Final Entry! Reunion in 2007

 Yes, I am a fan of European travel. Trouble is, for me and many others, it's much more complicated as we get older and as the world has changed. 

When I planned my trip in 1987, it was a solo venture. I traveled around the continent without reservations. When I visited England, a bit of Scotland, the Czech Republic and Germany once again, I had some reservations, but not everywhere. It's trickier with four travelers. For whatever reason, for our trip this month I booked three legs of our train travel with few problems. If I were superstitious, I would say someone or something does not want us to take a train from Wurzburg to Mainz. I have tried to book it seven times now, on the website and on the Deutsche Bahn app. I've tried with different credit cards. No go. Hotels, too, are more difficult with four. I didn't get very far with the suggestion that we consider a youth hostel or two. Somebody, I won't say who, is a bit hostile to hostels.

Three classmates, from left, Barb, Mike and Kathy.

In 2007, Lindy and I organized a gathering at the Great Dane in downtown Madison. We had a good turnout! Twelve of us (from I what I count from the photos of that night) were there, plus our two German teacher chaperones, Dennis Bergren and Marie Garnhart and some spouses. That might have been the last time I saw Bergren? I recall seeing him again, although he lived seven plus years after that. A smaller group of us got together five years later: 

The best part was that we had a couple of different faces. In addition to Mike and Lindy, we had, in green Chris Bradle and Brian H. 

Here are a few more photos from 2007:

That's all folks! Thanks for reading!

Five Years After

Of course, I was eager to return to Mainz and Germany. Problem was, I had no money for such travel. After my senior year, I made a trip out to see a friend's cousin and have a look at Seattle. I was astounded how green the Northwest is. I think my flight was something like $300. In today's greenbacks, that's over $800. So a plane ride to Germany seemed unreachable at the time. 

My plan was to make a trip to Germany and also to get a month Eurail Pass and see as much of Europe as I could afford. Let's face it, you dream pretty big when you're 20. A place few Westerners had ever heard of, Chernobyl, had a different plan. In late April of 1986, a little over a month before I hoped to travel, the nuclear plant there had a catastrophic fire and release of radioactivity. For that reason, my mother asked me to postpone my trip. Grudgingly, I agreed.

By May of 1987, I had enough credits to graduate with my B.A. in history. I booked a flight for the same day as the graduation ceremony. That way I wouldn't have to attend, since few of my friends were graduating at that time. My Iceland Air trip took me to Frankfurt and from there I headed straight to Mainz to stay with Rudiger's family once again. I planned two weeks with them, four weeks on trains, moving around the continent as I pleased, and a final week in Mainz before returning home. 

One of the first things I found out is that it's not nearly as fun being in place when a dozen + of your high school friends are not also around. Rita, R's mother, complained that I "went out too much." Well, yeah! I was there to see the city once again. Fortunately, Rudiger, who was at the University of Mainz at the time, was involved with an economic's organization, although I can no longer find evidence of its existence. The reason that was good is that I tagged along to an overnight gathering in Nuremberg. It was held at an old castle, and the students sat out in the summer evening drinking beer and wine and having a good time. That evening was a highlight.

I did manage to see Funda, who was with a guy, although I don't recall his name. We met for a tea and again for lunch in Wiesbaden. One day she arranged for her boyfriend to take me to Frankfurt to see the famed museum area. We had a good time. I also remember sitting out with him, Rudiger and some of their friends in an area near the university, drinking beer and swapping tales. That was also a good night.

After Mainz, I made a whirlwind trip through Munich, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Vienna, Verona, Italy, Florence, Mantua, Milan, Bern, Switzerland, Zurich, Freiburg, Cologne, and back to Mainz. I did so in the company of various people I met along the way. Some from the States, but also Canadians, Australians, Finns, and others I have likely forgotten. We stayed in both crowded and sparsely visited hostels and inns. 

After that trip, I mostly haven't had any contact with that group of Germans at all. It would be great to see them all, or some of them, but how do you find them? I did ask Claudia and Thorsten to have go at it, but I think they don't really know how.

Funda's boyfriend, Funda, and Rudiger, May of 1987.

I lied. I have to do one more post about our Exchange reunions. Next time.

Home and Aftermath

 This is what my bedroom desk looked like after I arrived home. 

I don't really recall, but I imagine I was pretty down after coming back home. Obviously if I'm taking the time to write about it 40 years later, it made a huge impact. My mom decided it was about the girl, Funda. Sure, that was a big deal at almost 17. Really, though, it was the totality of the experience. So much had been new, breathtaking and perspective-shifting.

Did the U.S. students get together again? I think a few of us gathered to look at one another's photos. Again, I don't remember too much about that. It was July, and my dad put me to work painting the two-story family home. Uncle Walt brought in a scaffold, I put my stereo speaker in the sill of my bedroom window and I went to work scraping and painting for an hourly wage. I do remember mailing a photo of me painting the west side of our house, on a ladder, to Funda with one of my airmail letters. 

