Closing Thoughts

If you’ve been reading my blog as we traveled you will understand that we had a great time.  There were some real disappointments with the Rotterdam that I wanted to vent about a bit.  This is the first time I’ve written a closing thoughts note.

 

Closing Thoughts

 

That’s about the last of the travel related stuff.  It’s time for some reflections on the trip. 

 

First of all, the QM2 is still the QM2.  The classiest way to get to and from Europe.  The food is great, the internet works (more on that later), the ship is very stable in bad weather and the staff is warm, competent and courteous. 

 

A more mixed bag is sadly the case with HAL’s ms Rotterdam.  The ship is fine, it went into a long dry-dock just after we got off but it was still in great condition.  The staff is excellent!  Unfortunately the Head Office seems to be letting the onboard employees down.  I say that for several reasons.

 

First, and by far the most important, is the internet onboard.  They had MTN, the same provider as the QM2.  I’ve been using shipboard internet for over 10 years and the service on the Rotterdam is the worst I’ve ever seen.  They gave up MTN for a new ISP and one of three things has to be true:  1. They went cheap on the contract and consequently are getting rotten service.  2. They are not getting the service they contracted for.  Or 3. If they didn’t go cheap and are getting the service they contracted for, whoever negotiated the contract did a terrible job.

 

The worst part of it is that the onboard personnel are helpless to do anything about it.  The service is what it is and all they can do is make excuses for it.  Apparently HAL and Seaborne went together on this deal and the head network guy is a Seaborne employee with absolutely awful English skills.  When the local people couldn’t answer my questions they emailed him and the email he sent in response is a joke.  I’m giving him a break by saying that the problem with the email was his English skills because if I don’t look at it that way he was just plain lying. 

 

Every provider I have ever had on board a ship has given me an SMTP so I could use my Outlook App to access my Charter email account.  MTN on the QM2 both on the crossing before the HAL cruise and after the HAL cruise gave me an SMTP and my Outlook App worked flawlessly.  When HAL ships had MTN they did the same thing.  This is in complete opposition to the HAL/Seaborne Internet Manager’s assertion that providing me with an SMTP for his system would be a large security risk.  Since I’ve been home I have done some research on this matter and can find no instance where giving a user the ISP’s SMTP has proved to be any problem for the service.  MTN has been doing this for years and they have not experienced any problems because of it.  This reinforces my position that the manager was either lying to me or failed to communicate his ideas to me because of his poor English skills. 

 

To add insult to injury my backup email method, and old AOL account would not work on the HAL system either.  I’m pretty sure that was because the network ‘timeout’ was so short that an old ISP like AOL did not connect quickly enough and the HAL system shut the connection down.  Again, with MTN on the QM2 my AOL account worked all the time without any problem.  The HAL internet people tried to tell me that the fault was with my AOL program and that I should update it or download a more current version.  Yeah, that would have been a moneymaker for the HAL ISP and HAL.  As slow as onboard internet service is it would have cost me about $100 to download a new AOL program.  I’d like to hear HAL’s explanation of why AOL worked flawlessly on MTN and would rarely work on the HAL system.  Consequently for weeks at a time I would not be able to use the Rotterdam’s internet to send email. 

 

This is just the beginning of the problems with the new HAL ISP.  The system tells you that you have connected to the internet when in fact you have not.  The result is that you try to look at web pages or send email and nothing happens.  Of course, because things are usually slow on shipboard internet you don’t realize you have no connection until you have wasted many expensive internet minutes.  Here’s the bottom line.  I usually buy a 1,000 minute internet package when I take longer cruises and I usually have about 150-200 minutes left over to use on the last few days of the trip.  This time I used up the 1,100 initial minutes and purchased another 500 minutes and used most of that during the cruise.  Looking back over the usage during the cruise it appears that about one third of my minutes were used trying to use the system when in fact it was down or trying to connect to AOL to send email. 

