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Andrew Jackson
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August 28, 2000
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Farewell to Amsterdam. There's another Old World capital under the ship's collective belt.
In London, we picked up a hold full of gooseberry fool, wild boar pie, and toadskin melons. Amsterdam was a veritable treasure house of cheese and bread. We also added two heretofore untasted fruits: the crossberry and the mangosteen. The Big Banana Night Market was the only place in town that sold them, and I got the last eight. I was pretty proud of myself.
The Amsterdam harbor was an amazing sight. I've never seen so many huge sailboats, ferris wheels, century-old river barges, and sightseeing boats in my life. They planned to run ferries to get us sailors over to the center of town, but there was too much traffic to cross the river.
The buzzword in Amsterdam was "gesellich" which means comfy and nice. I pronounced it "Gazellish," except more gutteral. Amsterdam seemed to be all flower markets, canals, and cathedrals. It was not as impressive or formidable as London, but so nice. With Hamburg and Copenhagen looming in our future, we are in a constant state of awe and excitement. But all of this pomp and circumstance fades in significance compared to the prime meaning of every landfall: mail.
It's hard to explain why mail is so important to us. All of us have phone cards, and we can E-mail the homefolks wherever we go. Heck, most of the mail we get are bills and bank statements, anyway.
Somehow, though, when you're along way from home in both space and time, just holding an envelope in your hands, reading a few clippings from the hometown paper, or seeing the familiar handwriting of a loved one means more than I can explain. And that's not counting the cookies Supertuff's mom (Ma Supertuff) sends him. So, every place we go is an adventure full of stunning novelties, but the first and biggest thrill, after we've tacked around the harbor, shot off our cannon, docked and hooked up power and water, and washed the deck, is to open our mail.
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The boat seems a little cavernous now that the cadets are gone, but we've got Lee Vogtman, our new "synthesizing conduit," to quote Jan. A couple of years ago somebody asked him what the ship's teacher did, and that's what he told them.
Leslie Bridget was the pioneer teacher aboard, and she left some pretty big shoes to fill, but Lee is finding his sealegs pretty quickly. The job involves staying up until all hours wrestling with our refractory computer gear, touring foreign schools, supervising foreign students' boat tours, photographing everything, and sending logs home to Maryland schools or whoever else cares to log on. It's not a job for people who can't go without sleep. Of course, we, the crew, feel it our duty to make fun of him or her as much as possible, so a heaping helping of equanamity is a key prerequisite. How well I recall Leslie on the first trip out from Baltimore to Bermuda, wedged into the midships companionway, as she took pictures of the crew reefing the main in forty knot winds. She stowed away on our crossing this summer, and took all our best pictures. Hi Leslie!
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Many crewmembers got beautiful tattoos in Amsterdam, but I can't say who or show any pictures until they've privately told their parents about it. Nobody wants Mom to find out about their tattoo on the Internet.
We had a dockside party a couple of nights ago where everybody in the band was wearing Kreuzenstern uniforms. Those Russians will sell you the clothes off their backs, always with a disarming comment on how doing this will get them in trouble.
Well that's it for now. See you next week.
Andy the Cook
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