I was teaching English to a group of Swiss retirees recently, when I asked buxom Bertha, to tell us about her recent holiday on board a large cruise ship. She lit up as she puckered up her lips to find enough English words to describe her incredible experience – one of many in recent years, since her husband had retired.

Her hesitant launch increased the suspense in the classroom, as we awaited her utterances, to transport us into her floating realm of wonder. Now I have to confess that the average Swiss isn’t overly indulged when it comes to culinary deviations in everyday local restaurants. The menu generally amounts to a duplicate of most other eating places, starting with a lettuce salad, meat with chips or rosti and culminating in a scoop or two from the deep freezer. There seems to be no apparent ambition to upgrade food presentation to a category beyond its station.

So, when Bertha enlightened us as to the round-the-clock buffet, she became visibly emotional with memories of opulent feasts from which she could barely disengage herself. She had to revert to German to elucidate adequately about the tender meat, tasty fish and luscious seafood in every conceivable, mouth-watering variant and every imaginable garnish. Succulent salads and vegetables which blinded one for their sheer wholesomeness. She could hardly resist treating us to an in-depth description of the dessert orgy. She enhanced the image of gourmet feasting, by insisting that she could return to the scene as often as she hankered for replenishment and all included in the price of the trip. In conclusion, she was resolute, that she would enroll at the local fitness center upon her return, to shake off her inevitable excess bulk.

Asked about any excursions she might have made in the scheduled ports of call, her facial expression promptly transformed. She had never witnessed such poverty anywhere. No, she didn’t taste any of the local food, because frankly, her epicurean lifestyle on-board had left her well and truly bloated, so she couldn’t face another morsel. She did snap some heart-breaking images of the local children in certain ports of call – little urchins begging for a living. They had been warned however before disembarking from the ship not to give money to beggars as it increased their culture of dependency. Passengers were also advised to buy souvenirs on board instead of ashore, where they were likely be ripped off or robbed.

The quintessence was a deeply uneasy impression, that the only thing the passengers left behind for the locals on land, was probably images of masses of well-fed aliens and billows of diesel fumes.

Photo: Unsplash.com / Vidar Nordli-Mathien