Steven Harper's Blog, page 3

Retirement Cruise: Gaydar and New Friends

When Darwin and I attended one of the shows on the cruise, I noticed seated in the same row as us was a guy with dark hair and Clark Kent glasses. He was sitting alone. He also set off my gaydar. It was nothing in particular, just that form of gay telepathy that said, "He's gay, too!"

Just as the show was beginning, another man, taller and lean, sat down next to him. Gaydar confirmed! (In my experience, straight men don't travel on cruises with their straight male friends. I don't know why this is. Women go on cruises with their galpals, but straight guys generally don't. They do camping trips instead. If you see two men traveling together on a cruise, it's a decent shot they're gay.) 

After the show ended, I tried to snag them to say hello, but couldn't pull it off without sprinting after them and thereby looking creepy. Ah well. 

A bit later, though, Darwin and I were taking a walk around the promenade when we ran into the two guys going in the opposite direction. Hmmm. I usually have a hard time starting conversations with total strangers, but I didn't want to let this chance pass by. So I stopped them with a, "Hey, there! Are you two together?"

A little startled and mystified, they halted and acknowledge that they were.

I gestured at Darwin. "So are we."

Conversation unlocked!

The four of us started talking and we learned their names were George (the guy with glasses) and Lorne. It was one of those really cool moments when you meet someone and become fast friends. It turned out that George:

--retired from teaching two years ago
--writes (children's) books 
--has been with Lorne for about twelve years

The more we talked, the more George and I turned out to be the same. Lorne, meanwhile, shared a lot of similarities with Darwin. It was surreal.

But it got better.

George and Lorne seemed a little familiar to me, but I couldn't place why. And then we figured it out. George and Lorne were on the first cruise Darwin and I went on! I met them at an LGBT meet-up on the ship. We talked a few times but didn't really hang out. Now we were on the same ship again. This was feeling more and more like fate.

Anyway, the four of us became cruise friends. We hung out on board, watching shows and having dinner and walking the promenade. We talked about history and linguistics and LGBT issues and government and politics and writing and retirement and being in a same-sex marriage. It was really nice to make this kind of connection. As you know, Bob, the older you get, the harder it is to make new friends, so this was a wonderful surprise.

The sucky thing is that George and Lorne live in Canada in a town that's many, many hours of driving away from us, so visiting our wonderful new friends is impractical. However, they love to do cruises, and we've already shared two trips, so maybe we can do another. At least we can stay in contact through social media.

Here's to cruise friends!




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Retirement Cruise: A Bit of Barcelona and Customs

sTuesday night we packed everything we could, and Wednesday morning the ship arrived in Barcelona. We finished packing, had breakfast one last time while looking out over the ocean, and disembarked with our bags in tow. A summoned taxi took us to the flat we'd rented, but it was too early to check in. Fortunately, there was a luggage storage place less than a block away. We stuffed our bags into a couple lockers, dusted off our hands, and headed out.

As is our usual thing, we didn't make plans to visit any site in particular. Instead, we wandered around looking at different buildings and other bits of interest. We poked our heads into a couple of cathedrals (sooooo many in Barcelona), admired some memorial arches in parks, and discovered that wild parrots in Barcelona compete with pigeons for ecological supremacy. We had a nice lunch and finally moseyed back to pick up our luggage and check into our flat.

The neighborhood we stayed in was clearly a happenin' party hotspot. As afternoon turned into evening, the streets filled up with cars and bikes and scooters and people. Darwin and I people-watched and bought food from the local bakeries and enjoyed a laid-back evening.

In the morning, we summoned another cab, which took us to the airport with no trouble. After that, it was 14 hours of winding our way through airports, waiting in airports, eating in airports, and going through customs in airports. And of sitting on planes. We had a layover at Charles de Gaul, our least favorite airport in the whole wide world, but we managed it without incident this time. At long, long, LONG last, we landed in Detroit. It was 8 AM local time, but 2 AM for us.

I have to say I was uneasy about going through customs. I was on a watch list for years because adult men who travel with exchange students, I learned, are automatically added to watch lists, and I was always pulled for extra searches when I traveled overseas. Finally, I got TSA Pre-Check, and the problem stopped. Now, however, the current administration has it in for a whole bunch of people, including people like me, and I was wondering if I'd get hassled or worse.

We snagged our luggage and got through passport control without incident, but as we were heading for the exit, a guard pulled Darwin and me aside and told us we needed "extra screening." Ohhhhhkay. Here we go.

The guard took us to a giant x-ray conveyor belt thing staffed by two other guards and had us feed our luggage through it. I treated it as an annoyance and refused to show nervousness, since that would only give the guards an excuse. On the other side of the machine, one of the guards grabbed my backpack. "I have to look in here," she said sweetly.

I shrugged. "Yeah, whatever."

"Where are you coming from?" asked another guard, though I kept my eyes on the backpack.

"Spain." My voice was neutral but short.

"What was the purpose of your visit?"

"Vacation."

"Did you buy anything worth more than $800?"

"No."

"Do you have any 'ha-mon'?"

I blinked. "What?"

" 'Ha-mon.' Ham?"

"Ham?" I was genuinely puzzled. "No. Why would I have ham?"

(Later I looked it up and discovered Spanish ham is illegal in the US but people still try to bring it in.)

The guard didn't respond. Meanwhile, the other guard pawed through my backpack and held up two objects. One was a half-empty can of chips, the other my trackball mouse, both of which had apparently set off someone's suspicions.

