Anyone? Anyone?

Nothing is going on. It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything but that’s why. When “The Masked Singer” is the biggest thing you’ve got going, it’s a slow news life.

I am totally sucked into “The Masked Singer,” though. I can’t watch it when it comes out but I track it down on Hulu as soon as possible afterwards. The ironic thing is, I am one of the least culturally literate people ever. There are four judges and a host on the show, and I’ve heard of one (but not in a good way) and know who another’s father was. They make guesses and eight times out of 10 I have no idea who the guesses are, and then when someone is unmasked, I have to wait until the host announces who it is.

They’re down to the finals now, two men and two women. My sentimental favorite (clues point to Nashville) probably won’t make it another week. Another one I liked just bumped out. The guest host, Sharon Osborne (who I’ve heard of tangentially but know so little about I was surprised at the British accent) knew the person – Bret Somebody – from way back. I never heard of the guy, but I have heard of the band he apparently fronted/fronts: Poison, though I couldn’t tell you a song they did. Hair rockers from 80s or 90s is the best I could venture.  

That I’ve just written two paragraphs about a television show illustrates how bored I have been during this pandemic.

Another regular has been watching “Sunsets and Songs,” or something like that, via Facebook. One of my favorite songwriters, Paul Overstreet, and his wife got stuck in the Cayman Islands so he broadcasted a little show every night they were there, singing songs and telling stories. His wife filmed it and had the sunset in the background. I didn’t watch it live but would do the replay in the mornings. Now they’ve been repatriated back to the U.S. and I they are continuing it from their farm. It’s been a nice diversion but it’s only 40 minutes or so. Well, that’s if the internet works. Usually it doesn’t so it takes me about an hour to watch it.

Like most people who are lucky enough to still be employed, I am mostly working from home. I’ve been down to two days a week in the office but signs point to that cutting back further next week. Both April and May are holiday-heavy in Belarus; between local and federal holidays, there are seven in two months. Next week is a three-day work week: M-W-Th. When I left on Thursday, it hit me I wouldn’t in in there for solid week.

The work-from-home thing is pretty rough in many cases, though it’s nice to be able to do laundry while I am working. What I can do from home is a bit limited, but not as bad as I thought it might be. Mostly, the lax workload stems from the fact we are only focusing on the bare, bare minimum so it’s been hard to scrounge up work. The first two weeks I was fine because I finished up a huge project, but since that’s done and dusted, I have been taking online classes from our academic institution. The classes don’t directly relate to my job but might be useful down the road. If anything, they’re enlightening as to what everyone else does, so it’s not a total waste of time. It feels like it, though.

Belarus is closing in on 10k cases now and they’re escalating rapidly. Still, there’s no directives from the government to shut things down, although the vast majority of people are taking precautions.

The weather is finally looking nicer and lots of people want to go outside. Fortunately, Minsk has tons of parks and open green spaces, so walking maskless is a good option. Yesterday, three of us and my adjunct dog took a long, long walk along the river, which meanders through the city. It turned chilly twice and sprinkled, but other than that it was a really wonderful walk. Wish I could motivate myself to go alone.

When I got home, I did pretty much nothing but scroll through awkwardfamilyphotos.com and play on jigsawexplorer.com. It’s not been really exciting.

There’s been way too much screen time lately, whether it’s been online games, reading books or listening to podcasts. Even the Russian lessons I’ve been able to do involve screens – I use Mango Languages and have gotten into a lesson I found on YouTube. We have a language instructor at work but I’m just not advanced enough to be able to do lessons over the phone.

I ran out of books. A friend offered to loan me some actual paper ones but I can’t get them unless I go into the office sometime after she goes into the office, so that’s on hold. I also have about six on hold and they all say they should be ready in about two weeks. I’ve read so many books this past year – since discovering the Kindle – and they’ve been all over the place. The most recent one I read that really grabbed me was “Stranger in the Woods” by Michael Finkel. It’s about a man who lived in the Maine woods for 27 years with no human contact.

Mir, Mir, what’s on the wall?