In late August I turned 17, since back then school start cutoffs had been December 1st, rather than the now more common September 1. A few friends were younger than me, but not too many. Generally, senior year was not nearly as enjoyable as junior year had been. Spring semester was somewhat of a waste of time, as many of us had been accepted to colleges, yet had to finish classes that weren't technically required for graduation. My grades nosedived.

What Germany had really done is to plant the travel bug in me. Fortunately, Lisa and I see eye-to-eye on the idea of spending money on travel. Since we've been married, we have traveled to Spain, Croatia, London and Paris, Ireland, Italy, and the Dominican Republic internationally. We also took the time and money to visit three Utah national parks, took trips to Seattle, San Diego, LA and more recently San Francisco/Berkeley and Yosemite. We did make a visit to Texas when Lisa was pregnant with Anna, which she would prefer to forget because of nausea. Toss in there trips to North Carolina and Florida, and in 2019 a trip around Lake Michigan to see the Michigan beaches. We have certainly put on some miles.

There was an excellent group of travel essays in the New York Times Style Magazine. Normally I don't bother to read much in that supplement, but last week it was good, especially the essay by the transgender man who revisited the Grand Canyon with his mother's ashes. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/t-magazine/grand-canyon-travel-arizona.html

Revisiting my trip from forty years ago is far less dramatic, and I can't write anywhere near as well as that guy, of course. The themes, however, of what has changed and the transformation that we undergo as we age and explore our real selves. That's universal, if we can in fact be as vulnerable and honest as that author. Certainly my knees and my shoulders (lately) can attest to the fact that I'm no longer a 16 year old. Yes, I have different interests and I no longer wish I could become Mick Jagger, although his knees seem to be holding up rather well. Have the fundamentals of my personality changed? No, not really. Hopefully I'm not as selfish and, occasionally, rude and childish like back then. Both marriage and being a parent transforms us, most often, for the better and with good reason. I will find when I land in Berlin that I remember even less German than I did on my last visit twenty years ago. 

That said, I hope I can appreciate the journey more this go-around. We're lucky to go anywhere after the past two years of COVID. Speaking of that, Lisa is very concerned that we travel and remain COVID free, which will require more discipline than a normal trip abroad would. 

Before I wrap this Blog up, I do want to say a few things about my visit to Mainz five years after our exchange. That can be my last post. 

Saying Goodbye

I suspect it might be difficult for my daughter to understand, but saying goodbye in the early 1980s was quite different than a farewell in the 2020s. Obviously there was no public internet available, but also remember how expensive long distance calling was then. The long distance telephone company battles had yet to begin. Remember in the few years after that had begun, when you would 'enter a contest' that was actually a form to switch your long distance carrier? I was burned by that once. Anyway, it would be hard to keep contact with German friends via telephone. My parents thought it was pricey to call Germany from the States. It was even more expensive for Germans to phone us.

Other than Lindy, I don't know which exchange friends kept contact after we left Germany. 

Before that, though, I remember a goodbye in Mainz at the Hauptbahnhof. A few of the exchange students took the ride with us to Frankfurt, including Funda. Here's a photo of Ann horsing around with Funda at the Frankfurt Flughafen. These two made a sweet connection with one another.

Funda tripping up Ann. 

I remember Andres, Chris's exchange partner telling me that after we leave, "I think it will be boring in Mainz." While I'm sure things slowed down socially among those classmates - and, by the way, did they ever gather again following our departure? Which ones kept in contact, I wonder? Did any? - I imagine the parents and the other family members could breathe a sigh of relief. As a middle-aged guy, I know that although it's fun to have guests, it also can be exhausting after a while. Imagine have a teenager(s), and then getting one more for a month. That's a lot of angst for one household.

I do remember saying goodbye to Funda and, after walking towards our flight, crying for a moment. 

I wrote Rudiger at least a few letters, and I remember sending postcards to the Besch family. I don't remember much correspondence in return. Funda and I kept up correspondence until sometime during my freshman year in college, which would have been either late 1983 or early 1984. At the time I was still taking German classes at UW-Madison, so drafting simple letters in German wasn't too difficult. When I took a German literature class and I was always a chapter behind as I struggled mightily with the vocabulary, I decided my study of German had to come to an end. It was frustrating, plowing through my Langenscheidt's dictionary every evening while reading Der geteilte Himmel (the Divided Sky). I couldn't figure out what was going on in the story. 

This was a difficult goodbye for a few reasons. For one, we had become close with our German hosts. For many of us, the novelty of German life was also something we weren't eager to let go of so soon. It also should have been clear at the time, but we were probably more focused on Germany and our new friends, but we would soon miss hanging out with the other American students so much. Remember, we had German class in common with our American classmates, but beyond the exchange, most of us wouldn't normally hang out together. Sure, I was already friends with Peter, Clint and Chris. Sure, I would seen John and Dave and Kathy G. at parties. Ann had her swimming friends, while Mike and Liz would go back to East. Besides Mike, I never saw the East High students again. Lindy would be back among her choir friends and Diana and Barb had their posse. Anyway, we wouldn't have a reason to all hang out together again, so that, too, was a loss.