"Are those a problem?" I asked archly. I wanted to say something like, "Is it fun putting your filthy hands on my mouse ball?" but I didn't.

Then the guard pulled out the zipper pouch I kept my cash in and started to open it. 

"Wait, please," I said, and stepped closer. "You don't want to open that without me watching."

"Why?" she asked.

"That's my money, and I'm sure you'll agree that it's a bad idea for you to go through it without a witness. It's for your protection."

She declined to open the pouch. I took my backpack back and we left. Sheesh. Another cab picked us up, and an hour later we were HOME!

Both of us were wiped out. Funny how sitting on an airplane for seven hours can tire you out. But we didn't want to go to bed "early," so we unpacked.

Yes, we unpacked the moment we got home. We are THOSE people.

By 11, we were both unpacked and drop-dead exhausted, so we fell into bed.

Now for the irony. When I was working, I had to be up by 5 or 5:30, and one of the bigger revelations to me is that during retirement, I'd never have to see 5 AM again. Naturally, that meant I woke up at 5 AM, which my body said was noon. I managed to make myself doze off again, but only for half an hour, so I was up at ... 5:30 AM. Sigh.

It was a lovely, lovely trip, and my retirement has been well celebrated!





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Charlie Kirk and Suspended Teachers

 So a bunch of teachers across the country have been suspended over social media remarks they made about the death of Charlie Kirk. The news stories never say what the remarks were, except in one case where the teacher apparently said something like, "One Nazi down."

I was one of the first teachers in Michigan to create and maintain my own social media, and since I taught in a conservative area and my views are liberal, parents loved to complain about it and try to get me fired.

They always lost in this. I never, ever said I represented the school district in my views. I think I mentioned the name of the district (Walled Lake Consolidated School District) directly all of twice in thirty years, both times to report some good news. I also told the parents, "If you don't like my social media, why do you let your child read it?" That shut them up nicely.

People like to say, "Freedom of speech doesn't give you freedom from consequences," and this is true--unless the consequences could come from a government agency. A school is a government agency, and it's therefore difficult for a school to justify disciplining an employee who exercises their First Amendment rights to free speech. It can be done, but the school has to prove that the speech somehow interferes with the teacher's ability to teach. That's a very high bar.

However, teachers do get suspended from teaching while the district investigates. This is stressful for the teacher (who sits at home all day, wondering what's going to happen). It's also hard on the students (who suddenly have a sub who may or may not know how to teach the subject in question), and it's hard on the school district (who has to pay lawyer fees and maintain a substitute). The teacher isn't required to send in lesson plans during a suspension, either, and a smart teacher doesn't do it.

I bring this up because in the vast majority of cases, the district finds no wrongdoing and teacher returns to the classroom, but the media never reports on that. When was the last time you read "Suspended teacher exonerated, returns to classroom" in the news? As a result, it sounds to the public that a suspended teacher is a fired teacher, and that just isn't true. Remember that.

Me? I don't have to worry about parents disliking my social media anymore, and I'm free to say literally anything. So I'm speaking for all the teachers who feel the same way I do but don't want to get embroiled in a fight at work:

I'm glad Charlie Kirk is dead. His hatred has been silenced, and this is a net good. He won't be able to say that gay men like me should be murdered or exiled or jailed. He won't be able to whip people into a violent frenzy anymore. He won't be able to push for hate-filled laws. He won't be handed a microphone and put in a spotlight for his malignant, cancerous views. After a week or so, he'll disappear from the media entirely, and then from human memory completely. Good.

Now--suspend me.





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Retirement Cruise: Marseilles

Marseilles, our next stop, was a laid-back kind of day. Our on-shore trip started a little later, so we slept in, then moseyed down to join the group. We piled into the bus and headed off. This was my first time in France, not counting a brief layover in Paris once, and it was a nice day. The bus wandered around the tight, narrow streets of the city while the tour guide narrated this and that bit of history. We ended up at a church at the top of the highest hill in town. The place is half church, half tourist attraction. Since there was no service today, the place swarmed with tourists. The church itself isn't extremely remarkable, as these things go. The real attraction is the view. The church has a second-tier balcony that runs all around the exterior, and you can see everything for miles and miles and miles. The red-roofed buildings of Marseilles are far, far below. They go down to the blue sea and out to the distant mountains. It's an amazing thing to see. After that, we had some time down in Marseilles itself. Darwin and I opted for lunch at a seafood restaurant on the bay. I settled on some tasty grilled sardines while Darwin went for steak. The servers were friendly and outgoing, and the food was great, which helped wash the bad taste of that Roman restaurant out of our mouths, so to speak. It turns out Marseilles pioneered the idea of using olive oil instead of animal fat for making soap back in the 1400s, and it was so successful that the king declared animal fat soap illegal. Anyone caught using the stuff would get their hands chopped off. (!) As a result, though, olive oil soap is a big deal in Marseilles. Since I like different-scented soaps, I dragged Darwin into a store to have a look. Lots and lots and lots of olive oil soaps in a hundred different scents lined the walls. The bars were octagonal to keep them in place better on the slanted shelves. We sniffed about, and Darwin insisted on buying more bars than I did!  Then it was back on the bus. The woman in front of us became, in our mind, Dotty Doting Grandma, or DDG. On the way into town, DDG was telling everyone within earshot that her dear, sweet, perfect grand-daughter E— missed her Grandma terribly. (The girl is two.) "We live next door," she exhorted to people who were desperately looking for a means of escape, "and I'm over there every DAY. E— doesn't know what to do without me."  I felt sorry for the parents, really. Having your mother or mother-in-law living next door and popping round every single day sounds like a nightmare, even if it means she's helping with child care.  Anyway, on the way back, DDG somehow got her grand-daughter on a video call. The volume was way up and DDG was talking loudly to E—. "It's Grandma, honey! I'm in France! How are you, honey? Can you say hi to Grandma? Say hi! E—, you need to say hi!" Clearly E— didn't miss Grandma as much as Grandma had hoped. At some point in the conversation, it became clear that E— had somehow injured herself earlier, and the DDG wanted to see the wound. "Show me where you got hurt, E—! No, show me! Show me the place! Honey, show me!" This went on for quite some time. Apparently, E— finally did show the owie because DDG gasped and fell silent. I was envisioning a gaping, sucking would or something, though whatever it was, it quieted DDG for several seconds.  But then she was right back to it. "That's a big owie! Are you okay? How did you do that? E—, can you tell me how you did that? Tell Grandma how you did that!" It should be noted that E— never once said a word throughout these exchanges.  When the bus was full and ready to go, DDG shouted, "Grandma has to go, sweetie! Good-bye! Can you say good-bye to Grandma? Say good-bye, honey! What did you have for lunch?" No wonder American tourists have a reputation for obnoxiousness.  The rest of the day was spent on the ship. We had dinner with friends, followed by a long social hour afterward. It was lovely. 