 

The short version of the HAL internet summary is that THE CURRENT SYSTEM IS UNACCEPTABLE and they should either demand that the current ISP deliver the service they are paying for or return to MTN.  In any case, the contract with the current ISP should be evaluated by an impartial third party to see if the promises match the performance.  If they do then some corrective action should be taken with regard to the negotiation and signing of the contract.  If they don’t the contract should be seen a breached and a new contract with MTN should be signed immediately.  If their intention is to provide only internet lite to grandmas with tablets that want to send short emails to the grandchildren their promotional materials should reflect that.  On longer cruises I use the internet to publish this blog, get and pay my bills and communicate with vendors and others.  This is really hard when the system works the way it did on the Rotterdam.  Apparently HAL is familiar with this issue as on last year’s World Cruise they refunded everyone ½ of the price for their internet service.  I don’t think the service has improved any but they’ve got their excuses prepared now and the bottom line is that the problem is with the system but their excuses blame the user.  Unfortunately, if you actually understand how networks, the Internet and ISPs function you can ask questions for which they do not have a canned excuse and the explanations you get to those inquiries either make no sense whatsoever or seem to be stabs in the dark that sound good but actually mean nothing.

 

I can only hope that the new lousy ISP does not spread to the rest of Carnival’s holdings.  If anyone at Cunard is listening, DO NOT ALLOW THEM TO TALK YOU INTO CHANGING ISPS.  The one you have is the best.

 

I said I had several reasons to be disappointed in the ms Rotterdam.  Since I went on so long about the internet I’ll keep them short.  Whoever is managing the onboard supply inventories is not doing a good job.  Every HAL ship, any ship for that matter, has always had decaf tea.  We had it for a few weeks and then after that none.  For some reason during the cruise they quit brewing decaf coffee and instead brought it in from somewhere and served it from large coffee urns.  It tasted terrible.  I think it was filtered through dirty socks from the laundry.  Just smelling it made me a little nauseated.  So your choice of decaf drinks with no calories was water.  They ran out of caffeine free Diet Coke but finally got some Diet Sprite. 

 

In sum, the ship’s workers were first class as usual, the managers were a different story.  Some were excellent but others need some remedial training.

 

I’m not telling you anything I have not told HAL directly.  They now send you an email with a link to an evaluation.  They heard about most of this then.  For the first time in about 12 years we are back from a cruise and have not booked one for the future.  Part of that can be attributed to a bit of travel burnout but at least some of it is due to our lack of confidence in HAL to deliver the product that has been their standard in the past.

 

All this aside, we did enjoy the cruise.  Visited many unusual ports, saw some fantastic things and met some wonderful people.  You can relax now, no more surprise travel emails.

 

Last Leg of the Trip

9423 Breakfast at the Bethlehem Diner.  Ham & cheese omelet, hash browns and wheat toast.  But the high-light

that brings me here every time is the brown slab on the small plate, scrapple.  It’s not as good as my grandmother’s but it’s still great.  Diana can’t stand it and I have to admit she’s in the majority of non-PA Dutchmen.  I love it.

9425 D and Jean with Fred’s 1963 Corvair Monza Spyder. 

9428 Fred and I in the Corvair.  When Fred’s beard is longer he could pass for Abe Lincoln.  We spent a lot of time together when I was a kid.

 

May 12 – Emmaus, PA.  Today we are going to the Bethlehem Diner so I can get an order of scrapple.  I don’t know many people who like it but I love it.  It’s all the parts of a pig that they couldn’t figure out what to do with, mixed with about 50% corn meal, spiced and formed into a loaf.  You slice off a ½ to 2/3 of an inch slab and fry it on a very hot grill or pan until it’s crisp on the outside.  It’s eaten by the PA Dutch as a breakfast meat, sometimes with Karo syrup and some people use ketchup.  I eat it plain.  The secret to scrapple is the spicing.  My grandmother’s was really good.  Most of the commercially available scrapple is too bland but it’s still got the basic flavor.  D hates it.  I guess it’s something you had to grow up with it to like it.  Of course she doesn’t like Shoo Fly Pie either.  What’s up with that?

 

After that we went to see my Cousin Freddy and his wife Jean.  Freddy lived on the farm and I spent a lot of time down there as it was a short walk from my house.  He’s been a motorcycle rider since 1960 and he’s owned all sorts of them since.  His first one was ordered from Sears & Roebuck.  He didn’t have that long.  He replaced it with a Honda Dream Machine.  I think it was a C70 but I’m not sure.  The most recognizable feature of it was the squared off front fender.  Very unique.  His next bike was a Triumph Bonneville.  Triumph is a British company but they named the bike Bonneville after the Bonneville Salt Flats where the bike set the speed record for production motorcycles.  After that I was in the Air Force and lost track of his progression through the world of biking. 

