Category Archives: Messaged from the Outhouse

An Open Letter to the Greek Chamber of Commerce

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Picture by James Bird

 

Dear Greek Chamber of Commerce,

I am aware that your members are currently under enormous economic duress, and I applaud their extra determination to get as many customers to enter their premises to aid the ailing Greek economy. Nevertheless, being bombarded every 5 meters by another hawker with ‘come in: nice food, cold beer’ for hours without end actually steels my resolve not to enter those exact premises that are aggressively trying to lure me in by standing in my way.

So, in the name of all the tourists visiting your lovely country, please tell your members that hawking inevitably will lead to another bail out.

Sincerely,

 

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Day 4: That’s Entertainment (or maybe not)!

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Another day at sea as we are traversing the Aegaen Sea from Istanbul to Athens. As Kim Stanley Robinson observed in ‘2312’: “Habits begin to form at the very first repetition”. So after 4 days we are already quite set in our ways: Get up, have breakfast, go back to the cabin, work, lunch, work, gym, dinner, digestif, bed. I assume that’s what it’s all about when taking a cruise: sleep and food. And plenty of both.

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It’s Terrormolinos!

For those who don’t have the necessity to sit in front of the laptop during their holidays, the ship’s entertainment armada offers sporty things on the upper decks, evening entertainment in the ship’s theatre (mainly consisting of a group of people singing musical and easy listening covers with varying degree of annoyance). And if you’re too lazy to sit in the theatre, you can watch the shenanigans on the ship’s TV. I am just glad that my cabin is quite far removed from the entertainment hub and I can’t hear the caterwauling. I am moderately envious of the guests on the Geek Cruises and those organised by the Scientific American or the Planetary Society, but then you learn by experience. If intellectual titillation it is what you seek, maybe you shouldn’t be on a Diva cruise. Live and learn.

Nevertheless, if it’s relaxation you seek, there’s plenty here for you. Especially for the brain. 

 

 

Day 3: Istanbul (is not Constantinople)

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Obligatory Plug:

Today I woke up to the call of the Muezzin calling the faithful to prior. Well, there was actually four of them, as they were four mosques around the cruise ship terminal. We got up a bit earlier than usual to take part in an excursion to the Blue Mosque and the Basilica Cistern: both amazing, cavernous spaces. Hard to decide what was more impressive: the delicate tiling and the vibrant colours of the Mosque or the vast, cavernous space with its dozena of columns and doric capitals.P1000399Apparently this is only one of hundred of hidden, subterranean cisterns, fed by aquaeducts. The mind boggles. By the way, for an excellent account of Justinian’s East Rome, check out William Rosen’s Justinian’s Flea: Plague, Empire and the Birth of Europe. Excellent book.

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At 6 pm, we left the harbour again to head to Athens, under the fading light of the Bosporus. Magic. Unfortunately marred by the smoker’s cough of the majority of our neighbours. Gosh, I completely forgot how fond Germans are of smoking. While the proprietors of the ship are keen to keep smokers out of the ship they are still smoking on their balconies and some of the outside bars. Sigh.

And don’t start me on the nudity.

Day 2: So you’re not in the middle of the sea anymore.

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Yesterday lunchtime the AidaDiva arrived with typical German punctuality in Istanbul. I quite like the fact that the cruise ship harbour is in the middle of the city, and that (if one would be so inclined) I could venture to the Golden Horn or the Hagia Sophia on foot. Instead I stayed in my cabin and worked on my Open University assignments, looked over the street scape and listened to Steely Dan. There are worse ways to spend a day and self imposed isolation feels like a true luxury when you’re surrounded by the masses. The alternative would be something like this:

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Highly professional facial blurring by GIMP 2.

Now imagine this being accompanied by somebody jumping up and down in front of them with a microphone. And annoying schmaltzy schlager music. That makes the cabin so much more alluring. By the way, the temperature on this picture was 12 centigrade. You would think that the Eastern Mediterranean would be a bit warmer. Not these days, it isn’t.

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If this looks suspicious, imagine it with ‘Agadoo’ as accompaniment. It gets immediately 20 times worse, innit?

After a few days of this, I have decided if I ever will venture on a cruise ship again, it will be with one of the Planetary Society ‘s cruise or Geek Cruises, otherwise my brain will atrophy (even more). Fortunately the ship has a well working satellite internet hook up (technical term there), though the bandwidth is rather small. But hey, the fact that it’s working in the middle of the sea at all is a technological marvel. At 159 Euros a week it’s a bit steep, though. But then the drinks are far  better value than in London.

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Beat that, Tower Hamlets.

Day 1: Fight For Your Right To Avoid Regional Accents

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Ok, I have to admit that waking up to a window full of sea and a gentle rocking motion does have its charms.

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The AidaDiva is quite the behemoth. It currently hosts about 2000 guests and another 600 crew. That means there’s about 500 passengers less than possible, which is nice. There are four cavernous restaurants who provide the guests with free food and another four which provide you with a la carte food (for which you have to pay). During meal times you can definitely tell you’re on a ship with 2000 co-prisoners  guests but fortunately most of the time people seem to disperse around the place. Yesterday was a sea day, so from a pure relaxation view, this was top notch. The sea certainly gives the whole thing an adventurous quality and yesterdays strong winds (up 8 beaufort) helped to enhance the impression. Our biggest worry -seasickness- so far hasn’t appeared. Even in the strongest gusts the AidaDiva rocked only gently and apart from a headache and some abdominal murmurings nothing happened.

The passengers are a strange crowd. As expected, pensioners seem to represent the vast majority and the entertainment seems to be geared towards that. There has been some terrible singing of schmaltzy piano ballads, ‘funny’ musicals, an auction of some genuinely terrible art and the good old ‘guess the steward’s weight’ shenanigans. This is obviously geared at people who would normally spend their days with the international equivalent of the ‘Jeremy Kyle Show’ and ‘Cash in the Attic’.  While we try to avoid these activities, they are hard not to notice as they tend to be forced on the unsuspected public from the central auditorium whap bang in the middle of the ship. The punters seem to like it though, as the seats are often filled to the hilt. Upstairs on the open decks people in various stages of undress are trying to soak up the sun (and in line with German tastes, there is even a nudist section). The presence of regional accents is staggering, and so far by my own count East German seem to be winning. To the unprepared ear this can be grating, especially if you’re not used to it anymore. I presume the equivalent in the English world would be to be surrounded constantly by crowds with a strong estuary accent. Or John Bishop.