Niasvizh Castle

For whatever reason, be they sitting in saunas, throwing back vodka or tractor-riding, there are currently fewer than 100 covid cases in Belarus. (Think I’m kidding? See the Washington Post article “No Lockdown Here: Belarus's strongman rejects coronavirus risks. He suggests saunas and vodka.” As a result, we’re not totally locked down like many seem to be. We are doing most of the buzzword stuff, like “social distancing” and using “an abundance of caution,” but we still free to roam a little, as long as we’re loaded up with hand sanitizer and wipes. (Incidentally, the Belarus hand sanitizer is a liquid, not a gel.)

Faced with another weekend of being “socially isolated,” a friend with a car suggested we dart off to a city an hour away to take a little break. At some point. The odds will no longer be in Belarus’ favor and everything is going to hit the fan but right now, we’re OK so long as we take precautions, so we got the boss’s blessing, loaded up the dog and took off for the area of Niasvizh and Mir, which are technically still in the Minsk region – and blissfully uncrowded.

Game room

After a quick stop at the McDonald’s drive through for breakfast, we hit the road and saw some countryside. Except for the train ride to Vilnius, it was my first time outside the immediate area, and Minsk’s sprawl surprised me. It’s still fairly small, but it’s a lot bigger than I first thought.

Niasvizh isn’t a big area – maybe 15k people – and, as far as I could tell, the castle and the church are the only things to see. Having arrived at 10 a.m., there really was no one there, and it was nice to see swans (and their baby ugly ducklings) swimming on the peaceful lake in front of the castle. I plunked down about $7 and spent an hour exploring the place.

The last castle-like place I’d explored had been Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, which pretty much sets the bar for ostentatiousness. It’s absolutely huge, and Niasvizh didn’t touch that, but it was still grand. It wasn’t on the Bosporus, but it had a moat and a fantastic spot to get a photo of the castle and its reflection.

My favorite rooms were the arsenal and some kind of room with dead animals. Trophies. Holy cow, the place reeked of testosterone. In the very first room, there’d been a scone with a candle in a funky cool shape. When I got to the animal trophy room, there were rows of black things in vaguely that shape. Initially, I thought that’s what I thought they were, but then I realized they were some kind of peasant. There were bearskin rugs, stuffed bears, moose heads and even some claw-like things that came off a unidentified animal. I’ve never seen so many dead things artfully displayed on a wall.

Canine Cannon

The arsenal was also pretty cool. I tried to think what hand-to-hand combat must have been like but I can’t wrap my brain around it. The U.S. and its frenemies have been “social distancing” mass killing for awhile now; the idea of going in to battle with a spear or similar is not something I can grasp. I can’t imagine a situation in which I could drive a knife into someone or beat someone with a mace.

To defend myself against claims that I’m most impressed with dead animals and weapons, I also loved the princess room and some other room that had white and gold walls and ceilings, plus  two mirrors opposite each other. It was bright and cheery.

Flying wolf skin rug

The castle dates back to the 1500s, well before central heating. As a result, there is a giant decorative furnace in every room, and those were total works of art as well. It’s really amazing how creative people could be in putting things together then. One  furnace, in a dining room, was completely tiled from floor to ceiling (and the ceilings were incredibly high) with several different kinds of tile, all totally different.

After grabbing some really good drainiki for lunch (table wiped down with disinfectant wipes first!), we headed a half an hour away to Mir to see the castle there, which also goes back to the 16^th century. We were able to explore the castle a little more than just walking through the rooms – there was a Jewish display in one of the towers. The stairs were pretty darn steep and scary, but it was worth it. (I can say that since I didn’t have to be med evac’d out.)

The two castles were similar, which makes sense because they were owned by the same family. And that meant there were more dead things there. I’d never seen a wolf skin rug before, and now I’ve seen three, including one displayed on a wall. It looked like a giant, morbid flying squirrel.

I guess that’s what people did for fun then. Now, we ogle their world.