 

I was surprised to find out that at the age of 74 he gave up biking and bought a 1963 Corvair Monza Spyder.  It’s a really nice car, very clean and classic car show ready.  It’s white with red interior, just like the Chevy Impala Super Sport he had in the ‘60s.  I like the car a lot.  That fraud Ralph Nader wrote Unsafe At Any Speed proposing that the Corvair was badly designed and very likely to be involved in accidents.  A 1972 study undertaken by Texas A & M showed that the book was entirely false and that the Corvair was no more likely than its contemporaries to be involved in a crash.  The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also did a study and came to the same conclusions as A & M.  So Ralph Nader’s fame as a “consumer advocate” is based on a lie and yet there he was pontificating in his typically superior attitude for years as an expert.  Expert idiot that is. 

 

We had dinner this evening with my cousin Darrell, his wife Connie and his dad my Uncle Bob.  He’s 90 and still working part time at a local grocery store.  He and my Aunt Irma just keep chugging along.

 

May 13-15 – Driving Home.  Today we are loading up the Ford Taurus and heading for home.  Note about the Taurus.  It drives very well, tracks nicely, not bothered by cross winds, fairly quiet, fair gas mileage (about 27mpg on average.  I’ve got a lot of weight in the car, it would probably be better if it was just the two of us.), good seats, very comfortable.  All in all, a very nice car.

 

On the way south we detoured to have lunch with a friend of mine from the early 60s.  Ralph and I spent a lot of time together at church activities and Sunday afternoons.  Last time we were together had to be in 1965 just before I went into the Air Force.  Ouch, that’s 50 years.  We had a nice lunch and reminisced about the old days and caught up on what we’re up to now.  Hope it’s not another 50 years till we can get together again.

 

We had an uneventful 3-day drive home.

 

Slow but I've got to finish this. PA

Another late entry.  I just thought I’d surprise everyone.

 

9410 Some of the old German Tombstones in the Jerusalem Lutheran Church cemetery.

9411 This old German Tombstone has always been one of my favorites. 

9417 Blast Furnace Row in the old Bethlehem Plant.  I could see these from my bedroom window about 10 miles away atop Gauff’s Hill.  When they fired them it was a great show of flame and sparks.

9422 The Orange Car building, Allentown, PA.  My mom’s family got their Christmas oranges here.  They came in a boxcar straight from Florida.

 

May 11 – Emmaus, PA.  Are you noticing that my area of PA has a lot of Biblical names for their cities?  The area was mainly settled by Protestants who were driven out of their homes in Europe during the religious wars.  My ancestors were driven from Bavaria during the 30-Years War (1618-1648).  They eventually wound up in the Netherlands although records regarding this migration are sketchy.  The Reformation had taken so well in the northern areas of what is now The Netherlands that initially they welcomed the homeless Protestants.  But as their numbers swelled the Dutch became a little worried about the number of immigrants.  (Apparently they are smarter than we are.)  Just in time a solution appeared.  After William Penn was given The Provence of Pennsylvania (Commonly known as the Pennsylvania Colony) because the Royal Family couldn’t repay a debt owed to Penn’s father.  Penn offered farm land in Pennsylvania to those who would immigrate shortly after its founding in 1681.  The German people who settled much of eastern Pennsylvania were very strong Protestants of different denominations, mainly Lutheran and Reformed.  But others came as well, Hussites from Moravia (Known as Moravians here in the US) and Huguenots from France (not in large numbers).  The East Jerusalem Lutheran/Reformed Church was founded in 1683 and a member of my family tree is on the founding documents.  The earliest tombstones in the church’s cemetery are all in German.  For the last time, the Pennsylvania Dutch are mostly Germans.  The British just couldn’t say Deutsch.  Very few of them are from the Netherlands.  I don’t know of any.  There are some Swedes and other Anabaptists, like the Mennonites.  I’ve got to tell you that few things are more complicated that the religious belief systems of the Reformation Period.  Everyone had their own slant, Calvinists, Quakers, Baptists, Anabaptists, Lutherans, Reformed, it was a real free-for-all.

