Equal Goes it Loose: Americans cruising with Nicko

[FuelScience]

While waiting for a horse race to start in 1965, German president Heinrich Lübke is reputed to have turned to Queen Elizabeth and uttered, “Equal goes it loose,” a word-for-word literal translation of the German phrase “Gleich geht es los.” A better translation would have been “It’s about to start.” Anyhow, Gleich geht es los with this review of our Nicko cruising experience.

 

German/English Cruise?

We left Amsterdam at 8:08 Saturday morning headed for Saarbrücken. After a quick taxi from the train station we were checked into our room and settling in. Soon we heard the cruise director making an announcement over the intercom. No surprise that it was in German, but we waited to hear it repeated in English. After all, this was advertised on Nicko’s web site as a German/English cruise, and we’d confirmed that through calls and emails with Nicko’s home office in Germany. When no English announcement followed, I walked down to the CD and asked him about English announcements. He answered that this was a German cruise. He had not received any notice that English speakers would be on board.

 

After some checking, he found that there were 4 Finns along with us who were primarily English speakers. For the rest of the cruise, he did a great job of repeating important announcements. For critical items he met with us privately to make sure that we understood things. His commentary while cruising scenic portions of the Saar, Moselle, and Rhine was all in German, but he printed out an English version of his script so we could follow along. I studied for a year at the University of Heidelberg almost 50 years ago, so I retain some of my German, but I probably understood 20-25% of what went on.

 

Nicko assigns seating at all meals, and we were originally slated to sit with 2 German couples. We asked about moving to sit with the 2 Finnish couples, but apparently the 2 German ladies who were sitting at their table wanted to practice their English, so we ended up by ourselves at a table for 2 for the rest of the cruise.

 

We were expecting the tours to be offered in both English and German, but due to Nicko’s failure to let the CD know that we were coming there were NO tours in English. We ended up only taking one tour (Ludwigsburg Castle). We walked along, and I translated what little I understood for my wife. I should mention here that there were no included tours. Nicko offered tours in every port, but they all required extra payment.

 

Let me close this section by saying that the CD did a great job of accommodating us. He wasn’t the problem. I blame Nicko for advertising this as a German/English tour and then not notifying the CD or delivering on English tours.

 

MS Casanova

The Casanova is classified as a “Boutique” ship by Nicko. It lives up to its classification in that it has a certain elegance and classy feel. It’s an older ship, but in pretty good shape. It’s showing its age in some areas. For example, the television sets in the cabins are old ~15” picture tube sets. You can’t even buy these sets anymore. Move ahead Nicko! Our room was about 12 m² (130 sq. ft.) and pretty crowded. There was a stool, but we never used it; if we wanted to sit, we sat on the bed. The shower also needed some work. Don’t know if this is the norm for Nicko, but cabins numbering in the 100s (ours was 114) are on the top level and 200 numbered cabins are down below.

 

One shortcoming of the ship was the limited visibility from the lounge. Some sailing days were cold and windy, and the lounge was the place to sit if you wanted to be comfortable, but there was as much wall as glass in the lounge, and the front view was very limited with the musician setup on one side and a big wall dead center, leaving only about 1-2 meters of glass on the right side of the front.

 

It’s also worth noting that in their documents Nicko warns you not to drink water from your sink. They say that it’s OK for brushing you teeth, but you should get bottled water for drinking.

 

Demographics

I think that this cruise had the oldest set of cruisers I’ve experienced. One solo cruiser was 100 years old! There were several people walking with crutches (no elevator). I don’t know if what we experienced was typical, but we met several people who do this same cruise EVERY YEAR. In fact, one couple had started this year in Stuttgart, cruised to Saarbrücken, stayed on the ship and were cruising back home to Stuttgart for a two-week total cruise. I should note that we really didn’t get to know too many people. Sitting alone at every meal limited our interactions. We exchanged greetings and small talk with the two ladies at the table next to us. They take the cruise every year and sit at the same table every year. 

 

Overall Impressions:

The first thing to say is that we enjoyed our cruise. Our CD Ferdinand did everything he could to accommodate us and make sure that we had a good trip. We sailed the Saar and Neckar where we’d never sailed before, and we got to see beautiful sections of the Moselle and Rhine again. The food was comparable to what we’ve experienced on other lines—maybe tuned a little more to the German palate, but good. By the way, like everybody else, Nicko likes baked Alaska (Eisparade) for their gala dessert.

 

Bottom line. I would not recommend Nicko if you don’t speak German. Maybe if I’d been more persistent before the cruise in assuring myself that English tours would be available things might have been different. Looking back at the web site and the documents I received via email, there’s absolutely nothing committing Nicko to do anything at all to accommodate English speakers on the tours that are presented as being bilingual. All that I can say for sure is that they’ve got an English web site, and they’ve translated their travel documents into English.

 

If you do want to try some of Nicko’s unique itineraries, I would be on the phone making sure that I had a guarantee in writing of what would and wouldn’t be included. This isn’t simple. Nicko has no office in the U.S. (or U.K. I think), so you have to call them in Germany, and some of the times I called, the person who answered the phone didn’t speak English. All in all, they don’t give the impression of being serious about wanting English speaking cruisers.

 

I’ll follow this up with a day-by-day overview of the cruise.

[notamermaid]

FuelScience,

 

good to read you are safely back home from your river cruise adventures. You really took an admiring plunge into unknown waters (excuse the pun) sailing with Teeming and especially Nicko. I took a deep breath before starting to write this post. With me initially having pointed out the Saar and Neckar to you, I really feel a bit unhappy about the hiccups with that cruise. I know that German cruises and cruise lines for that matter differ from North-American ones. But it does not sound like a good idea to recommend NickoCruises to the English-speaking world at all, I shall keep that in the back of my mind. A gross oversight on behalf of the management of Nicko as regards the language. I am so glad to read that the cruise director was able to remedy that. Wish I could have travelled with you for some translating, would have been fun! I would not have been a good guide though as I hardly know the towns along the way...

 

NickoCruises needs to put quite a bit more effort into this, certainly.

 

Thank you very much for your efforts and time reporting to us about your two cruises. I look forward to reading about your day to day along the four rivers.

 

notamermaid

 

[jpalbny]

Thanks for posting! Glad it worked out ok despite the language barrier. Had the tours been included it would have been really disappointing to not be able to make much use of them.

 

I think I'd rather see this area by land, because we'd be lucky to understand 20% of what was being said on an all-German-speaking cruise! You did better than we would have. I do better with food and beer menus, than with conversation. 

 

Looking forward to more info on the places you visited, and the food.

[FuelScience]

23 hours ago, notamermaid said:

took a deep breath before starting to write this post. With me initially having pointed out the Saar and Neckar to you, I really feel a bit unhappy about the hiccups with that cruise.

Notamermaid,

I'm glad we did it. As I said, we enjoyed the cruise, and don't regret taking it. There were indeed hiccups, but that's part of the adventure. 

[TravelerThom]

8 hours ago, FuelScience said:

I'm glad we did it. As I said, we enjoyed the cruise, and don't regret taking it. There were indeed hiccups, but that's part of the adventure. 

I had travel (business type) cards that in addition to my name etc had the motto:

 

”Any trip can be turned into an adventure by proper lack of planning.”

[Host Jazzbeau]

1 hour ago, TravelerThom said:

I had travel (business type) cards that in addition to my name etc had the motto:

 

”Any trip can be turned into an adventure by proper lack of planning.”

 

That sounds like a rephrase of the quote by Roald Amundsen:  "Adventure is just bad planning"  [which explains why he made it to the South Pole – and back alive – while Scott didn't]