Queen Mary 2 Atlantic Crossing: Burt Wolf Travels & Traditions (#1201)

travels and traditions with burt wolf is brought to you by the BMW European delivery program a way to experience the roads that BMW was made to drive BMW European delivery program and by swiss international airlines flying to over 70 worldwide locations truly Swiss made Swiss International Air Lines and by Sherry Lehmann on Park Avenue in New York City offering wines for over 75 years with an inventory of wines from all over the world sherry Lehmann calm and by the Signet foundation raising funds for those in need through art related initiatives contributions to UNICEF and animal welfare organizations the Signet foundation in the spring of nineteen eleven my grandmother and her one-year-old daughter my mother immigrated to the United States from Europe I was able to find her original departure documents at the immigration Museum in Hamburg Germany Humbert was a key departure point for Europeans immigrating to the Americas between 1850 and 1930 for at least 5 million people sailed from Hamburg to handle the traffic a small city was built near the port it had 31 story buildings a church a synagogue the hospital the cafeteria dormitories and a playground today the memory of that city is honored with the bow moussine many of the original rooms have been recreated their documents and exhibits that relate to almost every aspect of the immigration process mannequins and period costumes are equipped with recordings that tell the story of individual immigrants the buildings that were recreated are in their original spot they're also the same size and look as they did then most immigrants who pass through balanced odds spent between three and five days waiting for their ship if any of them were sick they were brought to the hospital and cared for until they were well bringing immigrants to America who were ill was bad business Ellis Island in New York City and most other immigration centers in the United States had teams of medical officers looking for signs of sickness if they found anything suspicious the immigrant was sent back to Europe and the shipping company paid the cost of the return trip I used the computer program at the visitor center to find my grandmother and my mother to mark the hundredth anniversary of her trip I decided to sail back to Europe with my wife and youngest son since my grandmother failed to buy a round-trip ticket I was able to choose my own accommodations for the return which turned out to be the Queen Mary - the ship departed from a pier on New York's Hudson River as we passed under the Verrazano Bridge the passengers applauded and expressed their appreciation apparently the fact that the ship's height in relation to the bridge was kept in mind while the ship was being built came as a complete surprise to my fellow travelers and a cause for celebration as we pulled away from the tip of Manhattan we passed the Statue of Liberty and the old immigration station on Ellis Island I thought about my grandmother's strength and determination and I thought about the tens of millions of Americans whose parents grandparents and great-grandparents passed through Ellis Island and helped build our nation a few minutes later we entered the Atlantic Ocean we would not see land again for seven days the great ocean liners are the largest moving objects on our planet and one of the largest ocean liners is the Queen Mary - she's 1130 feet long and 30 feet wide and 136 feet high she has 14 decks a crew of 1250 and usually carries about 2,500 passengers her normal speed is 29 knots which is about 35 miles an hour she was built by the Cunard Line in 2004 canard is famous for introducing the first regularly scheduled transatlantic service which they did in 1840 in 1907 the Mauretania came on line and set a new standard for speed and luxury the objective for these early transatlantic ocean liners was to create a luxurious environment an environment that made the passengers feel that they were spending a week as the guest of a wealthy British relative it's grand for a and named dining hall Ronald the decorative splendor of a palace 1,000 feet long weighing 80,000 gross tons the ship boasted artistic murals created by France's greatest painters one of the most important breakthroughs in the history of the ocean liner was the introduction of the oil powered turbo engine before that ships used cold and as they burned the cold the ship got lighter and the lighter the ship got the more it bounced around which was not too comfortable for the passengers with oil burners the ships were able to replace the burned oil with ocean water which kept the weight of the ship pretty much the same and gave a much smoother ride to the passengers in the early 20s exercise had become an important part of the experience there was a promenade deck for long walks a swimming pool a fully equipped gym some ships had squash courts steam baths and saunas one vessel actually had a tennis court and the game of miniature golf was invented for Ocean honors during the 1930s ocean liners introduced the Lido deck with a swimming pool the early liners had dining rooms with long tables and swivel chairs that will bolt it to the floor by the early 20s there were splendid dining salons with freestanding chairs and extraordinary staircases that gave guests the opportunity to make a grand entrance some ships even recreated the famous dining rooms from London's chic hotels Cunard introduced the veranda cafe designed to look like the front porch of a great hotel it was located at the rear of the ship and was filled with potted palms and wicker furniture but of all the comforts associated with the great ocean liners the most important were those that dealt with eating and drinking drinking food has always had the ability to be more than just nourishment for the body food can be a symbol of wealth and power can be a source of emotional comfort it can be a distraction or an entertainment and there is a considerable amount of scientific evidence that eating can reduce emotional stress from the beginning the great ocean liners used food and wine for all of the above it's interesting to see how much of the original plan is still in operation the largest dining room on the Queen Mary 2 is the Britannia restaurant it is 