Bel-Air-Ree-Us gets no respect

Had a long weekend and took the opportunity to visit Chernobyl, which is only an hour flight from here. Originally, I was going to go with a friend but she got sick. (No, not COVID-19.) The flights were non-refundable, as was the hotel room, so I decided to go ahead and go.

Gray blobs represent Ukrainian communities. See how
close they are to the yellow line? That's the Belarus
border. The damage crossed the line, but nothing I saw
on the tour or at the museum acknowledged it.

I’d been to Kiev before and looked forward to getting more chocolate. As you might recall, the head of the chocolate company was elected president in the last election. I am not much into politics, but holy cow, Rosen is wonderful chocolate. Beyond Chernobyl and the museum, that was my only other goal.

I didn’t take any time off for the trip, so I didn’t waste any time in Kyiv, either. Pretty much as soon as I go to my hotel, I left it again for the Chernobyl museum.

I remember the word “Chernobyl,” and know that it was a nuclear accident, but honestly, my knowledge of the subject is extremely limited. It wasn’t in my history books because, duh, it was going in my lifetime. But all we ever saw of the world, really, was from those short little newspaper articles we had to present in Coach Cone’s class. And hearing some uninterested student trying to regurgitate an AP news blurb to the class isn’t gripping.

Even since then, I haven’t attained much more knowledge of it, although I learned where Kyiv was and understand more about the Cold War. But what happened? I really don’t know.

No one else, does, either. Even after returning, I’ve talked with several Belarusians and they have mentioned that it’s still a mystery. Last night, I watched a documentary called “The Russian Woodpecker” and it spun a well-reasoned conspiracy theory, too, but in the end, no one really knows.

It was this. Over and over again. So awful

What we know is there was a nuclear accident on April 26, 1986, though the rest of the world didn’t find out until April 29, and that was thanks to Sweden, not the Soviet Union. Radioactive clouds from Chernobyl wafted that direction (and others) and the Swedes picked up on it and reported on it. The New York Times published a front-page teaser above the fold (complete with map) and had a huge story inside. Meanwhile, that same day, the Ukrainian local paper had, on the bottom left of page three, a red small box saying there’d been an accident at the nuclear plant, but no need to worry. And that was the first the accident appeared in the media. Radiation was all over at that point.

The museum in Kyiv is pretty haunting. There weren’t too many people when I went, and I got the headphones and paid extra to take photos. (Still, less than $6 overall.) I probably spent a couple hours in there.

But from the get-go, it was clear the story was from the Ukrainian side only. When you enter, there’s a staircase, and you see city signs lining both streets. The narrator said they represented the 70-something Ukrainian communities that had been wiped out.

Reactor 4 is now covered and sealed as best as possible.
For now.

Now, one of the books I read prior to going came from the Belarusian side: Essentially, 75 percent of the fallout affected Belarus. Being a smaller country made it even worse – there are lands there now that cant be used, and it’s a good portion of the country. But at no point in the museum, or in the actual Ukrainian side of the zone did anyone mention Belarus whatsoever.

Other than that, how was the play, right? But it is sad. The world mourns and sympathizes with Ukraine, but Belarus doesn’t get an acknowledgement.

The next day, a very appropriately gray one, I met my tour and we set off. It was an all-day thing and at lunch I surveyed the three minivans of people who went and realized that, other than diving, that was the first tour I’ve ever been on where the guys outnumbered the women. We had maybe 12-14 in our van (two empty seats) and I think there were only four women.

The scene is as creepy as you’d expect. The area is 30 kilometers around, and there are checkpoints as you go from safe to reasonably safe to I-warned-you not-as-safe. (No one under 18 is even allowed on the tour.)  Except for immediate looting afterwards, nothing’s been touched for 30 years, and nature has taken over. There’s broken glass everywhere, trees coming out of windows and rusted-out cars here and there.

We only went into a couple of the communities, with Pripyat being by far the biggest one, which had been about 50k residents in 1986. It’s where the Chernobyl workers and their families lived. The average age was 26.

The never-debut Ferris wheel at Pripyet.

