HOMEWARD BOUND

Sitting in the FINNAIR lounge with about three hours to go before boarding and it seems like a good time you reflect on the past three weeks in the Baltic and Norwegian Fjords.

We spent most of today in the Tivoli Gardens which is an amusement park with all the rides you would see at the Ekka and then some as well as some beautiful gardens. This is not M flying at the speed of sound but I do believe this is the ride our Parker begged to go again while his dad was out looking for his stomach.

This was more Michele's style

Streets of Copenhagen and City Hall

This has been a busy cruise in contrast to other cruises we have done. The difference is that longer cruises generally involve numbers of sea days where you get a chance to draw breath and relax - with a book, at a lecture, in the pool. It probably fits between those horrendous bus tours that visit a different country every day and a more leisurely longer cruise. So it has been more tiring but absolutely enjoyable.

The weather in the main has been pretty good for this time of year in these latitudes. We were very fortunate to get clear days in Flam, Norway when we cruised the Songefjord Fjord and took the train to Myrdal up in the mountains. Perfect weather in St Petersburg was also a bonus in displaying the magnificence of their palaces, churches and museums. Perhaps the most disappointing weather was in Stockholm which did not give an opportunity to do as much as we might with our guide.

Health-wise, Michele struggled at times with walking and will need to have her hip investigated; it has been eight years since her first hip replacement and she was told then that the other hip was also showing wear. But we shall see. I got a man-cold which lasted a few days and of course was at least as bad as a major bout of flu and requiring regular nursing care!!! But for the most part we were pretty good for two old pensioners. Again the message is loud and clear - do your travelling overseas as early as you can.

Before the cruise I did my usual research of where we were going, looked at options for shore excursions and prepared the outline for this Blog. We took only three guided tours and managed all other shore excursions on our own. We were often able to do the same activities provided by Holland America and saved considerable loot in doing so. For example I was able to buy the train ticket to Flam on line. Those who purchased the excursion possibly paid an extra hundred dollars each for some very expensive waffles in Myrdal. The Alla Tours booked for St Petersburg, Stockholm, and Berlin were less expensive than HAL and provided a necessary guide for these locations.

I think we would both say that St Petersburg was the highlight of the tour in terms of its grandeur, its comprehensive nature over two long days, and its unique history. At the same time you may recall from my post of that visit, that we were also appalled by this ostentatious display of wealth built on the lives of a peasant class. It was fascinating, even eerie, to know we were standing where Hitler stood in Berlin, where he addressed the masses, where he killed himself in the bunkers below, where evil raised its ugly head to threaten our civilisation.

The Eurodam was a pleasant cruise ship, less formal than the Cunard line and perhaps equivalent to Princess Cruises. The waiting staff were mostly Indonesian and were absolutely remarkable in their attention to passengers. Because of the busy nature of this cruise there were very few activities arranged on board during the day. Obvious because most people go on shore. Nevertheless we thought this could have been improved. Certainly, the evening programs were poor in comparison to other cruise ships we have used. The food on this ship was superb and probably superior to Cunard. After disembarking from the Eurodam, it was cruising on to Iceland, Faeroe Islands, Newfoundland, and New York. We would have loved to have continued on to those exotic locations.

I have tried to provide some accounts of the fellow passengers that we met over the course of the voyage, usually over a meal where there is an opportunity to exchange information about our respective lives. Meeting people, particularly from other countries, is one of the great joys of cruising. In the final analysis you come to the conclusion that we are all different and we are all the same. I guess because we all have the same purpose of taking a cruise simply for its enjoyment but also with the understanding that it will be a shared experience, that we find a lot in common and generally tend to like each other despite our differences. As indicated a number of times politics is a common theme for discussion and there is clear disquiet from residents of numerous countries in the quality of their Governments. 

I also see travel as a significant opportunity for learning or relearning from the experience. At times I have personalised and philosophised my interpretations of those experiences and I hope you will forgive me for that. I think it is the case that we wander along in this life with scales over our eyes unable to challenge old ways of thinking, content with the status quo, unwilling to question long held beliefs. When you are immersed into strange environments, into different cultures, and languages, and histories, there is opportunity to rethink this life's journey. 

To those who followed this blog, I hope you found some of it interesting. Due to technological limitations on this particular cruise I have not been able to structure it or resource it with illustrations as previously but will update it in the next couple of weeks. 