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Retirement Cruise: Rome

Darwin and I had an odd trip to Rome.  The cruise line arranged to get us from our port of call to Rome itself (from ship to bus to train to Rome), where we were dropped off with strict instructions to be back at the train station by 4:15. The rest was up to us, which was how we wanted it. The station was near the Vatican, and the place was just mobbed. Thousands and thousands of people gathered outside, some standing in long, long lines, some just wandering around, others marching in processions. It was a Jubilee year, and the Pope was canonizing two saints the next day, including the first millennial saint. Lots of people wanted to attend. Since we had no such inclination, we skirted the crowd and dodged down a side street in order to find the closest station for a hop on/hop off bus. It took some walking and bridge-crossing and crowd wrangling and waiting, but we finally boarded a bus. We got seats up top. The bus trundled us around and we saw some sights, but honestly? This ho/ho bus wasn't all that great. The recorded information about the sights often started just as we passed whatever it was, so we didn't realize what we were looking at until it was too late. The trouble with Rome, really, is that everywhere you look, there's something to see. You can't go a block without stumbling across something of note, and it's a little overwhelming. We got off the bus near the Pantheon, and we were starving, so we chose a restaurant at random and asked for a table. It was a medium-sized place with indoor and outdoor seating. We were seated at a nice indoor table near a window that looked out over the street. Very nice. And then... The waiter who came to take our order was brusque to the point of rudeness. I think he was annoyed that we didn't order wine. When the food was ready, the waiter thumped the plates down and rushed away before we could even say, "Grazie." Darwin's chicken and roasted potatoes were flavorless and bland. I had spaghetti with clams, and about a third of the clams tasted bad and I spat them out. I wanted to tell the waiter, but he never once returned to our table to check on us. We should have called for the manager and sent everything back to the kitchen, but we didn't. The waiter remained invisible, and I finally had to flag down a different waiter so we could pay the check. Just as we were leaving, our waiter popped up and thanked us. I pointedly turned my back on him. Usually, I laugh about bad service and/or bad food ("Well, they tried"), but this was over the top awful, and we were unhappy in the extreme. It was really the language barrier that prevented me from complaining to a manager. I would never let an American restaurant get away with something like this. The day got better after that, though. We got tasty gelato as a consolation for the awful lunch, then walked about to see what we could see: the Parthenon, the Trey Fountain (which was way bigger than I thought), a set of ruins in the middle of the city. Every street was a mass of people, and Darwin was starting to get overwhelmed. We were passing a stone church, tall with a plain front, but the plaque told us the place was called something like "Mary of Minerva." I wanted to see if the place was a temple of Minerva that was repurposed to Mary, so I dragged Darwin inside a plain green door to have a look. It was like stepping into another world. The church was HUGE. You could have put a soccer pitch in there and still had room for a little league field. Every inch of wall and ceiling was covered in icons and gold and stained glass. There were a dozen altars to a dozen saints in the aisles, all of them done and overdone and over-overdone, like they were trying to win a contest against each other. The main altar at the far end (way, way, WAY far away from the main door) was the most elaborate of all. So many statues of angels and saints and various aspects of Mary. I found a plain tomb of some guy I'd never heard of, so I looked him up and discovered he was a saint who had started off as a humble friar with a talent for painting. He rivaled Michelangelo. He painted hundreds of frescos and paintings and icons, and he never made changes in them because he believed his paintings were divinely inspired and to change them was to insult god. He was canonized for his humility and his contributions to the church. We also came across a shopping zone, a long street lined with dozens of shops. I bought chocolate (we were running low) and stopped to examine the inside wall of an olive oil shop. It looked like a waterfall was cascading down it, and then you realized the water was olive oil. Arresting!  Time was running out, and we started searching for the ho/ho bus stop so we could get back to the train station. We couldn't find the stop, despite seeing it on our map. We kept finding workers in ho/ho uniforms and asking them where the nearest stop was, and they always said vaguely, "That way" or "Next street." At last we asked a worker in a kiosk who said, "This the stop. The bus comes in seven minutes." Yeesh! We rode the bus back to the Vatican, hopped off, and headed for the train station at a brisk pace—we were running low on time. Darwin was getting nervous. Me, not so much. There were a billion taxis everywhere, and if it looked like we'd be late, we could just flag one down. But there was no problem. We arrived at the station with ten minutes to spare. Other cruisers started arriving as well, and the tour guide showed up at exactly 4:15. She took roll—and two people were missing (of course). The guide called out their names, but the sidewalk was crowded and her voice didn't carry. Darwin told her I had a Teacher Voice, and should I call for them? I did so: "DANIEL AND TANYA! LAST CALL FOR DANIEL AND TANYA!" The crowded sidewalk outside the station fell silent for a heartbeat, then got noisy again. The power of the Teacher Voice. :) Still no sign of Daniel and Tanya, though. After a few minutes, the guide said we had to leave or we'd miss the train. Here I learned that so far, three people on this cruise had been left behind at ports because they missed the ship. They wait for no one! I boomed again, "DANIEL AND TANYA! WE'RE LEAVING YOU BEHIND! LAST CHANCE! DANIEL AND TANYA!" "We're here!" called a desperate woman, presumably Tanya. She and a man—Daniel—rushed up, panting and sweating. They'd forgotten exactly where the meeting point was and couldn't find us. Good thing I yelled for them! Back at the ship, we showered and ravenously devoured supper. Overall, we declared the day odd but a success. The next day we were at Livorno, a city with a really ugly port. Very industrial. Because of the industry, cruise passengers aren't allowed to walk to the city. You have to take a shuttle bus, and you have to schedule it in advance. No thanks. Rome tired us out, anyway. We elected to laze around the ship instead. Which brings us to today. We're both getting to the point where we're ready to go home. And we do, in three more days. 

