Ninety-Six   I started 2004 having calculated our total of "countries", more accurately "travel destinations", we had been to, in order to join the Travellers' Century Club once we hit 100. I will remind that the TCC, founded in 1954 in California and a half-century old this year, counts political jurisdictions within actual countries separately (England/Wales), major islands and island groups separately, as long as the population is large enough (Italy/Sicily), and geographic separation separately (mainland US/Alaska). Our total after the South America trip came to 95, a number that Bev will now remain at. I knew the Deutschland trip would make us reach exactly 100, a goal I said I'd reach by Christmas, and I will. Well, I have the application filled out and in my luggage, ready to mail on returning home. You also may recall that they take your word for where you've been, but to try to avoid frivilous applications, there's a $100 application fee. I have that and my 2005 dues ready to go.

We docked today at Isla Margarita, one of Venezuela's several islands in the Caribbean, and it's major tourist attraction. I have now been to Venezuela, which is # 96 for me.

At dinner tonight there were paper flags at each table, since it was International Night. Our table had a German and a French flag, which we joked about. Then I got up and went to an empty table with an American flag and exchanged it for the French flag, and our table clapped. For dessert I had to explain that, yes, New York is famous for its cheese cake, and they should try it. Since today was exactly two months since October 9, I led our table in a toast to the Germanist Frau Doktor Beverly DiNapoli.

Except for starting and ending in Santo Domingo, we make a dozen stops. Tomorrow is the third, in Scarborough, Tobago, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. I've never been to Tobago before, but we have been to Trinidad, so I can't count it as a new destination. Apparently its population is not big enough to be counted separately.

Our stop yesterday was Bridgetown, Barbados. Bev and I had been there years ago, on our Nieuw Amsterdam cruise, but more recently just stopped there this past March on the Caronia on the way back from South America, and we took a taxi tour of the island. It's strange being in a place the second time this year. This time I went into Bridgetown in search of an internet café.

Back on the ship, the late afternoon in Bridgetown harbor was magnificent. To a large extent, the weather has been hot and humid, too much for me to sit in the sun, but it was ideal yesterday late afternoon as the sun started going down, and I was out on deck in a deckchair. There were two other, larger, American ships in the harbor, but behind us lined up on the wharf were two four-masted sailing ships. I can see why the term "tall ships" is used, since the masts on these relatively small ships were probably higher than the Deutschland.

Today we're in Castries, Saint Lucia. Bev and I were here before with the Nieuw Amsterdam. I decided, here in Castries harbor, to take the laptop to the elegante englische Teestunde in the Lido-Terrasse lounge to write. I have to say once again how stylish it is. It's almost all a glossy white, with brass fixtures such as railings and lamps. It's been already joked about how often you see workers around the ship polishing the brass over and over. The upholstery is gold, with some chairs in red brocade. Today a pianist has been playing on the shining white grand piano. It's very pleasant. There's a menu of teas, and I've been going down the list. I have a Jasmine Tea right now. The jasmine scent was always a favorite of Bev's and mine, and her favorite perfume was jasmine.

Ninety-Seven   We made our sixth stop this morning in Roseau, Dominica, which is for me destination # 97. This name is pronounced do-mi-NI-ca. People from here are do-mi-NI-cans, and people from the Dominican Republic are do-MI-ni-cans. Dominica is the offshore location where we decided to incorporate Eden Bay Ventures Limited, first in my name, then with shares assigned to our shareholders. We therefore have a do-mi-NI-can corporation and a do-MI-ni-can resort. Roseau, to say the least, is not much to see, but I went ashore this morning in a downpour, taxied into town to find an internet café, but neither of two worked for a laptop.

Frequent Travelers   I've talked about meeting Bea Muller on the QE2, the "lady who lives on the QE2", who spends most of her time on the ship. Although that's an extreme case, do realize that there are people who spend lots of time on ships. The first night here I met a lady who spent exactly 365 days straight on the Deutschland, centered more or less around 2003. She got on again when I did, and won't get off until South Africa at the end of February.

I'm not planning anything like that, but this morning in my mailbox outside my cabin door there was a little maroon hard-covered "passport" with my information in it, and then two unique rubber stamps describing each of the two trips I've taken on the ship. At the end there was an explanation that after 75 days on board you get a silver pin, 150 gets you a gold, and 365 gets you a diamond-and-gold pin.

