"Some say you haven't really lived until you experienced a sunset at sea," says the website of cruise ship company Peter Deilmann Reederei. The 93 holiday-makers who left Germany on Tuesday won't be able to vouch for that.
Their dream holiday aboard a Caribbean liner ended before it began, in the burning wreck of the plane that was have taken them to New York to join their ship.
The Concorde, yesterday dub bed "The Titanic of the Air" by Berlin tabloid B.Z., crashed minutes after it took off from Paris, killing all on board.
Yesterday, throughout Germany, communities touched by the tragedy flew flags at half mast. In Berlin, eight dead, in Hamburg, seven.
But nowhere was the tragedy as keenly felt as in the small German border town of Monchengladbach in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia.
Thirteen of the town's citizens booked their dream holiday in the local travel agency. Each paid up to DM20,000 (£8,000) for their 15-day cruise aboard the MS Deutschland and a further DM3,000 (£1,200) for their supersonic Concorde flight to New York. Three other couples from the town also booked places on the same cruise, but travelled to New York on regular flights. They only learned the fate of the rest of their holiday party when they reached New York.
Yesterday the travel agency in Monchengladbach that sold the holidays was closed. In the window, someone had stuck a handwritten note: "Because of familiar reasons, the business will remain closed today."
The manager of the Clemens travel agency said yesterday the couples who booked the cruises had been long-time friends.
"What can you feel when you get such news about long-time customers? Shock and naked horror," said Christian Stattrop.
The Concorde was chartered by Peter Deilmann Reederei.
The firm, based in Neustadt in the state of Holstein, was founded in 1968 and specialises in river cruises.
It also operates two large luxury liners, one of which, the MS Berlin, is the setting for the German television programme Dream Ship. The German holiday-makers had booked passage on its sister ship, the MS Deutschland.
Peter Deilmann, the tour operator, said yesterday he was "deeply dismayed" by the crash, but said the cruise would not be cancelled. "There's no sense letting the ship lie there, life goes on," he said.
Last week was the official start of the holiday season in Germany. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder yesterday said the added tragedy was that the victims had been "looking forward to their cruise for so long".
The German media has unsurprisingly been dominated by the crash since Tuesday evening.
"96 Germans Cremated in Concorde" is how Berlin-based tabloid B.Z. broke the news to its readers yesterday morning.
"They Burned Up in 119 Tonnes of Kerosene," said its sister paper Bild.