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Retirement Cruise: Kotor, Cats, Kerkira

I knew nothing at all about Kotor and Montenegro except that they've been traded around from country to country and at last have their freedom. So it was with a fair amount of curiosity that I arrived there with Darwin next.

I woke up in the morning with the ship already in dock. Misty-topped mountains ringed a wide blue bay outside our windows. It was breathtakingly beautiful and Darwin and I stared for considerable time.

We didn't have a formal excursion booked, since we'd seen on a map that we could explore Kotor on our own. I found a tourist app call GPSmycity. It's connected to a pile of cities around the world and for each one, it offers two, three, or even a dozen walking tours. You follow the map on your phone from attraction to attraction, and when you get to it, you tap it on the map and the computer reads you a short description and history of whatever it is. It was pretty cool! I called up a tour of Kotor and gave Darwin one of my earbuds so we could both hear.

Kotor is a bit of an oddity. It was founded a gazillion years ago and was handed around to Rome, Venice, Yugoslavia, and more. Its position on in a sheltered bay off the Adriatic Sea made it a valuable shipping and trading center. It's been the central focus of countless battles and wars, right up through modern times. Not only that, the place is prone to earthquakes. Two extremely powerful quakes all but leveled Kotor in the 1600s and again in the 1970s. As a result, the city has been built and rebuilt several times using stone from flattened buildings, which means the city is a mishmash of ancient and new construction, and ancient construction used for new construction. Most of the buildings LOOK Medieval, but were actually put up in the 1800s or in the 1970s. 

Also an oddity is that although tourism is the main industry in Kotor, this is a recent development. Until the 2010s (I think), Kotor wasn't on anyone's tourism radar. But cruise ships are eternally looking for new ports, especially since Venice closed itself to cruise ships, and they settled on Kotor. Now Kotor gets a daily does of cruise ship tourists. It revitalized the town's economy and turned it around.

Finally, a major attraction is the wall. A big chunk of the original city wall has survived, as has a fort halfway up the mountain behind Kotor. Famously, there are 1,280 steps up to the fortress.

All of this means that Kotor is, like I've observed elsewhere, something like Mackinac Island. They work to preserve the "old" look of the walled city. The original streets are still there, a winding, delightful tangle of them. There are lots and lots of shops that are designed to appeal to tourists, and about a billion restaurants that, as on Mykonos, mostly seat people outside under shady canopies. There are also some famous landmarks, like St. Typhon's church, which has two towers, both of which were leveled in the 70s and rebuilt; St. Luke's church, which is very small (the size of a nice cottage) and left undamaged from earthquakes, as a result; and the cats, of which more in a moment.

We visited both the churches. St. Typhon's church is a working church on the first floor, but you can walk up a stone staircase to the second and third floors and see the museum. The museum houses a huge collection of church artifacts, from icons to chasubles to relics. Oh, do they have relics! Relics from dozens of saints from all over Europe. Most of them are bits of bone put in containers shaped like a bust, or encased in glass and set into the chest of a wooden figurine of the saint. The head of St. Nicholas is in the main church downstairs. Some of the reliquaries are shaped like the body part the bone came from--an arm, a hand, a leg with foot. It's kind of gross, if you think about it! You can climb halfway up the bell tower and get the view, which was fantastic. 

St. Luke's church is more modest, though the altar is very elaborate. Also, the floor is made of tombstones. They're numbered in Roman numerals 1-19 and have no other inscription. At one time, parishioners were buried under the chapel. The more money you had, the closer to the altar you were buried. There are supposed to be hundreds of people buried there. I assume it's just their bones. Right? Hmmm...

