Sixty years ago today, in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, I boarded the S.S. Groote Beer, a Greek-owned, Dutch registered, Italian-crewed former Victory Ship, Dutch Immigrant ship and cruise ship-turned-student ship offering cheap transport and assorted student-style activities for about two hundred young passengers and assorted older passengers seeking the same cheap transport (including a German barber emigrating to Cleveland) back to America. She was destined to dock (as I recall) along the North River section of the Brooklyn waterfront after nine days. Since June 17th, after landing in Antwerp aboard a Norwegian freighter, I had been wandering the Continent…Paris, Barcelona, Nice, Rome, Florience, Venice, Munich, Amsterdam…Rotterdam…..
Many memories from those weeks — and from those nine days at sea.
Sometime I’ll share some of them. (I already have shared parts of the voyage over and arrival).
But now, I just wanted to summon all the drifting, shadowy feelings of Le Temp Perdu
On this dank Florida evening as darkness falls….
19 Cent Notebook 