Time for a time out

Dear Bloggers.

Due to the fact that my computer is having some trouble and we are being busy during the holiday season.
That is the reason why my blog is on hold for the coming months so I will tell my stories again in the new year.

See You in the year 2018

The Old Sailor,

Tough times and a tough life

Dear Bloggers,



Tough times happen to all of us. No matter how strong or powerful or confident we are, tough times will come: viciously forcing their might on us, causing us to crumble. As mighty as we can feel one day, we can feel just as lost and scared the next.

I don’t say this to cause fear, I say it because it’s unfortunately the truth. The hardest part of tough times is not to lose hope. And even though it isn't easy you have to carry on.

I’ve felt trapped like being under a pile of rubble, no light seeping through, and the rescue workers weren’t coming to save me. It’s a feeling mixed with loss, fear and deflated dreams.

The amazing thing about life (and I’m never going to understand how) is that as long as you’re breathing, you still have a small chance to survive. I don’t care whether you think it’s God, the Universe, or a couple of alien civilizations playing games with us, you always have a chance.

Understand why You are experiencing tough times, But be grateful for what you still have. Yes it sounds easier then it ever will be.

Telling you to be grateful is almost starting to sound cliche. Everybody says it, yet not a lot of people take the time to do it. It’s easy to get lost in cluttered thoughts filled with tumbled-down hope and feel sorry for ourselves, so I understand why we generally don’t make the effort to be grateful. 

But being grateful really helps. It pulls you back into the present moment, allowing you to put your troubles on the back burner, even if it’s for just a short time. It doesn’t matter how you choose to be grateful. You can write out ten things right now you’re grateful for. You can sing to the heavens all the beautiful aspects of your life. You can take a big, giant breath, hold it for ten seconds, give it a powerful exhale and yell, “Yes! I’m grateful for this breath.”

I don’t care, just be grateful, period. If you’re struggling to come up with anything, remember you are, in fact, still alive. That won’t last forever, so take extreme advantage of it.

Remember all the previous tough times You’ve battled through and how You got out of them

You’ve been through your fair share of tough times, am I right? I thought so.

What I find interesting is that you’re still here. You made it through your past tough times even when they probably felt a lot similar to the tough time you’re experiencing right now. Why should this tough time be any different?

Think back for a moment. What positively helped you through? Was it a book, friend, or a family member???? Go back to what helped you through the last tough time. Was there something you did that helped? Just revisit that.

Personally, Bob Marley’s music has always helped me during my tough bouts. It calms me, puts me in a more hopeful mood. But I can get so lost in my struggles sometimes that I forget about Bob’s music. It’s not until I’m proactive about my struggles that I tap into past sources of inspiration and guidance.

Embrace your tough times and explore what options exist to create an even better life. 

 

During tough times you simply can’t give up, ever. Even during the toughest times you must keep your hopes alive by pushing through. Work on what needs to get done, try and build some momentum, and then build on it further.

The last thing you should be doing is quitting, which I slightly hesitate to say because there are some very good reasons to quit sometimes. If You will give up everything is lost.

If you’re passionate about what you want to do, then don’t quit.
If you’re losing your life because of it, well, you don’t have to quit, but take a break from it and get your life back together.
One of my little secrets with my writing is that I write out of my heart and not out of fear. I’m not scared to death every time I type up a story. 

Am I going to make enough money to survive the coming month together with my family, my wife, our kids and our dogs? Is anybody going to even read this one? Is what I’m writing worthwhile, or is it hogwash? Yes my little list of insecure questions goes on and on. 

Somehow I cannot figure out if I do this for fun or do I hope that I will be discovered and earn some cash this way?

If you have been out on a rough sea, you can deal with this tough times as well. So just always keep your head up, believe in yourself, and take life head on.

The Old Sailor,

My good old typewriter

Dear Bloggers,

Yes, you should think your Old Sailor is out of his mind (crazy = mentally ill) because a few days ago I wrote some strange scribbles on this computer, I have writers cramps or a writers block and I walked around with the thought maybe it's time I'll stop writing for a while, but this I have to write this thoughts off from my mind.