We also walked a big section of the wall, on top. More fantastic views. The cloud-topped mountains, the blue bay, the boats in the harbor. You can't take a bad photo in this place!

For lunch, we chose a restaurant at random, and I elected to try the local version of sausage. (I don't remember its name.) The waiter seemed pleased that I had chosen it, and it was extremely good. 

While I was eating, a black cat jumped up into the chair next to me. He was very friendly. Cats are a major thing in Kotor. Most Mediterranean towns and ruins have a feral cat population, actually, but Kotor also has The Cat Museum. The museum was started as a little thing, and it struggled--until the cruise ships started showing up. Now it's a thing of its own. The museum heads up a charity that helps the cats, which made them both into a part of Kotor's appeal.

Anyway, I fed the cat a few tidbits, which is gobbled down. It then curled up against my backpack on the chair and settled in. He knows how to work it!

The next day, we woke up in Kerkira. This happens a lot on cruises--you go to bed with one view and wake up to another. This is because the ship travels all night, thanks to modern navigation tech. (The ancient Romans would be envious--no crashing into rocks or shorelines because you can't see them.) It's a little unsettling, really. You expect the scenery outside your window to change only with the seasons, not your location.

We'd already visited Kerkira, and it's a lot of work to get into the city (you have to walk most of a kilometer just to get to the port authority, and from there you have to walk even more to get to the edge of town). We decided we weren't up for it and spent a lazy day on the ship.




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Retirement Cruise: Olives, Hop On Buses, and Our Favorite City

 After Istanbul, we powered back down the Dardanelles to Katakolon, Greece. Here, Darwin and I actually went on a shore excursion. (!) We boarded a bus that wound its way through the Greek countryside until we arrived at an olive orchard. For the foodie in me, it was pretty cool. The orchard clearly gets a chunk of its income from tourists, because they had a spiffy presentation on how olive oil is made and how olives are preserved and such. I learned what "cold press" meant (I've seen it but never understood it) and why it makes better olive oil. They also had an on-site restaurant. It was outdoors but shaded under a canopy. We had a number of dishes made with olives and olive oil, and they were delicious. The orchard also makes wine, and each table got a bottle. Even Darwin, an aggressive non-drinker, tried a sip!

I got the chance to walk through an olive grove. I've been teaching Greek mythology for decades and I've told many times the story of how Athena created olive trees as a gift to Athens, but I'd never walked through an olive grove, and I really wanted to. The day was hot and sunny and dry. I wandered among the trees. Olive trees can live for hundreds, even thousands, of years, and continue giving fruit all that time. The oldest tree on the farm is about 2,000 years old. Many of the other trees are two or three hundred years old. I liked walking among them. I wanted to buy some olive oil and some nifty-looking amphorae painted with naked Olympic athletes, but they'd be tricky to get home intact, so I didn't.

Next stop: Kerkira, Corfu another major tourist port. When we pulled into port and docked, our cabin had a gorgeous mountain view. Less than an hour later, another cruise ship arrived and docked. In doing so, it slid right between us and the mountain view. It was a real SIMPSONS moment. The family goes on a cruise and stands on their balcony admiring the fantastic view, until with a great honk, another cruise ship zips in front of them to block it. Homer: D'oh!

We didn't do a shore excursion--Corfu is easy to explore on your own. We walked a long, long, LONG way down the dock, through the port authority, and out into the town itself. Then it was more walking to the hop on/hop off bus. I snagged tickets and Darwin and I waited patiently in the long but swift line. We both had our sun-blocking umbrellas, and thank heavens--the line was in full-bore sun. 

I love hop on/hop off buses. You get a little tour of the city and if something catches your fancy, you can hop off the bus, look around, and hop on the next one. They're a wonderful invention, and whoever came up with them should be commended. Darwin and I took advantage and saw many interesting things around Corfu, including two enormous forts that go back centuries. We hopped off at the halfway point and explored Corfu's restaurant/shopping zone. It was the usual jewelry and clothing and souvenirs, almost all of them geared toward women. Don't men buy anything? Apparently not in Corfu.

We ate lunch at a delightful restaurant with outdoor seating under another canopy. We both had gyros, and they were extremely good. The atmosphere was lovely--a fine summer day, slight breeze, shade, quiet voices of conversation around us. Like I said: lovely.

The next day (today) we were at Korčula, Croatia. Darwin and I were very much looking forward to this stop. We visited Korčula on our very first cruise two years ago and fell in love with the place. I wondered if it might not live up to our memories, but it absolutely did. The little alleys that lead from the bay up to St. Marco's square were just as charming and intriguing as ever. We went up and down all of them. We explored areas that we hadn't seen last time, including several little chapels. One of them, which wasn't much bigger than a decent-sized dining room, had several tombstones set into the floor with Latin inscriptions. I was able to read them with a translator app, and they dated back to the 1600s. I also saw what appeared to be a stone plaque high up on one wall. It was heavily inscribed in Latin. The translator revealed it was a ossuary! It had the bones of an important church official in it, but the translator couldn't pick out a lot of details. They were from the 1700s. I wondered what he'd done to warrant his bones being put in such a place.

