Baltic Cruise

Opera, ballet, symphony, art, architecture, royal gardens, history, and exotic cuisine: if Lynne and I absorb any more culture we will begin to mold. My daughter-in-law tells me I may have to reset with a little redneck activity, maybe some barbecued goat washed down with light beer. The big surprise for me on our cruise was Stockholm, where we embarked. My image of the city was of a dark, cold, and misty seaport with fog horns sounding through the gloom. It may be like that for much of the year but at the end of June it is a beautiful place, a clean city with almost no night, lots of fun walks, green hills, waterways, and stunning views. There was none of the waterfront eyesore I associate with harbors. They must have it but we didn’t see it. We ate reindeer steaks and Swedish moose balls and drank Wormwood snaps. The Wormwood isn’t going to make our list of favorite aperitifs. I was the only one in our group who would try the herring, a Nordic staple. Departure involved a trip through a long series of gorgeous islands and channels. The ship was fantastic, small by cruise standards with only 382 passengers but as luxurious as anything I can imagine. We were welcomed with champagne and hors d’oeuvres, escorted to our room and, since we had made our own transfer arrangements and got there a few minutes ahead of the crowd, our luggage was waiting. The room was spacious with a walk in closet, more storage than we needed, a sitting area, and private balcony. The shower was small but adequate and there was a separate tub. There was also a bottle of champagne. Most nights we had a glass before we went to bed and would find a new bottle in the refrigerator the next day. It was like that as long as we were aboard. Food and wine were excellent and inexhaustible, complete with 24 hour room service, all included. I have a piper to pay now that we are home. My favorite stop was St. Petersburg. Four things really stand out in my mind; the gardens at Peterhof, the amber room at Catherine’s summer palace, the copy of Raphael’s loggia at the winter palace, and the ballet. You can’t go to Russia without seeing a ballet, now can you? The Peterhof gardens are as elaborate as those at Versailles and the fountains more impressive. The amber room is as interesting for its story as for the art. Germans stole the original amber panels during WWII and they are lost. After decades of futile search Soviets decided to recreate them but the craft was lost too. There was no school to send workers to and no manuals, just pictures and descriptions of the originals. So they experimented, spent many years, made a lot of false starts and mistakes, and built a thing of genuine beauty. The room glows. Rafael’s loggia (his bible) has a story too. The original is in the Vatican. Open on one side, it was designed as a gallery where the Pope could walk and enjoy his private garden during inclement weather. It is wooden with ceiling and walls decorated in mosaics of biblical scenes. Catherine the Great got permission and had it copied, replacing the mosaics with painted murals. They say the original is badly weathered and if you want to see what it really looked like, you have to go to St. Petersburg. Catherine installed hers indoors and, since Germans never occupied the city proper, it was undamaged during the war. It looks as it did in the 18th century. Like the amber room it is a thing of beauty. I could spend hours there. The one disappointment I would express is there was hardly any mention of the Russian revolution in the city where it occurred. The rooms in the Winter Palace where the provisional government assembly met, and where Karensky was arrested, were closed. It was as though history ended in February, 1917, when Nicholas II abdicated. The WWII siege of Leningrad got more play, especially the destruction and subsequent rebuilding in the suburbs. (Peter I founded the city, made it his capital and named it St. Petersburg, Nicholas II changed it to Petrograd because he thought it sounded more Russian, Stalin renamed it to honor Lenin, and it is now St. Petersburg again.) On our trip to Catherine’s summer palace our guide had the bus stop at a massive monument to the heroes of the siege and told us her family’s story. A million Russians died at Leningrad between 1941 and 1944, mostly from starvation, more than the combined US and British dead for the entire war. The guide’s mother was ten years old when Germans surrounded the city and cut it off. Her aunt was nine months. Her grandfather went to the army and never returned. That winter was the harshest ever recorded and they had no fuel. The mother of the two young girls had frostbite in her legs so severe she could not get out of bed. The ten year old took charge of her baby sister and they survived on a ration of 100 calories a day, supplemented with crushed tree bark to add volume. Today, every year on her sister's birthday, the aunt toasts her for saving her life. During the siege people threw babies away. It is a moving tale. There were other stops, Stockholm and St. Petersburg were just the highlights. Helsinki is pretty but small and we were there only briefly. Tallinn, in Estonia, was the most picturesque. Lynne stopped a young girl selling soft drinks to ask her what language she spoke. English was her answer. No, what language do you usually speak? English; she occasionally speaks Estonian with her parents but uses English almost exclusively with her friends. One last day and night at sea marked the end of our cruise and then we had two days in Copenhagen to unwind. We walked around a lot, saw the little mermaid and the main street featured in postcards, had dinner at two really good restaurants, and went to one art museum but decided to pass on the palaces. They would have been more of an attraction at the beginning of the trip. On the last day we just went for a last walk along the quay behind our hotel, packed and took a taxi to the airport for a long tiring trip home. There were crowds and lines everywhere. It’s a shame such a wonderful trip has to have such an ignominious ending but I’m not sure there is a better way. Let’s just say it was well worth it. This was a dream vacation for us, more my dream than Lynne’s really but she will look back on it as one of our best too. It could not have come at a better time. We celebrated her retirement in style, put all our cares to one side, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Lynne not having to go back to work took the edge off even the long plane ride. Now we will take a day or two to relax and get our sleep cycle back in order, start to work out how we will adjust to a lot more time at home together, try to stay out of each other’s way, and begin to dream about the next trip.