Please, hold on for a second and then the lamp will probably fade out forever. No this is not a promise, I am not going to do anything, it's just a subject that matters suddenly and that subject is so tempting that I can not let it go.

In addition to the problems with my computer, I am lying awake about this in the nightly hours, but obviously aside. I had my memory on the run, just to think about the good old time when we used the good old-fashioned typewriter. Do you still know how that was, Dear fellow bloggers? 

Then you just pushed a button and that button put a lever with a letter in mirror image in operation on the end of the lever. That same lever with that letter "punched" first a ribbon that was soaked with ink and finally came to the paper (TICK!). If you wanted to enter a new line for the next sentence, you gave a yank on the big lever and the roll that serves the paper just bumped with a click. 

Without a doubt, I was able to watch this for hours when my wife took a seat behind the machine and typed flawless letters with over 200 hits per minute. Here I am still jealous with. She is ticking with ten fingers at once and I type with up to four fingers at the same time. The writing itself takes me little effort but my thoughts go a lot faster than I am able to type.

I saw this as a simple person with a simple background this all happen.

And how are you doing this now? You push a button and suddenly a letter appears on the screen. But how?!? I always think so how is that letter just the right one? Something like that. Do you have that too? No, you probably do'nt, because you have been using this for so long that you do not even stand still about this anymore. And if that letter does NOT appear, look, I'll get pretty upset, because I will not get it. I will scream and shout to the damn machine and throw things to the screen. Yes, I did not really understand how that letter came there into the first place, so how could I figure out how it will NOT happen again? Can you follow my reasoning a little bit, Dear bloggers? Or should I make little a drawing again?!?

So, what I really wanted to say: if a man has a troubled relation with his computer, then a specialist needs to be found, your whole machine is being in a heap and everything is being overlooked, or maybe even worse, it will be completely emptied and then it will be started up again. It's for a guy like me as if there is an illusionist on the job who makes the big Houdini acts blurred, and it's so cleared and cleaned up that no cat who would find her kittens back in it. Oh, it's on the good Lord's name all a big box of misery.

I've been running around with the vague plans for a few days to follow a computer course after which I could empty my computer or reset my computer myself. A good laugh.(I could not do magic tricks either in my younger years, so this is probably also an illusion or what is it called?) and so in the end it would have everything under control. However, I work in a kind of team system, at which time I am sometimes at 04:30 hrs. there to start my job and then the other week I will be around 02:30 hrs. home.

How do I have to drag it all on board and put it in place, Yes dear bloggers? Good advice is pretty expensive.

I sometimes think seriously about my old typewriter and dig it out of the dirt heaps in the attic where it is covered. Look, that's a good example of getting old! Isn't it, dear bloggers?

The Old Sailor.

(Mechanically thinking person and slightly strange type.)

My days at Sea ended

Dear Bloggers,

Once again it has been a really long time since I wrote my blog about my old job as a sailor…and I think I have come to realize the I’m just not one of those people who is a very good and regular blogger. Maybe it’s that I try to do my blogs to perfect and I will put too much detail into my posts…then they become too long.

However I did not want to leave this blog as an old sailorman that ended up landbased and would feel incomplete….I've had the feeling that my job at sea all of a sudden had come to an end and I walked around being unemployed and had to go search for a job that wasn't like evryone elses. I felt for awhile that i had failed and unfinished my job that I loved so much. So I decided to do my best and find a new one, A second kind of lasting love….

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So here is the short version of whats going on with me now….as I wrote in my former blogs, I started my new job with a temps office and learned how to be a bus driver on commuter busses close to home that was my first contract with them. As I was just there for the Summer but I stayed on until Newyears. I applied for a new contract with a different temps office for the same bus company but in the area of Groningen. The start was maybe quite rough but I learned quickly and some of the elder drivers told me, just do the best you can and don't be afraid to ask. 
 

