Wow, what an incredible week. Each time I sit down to write I can’t believe what’s taken place since the last time I sent a message! We’re in Gdansk, Poland (pronounced “g-dine-sk” with a long i), having left St. Petersburg, Russia on Sunday night. Morgan had a mild cold while we were in St. Petersburg, but she’s fine now. Cary picked it up from her, and it’s probably my turn next. In spite of everyone’s best efforts to wash hands and use “purex” hand sanitizing liquid at meals, lots of people picked up colds in the first couple of weeks. Most people seem to be better now, and there was surprisingly little trouble among the students in St. Petersburg (one fistfight, two robberies, other minor difficulties caused by students doing exactly what we asked them not to do). Almost without exception, they seem to have had a great time in Gdansk.

The captain’s memorial service was our first night back at sea. I watched the crew carefully and lovingly set up the memorial table at the front of the big classroom that included the photos and cards and notes from students, staff, faculty and crew. It was very poignant and well done, with speeches and video clips and music. Because the captain loved the children on all his voyages, the children of this voyage were gathered together and given white carnations (a traditional funeral flower in this part of the world) to throw overboard at the end. Many people were blinking back tears during the service. As the children came forward to collect the flowers (they all knew him because he paid special attention to them anytime he saw them), the A/V person started playing Samuel Barber’s “Adagio for Strings,” the piece that’s used over and over for funerals (JFK, Roosevelt) and as the virtual soundtrack for any footage of 9/11. And I completely lost it. The hardest part for me was standing on the back of the fourth deck with the uncharacteristically solemn children and their parents (none of the children were bouncing around), with students and staff packed onto the three upper decks above and behind us. We were absolutely silent out there – hundreds of us – watching the wake stream out past the ship. Then the ship blew its whistle twice, and the children and entire crew of tearful senior officers dropped their white carnations into the water. And in typing this, I feel just as drained as when I was experiencing it.

We have continued to have fine weather and incredibly smooth sailing; the night before we arrived in Gdansk the seas were like glass. Captain Kritikos said that because he was Greek and because Neptune and Poseidon were Greek, the three of them had worked out a deal to keep the ship safe and sailing smoothly. Our new captain (Captain Jeremy Kingston, from England) seems to also be doing well in that regard, because the seas have been absolutely quiet! We’ve also traveled slowly between ports (10 knots an hour), because in fact these ports are not very far apart. We’re used to our small cabin now, and we have a good rhythm to our days at sea. The St. Petersburg-to-Gdansk portion of the Baltic sea has quite a significant algae bloom, so the water has had a sort of beige scum over parts of it. We had only two days between ports this time, so I had just enough time to talk about the establishment of a virtual Poland in exile (in Paris) during the 19th century, when Poland did not exist as a nation-state, and the difficulties that state sponsorship of a newly-nationalized folk music has created in contemporary Poland. Luckily we had the fortuitous presence of Mika Sunago, a concert pianist, who came to my class and played three pieces by Chopin for the students, most of whom had never heard his music before. It was fantastic! The students probably have no idea how lucky they were. It enabled me to easily add issues of nationalism and romanticism to the discussion. Oh, and I’ve taught them some phrases in Polish, because nearly everyone in my classes was glad to use the few Russian words and phrases I taught them last week. Like I know either Russian or Polish!! It’s just the blind leading the blind.

There was a “fashion show,” with the ship’s children as the stars. All the parents were there, of course, and at least a hundred of the students. We were pretty sure that it would be awkward and inappropriate for Morgan’s age, but in fact it was incredibly cute and funny and charming. All the children had been helped to dress up by the students, including the very smallest ones. When it was Morgan’s turn to come onstage as a cat, she minced out as if she couldn’t care less, “licking” her paw and turning away, then saw the podium and rubbed her head against it instead of “parading” around the stage. Everyone laughed, and it really was very funny. You should have seen this reindeer pelt! It was large and, well, like having a dead reindeer in your cabin. One of the students had purchased it for her boyfriend. Both Cary and I were allergic to it, and in our small cabin the reindeer absolutely dominated the room until we could give it to someone who could give it back to the student! Morgan received many compliments on her performance (and several people asked if she’d done any work in children’s theater).

