incredible statue of Czar Nicholas I. Despite its depictions on the side of the Czar crushing rebellions, the Bolsheviks decided to spare this statue for its artistic value. Note that the tail of the horse is not used to balance the weight of the Czar and his horse.



St. Isaac’s is on the other side of the square from Nicholas I and his horse. Five hundred kilograms of gold gild the cathedral’s dome, which is visible even from our ship.

Building was started in 1818, when St. Petersburg was still marshland.

To give some idea of the scale of this, one of the world’s largest cathedrals, here’s the best my camera can do of a shot of people ascending into the dome fro the outside scaffolding. Those are people on the stairway, ascending into the central dome.





And it was here that my day in St. Petersburg ended. Next time we’re going to have to deal with enhanced security because the G8 will be in town.

I still have enough time to make it to the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, and maybe Peterhof if I can get on a tour as an escort.

I still have to buy souvenirs. But I came back with $20 in my pocket and a couple hundred Rubles.

Nynashamn

Here I am, with my sixth of twelve cruises just underway, sixty-seven days before starting the long journey back to Texas, and I’m already starting to regret what I’ve missed.

I haven’t been to Stockholm, but the odds mitigate against that because the passengers have to take a train to get there and they are tendered to the shore in the early morning hours, when no self-respecting musician would be awake. Even if I were awake then (as I was today due to a combination of the anchor chain roaring next to my head, Rob coming in from a night in the crew bar, and an irrational hunger for breakfast) I’d have to wait for a tender that could take me, which could take hours if the security guys were grumpy. I haven’t spent much time in St. Petersburg, just twice off the ship in ten days in port, but there have been some problems there, and the cost of taking the bus—the only way we can get off without a seamans’ book—is ten bucks, not huge, but enough to make me want to justify a trip. (Ten bucks is enough to feed a family of four for how many days, I wonder?) On the other hand I get a lot of writing done when everyone just leaves the ship.

Tallinn is a nice place for a walk around, Gdynia is a place where the prices are right and the sights are easily seen.

Copenhagen is moderated by the value of their currency, as is Oslo, recently named the most expensive city on earth, eclipsing even Tokyo. There’s still a public park with an extensive sculpture garden in Oslo that I want to see. It’s just a tram ride from the ship, but our time is short there, and I have no Norwegian currency.

A unique feature of this cruise is that each port has its own currency. In Denmark it’s Danish Kroner, in Sweden it’s Swedish Kroner (no relation), Helsinki actually uses the Euro, Russia uses the once-mighty Ruble, Estonia has its Crowns, Poland the Zloty, Norway the Norwegian Kroner (not interoperable with any of the other Kroners), and on the occasions when we visit Warnemunde, we again use the Euro. The dollar is not accepted, as a rule, in any of the ports.

It’s the Tower of Babel of Currencies here. I don’t change from dollars unless absolutely necessary. I still have what appears to be about $12 in Zlotys, but I’ll have no trouble circulating that into the local economy.

Today is the big internet day. I discovered a television store in Nynashamn where the young guy in charge has set up an internet cafe in the basement. Last time through he promised to have wireless set up and running and tables and umbrellas set up on the sidewalk. All well and good, but I need a power hookup so I may still be in the basement. The connection is 30 megabits, MUCH better than the ship’s satellite. Cheaper too. It costs 20 Swedish Korner or about 3 and a half bucks for an hour. (Plus another 50 cents or so in tax to keep the Swedish system rolling along.)

I’d sooner not see the sights in St. Petersburg, the gilded domes and the collection of priceless art, than miss out on an internet connection fast enough to Skype, collect a few podcasts, and get my email.

The bad news for last: We are still on Red Alert (the dreaded Norwalk Virus, which causes mostly passengers to hurl and poop at the same time alerts the doctors, who have some formula), since St. Petersburg last week. Staff mess is our only option and we’re down in the dumps for it. We get punished as the vectors of this problem, when we the infection starts gloom descends. Same thing with PAT testing, which security has made into the big Nazi room shakedown thing. Yesterday they came ‘round and confiscated several transformers, wall warts, and power strips. They make us feel like criminals and, not wanting to feel like one, I went down with Rob and got all my stuff approved, by these guys who barely even looked at my stuff. It seems that they had some problems with crew bringing on board cooking equipment of all sorts, and in their wisdom they decided they had to launch a jihad against people with laptops and iPods, like me. How you go from deep fat fryers and crock pots to iPods is beyond me, but I need some help with the Red Alert thing as well.

Ever onward.

Having a Beer in Warnemunde

Everyone else had steaks with their beer, but I figure I get my meat for free. James and Michel, top. Dave and Rob, bottom.