I enjoyed the busy student routes and I found my way in most of the areas. During the seventh contract I got employed by the company at Qbuzz (the buscompany is one of the smallest ones in the country) …but then got transferred to the city of Groningen (the largest region and the biggest in the Northeren fleet!) Eventhough everything was better on the newest and largest depot I was not really happy here. (I enjoyed the old and quite a bit smaller depot and getting my own locker and little safetybox) I love the raw personalities of the drivers here as they are a smaal group and deal with the situations how they are crossing their paths. But let us go back to my goood old days at sea:

I have been sailing on the Mediterranean sea….with cruises starting out from Venice and Barcelona…and we docked in ports like Livorno (Pisa and Florence), Piraeus/Athens, Rome, and Naples and in Greece we saw some of the Islands(Santorini, Lesbos, zakhyntos.)…also Palma Spain (which is one of the most beautiful islands that I have ever seen). Also I got a chance to stop in Odessa in the Ukrain and Yalta on the Island Crimea, Limasol on Cyprus and we stopped over on Gibraltar and in Porto in Portugal as we were sailing up the Atlantic coast towards the North of Europe.

Also, my social life on the Astor was much more exciting than on any other ship or any other job. I actually kind of loved the job and hated on the same time over there….and though it did not work very well working long hours and going ashore and party after work…it was somewhat nice at the time as well. 
 

I visited so many amazing cities and places….in Venice Italy of course the Gondoleras…in Istanbul the Blue Mosque, well in Rome ROME!…I mean everything in Rome is beautiful…old…elaborate, and historical! And Athens the city of the Olympics and the Acropolis The tour starts at the temple of Olympian Zeus (6^th c. B.C.), one of the largest in antiquity and close by Hadrian's Arch (131 A.D.), which forms the symbolic entrance to the city. From there, we were walking along Dionysou Areopaghitou Street (on the south side of the Acropolis) you pass the ancient Theatre of Dionysos (5^thc. B.C.) where most of the works by Sophocles, Euripides, Aeschylos and Aristophanes were performed.

Continuing, you will reach the ruins of the Asklepieion (5^th c. B.C.) and the Stoa of Eumenens (2th c. B.C.) and from there the Odeion of Herodes Atticus, which was built in 161 A.D. and is nowadays the venue of the performances of the Atheus Festival.

From there you climb up to the sacred rock of the Acropolis, the site of some of the most important masterpieces of worldwide architecture and art, the most renowned of which is the Parthenon temple. Apart from this, also impressive are the Propylaea. The temple of the Athene Nike and the Erechtheion, while you shouldn't skip a visit to the Museum, located close to the Parthenon. Moreover, from the rock you have an impressive view of the city. My advise hire a tourguide and you will understand so much more about all this.

The Atlantic Coast, …with all of the gorgeous weather in gulf of Biscay, High winds and rolling ship, and the amazingly beautiful Island of Guernsey. I could not believe that after waiting all that time…and working on a few ships…I had finally made it to the Northsea in my part of Europe to see some of the most charming places I have ever had the privilege of visiting! 
 

However, as exciting and beautiful as my time onboard was….I was not really enjoying the job on the ship anymore. Honestly I don’t know if I ever really loved being a waiter on a ship with no youth and having the felling sometimes that I was there mental counselor…not that the job is that bad…it’s just as a person with a service education as a background…and being a bartender at heart…I really wanted to do more with serving cocktails and logdrinks…and all the other things that we offered… I got the feeling somedays that we were basically their shrink. As they were telling me things as I was their therapist….after a little while it becomes annoying. 
 

Plus on a ship the size of the Astor…with lots of elder couple’s (I think in high season we had over 50)…there was almost never ever drama and conflict so it was boring like …. I was tired of that too. Then there was ship life itself…though I loved being out in ports…I was always sad when it was time to head back to the ship and get back to work after a busy and sometimes exhausting day of roaming the streets of Europe. I just wanted to have some time to decompress,reflect and relax.…and on a ship like this I did not have that.  

Having all these reasons and probably more….I decided in March 1995 just before they began with sailing down South and do the Atlantic Crossing I offered my resignation to the Hotelmanager and stopped my contract I left the ship and the feelings were double I would miss it and on the other hand I was reunited with my love. My search for a job started again and I started to do something that I had been dreaming about for years.