This week we had four days in Poland. On the first day we had a city orientation tour, walking through historic Gdansk. The city was a major center for the Hanseatic Trading League, and was yanked back and forth between Prussia and Russia and Lithuania over much of its history. And, of course, it is the place where the Soviet Union’s power over its satellite countries began to crumble in 1981 when the shipyard workers held a strike led by Lech Walesa (pronounced “Vawensa” – who knew?). Cary and I have been remembering when we heard about it in 1980-81, when we were living in Bavaria during that winter and working as ski lift operators. And one of my surprises has been realizing that the formerly near ubiquitous presence of Polish jokes has diminished to almost zero; at least, in my experience. It’s interesting. I confirmed this with my students as well, and I don’t think they were agreeing just to humor me. Our academic dean, Ron Linden, mentioned in one of his lectures the irony that it was a workers’ party that finally brought down the monolith that had always “celebrated the workers.”

Our ship is berthed here among the cargo ships, but luckily it’s near a ferry terminal where there are inexpensive and easy buses into town. We managed to find our way back to the ship on the first day thanks to a combination of bravery, language attempts, and local kindness and helpfulness. After a lot of anxiety (how will we know where to get off? How can we buy a ticket? What do we do once we’ve bought the ticket?) we got off at the right place and were back on the ship in minutes. Whew! We took a tour through “Historical Gdansk” and were surprised to learn that our ship is berthed at the exact starting place of World War II (September 1, 1939), when one of Hitler’s ships began bombing Gdansk. While it’s true that 90% of Gdansk was leveled during the War, it has been lovingly restored using old architectural plans, photographs, paintings, and local memories. What a magnificent job they’ve done! It doesn’t feel at all wrong, the way some hastily restored places make you feel. In fact, they’re still restoring some parts of the city, all these years after the war ended. Luckily a number of building fronts were still standing, as well as parts of churches, and many of the civic treasures were moved out of Gdansk for protection. Almost all the architecture is Dutch (back to the influence of the Trading League), and it is strikingly similar to the architecture of Amsterdam – lots of four-story buildings crammed together with no space between.

Gdansk is gorgeous. Of course we were lucky that the weather was so perfect for us (evidently just last week it was cold and cloudy), but the primary thoroughfare of the main city is a broad pedestrian street with lively cafes, shops, street musicians and other performers, artists, and more amber for sale in every direction than you ever saw in all your lifetimes put together! Cary described it as a bubble, and it’s true: just imagine the wealth and abundance that such a scene would create, surrounded by miles of apartment blocks on the outskirts of the main city and the old town. We saw two people on stilts dressed as ten-foot-tall bug/aliens in dark red and black. They were scary and funny at the same time, because they were surrounded by a crowd (exclaiming and photographing) and they’d be quiet, then lunge forward with a sort of growl or roar, sending people scattering. We also heard plenty of classical music, jazz, kids-with-guitars, accordions, an organ grinder, and one absolutely wild-looking elderly Russian fellow (Cary heard someone say “Cossack”) with 6” long white handlebar moustache, playing a broad zither in an ostinato pattern and doing some kind of epic recitation.

We heard the magnificent organ being played in St. Mary’s Cathedral (the first one had been destroyed in the war; this one was taken from a nearby church and installed as part of the restoration). St. Mary’s is the largest brick church in the world (it holds 25,000 people), so you can imagine how sound flies through and around inside when the organ is being played. It also has the world’s oldest astrological clock (with all kinds of special and strange features, including the twelve apostles rotating to the front on the hour, indications of the phases of the moon, Adam and Eve at the top with the snake in the tree having its head replaced by Mary’s crowned head. (?!?) We stayed in town after the historical tour and had dinner at a fine restaurant (where some of the other faculty spotted Lech Walesa attending a banquet the next evening). I ordered duck cooked with cranberries and apples, served with a plate of fresh sliced tomatoes and diced raw onions. Morgan had smoked salmon, and Cary had chicken with peach slices and pureed beets. We all loved our meals, and they are all Polish specialties. I mean, how often do I get to order duck with cranberries and apples? For dessert the three of us split an order of thick Polish crepes with strawberries and cream and chocolate. Ooh la la! Our total, including tip, was $60, which is amazing considering how much we had to eat, the quality of the food, and the elegance of the place. Half an hour before we left, some Polish musicians showed up and began playing some traditional folk music (fiddle, tambourine, accordion). The sun was still up, so we strolled through the cobbled streets and listened to more live music and watched people doing their evening promenade. With the gentle breeze to keep the humidity down, it was a great day!