We also climbed St. Marco's bell tower. You pay five Euros and enter an extremely narrow, extremely tight spiral stone staircase. There's barely room for one person. Two people absolutely can't pass each other, but the ticket taker doesn't do anything to direct traffic. He just lets things happen. This creates a certain amount of negotiation among the visitors. You can't be shy! I called out, "Is anyone coming down?" and got a "Yes!" So I waited until a small group of people emerged. I shouted, "We're coming up!" and started climbing. About halfway up the tower, the staircase opens out into a wider stair that's open down the middle so you can see to the bottom of the tower. There are little niches with windows where you can check the stunning view of the city and ocean or get out of the way of someone traveling in the other direction. There's a catwalk directly under the bell that creates a platform to stand on. People, lots of people, were milling about, negotiating good-naturedly with each other about the stairs. Darwin made it all the way to the catwalk before his acrophobia became too much for him, and he had to go back down. But he made it much farther than anticipated, so go him!

At the top of the tower, you can slip into an extremely narrow balcony that runs around the top floor of the tower, affording a splendid view of orange-tiled roofs, winding alleys, blue ocean, and hazy mountains in all direction. I took my fill and was heading down ("I'm coming down! Is anyone coming up?") when the bell started ringing. I checked my watch. It was noon. Drat! If I'd noticed the time, I would've stayed up top for the event. But I got to hear the bells echoing down the teeny spiral staircase, so that was cool.

Darwin and I next went to lunch. The last time we were in Korčula, we ate at a restaurant on the bay at the top of an ancient sweeping outdoor staircase that's right on the strait. We loved the view, we loved the food, we loved the location, and we wanted to eat there again because it was one of our fondest memories. When we arrived, the table we'd sat at before was vacant! We were able to sit in the same place as before, and it was just as delightful. I had risotto, and Darwin had a beef pasta dish served to us by a Very Handsome Waiter. We enjoyed everything about it and decided we'll come back yet again one day.

The last time we were in Korčula, I noticed the teeny little beach down by the docks. (The cruise ship was anchored some distance off-shore because the docks can't handle a vessel that large.) The ocean was clear and pretty and I wanted to swim in it, but I hadn't brought a suit and there wasn't enough time to get mine from the ship. This time, I remembered the beach and wore my swimsuit as underwear. I also brought a beach towel in my backpack. So when we arrived at the dock, I was set! Darwin didn't want to swim, so he took a moment's rest on a shaded stone bench while I climbed out of my outer clothes and strolled down to the beach.

The beach itself was ... well, awful. I hadn't noticed before that there's no sand. It's all tiny pebbles. You sink into them up to your ankles, and it's more than a little painful to walk on. The water was clear as blue glass like before, but the bottom was all rocks. Ow ow ow ow! But there was one patch of water that had no rocks, and I crunched toward it across the pebbles, wincing as I went. At last, I waded into the water and plunged in. After that, it was very nice. The water was the perfect swimming temperature, and I can actually float in salt water. It was calm and relaxing and I was thinking, "I'm finally swimming in Korčula!" 

When I'd had enough, I crunched my way back to Darwin to redress, and we took a tender back to the ship. It was a fine visit! 

Darwin and I make half-serious noises about moving to Korčula one day, perhaps when he retires. The climate and the scenery and the food and the cities are enchanting. It would be easy enough to do from a legal standpoint, since I'm an EU citizen and can live in any EU country indefinitely. So can Darwin, since he's my spouse. We'd be eligible for Croatia's universal health care, too. We've looked at some housing options, and we could definitely afford to buy an apartment, or even a small house. 

Maybe we will. We'll see.

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Thoughts on Retirement

Today is Sunday. Last Thursday and Friday were teacher workdays at Nameless High School, which I can now tell you is Walled Lake Northern High School.* This is the first time in 30 years that I haven't reported for those days. It's the first time I haven't put my room back together, made introductory lesson plans, and churned out copies. It's the first time I haven't greeted colleagues with, "How was your summer?" It's the first time I haven't had to sit through useless "Rah rah teaching!" motivational speeches and endure a three-hour staff meeting. Because I'm retired.

Tomorrow is Monday. It's the first day for students. For the first time in 30 years, I won't be in a classroom to meet them. I have no class list, no seating charts, no grade book program. None of it. Because I'm retired.

It doesn't feel real. It feels like still on summer break I'm here in Istanbul, and when this cruise ends, I'll be starting up the school year. But ... nope! When I get home, I don't have to go anywhere in particular or do anything on a schedule. I think if I were home, it would feel more real because I'd see school buses bumbling about and the lines of parent cars outside the school buildings. And I'd notice the little signs of the beginning of the school year, like a few leaves turning color and the cooling weather.

Usually these signs make me feel like I've lost time, that I didn't have a long enough summer break, that I'm not ready to face another school year. When I think about these signs now, I still feel that way. My brain is convinced that work is coming up, that I'm going to lose the delicious freedom of summer, and it makes me feel hemmed in. Even though I'm a night owl, I'll be going to bed at 10 and getting up at 5:00 now. I'll be driving to work in chilly darkness for almost an hour. I'll have a bell schedule that dictates what I do and when I do it. My lunch will be a rigid 30 minutes at 10:30 in the morning. When the day ends, I'll have to either bolt out of the building to make it out of the parking lot before the teenage-driven crush begins or wait half an hour for it to clear up. But nope--I'm retired.

My brain is having a hard time processing the change. I feel like I'm supposed to be somewhere, or that I've got a big job coming up. But I don't. I'm retired.

I'm also one of those people who needs a vacation after my vacation. You know how it is--you get home from time away, and you need at least two days to get your bearings back and do all the little things that need doing at home. I've never been one to rush off on a trip the moment I get home from work one day, then come home just before bedtime on the evening before I have to be back at work. I'm on a trip right now, and I'm positive that once I get home, I'm going to have to rush back to work without any recovery time. But ... nope! Once I get back, I'll have all the time in the world.

