Two things inspire this post this morning. One, which I'll get to in a while, is the fact that today, Monday, September 30th, 2024, is supposedly the long, and I do mean long, awaited launch day of the Villa Vie Odyssey, a primarily residence occupied cruise ship slated to partake in an at least three and a half year World Cruise.
But first, I want to get to a thought that popped into my head when I was watching a video detailing recent news out of Poland reporting on new changes to Polish immigration policy that now, apparently, have Polish soldiers shooting people if they try to cross into Poland illegally.
I remember back when I was growing up in my small New England town, stories of my family's ancestral immigration to America we're almost primarily of the following nature: The farms in Quebec were failing, our ancestors couldn't find work in Montreal or other Canadian cities, they headed south into New England where factory work was plentiful and found textile mill towns like ours where other French Canadians had already established a diaspora community of Quebecois expats. Rinse and repeat.
But for one line in my family, the story took a quite different track. According to family legend, my mother's father, August Stempkowski, when he was a young man, daringly escaped the advancing Nazi troops invading Poland at the start of World War II by accepting passage on a cargo ship along with hundreds of other refugees to make an arduous stowaway crossing, packed like sardines, or, more likely similar to the image above, African slaves, and brought to the freedom of neutral America. There, under the dark of night, they illegally entered the United States since, I guess, there would have been problems with going the usual route of asylum seekers either due to their illicit passage or perhaps international law regarding neutral nations accepting refugees blah blah blah. I'm sure the politics were never described to me or my siblings during these nights of regaling. So if this story is to be believed, I am the product, at least in part, of illegal aliens. Illegal Polish aliens. Chew on that modern Poland!
So now we abruptly, as we are want to do with a couple cups of coffee and a chelating attitude, move to regale The Saga of the Odyssey of, well, The Odyssey. That is, the ship named The Odyssey.
In case you haven't been following it in the news, this company called Villa Vie bought this cruise ship about as old as Monarch of the Seas, that is, built in the early 1990s, so as far as cruise ships go, freaking ancient. They promised to rehab the thing from stem to stern, sold cabins starting at a cool $100,000 for a tiny inside cabin with multi-thousand dollar per month fees.
Hefty pricing, but if you think about it, it could really add up to a bargain if you truly are set on world cruising and don't mind staying on the same ship, seeing the same faces all the time, having the same crew in your face everyday (Good morning Mr. Mike), listening to the same singer and keyboardist in the single lounge every night, watching the same Off, Off, Off Broadway show in the tiny theater twice a week, every week, every month. Hey, whatever floats your boat.
But the true Odyssey of this is not only that it's not all that it's cracked up to be, I mean just take a look at the pictures below that detail the promised look of the cabins and amenities and the actual cabins and amenities, but the delays. And I do mean delays.
- THE PROMISE -
They were supposed to set sail 4 months ago. They had everyone come out to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where the ship is in dry dock, in anticipation of being able to board her within days. Days turned into promised weeks. Weeks turned into months. People that complained, well, they got booted! So YouTube videos of these yet to sail residents, are all "happy happy hoi oi oi!"
We'll see by the end of day today whether their embarkation is a reality, or, if these hapless simpletons are led astray once again.
What do these two stories have to do with one another?
Well they're both about ships. And they're both about cramming people on the ships. People that are in search of a better life. My grandpa wanted to escape the Nazis. These modern day rich, retired bimbos are just searchin' for that lost shaker of salt before they go to that Margaritaville in the sky.
And that people is how you begin a post with a lithograph depiction of 17th century African people brutally packed into the hold of a slave ship and end up quoting the lyrics to Jimmy Buffett songs.