I’ve never been on a cruise before. I’ve done island hopping in Greece a few times or taken ferries and such, but never have I been on a cruise ship. The idea of being on a floating device in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of people never appealed to me. But here I am, in the middle of the Atlantic, with a bunch of people. A bunch means ~2000. It is day 2 of floating around and I kind of like it. There are quite a few expected and some surprising „Firsts”: being in a room without a window is one of the expected ones, being afraid of claustrophobia included, but it’s fine. We don’t spend much time inside the room anyway – too much to do! And that’s the other surprise: there is sooo much to do! Lectures about the universe, about Salvador Dali, WWII veterans, watercolor and dance classes, games, etc. We get a print-out every day, with a 4 page selection of „not ever getting bored“.

And then there is the food! I’ve never eaten food that good (I’m talking about that steak last night) that just melted in my mouth! But the “First” was, that the waiter came before serving the steak, with a wooden box filled with 10 different steak knives and I could choose one of them for my meat. For my steak they should have offered a spoon or something, a steak knife, freshly sharpened, was not necessary at all…

Another “First” is that I am treated like the queen of England. Not that they think I’m 100 years old, they just serve me like I would be the queen. Even at the buffet I cannot touch anything, I just point to what I want and they dish it all up very nicely. And they bring it to your table, they move it when you move to another table and there is always refills and seconds and plenty of everything. Masses of everything! And masses of waiters and servers and housemaids and everybody is just super nice!

Another “First“ is the daily newspaper we get to the room. Getting a newspaper is not that unusual, but we get an American version and a German version, which is not just the same but translated , it contains the news that are relevant and more interesting for Germans (or Americans). For example in the German newspaper is the main report about a train accident near Garmisch, where several wagons derailed and killed 5 people and injured many others. In the American newspaper the main report is about how many people were killed in several shootings that happened the last 3 days.

Another surprise is that I cannot feel the ship moving. It is a big boat, actually it is not a boat, but a ship, but I can’t feel a thing – yet. It is predicted that we will feel the outskirts of a tropical storm / hurricane that’s heading towards Florida and the Caribbean. So far, only the sky changed color from bright blue to grey, the water still behaves very nicely…..

And another „First“ is that there is a medical department and the people there are very nice! I had the pleasure to be one of their first patients yesterday and I was so pleased that I will go back again tomorrow and maybe a few more times; who knows?! I brought a little gift from California, a spider bite of some kind. By the time we were in New York it got infected and as soon as we entered the ship, it spread around my wrist and got nasty. But as I said before, the doctor and both nurses were very attentive, they took good care of this, cleaned and bandaged me up, gave me Penicillin for a week, ibuprofen and some other painkillers. Oh well…..

And another „First“ is that I’m going to be 58 years old tomorrow for the first time in my life!