River Cruising Water Cooler

[jpalbny]

On 8/19/2023 at 1:38 AM, Host Jazzbeau said:

You obviously don't have any (southern) Italian friends – or at any rate, none from The Bronx [the true center of Italian-American culture!]  The question at the dinner table is "do you want more gravy on your macaroni*?"

 

[*which can be any kind of pasta]

 

Is that a more recent development? I ask because my entire Italian side of the family lived in The Bronx from the 1920s to the 1950s. I ate tons of pasta with sauce with them (admittedly a few decades later) and I never heard the term "gravy" from them when referring to red sauce. 

[capriccio]

1 hour ago, jpalbny said:

 

Is that a more recent development? I ask because my entire Italian side of the family lived in The Bronx from the 1920s to the 1950s. I ate tons of pasta with sauce with them (admittedly a few decades later) and I never heard the term "gravy" from them when referring to red sauce. 

I can't speak for the friends of @Host Jazzbeau from the Bronx but my husband's family in Brooklyn (Sicilian immigrants who arrived from around 1915 until 1948) all called sauce "gravy" and used the generic "macaroni" instead of pasta.  My DH and his two sisters, born and raised in Brooklyn in the 1950s, only call it that when talking about their mom's and grandma's cooking.

[jpalbny]

44 minutes ago, capriccio said:

I can't speak for the friends of @Host Jazzbeau from the Bronx but my husband's family in Brooklyn (Sicilian immigrants who arrived from around 1915 until 1948) all called sauce "gravy" and used the generic "macaroni" instead of pasta.  My DH and his two sisters, born and raised in Brooklyn in the 1950s, only call it that when talking about their mom's and grandma's cooking.

 

Thanks. How odd. My Italian side is also from Sicily and would have arrived right smack in that time frame. And I never heard that term from them.

[sharkster77]

Providence RI has a large Italo-American population and gravy =  sauce is used consistently there.

 

Maybe it all depends on what part of Italy ancestors emigrated from?

[Host Jazzbeau]

The Google says there is no word in Italian like 'gravy,' and the surmise is that Italian immigrants wanted to assimilate – they saw their neighbors calling meat sauces 'gravy' so they did the same.  But as with many etymologies this is a 'back-formation' guess.  And there are likely variations among Italian-American families.  I asked a neighbor about this thread and she agreed that all pasta is 'macaroni' [The Google agrees too], but that in her family they called what grandma was cooking on the stove 'gravy' but when she went to serve it at the table it was 'sauce' – go figure!

[Canal archive]

Budapest is hosting the World Athletics Championships so just a few views of the river and other sights brings back memories 

[CPT Trips]

7 hours ago, Canal archive said:

Budapest is hosting the World Athletics Championships so just a few views of the river and other sights brings back memories 

I had similar memories last year when World Aquatics Championships were there. We were in Budapest shortly after the 2017(?) championships and saw the venue at night during our “sightseeing” cruise. Quite a sight. 
 

 

 

Full disclosure, not my photos. 

[Canal archive]

But still pretty good.

[CPT Trips]

Quite a striking building, and a real real contrast to Parliament. 

[Canal archive]

Question how long before the population off Passau and other pretty scenic villages and small towns decide to follow the example of Hallstatt? Serious question as in ‘cat among the pigeons time’.

Hallstatt: Austrian town protests against mass tourism https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66634889

Edited August 28, 2023 by Canal archive

[notamermaid]

Yes, the times of overtourism are back... Prague and Amsterdam decided in the wake of "temporary non-tourism" to deal with the problem.

 

Passau is a serious contender for overtourism and if you asked the people in 2019 some would have argued they are already in that state.

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

Maybe the concern has been raised again as we hopefully are now over covid. All over the world there are tourist hot spots near us is Bath, for example we live 10 minutes away and don’t go near in the summer and it’s getting close to being a no go area at Christmas. There are surly other areas in the U.K. and I can understand why. Hopefully a some enterprising person will come up with a superb idea to solve the situation.

[Canal archive]

PS of course most cities and towns are more than happy to welcome tourists as they spend far more than the locals.

[notamermaid]

I am not sure if it works as a comparison - but for me it is a bit like the lake that is saturated with plants to such an extent that the ecosystem turns. It is a process called eutrophication (yes, I did a lot of biology at school 😉).

 

Rüdesheim for me is at saturation point as regards river cruise ships. This overtourism is the reason I advocate for alternative river cruises, meaning alternative ports and fewer passengers, that meaning 110m ships. On the Rhine it would work very well. You just need to ignore the television adverts and are open to other history/cityscape and smaller places.

