Monday, January 30, 2012
At the Frankfurt Flughafen
Waiting in Frankfurt to Board Plane to Cape Town
Monday, 30 January 2012 - Frankfurt, Germany
Not blog worthy, but we did make the more (if not the "most") of the 12 hour layover in Frankfurt. Overnight flight from DIA left on time after I was chosen for a random hand swab and Barbara was frisked for the zippers in her cargo pants. We sleep on and off in Business Class on the 747. I had a bit of a problem finding a position on the "lie flat but not quite horizontal" seat since the position that would be normally the easiest to sleep was exactly that that irritated my back most. And did I mention that the controls--4 buttons and 3 three-way toggle switches--make no sense and tried to twist me into a very uncomfortable ball. I gave in to taking the anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxant pills and managed to sleep for a few hours.
We arrived a little early this morning and found the Lufthansa Business Class lounge. The most officious young lady attendant told us that all the Lufthansa clubs in Terminal C did not have showers unless we were to fly 50,000 miles immediately or invade the Sudetenland and suggested that we go through two more security screenings to get to Terminal A where maybe there were showers. Then she checked our papers again. Really. Oh, did I mention that on the 1st security screening here in Frankfurt, Barbara set off the magnetometer with what she believes is her underwear and had to frisked again.I only had my little bottles read very carefully and my papers thoroughly scrutinized again. We then went on a quest for the elusive baggage lockers so we could leave our carry-on bags at the airport and go into town. This sent us through 4 (four) more paper checks of various kind, including emerging through customs and of course getting our passports thoroughly checked. I frisked Barbara just to save time. But we did find the "Lufthansa Welcome Lounge" where our business class ticket stubs got us free showers and a banana. Then after getting help from various tourist and S-bahn (subway) attendants--who also checked our papers--we checked our bags and took the quite pleasant train to Ochenflugentuchen Platz and found, 1) Frankfurt is a very serious business, mostly banking business, city, and 2) Frankfurt has loads of very pleasant pedestrian squares and a pretty nice riverfront. (By the way, I was able to determine that the river was the "main" river in town but not what its name is. Maybe I was a big confused.)
During our walk to the very nifty cathedral (called, "Dom") and a little church (called, St. Pauls), we boarded one of those red double decker "hop on/hop off" (so to speak) tourist buses and got a very nice guided tour for a hour around the city. The tour started after a dignified gentleman got into an argument with the tour bus driver and other tour company employees. He insisted that the "City Tour" and the "Skyline Tour" were identical and that the money he paid for the second circuit was wasted. They insisted that the two tours were different and that he was wrong. They offered to let him take the route that was about to begin, he offered to call the police, the guide showed the irate gentleman his ID as an off-duty cop, and then when the gentleman ascended the stairs to the upper deck, the guide and driver flipped all the signs over to indicate which route our bus was no going to go on. At that point, most of the dozen or so tourists on the bus hurried off the bus. The guide then explained--if my German translating is correct--that we were going to go on the original route but flipping the signs was necessary all of a sudden. The others got back on and a good time was had by all. Did I mention that it is colder than Germany in January here?
We took the train back to the FRA airport around 4 pm, just in time to wait the remaining six hour for flight. We spent the time finding a few more Lufthansa Lounges and settled for a very nice one with very good chicken and ham sandwiches and nice German beers on tap. Barbara was not frisked going through security, but my bags were all selected for extra screening. I never knew that Germans could be so methodical and overbearing. Wait, I have to climb back on the turnip truck.
About to head to the gate in just an hour more for the hour's wait to take off for Cape Town. Next report I hope will be from summer.
Friday, January 27, 2012
A Journey of 28,000 Miles Begins with Waiting a Couple More Days
Barbara sold her house in Tennessee today. Well, at least she received a signed contract from the steadfast real estate broker in Lawrenceburg. An e-mail just came with the signed contract attachment and with the subject line reading, "Yippeeeeeeee." The closing should happen between Ghana and Senegal. Actually, the closing should be in Lawrenceburg, TN or maybe Huntsville, AL, but we will be between Takoradi, Ghana and Dekar, Senegal when it happens. Hopefully, on the Silver Wind. This is the same ship we left in Monte Carlo early last July, and like Trigger responding to a whistle it will pick us up again late next week in Cape Town. Of course the problem will be that we need to fly two long overnight flights averaging 5,000 miles each to get to Cape Town first. When we do, we will occupy Suite 437 again where a secret message hidden in a cabinet may or may not be there to greet us. Wonder how it got there.