It's oddly stressful. I definitely DON'T want to go back to work, but I haven't figured out how I'll spend my days yet, and it unnerves me.

I worry about money, even though I don't need to. I did the math over and over, with my finance guy checking over the figures, and I'm perfectly fine. My pension plus small monthly withdrawals from my retirement accounts equals what my salary was, and I'm mostly drawing out just the interest from said accounts. I barely touch the principal. In any case, I only need to draw that money out until I start social security at age 65, and there's more than enough to last me until then, even if I earn no interest at all. Once social security starts, I'll have more money than I do now (!), and my retirement accounts will be untouched again.

But I don't have a regular paycheck, and I've never lived off savings before. I've also spent my entire career saying, "You can't touch the retirement account!" to myself. So even though I'm literally using that money for its exact intended purpose, my inner security guard shouts, "What the hell are you doing? What if something goes wrong? You can't touch that money!" (Darwin feels the same way, incidentally.) Numbers don't lie, but emotions and long-held habits do.

It's a lot to adjust to.

I'll get there. It's a nice problem to have. 

*I almost never mention the school by name in my social media because I've gotten into fights with the district and with parents who were upset that in my blog, I swear and talk about LGBT issues and health issues and other grown-up topics. My responses to parents were always some version of "I don't mention the school by name, so it's clear I'm not pretending to represent the district in any way" and "If you don't like my blog, why do you let your kid read it?" That last usually shut them up faster than anything else.

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Retirement Cruise: Seasickness and Istanbul

Yesterday we steamed up the Dardanelles to Istanbul. It took most of a day and a half, and toward the end, I was feeling nauseated. I don't get seasick unless the ocean is really, really choppy, so I was mystified. Maybe it was because the ship was going pretty fast to make it on time and it exacerbated the wave motion? Not sure.

We arrived at Istanbul late evening, and I disembarked the moment we were allowed. Darwin was a little nervous. He and I have both visited Istanbul in the past, but we had a guide then, and although homosexuality is not illegal there anymore, Turkey remains a deeply homophobic culture. I have mixed feelings about the place. Istanbul is extremely cosmopolitan, and we didn't run into trouble last time, but Erdogan's regime is deeply unsettling. In the end, we went out, mostly so I could get off the rocking ship.

We wound our way through the long, long maze of tunnels and escalators out of the port authority, which finally spat us out on the street in the port district. It was Saturday night, and the place was hopping. Lots of restaurants and clubs. We ended up weaving through a snarl of narrow, pedestrian-only streets that were clearly the party district. Turkish shopkeepers and restaurant owners are aggressive marketers. They stand out front and assail passers-by. "You come in? We have delicious lamb!" "We have best food in the city! You'll love the felafel!" "Here! You should eat here!" If you show even an iota of interest, they really lay it on thick. "Come! I show you to a fine table! Right this way! We have kebabs to die for!" So you have to ignore them. They don't mind.

After a couple hours' exploration, my nausea wore off and I got hungry--I hadn't eaten supper. We had passed a restaurant some time ago that smelled delicious and I really wanted to try their food, but we couldn't find it again, so we finally chose a restaurant at random. The owner was overjoyed to see us! :) 

One thing I like about Middle-Eastern restaurants is the comfortable seating. Instead of hard "eat and get out" chairs found in the states, you have comfy couches with pillows on them. This restaurant was no exception. Our table was also outside. The balmy summer night air was pleasant, the loud crowds had thinned a bit, and the lighting was soft. It was a fine night. Darwin maintained he wanted only a small snack, but the proprietor persuaded him that he HAD to have the lamb chops, and he gave in. I got a lamb kabob. Both were amazingly delicious. One of the side dishes was, I think, a flavored barley that was especially good. I'd love to recreate it at home, but I couldn't identify the spices. Maybe some research will turn it up. Even though Darwin wasn't hungry, he ate nearly everything. He said it was so good, he couldn't stop eating!

We spent the night on the ship, and in the morning, we went out on a boat tour of the Bosporus Straight, which splits Istanbul in half, one side in Europe, the other in Asia. It's the only city that straddles two continents. The tour guide was a friendly, articulate college professor named Flower. (No, really.) She bundled us aboard the tour boat and off we went. We had armchairs instead of benches to sit on and drinks at our elbows. We had some rain on the way to the boat, but it cleared up by the time we embarked, and the weather was perfect. We bobbed around the strait, enjoying the sights from our comfy chairs (so many buildings, so many mosques, so many boats) and listening to the guide's very interesting history lecture. It was a calm and relaxing tour, actually, mostly because we didn't have to walk or elbow our way through crowds.

When the tour ended, Darwin and I popped back up to the ship for a moment, then headed back down to the city. I wanted to ... er, refresh the chocolate supply, and Istanbul is definitely the place for that! Turkish chocolates are sold by weight, and they don't look like American chocolates. They're brightly-colored in reds and blues and purples. Only a few are chocolate-colored. They're mixed with more adventurous flavors than in America--pomegranate, strawberry, malt and banana. The clerk was a young woman who was nonetheless as showy as any of the older men we'd encountered in other shops. "Try this one. It's delicious. You might like this one, too. No, take more than one! How much shall I get for you?" I bought almost two pounds of different kinds.

