CRUISE VIGNETTES 27, Stefan Batory

ON THE SHIP AT ROTTERDAM
We had packed a couple of very large boxes, five suitcases, a huge Army duffel bag, a large hanging clothes bag, several miscellaneous boxes and bags, and “a partridge in a pear tree,” then left Cousin Toni’s home in Mettlach, Germany, drove across Luxembourg and Belgium, to Rotterdam. Usually we checked a lot of heavy luggage on the airplane, had more than a legal amount of carry-on bags, and a large postage bill to mail home what we couldn’t carry. But now it all fit in the camper, and on the ship. The ticket said they would weigh the camper before loading it on the Stefan Batory. We had already paid for 1,500 Kilograms (3300 pounds) of camper weight, but we weighed the RV in Mettlach and found it actually weighted 2,500 Kilogram (5500 pounds). We were allowed 500 pounds of boxes, etc., on the ship as luggage, at no additional cost.

We were concerned they would charge us extra for all the luggage and stuff we had in the RV, but it turns out they didn’t care, and didn’t bother to weigh it. A story seen elsewhere on this site tells how the Polish Government “cheated” us out of a few hundred dollars when we left Poland in 1985, so we just considered this our opportunity to get even.

We had canceled the vehicle insurance with the European company, and had scheduled the US Insurance to start when we arrived in Montreal, Canada. We were told that to get marine insurance we would have to go across town, and pay a lot of money. When we found they had made this trip well over 125 times, and they now had a Rolls Royce and a couple of Porsche automobiles on board, we figured they knew what they were doing. We have pictures (somewhere!) of the RV swinging at the end of a cable high above the ship the next morning, as they loaded it into the hold of the ship.

On October 21, 1985 we left Rotterdam, and we stood on deck and watched while the ship sailed out of the Rotterdam harbor and down the Maas River, on our way to London.