The whole thing is utterly depressing, and it was more so because on the drive there, we watched documentaries on the event, which included footage of the city the day of and after the accident, and all looked normal. A lovely spring day and kids were frolicking and getting ready for the opening of the city’s new amusement park. They had no idea they were being poisoned.

“Haunted” is the best word I can come up with to describe the entire area, and some parts were more so than others. When the word finally came down for people to evacuate, they had two hours to gather up documents, a little money and clothes. Even after extensive looting, you could tell that people just left. There’s a kindergarten that still has schoolbooks and dolls lying around. If that’s not haunted, I don’t know what is.

When the people evacuated, they were told they’d be able to return in a couple of days, but that was over 30 years ago and no one has been allowed back. Everything’s gone.

But Belarus is forgotten. There’s a memorial – an angel made from some kind of piping – and again, all those city signs from all the Ukrainian communities that are no more, but not a word about Belarus’s plight. There’s even a map of the 30-kilometer exclusion zone with all the Ukrainian communities marked, all he way up to the yellow-printed border but nothing just over the border, even though those communities were wiped out as well.

The whole trip was sobering, but I told my would-have-been traveling companion that I would go again. The tour company, SoloEast, offers two-day tours as well. As I love ruins and stuff like that, there were a couple of points during the day that I thought I’d love to spend two days there, but there were also points where it was like, “Oh man, more dilapidated buildings. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

Tribute to children at the museum.

Maybe in another season, post COVID-19, I will go again. I deliberately didn’t cash in my Ukrainian money because I figure I’ll be back at some point.

And now I am looking forward to the next adventure, but I’m up in the air as to when it will be because of this whole virus thing.  I’m supposed to go this weekend and had planned to take off a couple days next week. I have time to burn and had planned on taking a long weekend every month or so.

At this point, I have no idea if I’ll be able to go, but in preparation, I had to get more money out, what since I didn’t change back my Ukrainian cash and all. I got a new debit card from Envision and decided to use it. I tend to juggle bank accounts, and I’d just gotten a package from Leanne that also had mail in it. After spending around 30 minutes on the phone to activate the darn thing, I thought I’d try it.

I went to a different ATM than normal and tried, but it declined my card twice. Dejected, I went home and discovered I had a missed message for two “fraud alerts.” I only have Google Voice, so if I get a phone call, it doesn’t register until I have Wifi.

Anyway, I called the fraud number and sure enough, it was from trying to use my debit card. The little voice asked me if I’d intended to use my card in – and at this point I was expecting to hear the bank name – “Bel Air Ree Us” and I had no idea what kind of store that was, but it said about $85, so I said yes. As I’d tried the card twice, I went through it again and this time, when the voice said, “Bel Air Ree Us,” I realized it meant Belarus.

Chernobyl or cash. This amazing country gets to little respect.

What a difference understanding makes

My Russian stinks. I am trying but I’m a terrible language learner and Russian is a hard language anyway.  What I need to do, people say, is watch Russian TV and videos to help learning. There’s a tutor at work and I’m working with her, plus using both Pimsleur and Mango. I also found some “learn Russian while you sleep” stuff on YouTube and have tried that. Nothing really has stuck so far. It’s a very, very slow process.

One of the options I might have for my next tour is in Kazakhstan, and I’m eyeing it because it would give me six months of Russian language studies. The position requires a certain level of language ability, and one of my hopes for this tour is to give me a head start because I think I need a two-year advance in order to get to that level. Seriously. I’m trying a lot of methods. Gosh, I even went to YouTube and pulled up an episode of “The Simpsons” in Russian, but it confused me because it seemed like it was people reading the script over the original, no real voice inflection and the same voice doing multiple characters. And by that, I mean the same voice from the same person, not the same person doing multiple voices.

Last week, I went to see “The Gentlemen,” which was showing in English. I successfully got my ticket and made my way to the theater. I had thought I selected a seat in the middle, but I wound up being close to the wall. Wall, empty seat, me, rest of row. I practiced trying to read Cyrillic during the coming attractions. I get hugely excited when I recognize a word.