Piaf   Last night was the second Gala of the trip. There'll be one more. After the Gala Dinner there was a performance in the Kaisersaal by Petra Lamy. She had done some very good singing earlier, and this was her tribute to Edith Piaf. She was described as one of the world's best interpreters of Piaf. The performance last night was in the form of a biography, with a narrator describing Piaf’s life between songs. Petra Lamy sang all the good ones: La vie en rose, La goulante du pauvre Jean, Milord, Je ne regrette rien. I'm very good at Piaf's French lyrics, but had to keep my singing along all in my head. It was a great show. She's German, from Saarbrücken in the Saarland.

This morning at breakfast Petra Lamy was at the next table. I leaned over, raised my glass of Prosecco to her, and complimented her in German on her show. Then I sang the first two lines of Piaf's "Mon manège à moi" to her, slightly modified to fit the occasion:

She enjoyed that and came over to sit at my table for about ten minutes. A nice conversation ensued, which changed freely between German, French, and English, and was very enjoyable.

Ninety-Eight   I'm writing this again during the elegante englische Teestunde in the Lido-Terrasse. There's been a trio playing today. I've gone through all the special teas I wanted to down to a green tea called Greenleaf, and for my second pot went back to a favorite dark tea, Jungpana. I always seem to get into tea drinking on ships and in Britain, but it never lasts once I get home. The hop over from Dominica to Guadeloupe is real short, and sitting here in this lounge on the top deck up front, and with the weather having cleared up, it is easy to see how Guadeloupe looks like it does on the map. It has a butterfly shape, with the east "wing" broad and flat, the west "wing" mountainous, including quite visibly the volcano La Soufrière, and with Pointe-à-Pitre, our stop, in the middle. It's all quite clearly visible out the windows. We'll be there this evening and all day tomorrow. It will be # 98 for me, and it's interesting to add two new destinations in one day. Bev and I had been to Martinique, but never here. They both are Départements d'Outre-Mer (Overseas Departments) of France, and therefore considered parts of France, and use the Euro.

Ninety-Nine   We've arrived at our eighth stop, Saint John's, Antigua, part of Antigua and Barbuda. It's new for me, and is destination # 99.

Bad News/Good News   Our ninth stop was to have been the very tiny island of Saint Barthélemy, usually shortened to St Barths or St Barts. The island is French, but was Swedish for 100 years, as evident in the name of the capital, Gustavia. It's just a resort, with not much to see, but is supposedly chic, ritzy, and sophisticated, and has catered to the Rich and Famous since the 1980's. My notes show these people (and more) either own(ed) there or visit(ed): David Rockefeller, Rothschild, Nureyev, Barishnikov, JFK Jr, Warren Buffett, Mick Jagger, Princess Di, Calvin Klein, Madonna, Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow. But I don't mind missing it. I've never been there, and I wasn't able to count it towards my total number of destinations anyway, since it's counted with the French part of Saint Martin, where I've already been. Therefore, dropping this morning stop, we'll have a full day in Saint Martin/Sint Maarten instead, rather than a half-day.

Bouillon   Every day from 11:00 to 11:30 they serve bouillion in the Lido, after clearing up from breakfast. I made it there today for only the second time. The first time I was alone while I was there; today there was one other person.

A bouillion break is an old tradition on passenger ships. It goes back to the days when, crossing the North Atlantic, even on a sunny summer's day, could be chilly, and you'd sit on a deck chair under a blanket and be served warm bouillion, which hit the spot. I clearly remember doing that on the old Queen Elizabeth. We also did it on the Deutschland the first time, crossing the Atlantic. Here in the Caribbean, it seems out of place in the warm weather, and anyway, it's served indoors. Still, it's nice to carry on old traditions. Here they serve it in a bowl that has a "coffee-cup" handle on each side, so you can drink directly from the bowl.

Der Trick   I do not delibrately try to trick or fool people, but it happens anyway. I was at the Purser's Office, where you had to tell them about your flight home. I gave her the time and flight number for the connection to New York. Then, still looking down into the book she was writing in, she asked me when I would connect from New York back home to Germany. The guy further along behind the counter, who knew me, started to laugh, as we all then did. It keeps on happening.

Adlon Lounge   Today I'm back in the Adlon Lounge by myself, writing. It's low-ceilinged, all in brown and cream, with leather chairs and sofas, a (non-working) fireplace, glass bookcases. The desks have inlaid woods. This ship has an elegance that even the Queen Mary 2 can't compare with. The QM2 is a great ship, but it's minimalist in style. When we got a tour of the QM2 in Rio last March we got to see the inside of the Queen's Grill and Princess Grill, reserved for those in the most expensive cabins. The table areas in the grills were most unimpressive; they looked like high school cafeteria seating. It might just be the more traditional style that makes the Deutschland interiors look so nice.

