Wednesday, September 4, 2013

kiel canal

Latitude: 54 degrees 22.110N
Longitude: 10 degrees 7.420E
Course: 260 degrees
Ship (and Hamburg) time: 10:55am

We are currently entering the Kiel Canal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiel_canal), leaving the Baltic Sea and making our way across the Jutland Peninsula from Kiel to Brunsbüttel and the North Sea. We will be in the North Sea only a short time before heading up the Elbe River to Hamburg. Our arrival is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 8am.

German immigration is on the ship right now, and we will shortly be making our way to Deck 7 to meet them and pick up our passports. That will make leaving the ship in the morning much more efficient since the ship will already have been cleared. 

 The channel in this canal is much more open than that of the Panama Canal which we transited in 2009. We are now past the first lock and it appears to be more of a lake than a canal; there are other vessels around us. I see a family picnicking on the shore and a couple walking on what seems to be a path along the canal. Our ship is so quiet I can hear them talking. The countryside is beautiful and green and it's a sunny day with few clouds. We are told the transit will take six hours, so we are looking forward to more sights like these as we go.

Off to get passports now.

Sunday, September 1, 2013

housekeeping...

A couple of things - if you try to post a comment, it won't appear immediately as I have to approve comments to prevent spam. You also have to verify those funny letters/numbers for the same reason. You wouldn't believe the junk that comes in.

Also, when I first post something, given the Internet situation, I am having to take a second step in order to make the links live. If you happen to see the posting before I have completed this step, you might not see live links the first time you look. Tonight it took over an hour before I got it done. I'm sure everyone on the ship is updating blogs tonight!

Thanks for reading and thanks for your comments, the ones posted on the blog and the ones emailed directly! John and I love hearing from everyone!

st petersburg

Latitude: 59 degrees 55.870N
Longitude: 30 degrees 16.460E
Local time: 5:10 pm

We will be leaving St Petersburg at 8 pm this evening, which will be mid-morning Sunday for most of you. We can see from our balcony the return of the students, some stopping for last minute purchases at the souvenir stand across from the ship, all going through Passport Control and ship security to return immigration departure forms and have their bags and bodies checked. There are lots of smiles as they share stories and experiences with each other; tonight there will be noisy, happy chatter at dinner! There are about 40 lined up right now - one reason John and I came back early today. 

St Petersburg (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Petersburg) is a beautiful city, particularly in the areas where tourists are likely to visit, and very European in appearance. We were told at some point that it only has 35 sunny days a year, a fact I have yet to check, but we have just had four of them! There are lots of G20 Summit signs around, since that is happening here in just a few days. There have been helicopters circling and visible military everywhere. Those of you who grew up in the 50's and 60's (and earlier and later) as we did will understand when I say that several times during our stay here, we stopped and said, "Can you believe it? We are in Russia!"

John's field lab went very well on Thursday. He and the students enjoyed their visit to the University and were treated to a very nice lunch before finally visiting a Freud museum. Unfortunately the Pavlov museum, which might have been a bit better to visit, was closed for the summer. It was a long day, but everyone seemed to agree it was a successful trip. I went on a long walk that day with others from the ship to Nevsky Prospekt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevsky_Prospect), the Hermitage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermitage_Museumand the Church on the Spilled Blood (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Savior_on_Blood). We also spent time in a couple of beautiful parks where there were other monuments to view. 

Along our walk from the ship, we began to see wedding parties and limousines, brides in their long white dresses carrying bouquets and surrounded by others in the wedding party and other guests, walking through the city and the parks. We have since been told that the weddings go on for three days, with the long walk in wedding gear the first day, a party with lots of drinking hosted by the bride's family on the second day, and another day of drinking hosted by the groom's family on the third day. It turns out there is a wedding pavilion between where the ship is docked and Nevsky Prospekt, and this is why we saw so many.

On Friday, John and I had an easy day since we had both had such a long day on Thursday. We did spend some time walking around and managed to find the nearest subway station, about a 20 minute walk from the ship. The subway maps were easy to read and use and we succeeded in making a short trip back to Nevsky Prospekt where we found a nice café to eat lunch. Yesterday we did a hop-on, hop-off bus tour and spent some time at the Russian Museum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Museum). One of our interport lecturers had told us that if you really want to understand Russia, this museum would provide more insight than the Hermitage. It does indeed have more from Russian artists and it is easy to get through in a couple of hours. The Hermitage would take days to see properly.

So we are leaving, very happy we had the opportunity to visit, and knowing we have barely scratched the surface. We look forward to hearing what the students have to say.