3 stories high and clearly designed in the grand ocean-going tradition we were invited to dine at the captain's table however the captain was not a captain he was a commander the rank that is considerably higher I had to have two martinis to get up there ah but it was worth it the ship is actually rather serious about their martinis they even offer a course in martini making a fine mr. Behrman is actually one drop and that's enough traditionally a martini is made from gin and dr white vermouth a dry martini has very little vermouth a wet martini has more vermouth and a dirty martini it's a splash of olive juice martinis began to show up in the second half of the 1800s gin itself is a mixture of grain alcohol and juniper berry oil that was originally concocted in the 1600s by a Dutch doctor he believed that it would cure kidney disorders stomach aches gout and gall stones while purifying your blood the Dutch word for gin is Geneva and the original stuff is still available in the Netherlands but without any medical claims there are a number of stories about how the martini got its name one claims that it was the result of a group of people who lived in Martinez across the bay from San Francisco and every night they would gather in the bar of the Occidental hotel and have a drink made from gin and vermouth another one says it was associated with the Knickerbocker Hotel and the third associates it with the martini rifle because it had the same kick either way the martinis real opportunity was the result of prohibition it was fairly easy to get illegal gin and a martini was an ideal and elegant way to serve it with a repeal of prohibition gin was even easier to get and the martini took off a more recent boost to its popularity came from James Bond with his recommendation to shake but not stir in keeping with a hundred and fifty year old tradition of recreating big-name restaurants on board transatlantic liners the ship has a Tod English restaurant Tod was born in Amarillo Texas grew up in Georgia lived in Connecticut went to school in North Carolina on a baseball scholarship and eventually graduated from The Culinary Institute in New York okay we're gonna put some hearts of palm in there right he's an author restaurateur and as his own cooking program on PBS his restaurant on the ship was particularly interesting to me because it's where we held the party for my son's sixth birthday most of our meals were taken in the princess grill which specializes in the preparation of tableside dishes one of the most popular was the ship's version of Caesar salad as you probably know there are numerous varieties of Caesar this is Julius with shrimp that's because Julius always liked to go into battle with people who was shorter than he was augustus with chicken he never wanted to go into battle at all and sit it was always good for a laugh the standard Caesar salad recipe came from Caesars restaurant in Tijuana Mexico the ship's head chef oversees the preparation of fourteen thousand meals each day so here COLLADA it's about eighteen chefs working here are they doing the preparing the epital for lunch so they do all the other minute cooking in their own galleys each restaurant has their own gather so then we do of course we do a little sugar work out work with chocolates and stuff for the face we're making about a thousand two hundred Scrolls every day this attached is the cream and the jam so it's going to be in the afternoon tea so you go easily to a thousand two hundred every day every year they go through two hundred and fifty thousand pounds of potatoes three hundred and fifty thousand gallons of fruit juice 55 thousand pounds of coffee and most interesting to me five hundred and forty thousand toothpicks well one of the important part of the most important each the miracle system which we have in place here where the amount of guests you have 1200 / sitting you need to know a little bit ahead of time how much you need from each meal so that lets friends of the pork scallopini red means now we have to cut more pork because you're unsure and I'm short because you're 200 or older that's what we made and you're already under 95 an order let me take five left make more call the butcher is one deck below here cut me 30 more portions it takes about five minutes near here and that's the way up to the restaurant as you have three levels so the weight is having on the third level and the second level you go first up the stairs and then you go run down or on the same level of them it's an amazing setup the chef has four grand dining rooms and nine specialty restaurants whatever in more informal rooms was the Golden Lion pub Puppis short for public house and for centuries the local pub was the major gathering spot in the small villages of England everyone came in after work for a few drinks and lots of talk traditionally the windows of a pub are made of smoked glass or covered with curtains so no one in the street can see you clearly this is not an issue in the middle of the Atlantic accordingly this is the first pub I have ever been in that is filled with natural light I could actually see what I was eating which in many projects is not an advantage when I worked in London during late 60s the food in the pubs which was called pub grub could easily have been described as a weapon of mass destruction the dishes in the Golden Lion are drawn from the classic repertoire pub grub but they're quite good there's bangers and mash which translates as sausages and mashed potatoes fish and chips deep fried fish fillets and french fried potatoes and of course a wide selection of ales on the third day of the voyage I went up to the bridge to talk to the Commodore Commodore is a military rank that goes back to the French Knights of the Middle Ages and designates someone of great authority today there's a rank above a captain but just below a Rear Admiral I was curious as to how he got into this line of work it was never a conscious decision to aim for this spot I wanted to go to sea and be a navigator and that was largely the influence of my father he had been at sea in the Navy and you take with you a culture of being at sea of being a sailor and in early life we grew up in those great entrepreneurs of Colombo and Singapore and so seafaring was always part of it and coming