 

We stopped by the old church, my Mom is buried there.  Someone has been revising history at the church.  It is no longer the East Jerusalem Lutheran/Reformed Church.  It’s now named the New Jerusalem Evangelical Lutheran Church and all the dates have been revised.  I guess it no longer has Reformed services.  When I was a kid they alternated services between Lutheran and Reformed.  The same minister led both services.  Granted, I was too young at the time to notice the liturgical distinctives.  All I remember is that on Lutheran Sundays the minister wore robes and on Reformed Sundays he was in a suit.  I always knew that building that existed in my youth dated from the mid-1800s because the building from the mid-1700s had burned down.  It had been a wooden building, the new one is stone and masonry.  It was renovated in 1884 and changes have been made since to accommodate disabled persons.

 

It appears that the dates have changed to emphasize the building as the date for founding the Congregation is the date the building was erected.  Actually, according to my family history the congregation met in farm houses long before the building was built and the new sign does not account for any existence prior to the building.  This is very unlikely as clearing land, building homes, barns and other activities to get the farms going probably took precedence over building a church.  To this day, many of the groups under the PA Dutch umbrella still meet in homes just as they did in the early days of the Jerusalem Church.

 

Today we went to the Sands Casino and Outlet Shops Complex in Bethlehem.  Actually, we drove down to the former site of the Bethlehem Plant of Bethlehem Steel.  Some of the old buildings remain as well as three of the blast furnaces.  The Bethlehem Plant was the specialty fabricator for the company.  They produced some regular steel beams and large rolls of hardened steel but when anything special or one-of-a-kind was needed, they made it.  An example would be that they made the 16-inch gun barrels for the USS Missouri and other WWII battleships.  My grandfather on my dad’s side worked there most of his life as a rolling engineer, a very hot job for sure. 

 

On part of the plant site that was demolished the Sands Corp has built a hotel, casino and outlet store complex.  After taking some pictures of the old furnaces of the steel mill we parked in the back lot and walked in to the outlet mall through the hotel.  The entrance to the casino is on the second floor of the mall so the women have to walk past all these shops to get in.  The shops were fairly busy but not crowded.  D actually bought a pair of shoes and a blouse.  The prices were certainly good.  I looked around the Bass Shoes Outlet and they had some $125 boat shoes on sale for $40.  Of course they were last year’s styles and colors but most men are not fashionista enough to notice such things.  I didn’t buy any because I’m very happy with my current pair of Dunlaps. 

 

We decided to eat lunch in the food court just outside the casino.  I was very surprised to find that most of the gamblers were Chinese.  Of course, it’s the middle of the week and the middle of the day so most people are working but these Chinese did not appear to be locals.  They looked very much like either residents of China, Taiwan or Hong Kong or very recent immigrants.  Their manners and style of dress looked very mainland China.  A fair mix of Hispanics and Blacks made up most of the rest of the crowd.  I saw about 7 Caucasian men in the crowd coming and going through the casino entrance.  I think we’re underrepresented

 

I decided to drive through Bethlehem and Allentown on the way to Darrell and Connie’s house in Emmaus, sort of a nostalgic tour to see what remains of the old landmarks.  On the way we encountered one that I thought would have been demolished long ago, the Allentown Orange Car.  When I was a kid we did not routinely have oranges or bananas.  They were considered to be exotic and were only purchased around Christmas when they would be stocking stuffers.  I think that might have been a pervasive tradition in the community as oranges would be available in bulk at the Orange Car.  I could never figure out why it was called a ‘car’ as the building is actually a shed like structure but it was painted orange with green trim.  It was in the Allentown railroad yard right on a rail spur.  At Christmas time freight cars (maybe the source of the building’s name) filled with large bags of navel oranges would be on the spur and the sales were limited to full bags.  Each bag was about 4 feet long and 18 inches in diameter so they held a lot of oranges.  The building’s orange and green paints were faint reminiscences of original vivid colors but the building is still standing.  The surrounding rail yard is long gone.  There’s no sign that tracks were ever there.  I’m sure I haven’t seen the building for at least 50 years.  It was fun to see it still standing.

 

We spent the evening with Darrell’s son and his family.  Matt and Anna’s three kids are a great source of entertainment.  They’re funny, well-spoken and extremely well behaved.  The two year old seems much older in every way but size.