But when the feature started, I didn’t recognize a word. The movie starts with a brief voiceover and then the screen opens up. As soon as I heard the voiceover, I realized there had to be two showings of “The Gentlemen” at the same time – one in Russian and one in English. The dubbed-in voices were not English.

At that point, I just decided to stay there and consider it a two-hour, $5 Russian lesson. Yes, I could have been more assertive and walked out and found the right theater, but I was locked in by the wall and decided the other people shouldn’t have to suffer with me packing up my coat and everything and tripping over them. So I stayed and tried to follow.

I’d read a little of the plot of the movie, but, watching it in Russian, it didn’t match what I’d read. I was thinking Hugh Grant had some kind of movie plot. The Toddlers – no idea. And who works on cars dressed like that? But I did catch “Balshoy Dave,” which is the translation of “Big Dave.” I was so excited when I knew words, but the whole plot – no idea. I came home and read the Wiki page (I donated to their fund-raiser, so I reference it guilt-free) and – yeah, I didn’t get that out of my two-hour Russian lesson.

On Friday, I went again to see it, this time going into the right theater and wow what a difference. It made so much more sense, although The Toddlers were still a bit baffling, as was the dress for the auto shop. But there’s no way I would have ever caught on to all the intricate plot details. It was very dialogue-heavy and understanding one word every five minutes or so didn’t do it.

Other than that, it’s been a fairly dull weekend. I’m trying to talk myself out of getting a dog. I have a massive case of puppy love going on right now for this little yellow thing that’s at a shelter, and the shelter is closing down next month. Looking at her photo, the little blonde bombshell might get up to about 40 pounds. Just having a dog is a bad idea for me right now, no matter the size. I need to keep telling myself that.

My distraction for the weekend has been buying Shelby’s mom’s TV. I’ve been having all kinds of laptop issues and in trying to rectify them, I lost the Hulu password, but it was still on my Firestick. I caught up on “The Conners” and “The Masked Singer,” the latter of which has sucked me in, not that I have a clue who the judges are, much less their guesses.

Now I’m on “Where Did You Go, Bernadette?”, which is about a family’s trip to Antarctica. It was recommended to me when I was on the cruise but I missed the showing. I’ve got the book on hold but it’s still got a wait.

I’m fine with global warming at the moment

The one thing I was worried about coming to Minsk was its weather, which is normally pretty bitter, windy and wet in the winter. And we’ve had our moments, like on Thanksgiving when I cracked my skull, but since I returned from Antarctica, it’s been balmy. Comparatively speaking, of course. It’s not a sunny Florida winter, but a 35-degree high is pretty fantastical as far as I am concerned. And today it hit 45!

Traditionally, it snows until June or so, so I’m not holding my breath but at the moment I am thoroughly enjoying it. On Saturday, I took a long walk and a run on the treadmill. It was so nice. It’s still raining here and there, like on Sunday, but by and large it’s warm and daylight out. I’m no longer walking to and from work in the dark, which is just so much nicer than November or December. (January, too, but I was cruising.)

I’m still really looking forward to summer and have started making travel plans. I’ve signed on to Chernobyl and Bratislava and am a little worried about coronavirus, but what are you going to do about it? That’s March and I have London planned for April, so I’m hoping travel is OK by then. I’m really psyched for London; I’m planning on meeting Laurie and going to a show and Stonehenge, which is a bucket list item.

Honestly, other than a cage diving, I’m not sure what all remains on my bucket list. Iguazu Falls, maybe. Route 66. But that won’t happen this summer, for sure.

Beyond the trips planned and hopefully one to see Mackenzie during her exchange program (which I hope still happens) I have nothing on the agenda. I’m dogsitting Warrior for two months in June  and July, so I’m not really going to be able to run away during those months, and at some point we’re supposed to get an ambassador and I feel like I probably won’t be able to go anywhere big about two months before to about two months after. And that’s not fun because I have six weeks banked of leave and I’d like to use it.

Discovered today that the wonderful chocolate factory has a shop close to me. As it turns out, it’s essentially across the street from my apartment building. I stopped by and got a salted caramel bar today. It’s huge and should last two days.