 

Rüdesheim and Passau were popular destinations before the river cruising boom - say 2010 - so started already on a high frequency. By the way, until fairly recently Heidelberg has boasted about its popularity and ever increasing numbers of visitors. There the tide has turned a little. They now prefer tourists that stay longer than two hours...

 

notamermaid

 

[Daisi]

That's the problem with tourism.. tourists spend money, good for shops & restaurants, but makes the lives of those who have to live everyday in the towns a headache. Yes, on the rivers, you get a couple of boatloads in at once, but they leave in a couple of hours. We have towns here that triple their population through tourism in the summer months (and mostly a lot of extra vehicles on the roads that crowd transit), and then nothing. Some areas survive just on the 4 months of "tourist season", but for living in the area it's a pain. 

[Got2Cruise]

3 hours ago, notamermaid said:

Yes, the times of overtourism are back... Prague and Amsterdam decided in the wake of "temporary non-tourism" to deal with the problem.

 

Passau is a serious contender for overtourism and if you asked the people in 2019 some would have argued they are already in that state.

 

notamermaid

 

I’m finding this discussion very interesting. I’ve been to all these wonderful towns mentioned. 

[notamermaid]

On a side note to this. I have coined the phrase "instagrammed to death", at least among my circle of people to describe a place like the Hallstatt spot. Everybody takes a photo for Instagram to the extent that it wrecks the place. It is the reason I keep favourite spots sometimes to myself. Working in the tourism industry I have spent a bit more than the standard amount of time reflecting on what social media and tourists can do.

 

notamermaid

 

[Canal archive]

Being a very keen photographer I get quite embarrassed at the impoliteness of many photographers, people seem to be in such a hurry to get as many of their must have shots as possible little realising that if they wait around for just a few minutes the shot would be all the better. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

1 hour ago, Canal archive said:

Being a very keen photographer I get quite embarrassed at the impoliteness of many photographers, people seem to be in such a hurry to get as many of their must have shots as possible little realising that if they wait around for just a few minutes the shot would be all the better. 

When they have someone from the ship assisting the tour guide as a 'sweeper,' they quickly get to know that I will be hanging back until the picture clears...

[notamermaid]

A little patience and waiting works for photos, I agree. I fear that in Halstatt this would cause a backlog, you know, queuing up to take that exact selfie shot that 100 people have taken in the last 10 minutes or so. I would love to see Bath, but would I enjoy it? Perhaps, because apart from the Crescent I would head to the garage and that spot at a street corner where they dug in a series of "Time Team".

 

Currently though I am much more into exploring small towns in Germany. I have this old map of Germany where interesting places are marked. Well, alright I admit, I loved Rothenburg ob der Tauber just like millions of people before me. It helped us that river cruise and Asian tourists were absent at the time. We were welcomed with open arms.

 

Passau harbour lists 18 ships for today, a good 52,000 people live in the town. 18 ships of varying capacity, my rough calculation based on ship name tells me that this could be 2,400 passengers (assuming that ships are not full but well booked). A couple of Viking ships are included. 300,000 people came on river cruise ships to Passau in 2018. I reckon by the end of 2023 Passau will be back to that figure.

 

We had a discussion on the topic here https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2523055-will-overtourism-affect-river-cruising/page/5/#comments

but we know what happened. Few outside of the industry probably gave the topic any thought for some time.

 

notamermaid

 

 

 

 

[Canal archive]

I must admit that way before I had health challenges I used the ‘gentle’ walking group much easier for a clicker, oops no shutter noise now.

[Canal archive]

Actually the worst period I find in Bath is the Christmas market and the selfie sticks I nearly had my eye taken out several years ago. Never again.

[Kristelle]

are selfie sticks still popular?

 

I used to see a lot of them a few years ago but not many at all now

 

have been to touristy places in Australia  - but not in other countries since before Covid, so not speaking for everywhere else

[sharkster77]

I will linger at the back to get the shot I want once folks start to move on but NEVER take selfies.  I find them to be an obnoxious thing, mostly because selfie takers are often oblivious to what's around them, stepping in front of those who have waited for their 'turn' to take a photo.  Selfie sticks are and invention of Satan, TBH.

Edited August 29, 2023 by sharkster77

[Host Jazzbeau]

You might want to get one just to use as a defensive weapon.  Like the famous frozen leg of lamb*, nobody would connect it to the crime...

 

* see Alfred Hitchcock Presents Lamb to the Slaughter

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0508189/