Keyboards   There are two laptops and a printer in the Adlon Lounge for passenger use in writing, but not for internet access. Yet I know from experience back in Mainz not to try to use a German keyboard. People assume that all keyboards are the same, and they aren't. The German keyboard doesn't differ as much as others. Of the basic alphabet, only the Y and Z are reversed from the American keyboard. But I'm a touch typist, and write very, very fast. When I try to touch-type using a German keyboard, New York comes out New Zork, and Zanzibar would come out Yanyibar. It's not worth the effort to keep on making corrections.

When I was in Guadeloupe yesterday and couldn’t find an internet café that could do what I needed, the man in one shop, when I needed to at least send out two business documents, had me copy them onto Word, save them on a card he inserted in my laptop, and reloaded them onto his computer to send as e-mail attachments. He just asked me to type in the addresses, and a short note if I wished. His was, of course, a French keyboard.

You can imagine the time it took. On the French keyboard the Q and A are reversed ("Queen Anne" would touch-type as "Aueen Qnne"), the M and ? are reversed (asking if it's "Mom?" would appear as "?o?M") and the Z and W are reversed ("hazy view" would appear as "hawy viez"). And that's only part of it. It took a lot of retyping for those four addresses and that short note. Then, the letter wouldn't send. He looked, and made a correction for me. Where we separate e-mail addresses with a comma and a space, they use a semicolon--and no space. Go figure.

And all this took place in French. I was ready and willing to go to English, but he knew maybe two words. Speaking French is fine with me, but for this situation I lack the computer vocabulary. When he said "logiciel" I knew that was software, but so much else of the computer terminology he used went over my head, and words I needed I couldn't come up with. It wasn't my finest hour speaking French, but at least we did get the job done. And at least the discussion was miles beyond "avec ou sans filtre".

Sint Maarten   What would have been our tenth stop is now our ninth, having dropped out one island. I'm now on the island that has an international border down the middle. We docked in Philipsburg, Sint Maarten, on the Dutch side in the south. Marigot is the capital of Saint Martin (French pronunciation), which is spelled the same in English. The French side is the northern half. Bev and I were here years ago on our trip on the Nieuw Amsterdam, and travelled to both sides. I would have been a good place to add two "destinations", except that I've already been to both.

I did take a taxi up into the French side to visit Club Oriënt, which is primary competition to our Eden Bay Resort. I don't think Club Oriënt offers anything near what we do, and I'm quite pleased with that fact.

One Hundred!!   What would have been our eleventh stop is now our tenth. I'm in Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands, and I've never been here before. I've hit 100. I knew I would just make my last five on this trip. I have the application to the Travelers' Century Club in my luggage and will mail it when I return to New York. There was an internet café very near the ship, and it took him a while to reconfigure things, but he got me connected.

Tomorrow is our eleventh stop in Samaná, on the north shore of the Dominican Republic, but some distance away from Eden Bay Resort. Then the next day it's back to the DR's capital, Santo Domingo.

Returning   I'm in Las Américas airport in Santo Domingo waiting for the flight to New York. Leaving the ship this morning went smoothly. I had my last two flutes of Prosecco with breakfast, and had a nice chat. Taking the crowded elevator with my bag to Deck 5 to leave, an older man said to no one in particular that they should let the junger Mann in. Once inside, I joked that he had called me a young man, and the whole elevator had a good laugh.

Outside the terminal I went up to the taxi dispatcher and said simply "un taxi al aeropuerto". While loading my bag, the dispatcher complimented my Spanish, which was nonsense, since he had heard only four words. What he really meant, I would say, was that he was happy to hear me speak Spanish at all. I'll say again that it's a real hoot to shift from German right into Spanish. I'm not going to say that I take it right in stride, because I don't. I enjoy every minute of it.

There's a short toll road from Santo Domingo to the airport. The taxi got stuck in traffic for twenty minutes waiting to pay the toll. Later, when the departure time for the flight came and went, it turns out it was delayed, of course with no explanation. When I went up to the American Airlines console to ask what the delay was, they explained that the pilot and entire crew had also gotten stuck at the toll booth. We boarded after about another half hour, once we watched the pilot and crew march onboard, wending their way through the waiting passengers. Ah, life in the Caribbean.