Just another reason to love Minsk. If it gets cold again (and I  hope it doesn’t), I’ll swing by and get another hot chocolate with ice cream.

A nice long weekend

Since Presidents’ Day is a U.S. holiday, not a Belarusian one, it was a regular workday for most of Minsk. This enabled a group of us to tour the local chocolate factory, Kommunakra. Belarusian chocolate is pretty wonderful. The company has been around for 115 years. They do tours daily but not on weekends, so we jumped on the opportunity.

It smelled wonderful! The company makes all kinds of chocolates, but most are small rectangle-shaped little treats. When I first arrived in Minsk, I had a little welcome bag with a variety of them an oh, man, they’re fantastic.

A dozen of us – 11 women and one man – felt like we’d won golden tickets. After an informative bit about the company and chocolate-making in general (palm oil bad!) we hit the floors, decked out in hair nets, flimsy felt jackets and shoe covers. Did I mention it smelled wonderful?

The factory mostly has female employees and seemed a really family-friendly place. In the talk about the company, the director said they had 120 women out on paid maternity leave at any given time. They also have a health unit and child care.

There weren’t all that many people on the floor. Everything is automated, so mostly people were making sure the machines didn’t jam and then at the end, they were taking the packages of packed chocolates away at the end of the whole cycle.

The automated processes amaze me. Somewhere, at some time, someone watched people hand-wrapping candies, for example, and said, “Man, I am going to patent a machine to do that.” And someone did. There were these single truffles with twist-tied wrappers, and you’d see the giant roll of foil get cut off as a single truffle thing hit it, then the truffle body spun around as a little metal thing held the top part of the foil in place, and voila, a twist-wrapped candy.

We started with a dozen people and finished with a dozen people, and there were no Great Glass Elevators, but we really felt like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I expected we’d get a free taste, but basically, at every stop, our tour guide handed her one of whatever was coming off the machine. The first tasty thing was a thin waffle. The final candy would be a four-layer wafer-type thing. I had no idea they were little baby waffles, but man, that sample, warm off the machine, was so good! The waffle pieces were probably 18x18, and we watched them pop out, get bathed in chocolate, then five of the 18x18 sheets – four layers thick – got smashed together, then cut into individual pieces maybe 3x1, covered in chocolate, cooled and wrapped.

I’m a total sucker for shows like “How It’s Made,” and I love factory tours. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and then we went to the café, where I had a little spinach pie and hot chocolate with ice cream. The hot chocolate being exactly that – melted chocolate, no milk. It’s fantastic. I never had it with ice cream before but what a fantastic idea. I had to get a thing of water in order to finish it.

We paid about $7 for the tour and man we got our money’s worth. During the presentation, we had tea or coffee and however many little chocolate things we wanted to eat, because there was a huge display. (Me = two) Then we sampled all through the tour and we got sent away with a gift bag with two big chocolate bars. It was a very nice way to kill two hours on a holiday.

The other good thing to do on an American holiday is knock out doctors’ appointments. I lined up two. I had a thyroid scan and then went to a specialist for a quick consultation. All is well, and even more so when I went to pay. Both visits came to less than one CO-PAY would have been in America. Unbelievable. America’s health care system is a machine that needs its plug pulled.

I tell you, I really feel like I dodged a coronavirus bullet on that cruise. Had it been a week later, I think I’d be in quarantine still. We had so many Chinese tourists and so many people were coughing and sick, I feel like even if no one really had the virus, we would have been quarantined as a precaution. I feel so sorry for all those other people – vacationers as well as crew members – who have been stuck. What a nightmare.

Even though a lot of people are not wanting to travel, I have bought a couple flight tickets in the past few weeks. I have a lot of vacation time I need to use this year so I’m hoping to take some short-haul trips.

In March, I am aiming for Bratislava and in April I have a trip to London. Hopefully in May I can visit Mackenzie but after that I’m dogsitting again so I don’t know what will happen.

