)
Getting to the airport: The long-awaited journey began early on Thursday afternoon at our house in Enfield, CT. Tom Corcoran[1], our friend of nearly five decades, had agreed to drive me in his Alfa Romeo to Logan Airport in Boston. My Swiss Air Lines flight to Zurich was scheduled to leave at 9:40, which was pretty close to my usual bed time. Originally both Tom and my wife Sue were planning to join me in this adventure, but Tom had a family emergency with which he had to deal, and Sue had not been able to locate her passport. The two of them spent a lot of time on the telephone talking with an agent from Viking, the company that had sold us the cruise. I actually made a twenty-nine minute digital recording of this conversation, but I have never taken the time to listen to more than a few short segments of it. Mostly I just wanted to assure myself that the recorder worked well.
)
The departure was not as sad an occasion as you might imagine. There were no tears. Sue, who had promised to make sure that someone picked me up at Logan when I returned on May 22, insisted that she would continue to look for her passport. She also expressed the hope that she could join me on the cruise in Budapest or Vienna. On other vacations I have taken photos of such Kodak moments, but my camera was stowed in my backpack, and I was not in the mood to extract it and pose people.
Almost as soon as we were on the road Tom asked me if I thought that Sue would be able to find her passport in time to join me. I had to answer in the negative.
)
I forgot to tell Tom not to take I-91. He had to execute a U-turn on North Maple and then a left onto CT-190 (Hazard Ave.), which goes all the way to I-84. This is the same route that Google Maps recommended.
Tom was adept at hands-free telephone calling.[2] He spent a good portion of the drive conversing with his relatives. His sister Carol Chami and her husband Mo had invited us to stop in at their house in Quincy, MA, for supper. Tom provided her with the ETA that Google Maps predicted, but he also admitted that we probably would be 20-30 minutes later than that because of the predictable traffic once we got close to Boston. He explained to Carol why Sue was not with us. It was also news to Carol that Tom had decided not to go on the cruise at this time.
)
Tom's second call was to his daughter Casey in Burlington, VT. Before he called her, however, he explained to me that Casey was actually living in Tom's apartment in Burlington with her husband Sean and son Charlie while their own house was being renovated. During this period Tom had been staying in the spare bedroom of the house owned and occupied by Tom's son Brian, his wife Malina, and their son Cian, who also lived in Burlington. Meanwhile, Tom's brother-in law Ray Lewonczyk, was residing in Tom's house in Wethersfield, CT. Have you got all of this?
Tom called to update Casey concerning Ray's condition, which was not good at all. Despite the fact that he could hardly even move, Ray was reticent about seeing a doctor. However, Tom and Ray's brother Fred had convinced him to make an appointment. Tom hoped that Casey might be able to help make sure that Ray actually followed through on it.
)
When did life become so complicated?
The closer that we got to Quincy the more red appeared on the display on Google Maps. Tom's car exhibited a very strange "feature" in the stop-and go traffic. Rather than idle, the car turned itself off. Tom had to restart it several times. I don't think that I would be able to put up with a car that behaved like this. Maybe it was not much of an issue in Vermont.
We had a little difficulty finding their house, but we actually walked through the front door at just about the time that Carol had predicted. Shortly thereafter Mo took orders and went to a local restaurant called Gennaro's Eatery to pick up supper.
During Mo's short absence Carol served Tom and me a Guinness, and Tom was given the assignment of reading an ancient hand-written letter from one of their aunts (I think). Carol called it "nasty", and there was indeed considerable cattiness expressed in it. I was glad to hear this because it had always seemed to me unnatural and even unhealthy for all of the Corcorans to get along so well.
)
Mo brought back a delicious supper. I had meatballs over angel hair pasta; Tom had cheese lasagna with meat sauce; Mo and Carol had chicken and veal parmigiana. We all drank wine. I could not understand how the food stayed warm for so long. Whenever we have pasta I always need to "nuke it" at least once.
Mo warned me that I should eat up because SwissAir would not feed me. He related that when he had flown from Geneva to Logan, the only food that the airline had provided was a piece of chocolate.
)
I took Mo's advice to heart and ate all of my meatballs and pasta. I did not, however, employ a piece of bread as la scarpetta. All of the others had plenty of food left over. There were also cannoli for dessert, but I did not indulge in them.
After we ate I showed Mo and Carol the cruise's itinerary on the map on the cover of my white vinyl notebook. It covered, in order, the Danube River, the Danube-Main Canal, the Main River, and the Rhine River. "Main", by the way, is pronounced like the English word "mine".
I also took a few photos of the occasion.
When we were back on the road Tom was worried that he might miss the turn for the tunnel that led to Logan, but he dutifully kept to the left as Mo had indicated, and we arrived at the airport in plenty of time. Along the way Tom called Brian and warned him that he was coming back to Burlington that night, but it probably would be quite late when he arrived.
