Oh my God...this took ages

[prosodic]

The St. Petersburg photos are finally up. It took 2 hours to upload them all into the photo album. I wrote most of the trip report last night, so while the photos were uploading, I was downstairs doing cardio.

http://itinerantwriter.blogspot.com/2007/08/baltic-cruise-part-3-st-petersburg.html

Lance and I are kind of working on a collaborative piece entitled "Cruise Etiquette for Dumbasses" or something to that effect. It will be full of snark. But it's our way of blowing off steam about all the things that frustrated us on the cruise.

I'll give you a couple examples right now...

In Helsinki, our tour guide was telling us about the immigrant population. Someone asked, "Do you have any Muslims in Finland?" She replied that there was only a tiny population.

Spontaneous applause broke out on the bus.

WHAT. THE. HELL?

Lance and I were looking at each other with our jaws on the floor. It's bad enough if people have prejudices, but to just flaunt them openly like that...no wonder why the rest of the world thinks badly of Americans. I can only imagine what our tour guide was thinking. Let's not even mention that there were Muslims on the cruise. What if some of them had been on that bus?

(There was also a GLBT group on the cruise...I think there was a gay commitment ceremony in the chapel during our first full day on the ship. I'm completely surprised that I didn't hear anyone say anything about that...but they were all pretty discreet anyway.)

Okay...another example of the mind-blowingly stupid:

When we were in Stockholm touring the Royal Palace, an older lady (probably in her 70's) turned to me and said, "I don't like this tour guide...she doesn't think in English."

Uhm...perhaps that's because SHE'S SWEDISH! She spoke flawless English...better than most native speakers. She also spoke fluent Russian. I'm sure this lady has barely mastered one language. So again...WHAT. THE. HELL?

Anyway, I haven't actually written anything down yet, but we've been brainstorming ideas back and forth for days. I may not put thoughts into MS Word until I finish the rest of my trip reports and photos.

Comments

[prosodic.livejournal.com]

Well, as someone who practically lives in the Netherlands, I can assure you that you are totally safe. You are safer there, or anywhere else in Europe for that matter, than you are in the United States. People should be more concerned for your safety at home.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Particularly when I used to spend a lot of time in D.C. ...

[prosodic.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah...I was only there briefly once, but the areas we saw were not good areas.

Maybe Americans are just so paranoid about traveling abroad because of our own problems with crime, but traveling here is probably safer than anywhere else in the world. I think pickpockets are probably the worst of your concerns, and as long as you're vigilant about that, it's not a problem.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I think it was independent Europe-travel guru Rick Steves who said once that the nice thing about crime in Europe was that usually once a crook had your stuff/money, he was done with you--as opposed to the U.S., where he might stick around awhile to beat you up or murder you.

[prosodic.livejournal.com]

I'm no fan of Rick Steves, but the man speaks sense.