I went on an interview to sail on a ferry again closer to home and still being overseas, in between the countries The Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The interview was in Amsterdam …and I heard back from them within a few months that I had the job and if I wanted it, I had to jump on today a rough start but that is typically me. I was so excited…because for over the last few years this was my dream to find closure for other things…I had been wanting to actually move to a totally different continent, and experience what it would be like to live in big country like Australia this dream failed unfortunatly as I enjoyed life there but there were no jobs due to economic recession and we were just trying to become actually residents of that country. (So no Australian girlfriend or someone from another foreign country would have become my wife or anything like that). 
 

Therefore…I knew that my time on the Astor…would not be my last time on a ship (at least full time for a long period.)…because in March 1995 I came back from Bremerhaven in Germany and found a job in a local tobaccofactory for the time being to pay the bills. And next to it I had a job in the weekends in a local discotheque (I travelled home on my own dime at that because I ended up shortening my contract)…and started my preparation for the new start of my life! It took a while to recover and fill up my resources.
 

So in April 1996, I had to come back home after a early morning shift and prepare for my new job in the DFDS company as a bartender and waiter. A bit of a short notice so we quickly bought some shoes and utillities for my uniform. I sailed for this company on several cotracts,jobs and ships. I started as a bartender and waiter, as a shop assistant, night security guard, restaurantwaiter and running the Guest Service Center. I'ne sailed on the King of Scandinavia, Prince of Scandinavia and on the “new” King of Scandinavia (renamed nowadays as King Seaways)

I am grateful for the experiences and the relationships my time on the ships brought, I wished that I was able to chronicle it in a better, and more detailed way…but I hope this blog has been helpful to someone. I will keep my blog open for anyone who still finds my posts useful…and I may (I’m not 100% sure) start a blog about my time on the M/S Astor. 

If I do…I will certainly post the pages here…so those of you who are interested can follow my journeys half way across the world and the intriguing world of the lives on a cruiseship. I probably have to split up the story in several posts and I'll promise that they will follow eachother on a montly base. Mylife on the ferry has been told in earlier posts,

Thanks to every reader for coming along on the journey…it has certainly been an interesting one to say the least…and I have been happy to share this with you!

The Old Sailor,

Saunter

Dear Bloggers,

There are amazing sounds coming from the little silhouette in the tree. The dark blue sky shoots through the small beak. Could there also be birds who do not dare to sing their song? Who only sing their father's psalms when sitting next to him on a twig. My dad could tell me directly what name this little animal has received. With his eyes closed. So he must have seen it with me too. I did not know what a sissy was. Some kind of vegetable, I thought. At least I understood that it was something dirty. Not that I was busy with those kind of things. I did not search for these kind of answers as I do nowadays constantly. Just because I am curious and want to know why? Things were just the way they were and yes it was bad news and I had to man up. But in that regard, I was perhaps more a sensitive guy and sometimes I was maybe more a girl or a little sissy like my father called it.

For example, my mother always had tea ready when I came home after school. It seemed like she had been waiting the whole day for us, something that I could do as well. Just I love to hang out with my wife and kids. I was really a bit of a softy who could enjoy these little loving and caring things that my mother did. Yes and I was a pretty simple guy, I burned my lips and tongue on my tea over and over again.

Next to each other, we sat in the window sill, our wet hairs against the glass that protected us against the ticking drops that wanted to get in. We just had been under the shower. She looked at me. I looked at her. We sat together hand in hand in the window sill. The ticking was going on and it felt like that the window had disappeared and all the drops of the world sat in my body and wanted to get out. Tickling, tingling, tickling against the inside of my skin, my belly, my eyelids, my burned tongue and lips.

Abducted by my shivering spine. Sitting there in the window sill I saw how she, cold as ice, took a few big slugs of the steamy tea. Why did not I see that, she was not a little softy girl at all? And yes she was a lot harder and tougher than me. But I did not care about that I just loved her and did not really know yet, what I could do with this girl. So I just enjoyed each moment we had together.

Now I'm sitting on a bench in a park looking at a little bird whose name I do not know. It's singing so beautiful that it's got to be afraid of love and it must be heartbroken. Only years later, I just realized that there were many other possibilities in relations, and that boys with boys and girls could be with other girls and that these were the so-called sissies. So I was not a little sissy but a little wimp or a softy. In the years that I went to sea and sailed internationally, I discovered that this was not strange and that these people are actually very nice people. And some have become really the ones that should be counted to my best friends. So, I did not understand anything about fear of gays, no, they really don't play with you and it's not really contagious. 

