After navigating two European airports including the above-mentioned Chas. De G. in Paris, on our way to and from the 330-foot-long, skinny cruise ship we first found tied up at the dock in Basel, Switzerland, Don and I have come home. We’ve gained at least another belt notch, are jet-lagged/tired, and smarter than when we left.

We also had a wonderful time, both because of – and in spite of – the careful engineering of the eight-day cruise down the Rhine River.

Most any trip out of Maine begins with a two- to four-hour ride to the airport, be it Bangor, Portland, or Boston. We waited in the rain for the 8:15 a.m. Concord bus that you can flag down in front of the Post Office. Lincolnville is the only official flag stop on Concord’s schedule these days. Don remembers his mother stepping outside her house on Atlantic Highway and waving them down when she wanted to go somewhere.

We had plenty of time to get to our flight, so we weren’t too concerned when our bus driver got lost in Brunswick – twice. Every good trip needs a glitch or two, right?

Unfortunately, the next one was a doozy when I stood up in the Paris terminal to catch our hop to Basel and left my phone on the seat. By the time I realized what I’d done, the doors of our plane were closed, and I was at the mercy of the ground crew for any chance of seeing it again.

So far, no phone.

We promised each other not to mention it again, not to let this ruin the trip, and except that I told every single person we met all week that I’d lost my phone, we stuck to that plan.

Next, I have to tell you about the cruise company: Viking, of course, dominating our TV ads with the founder’s soothing and reassuring voice, just the right lovely European accent we can’t quite place.

To say that these people attend to every detail is a huge understatement. 190 passengers are cared for by a crew of 52. They run the boat – steer it down the river, tie it up at night, clean the rooms, cook the food, pour the drinks, organize the daily tours. Keep track of the 190 of us.

And say “good morning, Madam” “have a nice day” “good evening, Sir” every  single  time you encounter them. They smile, accommodate your every wish and are never ever sullen or surly – to Sir or Madam anyway. They live on the ship for the duration of each cruise, and I hope, during their hours off, that they vent vehemently.

In idle moments we marveled at this well-oiled machine, how they manage to keep track of us as we hop on and off the boat at each stop. The first day was rocky since we hadn’t paid enough attention to the daily on board announcement: use your room key to check on and off the boat, don’t forget your listening device and ear phones (make sure you charge it every night), follow the right red lollipop (see photo) so you stay with the guide you’ve been assigned to. Etc.

Like ducklings following Mama Duck we trailed down cobbly European streets, one eye on the cyclists. “They’re not trying to kill you” one guide told us, “They just don’t care if they do.”

For a veteran tour traveler this is old stuff, but we weren’t, and it took a couple of days to get us whipped into shape. It felt a lot like being a high school freshman when you couldn’t find your home room. And suffered the social anxiety of sitting alone in the cafeteria. More about that later.

In spite of earlier reports that the Rhine was too low for the boats to go, by now the water is at the level for river traffic to move. Think about it. Too low and the boats won’t float, too high and they won’t fit under the bridges. In a couple of cases the captain lowered the wheelhouse (it’s retractable) so we’d fit under a bridge.

The boat sailed at night, docking at a new town while we slept. The curious (or insomniacs) were awake to witness our passage through any of the ten locks that dot the Rhine on its way to the North Sea. Sometimes we’d be two abreast in a lock with another ship – a barge or a cruise ship – in the tight confines of the lock. As the water poured out and our ship fell lower and lower, the cement wall rose high above us.

We’d crawl out of bed, open the sliding doors to our very narrow balcony and reach out to touch the slimy concrete wall still wet from the Rhine. One time a ladder appeared on the wall right in front of us, tempting us to make a break from the ship, thereby throwing our cruise director into a panic the next morning. Picture an elderly couple in their jammies, darting away from the river in the dark of night. Cooler heads prevailed, and we went back to bed.

The Rhine, we learned, is a very busy water highway with nearly constant traffic going in both directions. I posted a video. These were mainly working boats – long, narrow barges carrying who knows what up and down the river. Coal might be piled in shiny heaps the length of it, new cars one time, containers stacked just high enough to fit under the bridges, perhaps grain or other dry goods.

Many of these barges carried a passenger vehicle parked by the wheelhouse, so crew members could get off the ship when docked. Our captain, who’d commanded a river barge in the past, told us that sometimes a captain’s family came along. You might see a swing set on the deck for a child to play.

The way the river works, how these odd looking ships navigate it, and how the crew manages their cargo – in our case, passengers –  are only one aspect of being on a cruise. It’s also a very social thing.

Some 190 people, mostly strangers to each other, arrive in a place probably most of us had never heard of (Basel, Switzerland) on a Tuesday, likely exhausted from the experience of spending hours sitting in a cramped airplane seat. Six hours if you’re arriving from the East Coast, who knows how many if you started In California.

Do I need to mention how brutal air travel is these days? Oh, it’s not steerage, but think of the battery of lines to check your luggage, get through TSA, worry about being late, finding the right gate, hauling around heavy backpacks, clutching your boarding pass (and not leaving your phone somewhere) all performed in a place you’ve never been before, following rules you know nothing about.

Try hard, as the airlines say they do, to “give you a pleasant travel experience” the hellish maze of a 21st century airport is exhausting.

So, exhausted yes, but anticipating that things will improve. And they do, from the awkward first meal when solitary couples sit alone at a table for six watching the lucky ones who traveled in a pack of four or more whooping it up; one table of twelve, speaking Mandarin among themselves, settled right in on day one.