Besides the number of years worrying (and maintaining) an unoccupied house and considerable land in South Central Tennessee and the kind of out of the blue sale thereof has stressed us a bit, so has my back spasms. I seemed to have injured myself, probably by thinking of all the stuff one needs to do when trying not to be stressed by a surprise house sale and counting vitamins, bow ties, and other essentials for a 11,000 miles sea voyage. Attached are a couple of pictures from last Spring's voyage on Silver Wind, just in case you were curious about how we spend our time on board. I look at those pictures to remind myself why I doing this again. The pictures were taken in Silver Wind bar, called "The Bar" as the others bars are called, "The Panorama" and "Pool Bar", respectively, and on deck during one late afternoon as we sailed through the Messina Straits, the narrow gap between Sicily and the boot of mainland Italy.
First some statistics for the imminent cruise:
Flight Miles: 16,584
Cruise Miles: 10,998
Days in Cape Town, South Africa: 3
Days on-board ship: 39
Ports visited: 22 (counting Cape Town twice)
Latitudes spanned by sea: 33 degrees South to 41 North
Countries visited: South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Ghana, Senegal, Cape Verde Islands, Canary Islands (Spain), Morocco, Mallorca and Ibiza (Spain), and mainland Spain.
My total country count after this trip: 137 (but who's counting)
Special Celebration: Barbara and my first wedding anniversary in Walvis Bay or Swakupmund, Namibia
A few folks have asked me about the Costa Condordia disaster. No, I've never been on Costa. It is a big ship mass market line that caters to mostly Italians and apparently is run essentially independently from its parent company, Carnival Holdings. That outfit owns about half of all the world's cruise ships including Carnival, Princess, Holland-America, and a bunch more. We go exclusively on Silversea Cruises' ships. The biggest Silversea ship I've been on has a maximum of less than 400 passengers. The upcoming cruise is on Silver Wind with a maximum guest capacity of 296 and 222 crew members. The average passenger load is about 250 or so on the itineraries we usually go on. So there are approximately one crew member per guest! Also, you may recall that everyone gets a butler to ensure that our shoes are always polished (for some reason). All the Silver Wind's passengers and crew fit in the ship's four lifeboats. It's a different animal from the 4,000 person plus cruise ships, kind of like comparing a bed and breakfast in a lovely upscale neighborhood in Paris to huge Holiday Inn in an industrial suburb in, say, Detroit. The safety of the big ships is still very high, but the number of real maritime officers is the same for a 5000 passenger ship as in our little ship. That means that if there's a problem, there are loads of real trained experts to deal with it. On a big ship you are directed by the assistant laundry supervisor if you are lucky. On Silver Wind, it is probably a maritime academy officer or helmsman. The facts of the Costa grounding are still unclear, but my experiences on the bridge on Silversea ships have proven to me that the level of seriousness and competence on the small six ship line can not be beat. Again, all of Silversea's ships in total accommodate a maximum about 2,000 guests. And Silversea always does its "muster drill" for all new guests coming on board before the ship sails from the first port, by the way.
Hope you will enjoy following us along on this remarkable trip. We're particularly looking forward to visits to game parks accessible from the Indian Ocean side of South Africa as well as a number of nature reserves along the way going up the African Coast and on the Cape Verde and Canary Islands, visiting a souk or two in Morocco, sampling some sherry in Jarez, Barbara seeing the El Hambra for the first time while I check out the "white town" of Mijas, taking the funky train from Palma to Soller on Majorca, and of course seeing the great Gaudi Art Noveau architecture in Barcelona. And I'll try not to make too much fun of the other guests, not too much.
Please keep in touch and let me know what you think of my journal, and please feel free to ask any questions about the trip. The satellite rates to access the Internet are high on the ship, but it costs about the same to send a long response as a short one or to receive a whole bunch of e-mails as a few since we don't pay to read to compose responses. And we'd love to hear from the Western Northern Hemisphere to make sure it's still there.....
See you next from Africa, back pain and Lufthansa willing.
Mike
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