I've been married with a marvelous woman and I understand that luckily we're not all being the same. The fact that I was not a sissy-boy was something I showed during my military service. I struggled and fought hard and cautiously there was only one way and that was only forward and it was sometimes that it felt tough and the road was heavy but with your comrades you can do a lot. Although there are some things that stick forever in your system, but it has made me the man I am now. And I'm very proud of it, even though I have to tell it to myself. I am maybe a bit off the wagon, but I think you should be a little bit crazy and I think it;s actually very healthy.

Do you see that there is an old exercise book between my feet on the ground? With the two horses on the cover. One white and one black, both are galloping, running, jogging. Ah, whatever. In that exercise book I wrote my first voluntary sentences. Her name is on top of each page. After a sweet story about just fun things and yes, what did I have a huge butterfly garden in my belly. 

Suddenly I saw those horses grazing between my old school stuff. Stories about her and me. That we walked into the village hand in hand. She secretly stayed with me without touching her own bed. I have described millions of kisses in detail. Descriptions of kisses that I would give her. And then there are only empty pages left, Blank, Virgin white pages. The stories stopped when she unfortunately did not come back to me again. What we were to each other it did not come back to me. She all of a sudden just collapsed and died on a volleyball court in a sports hall. What do I hate tumors in the brain. There are all those empty pages again.

Why does that little beast in my head not shut up? Why do the hollow sounds of the little creature still enter the empty night? I will flick him out of that tree with this damn book. It will now know that nobody will listen to him if I hit him with these running horses on his beak. I'm on to the bloody beast with his big mouth. Nobody will be able to see on which side the beak was. With a Smile on my face I will listen to the squeeze and the bloodshed of the blood under the weight of my foot. Very short and fierce I will laugh. Then tears will come and their will be regret. I will scrape the puddle with feathers from underneath my boot. I will punch it and push the air on my hand. "Fly, fly, fly again please," I'll whisper to it, "sing, sing, sing please." His parents will be heartbroken pops in my mind, all of a sudden. An t question myself: So much sadness and why? I'm still angry with the fact that someone will be ripped so out of your life. No, you don't want to give this to your worst enemy. For years I have been thinking about the deep wounds that must have struck in the life's of the parents, siblings, school friends and friends. 

And what to think of what was still to be explored in the field of love. Hardly and all of a sudden stopped every one's world and I became sick of the thought that I could never see her again and that I could not hold her anymore. Never more the fun together and doing things together. No, I picked up my life again and I could not change anything about it. Still, I ask myself these questions and I can sometimes walk around with this. Probably at a certain time she would have walked and had found somewhere in the world a tanned Adonis that could've made her happier. But yes ,,,,,,, I will never get these answers. The Lord is merciful but also about that I am no longer sure.

The galloping horses do not blow up any dust in my brain. It's been almost 35 years since and my life has known a lot of ups and downs. But never has anyone ever called me a sissy again. And yes, meanwhile, I am also the father of two children, and I hope I will do things better than my own parents, but that's the purpose of every parent in my opinion. I'm also making mistakes and I've forgiven my father for a long time. He was full of grief as such a young life should not stop this way, his heart broke as every parents heart would, he had to get us back on track as a family because everyday life just goes on. As I grow older, I notice more and more that people around me sometimes have deep scratches on their souls.

There are still beautiful sounds from the silhouette in the tree. The vocals of animal are answered by another birdie and suddenly they shoot through the branches. So there is always a new beginning and this is probably the most beautiful thing in the world. It's just those little things that can make life so beautiful. And then I realize that bench where I'm sitting alone and that I just have to go on with the most beautiful memories and the thoughts that just came together. I hope therefore whatever you should do in this life, think it's been worth it and I had the chance doing the most wonderful things in my life. Sometimes I was falling on my face pretty hard and I just wiped my tears away and took my loss, Even when it hurt I still got up again. So be careful with what you are saying to someone.

The Old Sailor,