Tom pulled his car to the curb at the Swiss/Lufthansa area of Terminal E. After I thanked Tom for the ride I dragged my bright blue suitcase out of the car and put my backpack on my shoulders. When we bid adieu I had to wonder if Tom, Sue, and I would ever get to go on one of these wonderful vacations again.
In the airport: I went through the door and took a minute to orient myself. I soon found the Swiss ticket counters. Ropes were set up to handle switchbacked long lines, but no one was waiting within them. A lady in a black Swiss uniform was near the entrance. I walked up to it and took out my passport and wallet, which held my vaccination card. I then set everything down so that I could withdraw the pertinent paperwork from the white vinyl binder that was jammed inside my backpack. The lady assured me that I only needed my passport, but I ignored her. I was fairly certain that I needed the results from my Covid-19 test as well as the sheet with my flight number.
)
However, when I reached the counter I discovered that she had been right. The agent there took my passport and rejected the fistful of documents that I attempted to foist on her. Quite quickly she gave me my boarding pass with a small ticket for the bag. She then told me where the security line was.
This was my introduction to the laissez-faire European approach to the pandemic in May of 2022, and I was not happy about it. Everyone else on the plane and in the airport could be highly infectious with the strain of BA.2 that was rapidly becoming prevalent in the U.S. I resolved to stay to myself as much as possible. Because Viking had canceled Sue's flight at the last minute, I was pretty certain that the adjoining seats on both flights would be unoccupied.
)
Security was not unduly time-consuming. Upon being released I gathered my stuff and made my way to gate E10. I had two books in my backpack, Rick Steves' Vienna guidebook and Bad Monkey, a novel by the Floridian humorist Carl Hiaasen. I chose the former. I had an idea what I wanted to do in Vienna, but I had not read about Melk or Salzburg since the bridge cruise[3] had been canceled in March of 2020. So, I spent part of the time reading through those sections.
For at least an hour I sat alone in a row of four seats on the far left side of the waiting area for gate E10. Eventually four ladies occupied the three seats on my left. Three seats were sufficient for them. Different members of their party were continually leaving for one reason or another.
I could not help noticing that they were talking about taking a cruise on Viking. They were all very excited about the prospect, but I did not hear any details about which cruise they were taking. I figured that it was a long shot, but I wondered if they would be on my ship.
)
I also played with my new recorder. Whenever an announcement was made, I recorded it. Because all the announcements began in approximately the same way, I ended up with a lot of useless files, but I figured it would be good practice. Finally at 10 o'clock, twenty minutes after our scheduled departure time, a message of some interest was broadcast:
On the airplane: The announcements on the plane were delivered in German and in English. Switzerland actually has three official languages—German, Italian, and French. Those who favored the Romance languages were out of luck on this flight. I wonder if Lufthansa made that decision when the company took over this bankrupt airline in 2005.
After takeoff the lights in the cabin were not dimmed as they usually were on seven-hour red-eye flights like this one. I soon learned that Mo's claim about the lack of service on Swiss flights was erroneous. The flight attendants served us a reasonably tasty chicken dinner complete with wine or beer.
After supper I tried to sleep with the usual fitful result. However, before I knew it the sun was rising, and I could occasionally see the European continent through rather thick cloud cover. Before we landed the flight attendants served us again. The breakfast was Dickensian—a small roll of some sort with a square of butter.
Only then did the flight attendants distribute the pieces of chocolate that Mo had predicted. I had to wonder whether Mo might have slept through the primary service.
)
Goals of the trip: The last couple of days before I left were so hectic and stressful that I never really had time to formulate what I wanted to accomplish on this trip. If I had to rank-order my priorities, the list would be similar to this:
- Make it all the way through the trip without catching Covid and return as healthy as I was when I left.
- Minimize stress, if possible.
- Make a few friends, which is sometimes difficult for me.
- Learn a little about the history.
- Document as much as possible without taking my usual copious notes.
[1] Tom and his wife Patti had joined Sue and me on the Village Italy Tour (described here) as well as our tours of Eastern Europe (documented here), France (here) and Russia (here).
[2] The fellow who sold me my Honda told me that my Pixel 2 should have been able to communicate with the car via Bluetooth, but he was unable to make it work. The phone still tried to connect, but all that it accomplished was to shut down its own audio. So, every time that I drove I needed to disable the phone's Bluetooth feature.
[3] We booked passage on the first riverboat bridge cruise ever sanctioned by the American Contract Bridge League as a regional event. It was scheduled to take place on the Danube River in March of 2020. All of the passengers would be bridge players. This event was meant to begin in Vienna, go upstream to Passau, Germany, turn around and go downstream all the way to Budapest. Then the ship would reverse course again and return to Vienna, where Sue and I intended to spend three additional nights. When this cruise was offered, it sold out in less than a month. In fact, I booked the last standard (not suite) stateroom on the ship. Because of the outbreak of Covid-19, however, the cruise never happened,as is explained in great detail here.