This story comes to you while I am somewhere on the Baltic Sea. The cruise boat plans to stop at Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki, Stockholm and St. Petersburg. I have never been to any of these places. I hope to return with wonderful tales and stories of Scandanavia and its people.

In the interim let me relate two stories that occurred in my past travels.

I was in a museum in Vienna, Austria. There were statues of Goethe and paintings by Breughel and my cultural fluids were overflowing. I was absorbing the amenities of this dark, serious museum, very methodically.

It was at the end of the vacation as we were flying home the next day. I was down to my last clean polo shirt. It was my favorite shirt from the "Hicksville-American Soccer Club."

As I browsed among the artwork, a very tall, muscular-built gentleman was following me with his eyes. I assumed he was Austrian but I was wrong.

He walked up to me and in perfect "Long Island" English he said, "I didn't know that Hicksville had a soccer club. My father had a store in Hicksville for 35 years. It's great to see somebody from back home."

He told me that he was in Vienna to renew his long held love for Mozart and Beethoven. We clasped hands in a moment of friendship and camaraderie a long way from home.

The second story is set in Greece, on the Island of Santorini. The Greek name is Thera. This island is believed to be the remains of the long lost Island of Atlantis. Thousands of years ago an explosion destroyed most of the land.

Our cruise ship had landed and the tourists headed for the shops on top of the mountain of Santorini. There was an elevator for the faint of heart but Lorraine and I took the natural route, on the back of a little donkey. As we zig-zagged up the mountain our feet dangled into space about 200 or 300 feet from the water below.

It was frightening as the Greek driver whipped the donkey around hairpin curves as we ascended to the shopping street. The shopping street was stark white and the panorama of the Aegean Sea, the mountain and the whitewashed stores was glorious. The day was boiling hot and as good Americans we stopped for a Coke and a lemonade.

Into the café on this distant isle, thousands of miles from home, walks in our very next door neighbors, the Rosenbergs, Harvey and Libby. We all screamed in unison, "What are you doing here?" "Who is back in Westbury watching the store?" asked Harvey jocularly.

Kisses and hugs and then we returned to our separate cruise boats. Soon we would meet back home on our island, the Island of Long.