Here's another photo from departure day:

Peter (giving his Joey Ramone face), (exchange partner) Michael, Dave and John. 

Final Potluck

 I have no idea if potlucks are a thing there. It seems there isn't a German term for it, so probably not. I wonder how it was explained to the German families if that is the case.

 Anyway, I don't recall an arrival potluck, as we had in the U.S., however we did have a large gathering to say goodbye in the school's gym. Besides food, we had prepared a skit in German. Bergren wanted me for the lead, the kid that was 'bad', but only unintentionally. My character's name might have been Willy? It depended on some word play, using the term 'Esel', which is jackass. I remember Peter was the Esel. I think we were throwing rocks at it, which is pretty terrible, in hindsight. The teacher (Chris Bradle) became confused as to who we were calling an 'Esel'. I remember he was supposed to hit me upside the head a few times, and his blows were a little too 'method'. There might have been some suppressed anger coming from somewhere in Chris. Maybe I kept him waiting too long in the mornings when he pulled up to give me a ride to school?

That part of the 'program' went off pretty well. We got some intended laughs. There was a joke about the German soccer legend, Franz Beckenbauer. All good. 

We had been discussing what to do about a song. Both Peter and I played guitar, so we talked about accompanying the class to some song or another. One song that was big at the time and that the German students liked was the Styx 'weeper', "Babe". Back then, we couldn't find chords to a song online, and I didn't have the ear to pick up chords the same way I would later. Someone had the cringe-worthy idea to just sing along to a recording of the song. That view ultimately won out. I was mortified to have to stand up in front of 85 people and sing "Babe" to a bunch of Germans as the record played. If I had been cool, it would have totally ruined my reputation.

From our skit: A little eerie how the parts were most male. From left, John Fredrickson's arm, Dave D., me, Clint Miller's arm and leg, and Mike N.

Besides the singing and the skit, I don't recall much else from that night, so here is one more photo from that final potluck:

Left to right, kneeling: Diana, Barb, Stacy, Ann, me, ?, Tami, Brenda. Row 2, Brian, Kathy, Liz, Karen, Mike, Kathy, Lisa, Clint, Ann. Row 3: John, Peter, Dave, Chris, Lindy, and Curt.

 

Johannisfest or Johannisnacht

 Our time in Mainz (did I say this already?) was a bit anti-climactic after Berlin and, for me, after my infection. We did a few other things that I remember, but I'm not sure in which order. We went to a Crackers show...somewhere. Wiesbaden? I remember we took a train to get there. I didn't know where we were going. It was a very fun show. Just recently I found the CD on Amazon, and I see they're playing a show next Month in Wiesbaden, however we will be elsewhere in Germany at that point. 

Note the guitar body is in the shape of the former West Germany. 

The other highlight was our night at the Johannisfest or Nacht or something like that. There was much confusion about what the evening is/was called and just which 'Johannis' they were celebrating. Some of us understandably decided it must be in honor of Johannis Gutenberg, who perfected movable type in the process of printing. Since we didn't have the internet then, we couldn't Google it to learn that it's held on the feast of St. John, but that it also commemorates Gutenberg. Hell, I'm still confused. Anyway, I remember riding a ride or two, some beer (I still have the mug from the evening), and maybe some food? That part is fuzzy, probably because of the beer.

Diana, Rudiger's head, Andres, Michael (peeking through) and Ann.

Streets of Mainz during Johannisnacht, 1982.

It seems to me that we left almost immediately after the festival. We did have another potluck dinner, which I will share some memories next post.

Up and At 'Em and Souper Serious

 Once I was able to move about again, I made the most of my remaining days in Mainz. A few moments stand out. 

I'm not sure of the chronology of these things, but shortly after I could resume normal activity, we took a cruise with the West German army along the Rhine, at least a short ways. It's clear that this is after my infection, because the photo below shows me with a bandage. From my expression, it looks like I was still on the mopey side. Not to worry, as I was over that several years later.

I recall we stopped around Rudesheim, because we took the cable car ride to the Niederwald Denkmal, which commemorates German unification. It's 38 meters tall (nearly 125 ft). I don't have a photo of that any longer. Here's one by Karl Heinz Walter:

Beyond that I don't recall much other than not leaving Funda's side. Here's Mr. Mopey:

I have a better recollection that the class of German students graduated from the Neutorschule, and we attended the brief ceremony. Some of the students at that point went into trades training, others went on to a gymnasium (upper level) high school, like Funda and Rudiger did, and still others found jobs, presumably. Here are a few photos from that ceremony and from a lunch a few of us went to afterwards. 

Claudia's mother, I think, Claudia and Thorsten at the grad ceremony.