Cruising and bailing out

I’m back from Antarctica! Lots of adjectives to describe it: amazing, once-in-a-lifetime, phenomenal, long. Really glad I went and also really glad it’s behind me now.

Ushuaia

The only way get to Antarctica, short of working at one of the research facilities there (I applied for a job once) is to cruise, so, even though I didn’t think I was much of a cruiser, that’s what I did.

And you know what? I am not much of a cruiser. I hated it. Well, at least the sea days, of which there were a dozen. Normally, I would guess, there are more port days, but the point was to go to Antarctica, and you can’t get there easily. It’s three days from Ushuaia, Argentina, which is basically the bottom of the civilized world.

I loved Ushuaia, and would go back again to spend more time there. It was incredibly outdoorsy and surprisingly populated. As the guide explained it, there are lots of factories there and people have come from all over Argentina to work. There was even a Hard Rock Café!

The cruise people tried. It just wasn’t for me. I like active vacations, and sitting in a chair reading for 20 hours a day isn’t for me. I read my share of books – including Gone With the Wind! – but was bored out of my mind even before we left.

That might not have happened had we left on time, but so be it. There was an issue with a fuel ship, so we spent the entire first day tied up to a dock in the little town of San Antonio, Chile. Beyond a little mall I’d explored the first day, before we were due to leave, I’d explored that mall and was done with it, so I didn’t bother getting off again. We finally set sail something like 20 hours late.

It didn’t get much better for me, but at least there was a schedule and a gym. I was up early every morning and in the gym. The fitness classes cost extra, so I didn’t do those. Everything costs extra, it seemed, or at least there was an upsell to everything. A “free facial” class led to pressure to sign up for $200 treatments and $50 skin care products. Even bingo cost extra.

Trivia didn’t, though, and that was the other “must do” for me. At first, I jumped on any team I could find and then eventually settled with one group that was pretty fun. Despite trivia happening four times a day, I mostly aimed at the afternoon one. Most of the times, my teams did pretty well and we won twice. (Yes, a frog uses its eyeballs to push food to its stomach – no one believed me but it was right.) That was, by far, my favorite on-board activity.

Spa treatments, which were outrageously priced, were No. 2, followed by watching reruns of “The Love Boat,” if you can believe that. They did not have much TV on board but every day they played a “Love Boat” episode about 4-5 times. When I got sick down the road (a lot of people did), I wound up watching it 2-3 times a day. They had that, “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “Cheers.” I only say 2-3 episodes of each, but I saw those 2-3 episodes multiple times daily. There were just huge gaps where there was nothing to do. Not for me.

There were pools, but it was too cold out to sit on the deck or contemplate getting in the pool. Way down the road, I learned there was a sauna and started on that, but I’d initially thought they either didn’t have one or there was an extra  charge for it, because the spa person who’d showed me around made a point to point out the steamroom, which was $299 for the entire cruise. I wasn’t into that, but the free sauna – once I knew about it – was great.

Antarctica itself was definitely worth it. Although since I have a crappy camera, I can’t prove it, but we saw seals, whales and penguins. Plus oh so many icebergs! And, something I didn’t expect, other ships. Not many, but over the course of two days in Antarctica, I think we saw three of them, not counting the one some scientists came on board with to tell us about their work.

“The Drake” – the Drake Passage, right around from Cape Horn, is apparently quite a horrid ride most of the time. All the cruise information I read said it’s 2-3 days of rolling waves and people puking their guts out. But we got extremely lucky. We had one day early on with rough weather, but not at The Drake. It was calm and gorgeous. Really, most of the cruising was except that one day. I noticed a lot of people wearing those seasick patches behind their ears.

I realize what I did wasn’t a typical cruise, but I’m certainly in no rush to join another. I do see the draw; it’s just not for me. However, I enjoyed a lot of the parts, including trivia, the dinner meal and the evening shows. We had a good table of people (and perhaps the loudest and most jovial) at dinner and that was great fun. So were the desserts. I got spoiled right off when they had Key Lime pie, but that never happened again and I kept the fallback of caramel sundaes, which is not a bad fallback. Every time I opened that dinner menu, though, I kept hoping for more Key Lime.