The clerk was friendly as well as sales-y, and we ended up talking a bit about our respective ability with different languages. At one point, she apologized for her accent, and I said, "Your English is better than my Turkish, so I'm not in a position to complain."

"You know English!" she said. "You can go anywhere with English."

I told her about the time I visited Berlin as a student and shared a hostel room with a Greek and a Turk, and the only language we had in common was German, so we had a Greek, a Turk, and an American speaking German to each other. She said she'd been to Indonesia and hung out with a Korean girl as well as an Indonesian, and they all spoke Korean to each other. Communication is endlessly fascinating.

We also visited Istanbul's museum of modern art. We spent considerable time examining various wild and crazy works of art and comparing what we saw in each. Darwin's interpretation was often different from mine, which is always fun. One of the exhibits was a room lined with mirrors. An animated blue design that looked a bit like circulating blood or sea water filled with plankton swirled around us. I don't know what the artist was getting at, but it was riveting nonetheless.

And then back to the ship for supper.



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Retirement Cruise: Mykonos

Today we were on the island of Mykonos. The island was based on fishing for centuries, but starting in the 50s, it transitioned over to tourism, and now it's 100% for vacationers and tourists. Local ordinances require all buildings to be painted white with blue trim to create a unified look that's become iconic. Everything in the Old City is geared toward tourists. It's all clever little shops, restaurants, and small hotels. For you Michiganders, it's the Mackinac Island of Greece.

The day we arrived, there were FOUR cruise ships in port, counting us. Only the biggest is allowed to actually dock. The others have to anchor off-shore and shuttle people into town with tender boats. Our ship wasn't the biggest. That honor belonged to a Norwegian cruise ship with 20 decks. (Our ship has 12.) It meant that upwards of 10,000 people would be visiting the little city that day, but we were assured that Mykonos was very used to groups this size.

We gamely boarded a tender and then a sea bus and at last arrived at the edge of Old Port, one of three sections of Mykonos. The other sections were New Port (obviously) and THE RESORT. THE RESORT is secluded and famous for its celebrity visitors. You have to have a pedigree just to sail past.

The sun was blazing down, and although it was only about nine in the morning, the day was hot and promising to be hotter, though at this time of day, the buildings offered shade. Old Port is both lovely and fascinating. Yes, the white-and-blue color scheme makes it look a little artificial, but the original streets and alleys are just a joy to explore. The widest streets weren't even the width of a one-lane road, and lots of the streets/alleys/byways were so narrow, two people could only pass if they turned sideways. The only vehicles were scooters and tiny vans. Nothing bigger would fit the narrow, winding streets. Even the trash was hauled away by scooter.

Most of the buildings had a shop on the first floor and residences on the second and third. Tiny stone staircases, worn over thousands of years of use, curve up. The streets and alleys dip and climb and twist and turn, looping back along themselves and meeting up again farther down. There's no good map of the place, but really, you don't have to worry about getting lost. All you have to do is keep heading south and eventually you'll get to the harbor. Everything within the streets is shady in the morning and still cool, though to get there, you have to walk along the shoreline for a bit, passing many expensive restaurants and a little chapel with a tortoise shell cat sprawled across the entry. We were at this stage and getting seriously hot from the morning sun when I saw a tiny street and led Darwin into it, away from the sun. That's where the maze of twistiness began for us, and it was lovely.

Mykonos aggressively markets itself, but the place actually has a very laid-back, easygoing feel to it. No one is in a hurry. Why rush? You'll only get sweaty. The tiny vans that wind through the streets don't beep when they get stuck behind unwitting pedestrians--the driver just inches along until someone notices the van and tells everyone to step aside so the vehicle can squeeze by. I'm sure this is on purpose--we don't want honking horns to disturb the restful atmosphere. It works, too.

Just before noon, Darwin and I were getting hungry, so we chose a restaurant at random and asked to be seated. The place turned out to be way bigger than it looked. It had three seating areas separated by half walls, and there was more seating actually inside. A bougainvillea provided shade for one section. Darwin and I ended up under a roofed area with couches and soft chairs. Ceiling fans created enough of a breeze to make the air perfectly comfortable. 

Because we'd arrived just before noon, the restaurant was transitioning from breakfast to lunch, which meant we could order either one. Darwin opted for breakfast and got perfectly-done fried eggs, rustic toast, bacon, and sweet, sweet tomatoes. I had pasta with mushrooms in a cream sauce that was one of the best things I've eaten. The food and the atmosphere were delightful and we enjoyed it quite a lot.

We wandered about the town for a bit after that. We passed a man with a deformed hand and arm sitting on a bench. He rocked and muttered incoherently to himself but looked up at passersby to entreat money. Darwin couldn't bear it and gave him ten Euros. He put his hand on his heart and bowed several times in thanks.

On the way back to the ship, we stopped for gelato. It wasn't "real" gelato, made in-store and displayed in shallow dishes. This was the jewel-bright, factory gelato displayed in huge heaps in deep pans. But we got some anyway. One was called "black vanilla," and was a purplish color. Darwin, who likes vanilla, got some and loved it. The worker said the vanilla beans were rarer and gave the gelato its color. 

By now the sun was scorching overhead, and there was little shade anywhere. I got out my sun umbrella. The moment I put it up, the heat vanished. It was like walking under a shade tree. This is why I like my sun umbrella. It reflects heat so well that the fabric doesn't even get warm. The city was starting to become a little crowded, but only a little. Mykonos absorbed four cruise ships perfectly well! But we'd had enough, so we headed back to the ship.
 

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