German students doing a reading.

From left: Birgit, Chris, and Andres

Ann and Diana at lunch. I guess the mood stayed somber. Most of us realized we would have to go home soon.

Chris has always taken his soup seriously. 

Besides graduation, I remember going to a party at the house of a student who planned to be in the exchange for 1983. I don't remember her name. 

Next time: Johannisnacht and flying home.

Triangle of Death

 As I mentioned in the last post, my lip bothered me during our day in East Berlin. As we woke up to take the long train ride back to Mainz, my upper lip had become swollen on the left side. 

I don't recall much of anything about our train ride back. If I'm not mistaken, it took seven or eight hours to get back. Did we change trains? I don't recall that either. 

Way more vivid in my mind is waking up early the next morning to a disturbing sight. The left side of my face was inflamed to the point that my left eye was mostly swollen shut. I recall knocking on my host parents' bedroom door to show them what had happened. They were understandably startled. That morning we went to a clinic.

They numbed my lip and the Dr. made an incision to drain the swelling. Realize, I didn't really understand a lot of what was being said. I'm not sure anyone explained things to me. Perhaps they did, but it's fuzzy now. Anyway, at some point they phoned Bergren, our teacher and, in turn, he phoned my parents. 

I was made to understand that for the next few days, I required bed rest. Imagine how pleased you would be as a sixteen year old having the time of his life, but suddenly you're told you have to stay home while everyone else gets to hang out and do fun things in Germany. 

What I didn't know at the time is that the doctor suggested admitting me to the hospital. Infections in that area of the face, popularly known as the triangle of death, are occasionally very dangerous, since the blood flow in that area of the face is direct to the brain.

In the above photo, if you look closely you can see a bandage on my face, following a follow-up visit to the Dr.'s clinic.

So I was mostly in bed for the next few days. I think I missed the tour of the Gutenberg museum, but I'm not sure what else. Mostly as a love-sick teen, I missed seeing more of Funda, although she did visit me one afternoon. What I also didn't realize at the time was that Rudiger's mom had promised to change my bandages and keep me on bed rest, rather than have me admitted, so I am very grateful for her care. 

Naturally my parents were concerned....about the cost of treatment. 😅During that same follow-up visit, I asked the Dr. (wish I had his name written down - I did in my original scrapbook that was not acid-free) how we would figure out payment. He said the treatment was a gift to further German-American friendship and understanding. Turns out my pimple served a higher purpose. Below is that Dr. and a nurse at the clinic:

Thanks, Doc and Nurse!

More on Berlin: Berlin Part IV

 It's not easy to recall all of our activities in Berlin in 1982. From the previously posted photos I see that we visited the Wall, we drove around to see some of the Cold War reminders, and we strolled along the Kufurstendamm, which was a the main drag in West Berlin's heyday. I don't remember the details of any meals or whether we ate at restaurants. I do recall taking the U-bahn. At some point we were near Checkpoint Charlie, and I posted a photo of that site in an earlier post. Did we visit any museums in West Berlin? I don't recall any.

The most memorable day during our visit to Berlin was the long day we spent in East Berlin, the area that had been designated by the East German (communist) government as being the capital city of the DDR, the East German government. At the war's end, Berlin, like Germany as a whole, had been split into four occupation zones, one each for the U.S., Great Britain, France (really!?), and the Soviet Union. Berlin was in the center of the Soviet occupation zone, and approximately a third of Berlin, that eastern third, was the Soviet zone of the capital. 

By the early 1960s, the outward flow of migrants from East to West Berlin prompted East Germany, with the green light from the Soviet Union, to erect the Berlin Wall and, in effect, to completely control its population. When we visited, the Wall was only about twenty years old, but to us, sixteen and seventeen year old kids, it seemed like it had existed and would continue forever. 

Checkpoint Charlie was then in the popular imagination as they way in which visitors from the west could visit East Berlin. Instead, we took the U-Bahn, the subway. Until we were getting on it, I had no idea the subway still ran between the two cities. In the first creepy moment of our day, we watched out the subway windows as we traveled through abandoned subway stops. They were abandoned, save for guards armed with long guns and companion police dogs. We had to submit paperwork to visit and exchange money. East Germany required both West Germans and other visitors to exchange Marks, the German currency at the time, 1-1, meaning you would give a West German mark and get the East German version in exchange. This was so, despite the fact that a West German mark was far more valuable than and East German one, which had essentially zero worth in world currency exchanges. If I am not mistaken, Dennis, our teacher, received permission to permit us to exchange less money than was typical. I might be wrong about that. We were required to spend whatever we exchanged, but it was difficult to find much of anything to buy there.

Here are my visas from that day:

Actually, one of these might be from our travel between East Germany and West Germany, but you get the idea.

