The Bilbao to Portsmouth Ferry

Air travel doesn't do justice to distances, or to journeys. Getting on a plane in one place, getting off in another, feeling nothing but blankness in between - it reorders geography into simple equations of hours-between and time-zones crossed. It's nice, every once in a while, to go more slowly and deliberately, and to have time to ruminate on the change.

We left the continent in grand fashion this time, setting sail for southern England with our car and a few days before our flight home. The trip took a little over 24 hours, beginning in darkness, traversing a full day and ending late the next night.

Above, morning breaks over the Bay of Biscay
The Brittany Ferries boat that plies the water between Bilbao and Portsmouth is much bigger than we expected. Because of some bad weather that we never saw but heard a lot about, the ferry was late in loading. During a few hours spent sitting in the vast holding lot, idling truck engines and the crackling radios of the customs men settled into a kind of dreamlike white noise. A few hundred other cars sat in the gloom with us. Truckers talked by their rigs, drinking beer until unsteadied and laughing over old stories.
When we finally were ushered on, it happened in a rush. We left the car with our overnight bags, found our cabin, settled in. Our cabin smelled faintly of seawater, the ship rolled heavily, we slept lightly, always aware that the ocean was beneath us.The morning brought brief sun, followed by spitting rain and strong wind as we entered the Celtic sea. We worked and sat, wandered from shop to restaurant to bar. There are events on board, of course, and movies playing, but we didn't take part in any of it. A certain pleasure can be found in being hemmed in for a finite amount of time, and in drifting into a soft-lit daze. The day passed very swiftly, in a cornerless line of rolling waves and quiet music.
There were two restaurants on board, and two real bars. Rumors of a third bar spread, and were confirmed by a vague mention in the directory, but we weren't able to find it. It sounded intriguing - the "chauffeur lounge," reserved for truck drivers and, one imagines, the more unsavory types.

The other bars were predictably bland, though they did a brisk business. People like to drink when they're on a boat, and to eat. We had sardines and bread for our chilly, on-deck lunch, followed in our cabin by some dates and oranges.

Night fell again, and with it came a certain edginess. The passengers were informed of another delay, minds were turned toward solid ground. In the last few, long hours, it was as if the boat had awakened. Passengers stretched and paced, standing restlessly in the hallways and congregating more anxiously around the televisions and bars.

The lights of England and Portsmouth brought people out onto the decks. The air was heavy with moisture, but the rain had cleared. Most of our fellow passengers were British, and the sight of their homeland seemed to calm them.

We slipped into our berth around nine-thirty at night. Driving away, speeding down a misty English motorway, the breadth of the water behind us felt immense.

The Zadar Mali Lošinj Ferry

Croatia's coast doesn't so much mean an end to land, as it does a point where the land begins to trickle out. The islands continue for miles, breaking up the Adriatic into a series of channels and spaces. It’s a watery place, with rough stone edges and remote specks and ridges. The only real way to get around is by boat, which is how we got from Zadar – on the edge of the sea – up to Lošinj island.
It’s a monotonous journey, but a pleasant one. We boarded at nine in the morning and drove off the boat in Mali Lošinj at three in the afternoon. The coasts of the mainland and of the islands slipped by slowly, none much unlike any other. A handful of other voyagers joined us, some getting off before us, some getting on at stops along the way. Two decks, painted blinding white, were mostly empty because of the intensity of the sun, but the inside of the boat was quiet too. It’s a lonely, less-traveled route.
A constant, low-frequency hum was the only real noise below deck – the sound of the engine churning. The Adriatic was flat and calm, and the only change in the reverberations came when the ship ground into reverse as we neared a port. The only other persistent noises: a slight clattering of the coffee cups, piled high on the cafeteria bar, and the voice of the cook, who sang and yelled with a great deal of energy. He made a meal for the crew, served at noon, that smelled tantalizing – only sparsely-filled sandwiches were available to the passengers. The sandwiches sat in seran wrap behind glass at the bar. A bowl of bananas was apparently meant for someone else; the bartender told us that they weren’t for sale.
There were three stops along the way. The ports were small and sparsely populated, little more than a concrete dock jutting out from a sleepy island. What I will remember most is the clarity of the water. Without the churning of the ship’s wake, it was nearly transparent. Looking down from the deck, it was possible to imagine that the rocks beneath the surface were only tinted a light aquamarine and not underwater at all. These outer islands were surrounded by the clearest seawater I have ever seen.
A flurry of activity erupted in the hold at every stop. Though few passengers boarded or got off, locals swarmed on board. They stacked and carried away crates of produce and cardboard boxes, picking up shipments from other ports and sending goods and packages onward along the route. This seemed to be the more important function of the boat – not to bring cars with foreign license plates to distant locales, but to supply the inhabitants of far-flung places with a link to the mainland. Jadrolinija, the giant among Croatian ferry companies, is state owned and not overly concerned with profits. It exists because the people on the islands need a connection, not because people are clamoring to travel this way.
Between stops, very little happened. When someone got up to go on deck, or when the cook changed his song, everyone noticed. People came back below into the air conditioning almost gasping from the heat and sun.
As we approached Mali Lošinj, the last stop on the line, a restless excitement came over the passengers. In the sixth hour of our voyage, the uniformity of water, sun and movement had begun to devolve into tedium. Everyone was glad when the port came into view; no one lingered long on deck before assembling at the cars.
We’ve taken a number of shorter ferries on our trip, including a few here in Croatia, but never one that felt like a journey in itself. Driving off, we felt less that we'd been on a boat for six hours - more that the land had slipped away for an interminable amount of time and we had just found it again.

