The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2005, Qupperneq 20

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 59 #3
It was an incredible feeling to finally be
on a safe shore. Still the thought of food
and tobacco was stronger than anything
else. We had just finished to tie the ship
when Shanol came to us and offered us cig-
arettes. It is still a mystery where he got
them from.
Now the immigrations and customs
came onboard and asked for papers. We
showed them our passports. Old Hussein
had some problems when his passport
showed him to be 641 years old. He was
born in 1338, before the calendar change,
which happened in Turkey in 1925. As
matter of fact he was 60 years old. Shanol,
on the other had, was 30 years old but did-
n't have a passport. At first they wouldn't
let him off board, but he pretended not to
understand and followed us when we went
up to the pier.
We practically ran up the pier and
looked around for a restaurant. All out-
thoughts were about food. Fortunately we
soon found a restaurant and ordered the
biggest breakfast that had ever been
ordered in this place - to the owner's great
pleasure and even more so for us. It was
magnificent to have the taste of meat and
bread in your mouth again, swallowed
down with beer. Fantastic, after two days
without food! Never had any food tasted
better.
After having this fine breakfast we
wandered around the city and viewed its
most interesting places. Messina is a beauti-
ful city with many old buildings. Ferries
sail from there between Sicily and Italy,
and a lot of ferries were in the harbour
there. At dinnertime we found a restaurant
and ordered roast pork and red wine,
which went down easily in large amounts.
The Turkish Muslims were no inferiors to
us on the pork and red wine. When we
asked them what they thought Allah would
say about this behaviour, they told us Allah
never went abroad so he had no idea of
what they were up to in foreign countries.
They considered that no problem at all.
Valentinus called his friend in
Luxembourg that day and asked him to call
Iceland and let our families know how we
were doing. We had decided not to take the
ferry any further and go home from
Messina. We felt that we had gone far
enough and had no more duties to Johan.
We discussed this with him and Philippe,
but they convinced us to sail the ship to
France. After long discussions Johan final-
ly persuaded us to go on and we agreed to
sail to Toulon.
Part three in the next issue of
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
MAGAZINE.
Doreen & Ingvar Karvelson
CENTER ST., GIMLI • MB (204) 642-5995
mm *J \EC
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