Among the things we did that day was a visit to "Museum Island". The world-famous Pergamon Museum was located in East Berlin and has treasures from antiquity, including the Pergamon Alter from ancient Greece. I had very little idea of what I was looking at, and in fact I paid more attention to the girls in the other school groups that were visiting. I recall meeting and exchanging contact info with one East German school girl, but I lost her address before leaving Berlin. It might have been better for her, in retrospect, not to have received mail from the US, give the repressive nature of East German life. 

We were taken around Berlin in a comfortable tour bus and we had East German minders/guides. At lunch time we were taken to some sort of a municipal building. I recall they gave us turtle soup, or at least what they claimed was turtle soup. 

We had some free time in the large pedestrian area near the television tower, the Fernsehturm, which is still the tallest structure in Germany. We didn't visit the top, but we did have a look at their department store. 

Labeled 'Centrum' in the photo, this was East Germany's multilevel department store near Alexanderplatz.

Our jaws dropped when we saw the shop that visitors from other Eastern European countries flocked to when visiting. There was very little there, plus it all looked very dated and unappealing. Consumer goods were certainly not the priority in East Germany. We 80s mall rats were aghast that people should live with such meager shopping options. 

All during the day, I was bothered by both the cool weather and an inflamed upper right lip where I had a small acne mark. As the day went on I felt more tired and more bothered by the cool temps. Add to that the stark contrast of having spent a couple of days in "glamorous" West Berlin, compared to the drab surrounding on East Berlin meant I was somewhat overwhelmed at day's end.

In the evening, someone arranged for us to go to a pub that apparently served as a night club. In West Berlin we had visited the Ku Dorf, a bar and dance space (I hesitate to call it a club) and wore ourselves out with beer and dancing, probably to the amusement of our teachers. Pete Reinhardt especially "left it all on the dancefloor" that evening. I recall him drenched in sweat before we went back to our hostel to sleep. Anyway, the place in East Berlin was hardly that. I remember ordering what they considered cola and being sorely disappointed. There were very few other people there. It was depressing as hell. 

At the end of a very long day we trudged back to the subway that would take us back to West Berlin to sleep before we took the train back to Mainz. It had been very hassle free to get into East Berlin, but the border agents showed their true selves as we tried to exit. They gave Peter and especially had time, for whatever reason. Farewell to a very shitty country. Here are a few more from East Berlin:

Traffic cop, East Berlin

Sitting at the fountain outside the Centrum store. From left in gray jacket and sucker (seated) Dave D., John Fredrickson, Liz ?, Mike Niemann, Barb Washa, Stacy Solderholm, Diana Fleming, Pete Reinhardt. Standing at left, Clint Miller.

Statue at Treptow park, an enormous Soviet War Memorial in East Berlin

Long view of Treptow.

  

Flash forward or back - Mainz thoughts today

 So I felt really old today trying to dial Germany, first from a landline that wouldn't seem to ring a hotel in Mainz. Frustrated, I decided to try my cell. I didn't know before today that cell phones could dial a +. That is what the hotel showed as the prefix to dialing it's number, so I tried that, but got the message that my cell service had to authorize international calling.

After a chat with my cell provider, in which the person told me to dial 001, I tried again. That person was wrong. The + worked and I got through and made a three night reservation for Mainz.

Rick Steves says there's nothing worth seeing in Mainz. Hell, he doesn't even mention the Chagall Windows in the St. Stephens church. We're talking Marc Fricken Chagall. They're beautiful. There are Roman ruins in Mainz, an amazing Romanesque cathedral, but yes, compared to some German destinations, it's not a tourist "must-see" location. Ok, Gutenberg did develop the printing press of movable type here. No doubt the draw for me is the sentimental connection, even if I won't get the chance to see many of those folks. Rudiger's parents died a few years back. I just sent word to him through his brother Jurgen that I'm coming to Mainz. I'm doubtful I will hear back. I will be happy to see Kersten, Claudia and perhaps Georg and Thorsten. That would be pretty remarkable to meet up with people after forty years. 

Gutenberg in his workshop.

One note is that, after traveling for years to Europe either solo or with Lisa, things get more complicated and expensive when you are a group of four. Many hotels in Germany don't have the standard, two double bed configuration. In Berlin, we found a place that has a queen bed and a sofa bed for our three nights there. My plan is to tire out the teens so that they can sleep soundly on anything. In Mainz, I tried to book an Air BnB, despite my general distaste for 'the sharing economy'. I created an account and made a reservation, but they turned us down. Lisa would greatly prefer a place in walking distance of the Altstadt, so I found a relatively reasonable place with a pool. Hopefully the pool will be open and available. 

One thing I had forgotten is just how close Mainz is to the Frankfurt Flughafen. We have made reservations for all of our stops, Berlin, Dresden, Wurzburg (also a base to visit Rothenburg), but we haven't talked about where we will stay the night before our early flight back. It probably makes sense to stay near the airport, but it might be more fun to stay near Frankfurt's old town, which I have never visited. 

Next post, back to Berlin.

Mainz city hall along the Rhine, taken from a special tour we had of the Mainz cathedral. 