Lake Uri

In German, it's called "Vierwaldstättersee," or, "Lake of the Four Forested Cantons." Lake Lucerne (or, if you prefer, Lake Luzern), is a complicated, twisting canyon landscape with many deep branches and points. Though it's all one body of water, the locals call each of the different sections by a different name. There's the Buochser See, the Küssnachter See, the Alpnacher See and the Urner See. We spent two nights in Brunnen, camping by the waters of the Urner bay, which, in English, is called Lake Uri. It is a pretty, quiet part of central Switzerland, with a long and important history. These are the waters by which the Swiss Confederation was founded and on which William Tell sailed. It is here that the modern nation was born and where the canton of Schwyz - the namesake of Switzerland - rises up in forested hills.
Despite all of its history, Lake Uri is much quieter than the other, more westerly branches of Lucerne. Brunnen, where we stayed, is the largest town, but isn't all that big. We spent both days here hiking around the Swiss Trail, which stretches from Brunnen all the way to Rütli, which sits remote and misty at the point where Uri meets the Buochser See. Along the way, we passed through most of the little towns on the water. Some were actual villages, having a few cafes and churches. Some were little more than a ferry dock and two or three houses. Sisikon, where we stopped walking the first day, was one of the smaller towns. We waited at the dock for the boat, content in the sunshine. We were the only passengers getting on or off there, and were amusing to the ferry's crew.
Legend has it that William Tell, who was being taken across the lake to be executed after insulting the governor, was caught up in a storm. Fearing that the boat would capsize, his guards released Tell - who was renowned as a sailer as much as he was a marksman - to help them pilot the craft to safety. When they reached shore, however, Tell leaped onto the rocks and pushed the boat back out into the waves and wind.

Tell is a very famous figure here, with statues, shrines and streets bearing his likeness and name. Much of the mythology surrounding him was created - or exaggerated - by Friedrich Schiller, and the playwright is nearly as famous as his subject. There is even a gold inscription on a thirty foot high, natural obelisk in the lake that is dedicated to the writer.

The more salient historical points surrounding the lake, however, have to do with the founding of the Swiss confederation, which was signed into effect in 1291 here in Schwyz. The original cantons of Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden formed an alliance that was ultimately joined by the other five lake cantons, and then, gradually, by the rest of Switzerland. The spot where the document was signed is not far from the lakeshore, and is popular with tourists - we didn't visit, but we saw a lot of people going there on the ferry.
On the trail, high up above the waters in the alpine meadows, it's easy to imagine that nothing has changed here since the 13th century. The farmhouses are ancient, people still mow and turn their hay by hand and the plunking of cowbells is the only sound of civilization. The mountains, of course, are ancient and at the tip of the bay they rise steep and snowy.
The view from the campsite was tremendous, and we fell asleep listening to the lapping of wavelets and the distant churning of ferry engines. To the left, here, are the lights of Brunnen proper, and the entrance to Uri beyond.

