Dateline: Thayne, Wyoming. Herewith are more random thoughts from the trip just finished.
River cruising in Europe may be the most perfect form of travel ever invented. We visited 5 countries and our hotel "room" (cabin) traveled with us; two weeks of travel without once schlepping luggage. There are no "sea days," every day there are towns to visit and walk in. There is no sea sickness. There is always something ashore to see while cruising. The narrowness of the river means all passing boat traffic is near enough to view easily. The locks are much more interesting than those of the Panama Canal.
Airport security in Europe has become much more uniform than it was some years ago. It now strongly resembles what the TSA does here in the States. On the other hand, the last time I was in Brazil it was still idiosyncratic, a couple of years ago. The one thing that still varies from airport to airport is whether or not one must remove one's shoes.
The crew on our river ship was much more international than in former visits, the last maybe four years ago. Then the crew was largely Eastern European, except for the executive positions which were filled by Western Europeans. This time we had several Indonesians and one lad each from India and the Caribbean, as well as the usual Romanians, Croatians, Serbians, and Macedonians. Once again the executive positions were mostly Dutch, except for the chef who was Bulgarian and the Macedonian maitre d'.
As is the case on ocean cruise liners, all these folks seem to get along with each other relatively well. Perhaps we should turn over international relations to the cruise lines, which seem to do a better job of creating harmony than our diplomats do. It appears that the future world will communicate in heavily accented, broken English, as much of it does now.
Speaking of which, many shops had signs either partially or entirely in English; this in countries which have another language as their own. Ditto magazine titles. I suppose they are "borrowing" cachet the way we all used to with French.