Plans are coming together

 This week we purchased our tickets to fly to Berlin and fly out of Frankfurt in June. Because of COVID and more recently the war in Ukraine, we weren't sure we should go. Fortunately, Lisa recognized just how important this anniversary is to me, and Anna has grown more excited about the trip as the months have passed.

In preparation I have made a list of things I hope to do in Berlin:

• Visit the Reichstag. This has become very popular with the renovation and the change that has reverted Berlin to the national capital.
• Templehof tour. As mentioned in the last post, Templehof is no longer a working airport. It's now a park and it has an interesting sounding tour. The new Berlin international airport's opening has been delayed for several years.
• Brandenburg Gate: Couldn't get near it in 1982.
• Siegesaule: The Victory Tower that is among the most powerful symbols of Berlin. It wasn't something we could visit on my last trip. Since then, the 1987 film Wings of Desire made that famous in cinema. 
• The East Side Gallery: Another very popular spot, the is an outdoor installation that uses a section of the Berlin Wall as a canvas.
• Berlin by Boat. Lisa got really excited about this one. She like boats a lot, I guess.
• Checkpoint Charlie Museum. The younger among us should like this especially.
• The Holocaust Memorial

Many of these weren't a thing 40 years ago. What remains the same about Berlin is that it is always changing. It's seems metamorphosis is part of its identity.

I do hope I can convey some of the history to Anna, Ava, and Lisa with minimum eye rolling. I know even from my time as a 16 year old visitor: when we have more context for what we experience as a tourist makes it far more interesting and substantially more meaningful. I certainly don't want to bore them, but I do want them to have some appreciation for where they are and why we are taking the trouble to go there.

This is where visitors who wished to travel between the Allied Sectors of Berlin and East Berlin stopped for document checks in 1982.

 Anyway, let's hope it can open their eyes to what travel can teach us. 

Review and Forward, Berlin Part 2

 So I finally read through all the previous posts to see how often I repeated myself. A little too often. You wanted proof I'm much closer to 60 than 50? There you go. No doubt the few people that look at the whole Blog will mind too terribly much. I am half hoping Lisa and Anna will read through before we finish our trip, so they will have a better understanding of why we're going to Germany. False hope?

So I mentioned a few things about the Wall (prob should capitalize it) already and orientation to the city. I should say we didn't get very close up to some of the World War II sites like the Soviet War Memorial in West Berlin, the Reichstag or the Brandenburg Gate. I looked at some of those photos and they're blurry, mostly because I took them out the window of our moving bus. At the time, I wanted to get closer to the Soviet Memorial in the Tiergarten. I remember thinking, I guess we are not permitted to get close to these sites. Apparently it wasn't on our itinerary to get closer. I had seen photos (pre-internet...you couldn't just find photos instantly) of the Soviet Memorial and I wanted to examine it up close. Sorry, not that trip.

Sign in front of the Brandenburg Gate, which sat just inside the Soviet Sector of the Berlin, and later in East Berlin. The sign in front says, "Attention, you're leaving West Berlin", although you couldn't legally travel through the gate in either direction.

I'll spare you the high school level history lecture on the history of Berlin. At some point we also motored by the Hungergabel at Templehof Airport, now decommissioned and a popular park. The 'hunger fork' is in reference to the Berlin Airlift. A week or so ago, the original "Candy Bomber" died, Gail Halvorson. A shining U.S./British moment in a very dark period.

One sobering place we did stop, perhaps during that same whirlwind look at the city, was the Plötzensee Memorial, dedicated to those who were executed on the site, some 3,000, at the hands of the Nazis. This is one of the early Berlin memorials to the human costs of the Hitler dictatorship. My guess is that it has been overshadowed by the newer Holocaust Memorial completed in 2005. It's easy to quickly be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the Nazi misery, suffering and murder.

Here is a photo from Plötzensee:

It would be wrong if I said I'm "looking forward" to seeing Berlin's Holocaust Memorial. It forever astounds me how far so many in Germany have come toward "truth and reconciliation" in a relatively short period. Compare that with the U.S. and lynching, and all the monuments to the Confederacy that are only now beginning to come down. I've visited Atlanta a couple of times, and it's remarkable how commonplace it is to visit Stone Mountain's memorial. I would never go there, but five MILLION people trek there each year. Chilling. Meanwhile, there are all of those Americans who are moving backwards and not towards an honest reckoning with the Nation's ugly past. Anyway, I've never been close to Auschwitz, and I passed up my opportunity to go to Dachau years ago. The last time I was in D.C. it was only for a few hours with Lisa on our way to the Baltimore airport. When I was there for more time than that, the Holocaust Museum hadn't been completed. So this is my chance to see the memorial dedicated to the family connections I will never have the chance to know. Less personally, of course, I have read, seen and felt so much about the topic that visiting will be chance to physically inhabit the collective grief that haunts humanity.

