DAY 18, MARCH 18, 2024, HAPPY NATIONAL AWKWARD MOMENTS DAY!
Strange situations happen where there are no explanations. They are so incomprehensible that you believe you have been in the Twilight Zone.
I experienced such an incident ten years ago when my husband was living; we took a bus tour of fourteen days to the United Kingdom, Scotland, and Ireland. I was looking forward to the trip because I wanted to discover which part of Africa I came from. I thought I could find some records in York.
We decided to go with friends from his Law Enforcement club. We were twenty-five couples, and we met up at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (Frankfurt’s Main Train Station) at four o’clock in the morning to get on our tour bus and be driven to Bremerhaven, Germany, where we would take an overnight ferry across the English Channel. I had never been on a ferry before. My very first time. Whenever I went to the UK, I bought a flight ticket and flew with an airplane. I am not a swimmer. I can paddle the water, but a swimmer, I am not.
Thus, I avoid cruises. They are not my cup of tea. I didn’t know that the tour bus would also be loaded on the ferry and that the ferry would arrive at our destination the following day around nine AM. The tour bus would be unloaded, and we would get back on and start our trip.
Being self-employed, I had been working very hard before we left Grosskrotzenburg, and I was looking forward to finally getting on the ferry and then to our cabin.
We had a nice outside cabin. The ship’s kitchen was excellent. The chief cook and his crew served us well for the evening meal as we crossed and for breakfast. After the evening meal, we retired to our cabin, and I went to bed immediately; my husband said he might go to the deck and look around and talk with a few friends, and I mumbled goodnight. According to my husband, I slept like a log.
In the morning, I woke up, stretching my arms out after having a delightful sleep, and my husband was sitting up, already dressed, with a scared look on his face. I asked him what was wrong. I thought I had snored too loud. That was when he looked at me and said, “Now you wake up. Didn’t you hear that the ship was going under? The buses, cars, and trucks parked underground in the belly of the ferry crashed and shoved into each other like someone in the underground terminal was throwing them around.”
Shocked, I said No. The awkwardness of this moment was that everyone heard the alert from the captain over the PA system and was standing by, and I was the only one sleeping. I still laugh about this moment. In fact, I am laughing now. 😊
Let me say the ship wasn’t going under, but someone had forgotten to park his giant truck safely so it wouldn’t roll. Cars and motorbikes were severely damaged, but no one was hurt, and no one slept that night but me.😴
The couples who toured with us kept asking me afterward how I could sleep. All of them thought the ferry was sinking and their lives were over, and I was the only one who had the best sleep of her life going across the English Channel.
Have a lovely day!
Shalom shalom.
Pat Garcia