We spent the second day at the Gdansk shipyards, first going to the museum commemorating the workers’ strikes. The translator was very good (although very young; I had the impression that everything that happened in Poland in the 80s was before his lifetime and therefore somewhat irrelevant). Anyway, we saw the actual board on which the shipyard workers’ 21 demands were written (an international treasure/cultural heritage piece according to UNESCO), the tables at which they sat, and saw news footage from the time (including stuff we never saw because we were in Germany). Naturally, I wanted to buy a Solidarnosc pen, replicating the large pen that Lech Walesa used to sign the agreement. Naturally, they had them for sale. We also had the extraordinary opportunity to meet with Mr. Bogdan Lis, one of the founding members of Solidarity. He speaks no English, but our translator did okay in working with our questions and his answers. I asked a question about the role of music in Solidarity, and he said that there were many songs, some of which were composed and performed spontaneously at the time. After that we jumped on the bus and went over to the actual shipyards, where there was a huge warehouse with people welding and machinery grinding away. I loved it. The shipyards are making only five ships a year now, instead of 18, but we got to see one monster of a ship that is just a couple of weeks away from being launched. What wondrous capability they seem to have: we watched moving cranes, scaffolding, welders all over the sides of the ship, and the entire ship’s bridge, sitting on the ground being worked on.

I am one of many women on the ship (and one man) who have “the Russia Rash.” It’s a three-inch wide circular rash three inches above my inner ankle on each leg. It doesn’t itch or hurt, and every one of us has it in exactly the same place! It fades after a few days; I’ve had it since our fourth day in St. Petersburg. I suspect that more men have it, but only one has mentioned it to the nurses or the doctor on the ship. Weird! One of the nurses said she wants to write an article about it: why do we all have it in the same place?

On Friday we took it easy in the morning by walking over to the beach (about five minutes from the ship) with the Swerdlows (the family that includes Morgan’s friends Rebeccah and Eliana). The kids played on the beach making sand castles and “cat castles” until the very mild waves came up and washed them away, sending the kids straight into the water up to their knees. There were plenty of Polish children in the water, and a good number of Polish adults, but right next to the beach there were oil tanks and a refinery, and David and Milagros and I decided that minimal contact with the water was probably best. When we came back for lunch all the kids had a good shower. Our afternoon started with a bus ride out to the region of Kashubia; this whole area is Pomerania (where the dogs come from), formerly belonging to the Prussian Germans, and the Kashubians are a local ethnic group of over 500,000 people. They speak their own language (no longer suppressed by the Germans, Russians, or even the Poles) and have their own rich folklore traditions.

We stopped by the Kashubian Folklore Museum; it’s all contained in one house, but what an amazing collection of stuff! They had farm implements, an old sledge for carrying wood in the winter, children’s toys, beautiful embroidery and a loom, kitchen tools, and musical instruments including a devil’s head on a five-foot long stick with a metal tambourine-type hat. You strike the hat to make the jingles ring, and tap the bottom of the instrument (a metal plate near the bottom of the stick) for percussion. The actual head of the devil is covered with fur and has a big red tongue. They also had a friction drum (the friction part made with horsetail hair sticking out through the center of a deerskin drumhead) that’s played by pulling on the wet horsetail hair, and a long trumpet. The guide was excellent; he gave the students the entire history of Poland (through World War II) on the way out through the countryside, and he translated for the guide at the museum. The museum fellow was lively and engaging, even though he spoke only Polish, and he recited a poem in Kashubian and sang a song. It was fun.