Seated from left: Me, Barb Washa, Ann Buller, Diana Fleming Mackie, Brenda Lansing Alexander, Stacy Soderholm Davidsaver, tour guide (not sure why he's here). Second row, standing, Lindy Kaye Anderson, Kathy Grzenia Pierce, John Fredrickson, Dave Dedie, Brian Hischke, Tami ?, Curt Herwig, East Teacher Marie Nelson. Third row, Karen Hegge, Ann Conklin, Kathy Brockman Lewis, Clint Miller, Lisa Page, ?, Chris Bradle, Mike Niemann, Peter Reinhardt, Liz ?, Dennis Bergren

The above photo is way out of order, but I thought I ought to include it somewhere. Good photo of everyone!

Berlin, Part 1 of ?

 Our biggest and most memorable trip within our trip was our visit to Berlin. Technically, it was our visit to West and East Berlin, for at the time, the city was still divided. There are so many reasons why those few days have stuck with me.

I'm sort of embarrassed to say, but I think the fact that we were more on our own, away from both our families and our host families, made Berlin more fun for most of us. For me, that was a first at age 16. Granted, we had our teachers' supervision, but we could certainly relax more. It was a little unnerving for the first couple of weeks in Germany to be on our best behavior in someone else's home, while being unsure of pretty much everything. Dare I ask for another ice cube? Is it ok to have a 2nd Brötchen? In the case of my host family, the boys ate like (no exaggeration) ravenous animals. Clearly they were growing, but WTF? I remember one of them grabbing the serving dish and rapidly shoving the remains into his mouth. I was dumbstruck. In Berlin we could act like the sixteen and seventeen year old's we were. I recall taking full advantage.

Peter, me, Dave, and John in the 1936 Olympic Stadium. I won the gold for the worst looking sweatshirt imaginable. Check Peter's jeans and note his rock and roll buttons - yes, the 80s, nor should you overlook John's Member's Only Jacket.

The other reason it was a highlight is because the history and politics of Berlin were fascinating. West Berlin, the part still connected to Western Europe, was an island surrounded by East Germany. The Berlin Wall, for example, surrounded West Berlin, to keep others out, namely East German citizens. 

Trains were not quite so speedy in those days. I remember it was a long ride, and we were nervous about the "passing through East Germany" part. The teachers had prepared us to try not to act like idiots in a way that could get us into trouble. I can't imagine a trip like this would even be possible with some of today's teens, since many of them figure they can get away with (and often do) anything. Along the way through East Germany we made a few stops, which I think were border and security checks, and I guess I couldn't resist pointing my camera out the window.

DDR flag, Deutsche Demokratische Republic, taken out the train window in 1982.

I'm not sure my next move was the smartest, even in my sixteen year old brain, but when the East German border police came on the train to ask who had taken photos, I pretended I hadn't. Hopefully I wasn't in any real danger of being pulled off the train. Perhaps they would have taken my film. I'm glad neither of those happened, but it's probably also a good thing that I didn't try that ten or twenty years prior. It might have had a different ending.

I don't remember much else from the train ride, but when we arrived in Berlin we checked into a youth hostel, although I have no idea where in the city we stayed. By no means is Berlin any sort of a grid city, and we mostly traveled around by subway, which doesn't really lend itself to getting your bearings. At that time, the heart of the city was the Kurfürstendamm, the busy boulevard in the west. With the end of the wall, the heart has moved to the historical center, Mitte and Alexanderplatz. I'm looking forward to seeing that change. In the K-damm area, I recall visiting the memorial church and it's more modern replacement, and perhaps we went to Ka De We? Pretty sure that was a big tourist hit in its day. Here's a photo from the Ku-Damm:

The "U" is for underground (subway) and the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church is in the background next to the modern bell tower. 

I remember seeing what appeared to be hardcore punk rockers in the city, which we didn't really see in Madison in the early 80s. Seems as though the city had a sizable population of drug addicts then, and perhaps we'll see both when we return this summer. Thanks to U2, I now know that Zoo Station is a hangout for those who are addicted. Actually, I read a bit online and see that now the subway stations are frequented by addicts, especially along the U8 line.

Also troubling is that I see the U.S. State Department has a "Do Not Travel" to Germany and all other European nations. Looks like COVID is still the primary reason. We'll see if that is updated to a caution in the coming weeks.

What we remember

I tend to remember the parts of this trip that, obviously, I have thought about at different times over the past 39+ years. For some of it, I have no photos. I remember a few moments of our night to the local winery, owned by a host family. I remember drinking, for my age, quite a bit of wine and laughing a lot with Peter Reinhardt. Sadly, my camera must have been back at the house. 

I received a message back yesterday from one of the German exchange students. I had asked her if she had any connections to her classmates from so long ago and she said she didn't. She doesn't even recall many of their names. I sent a photo (shown earlier in the blog) of all of the German students on the last night in the States, because it has all their names. She said that she remembered very little of a few of her classmates. 