 

The cruise life really did crack me up because of Baghdad. Upon getting Baghdad as an assignment, people said it was like a cruise ship that never docks. Now, after actually going on a cruise ship that rarely docked (for ports in 15 days), I really get the comparison.

There is food everywhere, right along with signs to wash your hands, and there is a full schedule of stuff to do. Both have captive audiences, but is way more diverse in many ways. Beyond more people from different places, they also have more fitness classes in Baghdad. I guess if I had a job (or anything else) I could have done for 8-9 hours a day I wouldn’t have been so bored but man I sure was.

The shows were pretty good, though. I did the 9:30 p.m. one every night since our dinner was 7:30 p.m. There was a juggler, a magic guy, a couple of ship-produced shows, plus some outside entertainers. My two favorites were Ric Steele, a country music writer/singer, and Carlos Somebody, who had an amazing voice and huge range. He opened his second show with “Unchained Medley” in Spanish and  closed it with an Italian opera, and this was a guy who’d done “Billie Jean” in his first show.

During that performance, his microphone cut out a couple of times. We could tell it was while some announcement was going on, but Carlos continued with the song, thanking the captain at the end of the song for “being part of the entertainment.” At that moment, his mic cut out again and the captain came on, saying something about it being contained or something like that.

Turned out, one of the engines had caught fire, and they came over with an announcement that the crew needed to reports to their drill stations. With that, the seven-piece band got up and walked off the stage – they had to report.

Fortunately, nothing bad happened with the fire. It would have been the absolute worst timing, because we were just headed out of Antarctica – 800 miles from the nearest outpost, which would have taken two days to get to.

That next port was Stanley, in the Falkland Islands. Sadly, four cruisers were in a car accident on their way to see penguins and they weren’t able to get back on the boat and had to stay in the hospital there. Also there, one of the crew members had to get off the boat and have surgery, which we later found out had happened in Santiago. I’ve no idea what the hospital facilities are like in the Falkland Islands, but I can’t imagine being that poor crew member, who had to have some emergency surgery (our guess: appendix) and wound up having to fly from Stanley to Santiago. But the report back was that he or she was doing good.

I didn’t do a tour in Stanley and just wandered around a bit. In Montevideo, I did a regular city tour and enjoyed that, and once in Buenos Aires – cruise end – I went to a ranch one day and did a city tour the next. I’d also arrived early and spent three days in Valparaiso, Chile.

It was a long vacation – initially intended to be taken from Baghdad, not Minsk – and I had been planning it for a long time. Now it’s over and I really don’t know what’s next, although for now, long-haul flights are off the table. I had two full travel days on the way there and one the way back, and I was under the weather for both segments.

I’m really glad to be home, even though I can’t wrap my brain around the fact I have to go to work tomorrow. I’m sick, let-lagged and exhausted and planned on taking it easy today. I took melatonin last night and didn’t wake up until about 11 a.m., at which point I tossed clothes into the washer. When I made it as far as the kitchen, though, everything went South: the sink was filled with dirty water, the counter was covered in it and dirt, and there was standing water in my utensil drawers and on the floor, including water that had soaked one of my Turkish rugs.

It wasn’t the washer; apparently it was someone else’s dishwasher hitting a clog and backing up into my kitchen. Not fun, but I called the person to help and the right people came over so I think it’s fixed now. I just had to wash every utensil I own and sop up the floor. I used the giant bucket to bail out the sink (which was still filling up with water) and it took six trips with the bucket to the toilet to get it under control. When the guy texted me to back if thee kitchen was flooded, I wasn’t even sure how to answer because it had been flooded but by that time I’d cleaned 80 percent of it up.

Not how I hoped to be spending my last day before going back to work, but it’s a good reminder to not count on making definite plans. I didn’t have anything I really needed to do today, but bailing out a sink with a cup, a saucepan and a bucket certainly wasn’t in my realm of possibilities of how to spend a Sunday.