The journey to the Baltic and Norwegian Fjords was a fitting tribute to this 50 year Wedding Anniversary. 

HAMLET'S KRONBORG CASTLE

This illustration discovered in 2015 is thought to be
William Shakespeare 1564-1616

To be or not to be; that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: To sleep:
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and thousand natural shocks
that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die; To sleep:
To sleep: Perchance to dream.

The castle in which Shakespeare's Hamlet is thought to be set is Kronborg Castle situated north of Helsingor (known generally in English as Elsinore). Built between 1574 and 1585, it is strategically situated on a narrow stretch of water just 4 km wide between Denmark and Sweden. About 1.8 million ships passed through the sound during this period and all had to pay a toll to Kronborg castle or be fired upon by canons from the castle. It was this strategic position guarding the strait that allowed Denamark to develop its power.

Eurodam sailed past Kronborg Castle early this morning on its way to bring us back to Copenhagen for the last time. Its turrets stood out clearly on the horizon as we peered through the stern windows while having breakfast. We have planned a visit to the castle soon after the ship docks at 11.00 a.m. We will take the number 27 bus to Osterport Railway and then the train north to Helsingor.

There is a very strong, cold wind blowing today and we have several layers of clothing. Our transport arrangements work well and we are soon on the train for the 45 minute journey to Helsingor. Then there is a 15 minute walk through the town against this strong wind to the castle which can be seen standing proudly ahead. M. is not too pleased with this biting wind sweeping in off the water.

The earliest plans and construction date to 1420 and various iterations occurred over the centuries with new sections built or remodelled or even rebuilt after Sweden attacked the fortress and brought about its surrender in 1658.

Model of Kronborg Castle, outbuildings, and moats

The Great Hall

Kronborg is known as Hamlet's castle. Shakespeare's Hamlet, the famous play about the Danish prince, takes place in Elsinore and many presentations by famous actors have been conducted at Kronborg Castle. The tradition goes back to 1816 when the play was performed at Kronborg on the occasion of the bicentenary of Shakespeare's death. International stars really began to take over Kronborg in earnest in 1937 when Laurence Olivier and Vivienne Leigh appeared as Hamlet and Ophelia in the castle courtyard.

Alas, poor Yorrick, I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
Of infinite jest: of most excellent fancy.

Entrances are well fortified

Despite the cold winds, the sky was clear and this was a most worthwhile visit. It's back to the ship, suitcases retrieved from under the bed, repacked and placed outside the cabin door in preparation for booting us off the ship at 8.15 a.m. tomorrow.Our flight out of Copenhagen is not until 8.15 p.m. so we will spend much of the day having a last look at this delightful city before taking the train to the airport.

BERLIN

Eurodam docked around 5.00 am in Warnemuende just as our alarm went off to prepare for our trip to Berlin. It was a gloomy scene from our balcony with weather looking uncertain. Warnemuende means 'mouth of the Warne River' and is a Baltic port for transfer of goods south into Germany. Currently it has a significant industrial role constructing Viking river boats that are so popular today on the European rivers.

Warnemuende Port

Again, our tour is with Alla Tours and we join the bus on time at 6.30 am and are soon on our way for the three hour drive down the highway with a comfort stop along the way. The guide relates the history of early settlement of Berlin in the twelfth Century through the various wars with France, Denmark,WWI and WWII, the reconstruction after the war, and on to modern day Berlin. She did a reasonably good job of recounting this complex history of 800 years in three hours. No punches were pulled in the description of the atrocities of Hitler and the Nazi Third Reich and of course our visit to Berlin focuses on visiting those sites most relevant to the rise and fall of Nazi Germany. Here's a sample:

This church kept in its current condition to demonstrate damage from bombs.

Memorial to the fallen.

The Reichstag

The Brandenburg Gate constructed in 1790

The Holocaust Memorial

The site of the Nazi book burning event replaced with a cellar below the glass comprising empty bookshelves.

Memorial of a mother cradling the body of her soldier son below an open window that allows rain and debris to fall on them throughout the year

Lutheran Cathedral designed to rival the nearby Catholic Cathedral and reminiscent of St Paul's in Rome

Michele takes the salute at Checkpoint Charlie

Berlin's oldest museum built in Classical style.