I've got to say, even though I haven't seen some of the American students over the years, I remember quite a bit about them, except for a few that came along from East High. But for one of the East students, I haven't seen them since our trip. Certainly a few of my classmates I'd love to see more often, particularly one of the kindest fellows I know, Chris Bradle. He's out in Pittsburgh. Here's a photo of him from our travels:

Here's Chris with his (probably) 60s era viewfinder camera. I believe this is from our afternoon in Heidelberg.

With Chris I have the advantage of having known him since middle school, or perhaps even grade school. For a few years in high school, he was my ride to LaFollette each day. After college, however, I don't think I saw him until I had a German Exchange reunion in 2012 and he came over to the house for a couple of hours. So do I really know him much anymore?

When I look at the faces and names from the group of Germans in our exchange, I'm not sure I even had an extended conversation with much more than half of them. With those I did spend more time with, I feel like I had some understanding of who they are, or at least who they were. I'm of the belief that people don't fundamentally change much once they're that old. I run into people I haven't seen for decades and their personalities are pretty much the same. Perhaps they have calmed down a bit, or they're a little more introspective. That's just age, though. 

Here are Mike, Lindy (aka Linda), Chris, and Brian from September of 2012.

Nevertheless, it would be a joy to see any and all of them again. I had the pleasure of spending an evening with Claudia when she visited Kathy Grzenia Pierce a few years ago. I spent a little time with Funda when I stayed with Rudiger in 1987. I have seen some of Thorsten on Facebook. The others, however, who knows where they are or even if they're all still living? Unfortunately we have lost many classmates since graduation. To my knowledge, none of those from the exchange have passed, but we also don't know where everyone is.

Some people aren't fond of reunions and sometimes it's because of haunting memories from high school. No doubt, if things had been awful for me, I would have likely stayed away. For most of us, however, I think you should try a reunion before you dismiss the idea altogether. Our recollections can not only connect us with one another, they can also help us make sense of ourselves. I have a strong suspicion that some of my exchange mates can't believe I haven't 'moved on' from this time. Believe me, I have moved "on", or at least moved beyond it. I also know that time informed some of my beliefs, and some of my attitudes. It can be a powerful thing to, once you have view of your own culture in the context of another, question why we live the way we do. So, yes, I really enjoyed that brief time in Germany, but I also value it for how it opened me up to new possibilities and different points of view.

Dinner with Claudia and her husband at Kathy's house, 2018.

Day Trips, Germany Style Part 2

 Besides Heidelberg, we made day trips around the area, with one that just barely put us in Bavaria. I remember visiting some Roman ruins in Bad Durkheim, but that excursion was otherwise unremarkable. Other than Heidelberg, the best of these was Wurzburg, the city at the northern edge of Bavaria, mostly because it has the ornate Residenz palace. I don't think any of us had seen such a decorative building before. I do remember my German family puzzled as to why we went to Wurzburg(actually spelled with an umlaut above the u), but these days I do see it come up in guidebooks for the very reason we visited.

Locally, we spent some time poking around Mainz. We had a tour of the Dom, the Mainz Romanesque cathedral. Back in the states, our teacher Herr Begren gave us lessons about common architectural styles, so we could identify a gothic period building from a baroque era one. We had few enough opportunities to feel smart our first time in another country, so at least we could parse a few things about our surroundings. Mainz also has Marc Chagall windows in one of its churches, so we had a look at those, which is one site I'm planning to visit again. I missed the day our class went to the Gutenberg museum, but from what I read, it's not particularly well done. (more on WHY I missed later)

 At the moment, I am trying to figure out a workable itinerary for our trip this June. It sounds more likely than not that Lindy Anderson and her family will meet us in Mainz. I have a list of worthwhile activities in Berlin. Our other stops, I'm less certain about. I did find out that Anna rides free on German trains! (Actually, while pricing tickets, I found that she does NOT ride free - 4.20 edit)

Above photo: Dave, John, Ann, and Peter in Bad Durkheim, sitting in a Roman something or other. I'm guessing today, they probably don't permit you to climb in and sit on them.

Ann and I on the same daytrip. Looks like I was still trying to look like a tennis player, even though I stopped playing at school the year before. My hair is nearing the style of Bjorn Borg.

On one of the bus trips, perhaps on the above one, we sat down with several other students, German ones, and created two lists. One list, the English one, contained the obscene words we wished the Germans would translate into German. Naturally, some terms didn't translate well. All the naughty body parts did, of course, but some terms, like the German word Bocker, which Google Translate says means 'Bucks', the students said means "Fucker". One who fucks? Is this something you would use on someone in an attempt to be hurtful? In English it doesn't work so well. Naturally, we threw in some absurd terms for our own amusement. I think it was from Steve Martin that I heard the term "Golden Bozos", referring to breasts. All of us, the Germans included, got a big kick out of hearing them say that one. You could count on uproarious teenaged laughter when the Germans used this in the company of their parents.