The Ferry to Muhu

On our way from the pretty lake town of Viljandi out to the island of Saaremaa, we had to take a ferry from Virtsu, on the coast, to Muhu island.
The crossing took a little over half an hour - a straight shot out into the sea ice, across the channel. The land was difficult to distinguish on the horizon because it's so flat. The sea was dead calm and the ice lay still on the surface. Even behind us, in the wake of the boat, the water seemed barely disturbed, the floes sliding heavily into place around the stern.
We left the car on the lower deck and went up for a bite to eat in the cafe. Rebecca had a piece of bread adorned with these small, silvery fish that she believes are Estonian "räim," or Baltic dwarf herring. They were barely cured, without much salt, and she said that they were delicious.
I had this blood sausage wrapped in bacon, which was much heavier. I had intended to have just one of them, but the serving-lady put two on my plate alongside a huge pile of sauerkraut. They were good, but it was more food than I really wanted on our short crossing. Around us, passengers sat without talking and looked out the windows. Something about the blankness of the ocean space and the low sound of the engines made conversation seem frivolous. Being on a boat - even for a short amount of time - always seems to bring out a contemplative quietness in people.
After we ate, we went out onto the forward deck to watch the port drawing nearer. The ferries had tracked a path in the ice (which you can see in the photo). The air was surprisingly still, which was nice because the temperature was hovering around 10° fahrenheit.

The Curonian Spit

Somehow, we ended up staying fifty kilometers away from firm ground on a giant sandbar in the Baltic sea.
The Curonian spit seals off a large bay, creating a shallow, sandy lagoon. The whole spit is over a hundred kilometers long, but only two kilometers wide at its widest point. We were only a few minutes from the Russian Kalningrad region, which controls the southern half of the spit. The people here are referred to as Neringians, regardless of their nationality, and they're a hardy, seafaring lot. They've endured a lot in their history, losing towns and lives to shifting sand and encroaching water.
There is a little gap at the northern end of the spit, so we had to take a ferry from Klaipeda down onto the sand. There were quite a few people and cars on the boat, probably because it was a saturday. We waited for about forty-five minutes to board, then were on the water for a total of ten minutes. Because we were one of the first cars off the boat and there is really only one road on the other side - and because we were freaked about speeding tickets - we made a lot of people mad. Everyone was able to pass us eventually.
The people that live on the spit rely mostly on tourism for employment, but there is still a considerable fish-smoking industry. The smell of smoking fish makes its way downwind from each of the four Lithuanian villages - especially the two smaller hamlets of Preila and Pervalka, which are cut off from the main road and most of the tourists. Our hostess is originally from Klaipeda, but her husband's family has been on the spit forever. We met him briefly - he looked like a sea captain with his weathered face and white beard.
We were staying just outside of Nida, the southernmost Lithuanian town. Because the Russians are very picky about their visas, the land might as well have ended right there. All of the towns are on the lagoon side of the spit, away from the waves and wind of the Baltic. Nida is the largest and the most touristy - there are also a lot of vacation homes belonging to Lithuanians. Someone was having a party one night, and they had a rented sauna sitting outside their house.
We were able to make arrangements with our hostess for two bicycles, which let us get out into the wilder parts of the land. The spit is a highly protected nature preserve, so a lot of the dunes are off limits. The concern is that tourist traffic on the delicate sand environment will lead to the destruction of the plant life and make the sands more unstable. This is a long-standing problem - in the fifteenth century, deforestation caused the sands to begin shifting and fourteen villages were swallowed up. In 1768, the Prussian government began replanting trees and grasses to protect the dunes.
That seems like a very long time ago for such drastic ecological action, but it's the reason that the spit even exists today. There are a few paths up to certain sections of the Baltic (western) side, but even these are protected by latticework designed to keep the sand in place.
The one unprotected dune - the Parnidis dune - lies in the borderland between Lithuania and Kalningrad. It is spectacular, with its towering vantage points and moonscape valleys. The above picture is taken from close to Nida, looking south into Russia. It is difficult to gauge distance from the picture, but the landscape is vast. The sand is piled about sixty meters high. Walking down into the sand is almost frightening, it feels like a desert and it's easy to lose track of landmarks.
It feels like a tenuously solid place, as though the entire landscape could get blown away in the night. It's a beautiful, lonely place and it's totally unique in the world.