It took a couple of mealtimes, preceded by drinks in the lounge (did I mention that alcohol is, shall we say, a highlight of the “cruise experience”?) for people to begin mingling, to sit down with strangers, to dance on the bar.

But by the end of the trip, and many cordial meals with various other passengers, we’d exchanged contacts with Scott and Joan, along with a promise to visit Maine someday.  We were well satisfied to leave knowing we’d made two new friends.

I’m not going to tell you what we saw – you can watch the ads, read the brochures, look at websites. The Rhine is fascinating. I suspect most of the world is, if you get up the gumption (and cash) to leave our quiet little corner.

But here are the two highlights I’ve carried away.

Each stop, each new town brought us a glimpse into Germany – its history especially, but also the sense of what life is like there now. In Speyer, population 50,000, our guide was a passionate local historian, telling us stories her grandmother told her. She led us by the Judenstrasse, historically the Jewish quarter where frequently – heartbreakingly – the Jews were driven out, only to be re-welcomed a century or two later. Welcomed back because of their financial prowess; Christians weren’t supposed to handle money.

“We guides here in Speyer,” she said, “bring our own children to these sites to teach them their history, to impress on them that they not forget.”

Then she pointed out the way to the mikvah, the pool of “living water” where devout Jews practiced ritual bathing. Especially the women who “walked naked into the still pool, eyes and mouths open” to purify themselves after menstruation and childbirth. Men too would bathe there before Sabbath or after touching a corpse. Both sexes would bathe after a contagious disease.

We wandered off with our group to look at the shops, but near the end headed back to the little museum that opens onto the Judenstrasse. The entrance to the mikvah is in the museum’s courtyard; no one else was there as we stepped onto the rough rock stairs that wound down 10 meters into the earth, the only light was what came in from the entrance.

This steep passageway, built in 1128, was re-discovered in the 20th century, where it had been filled with earth by the people of Speyer who destroyed the nearby synagogue and drove out the Jews by the 14th century.

We picked our way down slowly, past the alcove with stone benches where the devout would leave their clothes, and then into the little room at the bottom, the pool of perfectly still ground water, a single feather floating on the surface. 

Just us: deep underground with that story.

The other memorable moment for me came from Dirk, another guide and a professor of Medieval history from Cologne. He remembered growing up in the 60s in that city, playing, as all the kids did, amongst the rubble left by World War II.

The only building that remained standing in the city center was the cathedral. Though it took some 14 bombs, the building survived, attributable to its Gothic arches. Photos show great holes in the roof, but the roof basically held as did the rest of the building.

Even the stained-glass windows are original, Dirk told us. How could they have survived? Because, he said, the German officials had them removed in the 1930s before the war.

“They knew exactly what was coming, and nowhere was there a person willing to say STOP! This is not a good idea.”

Actually, no one danced on the bar.

And my phone was thankfully insured and face ID protected. A new one is winging its way to my house as I write.

Veterans Day

This was the day we learned about the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month” when the “War to End All Wars” finally ended in 1918. We didn’t get the day off from school, but instead stood at that moment to listen to the church bells in our town tolling eleven times. Some years later my high school history teacher,  a WWI veteran, determined to get our attention, talked about the MUD, the mud up to their hips. I can still hear his gravelly voice, though I’ve forgotten his name. Out on the streets people were giving out little fabric poppies, blood red with a black bead in the center. The poppies of Flanders Field in France; people put them in their buttonhole.

School and the Town Office will be closed Friday; the American Legion is holding its annual Veterans Day program at Post 30, 91 Pearl Street, 2 p.m. This is always a moving program with the Lincolnville Town Band playing along with poems and songs (Will Brown singing Christmas in the Trenches) and tributes to our veterans. Bring the kids, bring grandma and grandpa. See you there.

Mamma Mia!

Right on schedule, just at a time when we all need some cheering up, CHRHS comes out with their fall musical, Mamma Mia! And this year’s lead is a Lincolnville girl, sophomore Rosie Fishman. I always love seeing our former LCS students finding their way in the big high school: cast members include Rosie, Charlotte Nelson, Trey Freeman, Chloe Day-Lynch, Maren Kinney, Tatum Freeman, Addy Harbaugh, Cooper McBride, Kathryn McNeil, Freya Hurlburt, Hailey Levangie, and Maggie O’Brien. With three more performances next week-end – Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. – there’s still time to get tickets 

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mamma-mia-tickets-390130660307

Election Day

Thankfully we don’t live in a place where we have to dread our elections. In fact Election Day in Lincolnville tends to be as much about the Bake Sale as any angst over voting irregularities. As a long-time vote counter (now retired!) the process was as meticulous and fair and careful as possible with town administrator, Dave Kinney and town registrar, Karen Secotte following every procedure down to the letter.

So, the Bake Sale. For many years now United Christian Church has filled the long tables in Lynx Gym with home-baked goodies of all kinds, sweet and savory. Started by Church Ladies Extraordinaire, – Peg Miller and Ruth Felton – (add in as many others as you like!) the sale was intended to pay for the winter’s fuel oil to heat the church. It still is. Betty Heald and Robin Brawn are in charge this year, and they’ve had many of us baking all week-end. As Don Heald said in church yesterday, his wife is “baking up a storm.” See you there tomorrow; polls are open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Oh, and don’t forget to vote first

Bernard Young

Bernard Young, Lincolnville’s long-time road commissioner, represented the kind of community member that holds a small town like ours together. Someone who knew it inside out, part of a large family, and whose siblings and offspring are/were just as dedicated. The Young name peppers the historic record. Rest in peace Bernard, and condolences to all who loved him.