Remnants of the Berlin Wall above and the tragic history of the Third Reich on the Memorial Wall from 1933 to 1945

From the Memorial Wall

We are back to the ship by 6.30pm. A long and very interesting visit to the centre of one of the most evil periods in the history of our human 'civilisation'. 

Adolph Hitler

The evil that exists in our world can generally be thought of in two categories. The natural evils are those that occur seemingly at random. An undersea earthquake creates a tsunami that takes thousands of lives, a disease like Ebola spreads suddenly without warning killing hundreds, a young life is cut short with brain cancer, a car accident takes the lives of an entire family. The natural evils are tragic events that can happen to anyone at any time.

The unnatural evils are those that are similarly freakish and random but are enacted by someone on someone else - like rape, murder, domestic violence, and war. They are the things that people intentionally do to others to achieve some personal objective. Certainly Hitler's reign as Chancellor of the Third Reich fits the category of unnatural evil. His actions supported by his henchmen and by the German public could not be excused as mental illness or aberration of mind. They were purely and simply unnatural evil acts.

The theological explanation for the existence of evil in the world is known as the Greater Goods Defence. That proposes that it requires the presence of evil in order for good acts to occur. For example, courage cannot be found without fear or sympathy without pain or happiness has no value without sadness. This theory further expounds that God, in creating the world, got the mix of evil and good behaviours or events just right such that the amount of evil in the world is justified by the good it provokes. When Germany was bombed to within an inch of its survival by the allies and its citizens humiliated by the partitioning of Berlin, a decision was made not to make reparations so unbearably crippling as occurred after WWI but to take the course of rebuilding the economy of Germany and its political structures so that it could one day rejoin the family of democratic nations. This good action was only possible in the context of the evil that previously existed. It does seem a strange way for God to manage the conduct of the world, but that's the theory.

The non-theological explanation is that an all-powerful, all-knowing, and loving God would not have purposefully created a world in which evil exists in order to develop corresponding virtues in man but would instead have made the best possible world to live in. The reality is we live in an unpredictable world where random acts of natural and unnatural evil occur from time to time. It seems to me that the Greater Goods Defence gives God a very bad wrap. Given the evidence that Hitler was able to perpetrate the evil he did, it is clear that such evil exists randomly and unpredictably and the best that can be said about God is that he cannot or chooses not to take any action to prevent such natural or unnatural evils. Either conclusion logically calls for a redefinition of the nature of 'God' which currently presumes a capacity to intervene in the natural and unnatural order of events on this planet.

STOCKHOLM

Eurodam winds its way in the early morning through the Stockholm Fjord among the many islands that make up this archipelago. The planned commentary of this journey has been cancelled as the weather has turned grey and cold with light rain making for a miserable picture. We have another tour with Alla Tours planned for midday to late afternoon and hope for a break in the conditions.

But we are disappointed and hop aboard the tour bus with 15 others and a guide amid drizzling, misting rain. We travel along the embankment fronting the old wharf area which has been transformed into Art Deco expensive apartment living and on by the large fresh water lake that supplies all of Stockholm's drinking water. The city of Stockholm is built across a number of islands and we drive to a lookout for that panoramic, splendid view of the city. But of course it is shrouded in a grey mist.

We then remove our rain gear, re-board the coach and travel to the Royal Palace with its State Apartments, the Crown Jewels (which were not shared with us), the Hall of State, the Royal Armoury and the Palace Museum. There is an impressive changing of the guard as we hear the clip-clopping of hooves of a cavalry of some twenty mounted soldiers make their way into the palace square to relieve their colleagues for the next shift of guard duty. They look very smart in their blue uniforms and gleaming silver helmets with a very serious rifle slung across their chests.

VASA MUSEUM

The misty rain continues to make conditions unpleasant but not unbearable; however our guide makes an executive decision to change the sequence of our tour and drive immediately to the Vasa Museum which of course is all under cover. This is the home of the Royal Warship Vasa, built for King Augustus Adolphus of Sweden in record time between 1626 and 1628. It was the mightiest warship in the Swedish fleet, intended to strike fear into the hearts of enemies. Against the advice of the ship's engineers, the King insisted on a double deck of cannons to protrude from each side of the ship. When it was launched a gust of wind caused the ship to rock and become unstable, swinging like a pendulum. Water rushed in through the cannon portholes, the ship was righted by this ballast and then slowly sank within 20 minutes with the masts just protruding above the surface of the water. A very embarrassing maiden voyage for the King's armament of terror. 

