THE NORTH ATLANTIC \u00e2\u20ac\u201d On one of our across-the-Atlantic flights to visit our son Stan, his wife and children, we noticed several passengers who had positioned themselves in the middle seat of the middle row. My wife and I had been content with our seat assignment, a window seat and the one next to it.<\/p>\n
The motives of these middle-of-the-roaders soon became clear: As soon as we were airborne, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d simply raise the armrest between the seats, stretch out and snooze all the way to Copenhagen. On a later, less crowded flight, I claimed one such arrangement, told Bonnie about it, agreed to let her use it, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just for a half hour,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and ended up in my cramped single seat, next to a large man who had claimed Bonnie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s seat, and who apparently had been eating garlic-and-onion sandwiches.<\/p>\n
On this flight, I spotted a row of three unclaimed seats, ran for them as soon as the pilot turned off the seatbelts sign \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and discovered that the armrests do not come up. For some reason Bonnie wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t interested in commandeering that row from me.<\/p>\n
That was just Phase 1 of our trip overseas, where we stopped first in Denmark, then hopped the Costa Luminosa, to see the fjords in Norway. The cruise liner, by the way, belongs to the same line that owns the recently wrecked Costa Concordia, whose captain notoriously left the ship early after \u00e2\u20ac\u0153falling\u00e2\u20ac\u009d into a rescue craft.<\/p>\n
The sister ship\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s misfortune no doubt provided the impetus for an extremely long training session on the day of embarkment. All 3,000 of us stood five-deep, clad in lifejackets, as we listened to instructions on how to board the lifeboats.<\/p>\n
That information would have been fine, and useful, had the crew not simply assumed each of us understands Italian. We listened to long announcements \u00e2\u20ac\u201d delivered through faulty speakers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in most of the world\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s extant languages: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153After we give the passengers a few verses in Italiano, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s try Turkish, then Swahili, Tewa, Sanskrit, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll close with English, and one final round of Italian.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Or at least that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what I assume they said \u00e2\u20ac\u201d I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand Italian.<\/p>\n
Italians made up about 40 percent of the travelers, but there were a large number from Germany, many from France, a sprinkling of Spaniards and an American or two. The frequent announcements that came over the P.A. System usually were in Italian. Once, a message came through with considerable urgency \u00e2\u20ac\u201d in Italian. We rushed downstairs, and as I was about to do my \u00e2\u20ac\u0153no comprendi\u00e2\u20ac\u009d routine, the clerk said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh. That was nothing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Nothing? We went down from the 11th floor to hear nothing.<\/p>\n
And we discovered that folks from Italy either don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appreciate my stabs at humor, or don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand them. I saw a man with a nametag, Vito. He had his hand on the elevator door in a way that made it seem as if he wanted the car to move but didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realize that his hand was preventing the door from closing.<\/p>\n
I offered help, gesturing for him to put his arm down. When we made eye contact, he said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My wife.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I now surmise he was telling me he was holding up the elevator until his wife arrived. My only reply had to be, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re very nice, but I hardly know you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d And that did not go over well with this amico mio.<\/p>\n
Finally, we discovered that on an ocean voyage with countless others \u00e2\u20ac\u201d on a ship that houses 13 dining rooms and 11 stories \u00e2\u20ac\u201d lines don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily form at the rear. For example, being close to the front means nothing if the person in front of you has a large family, all of them able to squeeze in line because, well, because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re family \u00e2\u20ac\u201d someone else\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.<\/p>\n
On the last day on board, when it was time to clean out the cabins, we noticed a strong scent wafting through the hallways. It delighted most of the voyagers. The name of this fragrance spray: Arrivederci Aroma, of course.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
THE NORTH ATLANTIC \u00e2\u20ac\u201d On one of our across-the-Atlantic flights to visit our son Stan, his wife and children, we noticed several passengers who had positioned themselves in the middle seat of the middle row. My wife and I had been content with our seat assignment, a window seat and the one next to it. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":944,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}