We then drove through the countryside to a campground in the hills, right by a beautiful lake with swans in it. There were lots of Polish families there, camping and swimming. A group of Kashubian musicians greeted us (accordion, fiddle, “devil’s stick,” tambourine, singer). We were all served “bison vodka” (vodka flavored with the grass where the indigenous bison feed) and beer, delicious local pickles, toast with a hefty spread of lard (!) (we declined that part), chunky beet root soup with pieces of chicken (it wasn’t the deep red kind of beets; these were pale), a wonderful potato pancake with wild mushrooms and vegetables inside, and a large sausage. Meanwhile, the musicians were singing and dancing, and eventually our students got up to dance and try the musical instruments as well. We have pictures of Morgan playing the friction drum! The weather was warm and lovely, the lake was shining, swans and children were swimming, the music was great, and everyone was supremely happy. Once we got back on the bus, one of the senior passengers (the ship has 60 senior adult passengers who prefer this kind of traveling to casino ships) asked for the microphone and began singing hits from her days as a professional singer (“I’m in the Mood for Love,” “Almost Like Being in Love,” “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home,” and others). The students cheered after each one, much to my surprise.

We then pulled into the small town of Oliwa to attend an organ concert by the Finnish organ player Juhani Romppanen. It was very good! We had the chance to hear a handful of pieces by Finnish composers that we’d never heard of. The organ is special because it has a number of moving parts (angels that play trumpets, birds that appear, lights and other features), but the organist did not use any of them and it was a bit of a disappointment to me because I’d played that feature up rather big in my class. The music was very good, however, and of course it was very nice to hear the sounds chasing each other around in the church for a few seconds after the organist stopped playing. I know that my students were shocked that no one applauds during organ concerts until the very end of the recital, and I plan to bring it up with them on Monday.

On our last day in Poland we took it easy again because Cary still had his cold. It gave me a chance to work on my classes for a bit, and when Cary went into town to try to retrieve our phone messages, Morgan and I played and relaxed. We later walked over to the memorial to the Polish soldiers killed while defending the Gdansk shipyards on that first week of September, 1939; it was poignant to see their names and dates of death (September 2, September 7, etc.). Evidently 200 soldiers held 1000 Germans off for a whole week, allowing many of the citizens of Gdansk to escape into the countryside. Since most of the residents were of German descent, after the war the city was largely repopulated by people who moved in from the formerly Russian-held areas to the east. The war looms large here, not just in the restoration efforts, but also in the ability of the older people to speak German. Many, many people lost most of their relatives in the war, and the continuing existence of the concentration camps as memorials is painful. And yet, my impression of Poles in Gdansk was one of great optimism; at last, other countries aren’t pressing in on all sides, trying to take bites out of it, and its membership in the EU is cause for at least some celebration.

Today is Cary’s 55th birthday! Happy birthday, Cary! It also marked the halfway point in the voyage, and was the one and only day off for students and faculty. To fill the day, the staff sponsored an Olympiad, featuring major sections of the ship as teams (each section is called a “sea” as in “Red Sea,” “Bering Sea,” etc.). The faculty, staff, and senior adult passengers comprised one team (“Luna Sea”), and our “fight song” was a satire based on “Beer Barrel Polka.” It was verrrrrrry corny! AND as the music faculty, I had to conduct the group, waving a tiny American flag as my baton. I participated in one event, involving the speedy opening of tiny mustard packets (which are nearly impossible to open on a good day) and filling a paper cup with mustard. I took Morgan’s suggestion to open the packets first and then squeeze them all in at once, so I grabbed a handful and quickly opened all of them. Meanwhile the other competitors ran out of mustard packets and started grabbing my pre-opened ones. My “hey, no fair” protests were drowned in the din of shouting and cheering. Chaos ensued. Luckily, I didn’t get mustard all over myself, though my hands still smell like mustard. I still have no idea who won! The big closing ceremony is tonight, and the children’s team is performing a dance.

We’re en route to Antwerp now. This afternoon I saw breathtaking and shocking video footage of the spring voyage (the one where the ship was caught in seriously stormy weather and smashed by a giant wave), and I am thanking my lucky stars (again) that our voyage has been so very smooth. I’ll try to get myself to an internet café in Belgium; here on the ship it costs 45 cents a minute, so in the meantime please forgive any delays on my end in responding to your messages.