Divers were sent down to retrieve the cannons and the masts were removed. But the ship remained under the Baltic Sea for a further 333 years before a search was conducted, the Vasa found, and carefully retrieved in 1961 from its resting place still upright on the sea floor. Had the wreck lain in salt water it would have been destroyed by sea worms over the decades. Because the Baltic is brackish in nature from the amount of fresh water that enters the sea, the timbers remained largely preserved. In fact, 98 percent of the Vasa now restored within the museum is comprised of the original materials and any new materials are shown in a different colour. It is indeed a mighty ship splendidly adorned with hundreds of sculptures.

We conclude with a walking tour of Stockholm's historical centre, Gamla Stan, The Old Town, which is located across three islands. The largest island is Stadsholmen on which Stockholm was founded in 1252. It is an amazingly well-preserved 13th Century town and one of the largest preserved medieval centres in Europe. Gamla Stan is a charming picture book of narrow winding cobblestone streets and medieval alleyways. For a time, the mist begins to lift and our guide recounts the history of The Old Town as we pick our way across shiny stone pathways polished by the feet of centuries and glistening from the morning rain. (The next day we hear that someone slipped and broke an arm on one of these tours in the Old Town and spent the night in hospital.)

And so we end our first day in Stockholm a little disappointed that the inclement weather will leave us with a diminished appreciation of this city of 2.2 million. There are 100 Art Galleries and 70 museums so there is plenty to see. Stockholm is known as the longest Art Gallery. It is the home of Eriksen and H & M.

Day two in Stockholm dawns with more promise but still heavy cloud shrouds the city. Had it been clear we would have taken a tour to Drottingham Castle and Gardens. After a bit of indecision unsure what the weather will do, we have a short walk around the port area and decide to spend a quiet day on the ship. M decides on a spa on deck nine and I sit under the umbrellas to watch the passing parade. But now there is sunshine and we should get a pleasant passage down the Stockholm Fjord.

The ferry boat that services the many islands in the fjord

At dinner last night we are at a table for six and a trio of Swedish musicians wandered among the tables playing to the diners. A nice touch. Soon or later, I guess, you strike a set of table mates whom you find less than interesting. There are two elderly ladies from New Jersey (north of New York) who are widows and are travelling together. They each immediately ordered Southern Comfort on ice which gave promise of an interesting evening but that I'm afraid was the highlight. Probably in their late seventies or early eighties they represented the quintessential wealthy American grand dames with jewellery adornments typical of that age and class and intent on spending their late husband's inheritance. One had ten grandchildren and one just five and they each still lived in the large family homes where they raised their children. I'm not sure if they have ever really heard of Australia and could not contemplate a visit- much too far away. 

One of the ladies has two very large dogs with a strange name I had not heard before but of the size of a Great Dane. They sit on each side of her at breakfast and are fed toast. One has a habit of putting his nose under her arm then throwing it up so her arm goes around him. Oh, they are such fun! The other has a house with thirteen bedrooms and five bathrooms. She's the one with ten grandchildren. But they were pleasant people of course. The other two Americans were perhaps late fifties and quite odd. She was of Chinese origin but had lived in America for thirty years. Her accent was very thick however and difficult to understand at times although she gave you plenty of opportunity as she never stopped talking (quite loudly). Poor Scott, the partner, couldn't get a word in edgewise even when M asked him a question, she answered for him and when he did speak it was somewhat obscure. We never did find out what either of them did or where they lived in the U.S. I was too busy with the dowagers, anyway. The rather large Chinese/American clearly loved her food. She noted that M had enjoyed her lamb cutlets and, after finishing her meal, ordered some for herself which she quickly demolished. We were pleased when they got up to go to the movie (The Diviner) being shown in the Theatre.

The sail-away down the Stockholm Fjord among the hundreds of islands has been spectacular in bright afternoon sunshine. Many of the islands have quite substantial homes built on them. Obviously transport is by boat and a ferry runs between the islands. If you want to catch the ferry you hang out a flag on your pier. Cruise ships can only travel this route in daylight. Its entrance is very narrow and on one side is guarded by a modern defensive facility. On the other there still stands the fortifications used in medieval times to prevent ships entering.