to sea was just the natural thing to do besides running the ship he's also in charge of an elegant hotel the people aspect of it is one of the most satisfying and rewarding parts of it whether as a manager or as a host or as somebody for whom the ship's company can see as somebody who looks after their welfare and well-being so all of it comes together very nicely I joined the Queen Mary 5 years ago so she was just 2 years old then I took her on her first around-the-world voyage and many maiden ports in those early years but I've always been very aware that this is the most magnificent ship in terms of speed her power her beauty her sheer ability to deliver this magnificent product which has its links with the past the crossings are all about the weather and the current whilst we go east and west across the Atlantic throughout the summer no route is ever the same as the last everytime we're looking at what combination of weather and current will give us the most comfortable and the most economic journey or crossing we aim to do the shortest crossing but it seldom works out that way you have some sort of weather or current avoidance built into that of course an essential element for any ship on the high seas is the safety drug as you can see from the public areas everything on the queen is rather regal in fact canards association with the royal family goes back to 1859 when Queen Victoria bestow the title of baronet on Samuel Cunard for his service to the country during a Crimean War just for the record the Crimean War took place between 1853 and 1856 England and France were on one side Russia on the other the Ottoman Empire was in decline and the issue became the control of the Holy Land the war stands as a high point in the history of military and political stupidity and incompetence four hundred thousand people died in a war that achieved nothing I like the old days when the head of a country had to lead his troops into battle whatever happened to follow me men back to kannur I named this ship Queen Elizabeth may God bless her and all who sail in her since then eight canard whiners have been named by senior members of the royal family including four by Queen Elizabeth and in accordance with this special relationship the Queen Mary - celebrated the marriage of Prince William to Catherine Middleton they loaded hundreds of bottles of champagne much of which was used to make a commemorative cocktail for the royal toast they decorated the Queen's ballroom with British flags they commissioned a collection of royal wedding souvenirs I heard that some of the porcelains were based on the designs of the great ukrainian master dmitri chovka of odessa truly a collector's item they make the giant foot cake similar to the one that would be served to the bride and groom they prepared a small box with a slice of the cake for every passenger on the ship and Lord twining produced a commemorative blend of tea tea was the signature non-alcoholic drink of England since the 1600s those were the good old days or the bad old days depending on your viewpoint when a European country would take over some other part of the world declare it a colony and do whatever they wanted to do to make as much money as they could now the Spanish did a good job of it in the Americas the Belgians dug up the Belgian Congo and England had a grand old time of it in India they had two million acres of tea producing plantations in India they built roads and ports brought in tools and equipment and managers and sent millions of pounds of tea to England the idea of stopping for tea in the afternoon was introduced by Anne Maria Russell the Duchess of Bedford and every afternoon in honour of the Duchess the Queen Mary - serves tea it was in the early 1800s a time when the English were getting more and more worked up over the Industrial Revolution and even rich guys were staying late at the office dinner was being served later and later usually between 7:00 and 8:30 lunch had been introduced to fill in the gap between breakfast and dinner but lunch was a very light meal and there was nothing to fill in the hours until dinner would that just found herself getting hungrier and hungrier so she decided that around 4 o'clock she would stop for a snack Oh maybe a little piece of Dundee cake and cheese sandwiches and a little sandwich with some smoked salmon in it and she liked those little scone things with a big dollop of cream on top and maybe some jam just a little something to hold her over until dinner well she began to have such a good time that she invited her friends over you could sit around drink tea eat sandwiches and sweets and tell the most awful stories about other people it became the ladies equivalent of the London men's club it's been going on for over 200 years these days men are invited which has sadly diminished the quality of the gossip in a desperate attempt to give a significant role to the men and fill in for the lack of gossip dancing has been introduced after seven days at sea and two tea dances we arrived in Southampton collected our luggage and began our new life in the old country my grandmother would have been pleased for travels and traditions I'm Bert Woolf for a printed copy of this show send a stamped envelope and three dollars to this address please mark envelope with show number the same information is available free on Burt wolf com travels and traditions with burt wolf is brought to you by the BMW European delivery program a way to experience the roads that BMW was made to drive BMW European delivery program and by swiss international airlines flying to over 70 worldwide locations truly Swiss made Swiss International Air Lines and by Sherry Lehmann on Park Avenue in New York City offering wines for over 75 years with an inventory of wines from all over the world sherry Lehmann calm and by the Signet foundation raising funds for those in need through art related initiatives contributions to UNICEF and animal welfare organizations the Signet foundation

Channel: Burt Wolf

Views: 49,339

Keywords: Travel, Burt Wolf, QM2, Queen Mary 2, Ocean Liner, Food, Gastronomy, Immigration, Cruise Ship, Vacation, Travels & Traditions, Travels, RMS Queen Mary 2 (Ship)

Id: htMOkVietX8

Length: 26min 46sec (1606 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2012