Pu’u Hōkūʻula (a.k.a Buster Brown) rising from the mist.
True Neighbors
There has been an uproar in my hometown of Waimea regarding the large land purchases and huge philanthropic donations made by San Francisco based tech businessman Marc Benioff.
I recently had an e-mail exchange with a friend about Mr. Benioff’s questionable donations. Questionable because while he’s been very public about his donations, his other land purchases have been more secretive. My friend believes we shouldn’t criticize our neighbors, the Benioffs, since they have done so much for the community.
I take issue with the word “neighbor”.
Who is my neighbor?
When my family ran Fukushima Store, we had a farmer and his wife as neighbors. They would bring us a sack full of daikon and other vegetables from their fields. My parents would talk story with them. We’d reciprocate by stopping by their house on our way to Honoka’a and give them banana bread or cookies.
My mother continued this tradition of talking story – an island tradition – after my father died. I’d sometimes overhear her end of the conversation on an old fashioned land line phone, where callers have to pick up and put down a receiver. She would be talking to a neighbor in the driveway before ours. It they are both working in their yards, they’d take a break and talk story over the fence.
My mom would also send me to deliver cookies and fruit to our longtime neighbors. We have been neighbors for at least fifty years. We have built a rapport with them and have gotten to know them. A neighbor is not one who intimidates or bully others. That would create a sense of mis-trust.
Friendly horses at the Kalani Schutte District Park.
After reading the NPR article, two words come to mind describing Mr. Benioff’s behavior. Those words are unapproachable and aloof.
At the start of the interview with Mr. Benioff, Kerr mentioned that he had a Salesforce associate sit in on the interview via ZOOM. Mr. Benioff loved talking about his charitable donations. But when the reporter brought up the subject about his land purchases, he would fidget and avoid the subject. At one point, his associate intervened, saying Kerr can talk with the associate about the land purchases after the interview.
This associate played the role of what western journalists working in China, call a government minder –someone who monitors the entire interview. This is not how one “talks story” to build rapport. This is not how you come clean to the public.
Which leads to his aloof behavior.
While Mr. Benioff may understand the idea of ‘ohana, he does not understand the idea of “talking story” with our neighbors. If he had asked for community input regarding the purchase of the former Mamane Bakery property, perhaps he would have gotten a better reception. To just suddenly open a Jewish center – he has since retracted that statement saying that it’s a community center for everyone –without community feedback, shows that he is out-of-touch with his neighbors.
In that famous parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke 10, a Jewish leader asks Jesus who is my neighbor. Jesus then proceeds to tell the story of a man who is attacked on the road by thieves. The man is injured and left to die.
A priest sees the injured man. But he continues on his way. A Levite does the same.
But when a Samaritan sees the man, he stops and tends to the man’s injuries. He then takes the man to an inn and pays for the man’s expenses.
Jesus ends the story by forcing the leader to answer his own question.
“They one who shows mercy.”
I saw this mercy in action when we had our fire disaster in August of 2021. Our community emergency response team of which I serve on, was asked to help the county to open and run shelters in Waimea. I saw several flatbed trucks loaded with palettes of bottled water, parked in the parking lot of the Waimea Community Center. Men were unloading these palettes for distribution to evacuees. I also had teammates fielding calls from local thrift shop operators asking us what we needed.
“We need mattresses, pillows, blankets, and bed sheets,” said our team lead. “We’ll take whatever bedding you’ve got.”
These thrift shop operators came through. They opened up their storage and brought what they had over to the shelters.
These volunteers showed mercy. They are our neighbors. They are people that live on the street where I live. They are the people that I work with and go to church with. They are the people that I break bread with. These are my neighbors who I come into contact on a regular basis and who I trust.
So, who is my neighbor? It is someone who not only shows mercy to others. It is someone whom I can build a rapport. It is someone whom I can break bread with. It is someone who is willing to get dirty when the going gets tough. While it is nice to have a rich man donate chunks of money to charitable causes to benefit the community, a neighbor is someone I can trust.
Mr. Benioff is not that neighbor.
So, look to the family who lives next to you. Look to your co-workers who share your work space. Look to the person who sits next to you at church. When disaster strikes, these are the people who are most likely to respond.
These are my neighbors.
The former Kamuela Montessori/Mamane Bakery in Waimea.
Children enjoying the fountain at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
They Feed Us All
I enjoyed watching this year’s Wimbledon, the third leg of the tennis grand slam season. At the start of the tournament, I was laughing.
Why?
Rain.
Several matches on both the men’s and women’s sides were stopped in the middle of play because of rain. Subsequent matches were postponed and as a result, one day could have several rounds of play.
It rarely rained when I was there.
On my previous trip to Europe, I was caught in the Austrian Alps in the rain without a raincoat. All I had was a flimsy windbreaker and an umbrella. Neither of them did me any good. I was still cold even in the summer.
I swore to myself that before my next trip to Europe I would get a proper raincoat. I got myself a raincoat in the fall of last year and brought it to England because London is notorious for its rain.
Or was.
The whole three weeks I was in England it rained only twice. It rained on my first day in Bath, and it rained on our way to the Lake District.
As we toured an English garden in Bath our guide Mike, explained to us that the English are having to find plants that are water resistant due to climate change. The garden we were visiting looked like half of the plants were dying of thirst. They were turning brown because of the lack of rain.
An English Garden in Bath.
Several days later, we got to visit a farmer named Gareth in Wales.
Gareth is a celebrity in the U.K. He has been a judge on shows like Fferm Ffactor, and has been on a reality T.V. series called Snowdonia 1890. He even has a YouTube channel featuring clips of him working on his farm.
Rick Steves’ Europe sends tour groups to Gareth’s farm in the Cardennau Mountains in north Wales to learn about sustainable farming. The star attraction is that we have a chance to try our hand at herding sheep with the help of one of Gareth’s sheep dogs. In this case, it was Max.
Two members of our group volunteered to herd four sheep into a pen. To do that, Gareth taught them the whistle commands and the Welsh commands to give Max. Then, the four sheep were released and my two friends, along with Gareth and Max, herded the sheep into a pen. The rest of us stood back and watched as our friends tried to command Max, who darted back and forth before they successfully herded all four sheep into the pen.
But that’s not the thing that impressed me most.
After the sheep herding show was over Gareth invited us to his man cave to share what life is like to be a farmer.
“Everyone loves to blame farmers for the climate change problem,” he complained. “But we’ve got to be a part of the solution.”
As Gareth was giving his talk, he was also looking at the sky. Indeed, it was overcast, and I did have my raincoat on just in case it rained.
“While it is a good day for you to visit, I’m keeping my eye out on the sky. We need the rain.”
On Gareth’s farm in Wales.
As Gareth was sharing his woes as a farmer, I kept thinking of some of my farmer friends back home at our farmers’ market where I sell my books. One farmer I thought of was Aunty Joey, my neighbor and fellow vendor at the Wednesday Mid-Week Market.
In December of 2022, we had a major winter storm in which roads flooded and rivers overflowed their banks. I remember being stupid enough to go Christmas shopping in such dangerous conditions.
At the next Wednesday market, after Waimea had somewhat dried out, I noticed that Aunty Joey did not have her usual vegetables for sale. All she had were a few bags of macadamia nuts and a bucket full of flowers.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Flood wiped out my entire crop,” she said.
So, one farmer is praying for rain in an area that should have lots of rain, while another farmer has lost a crop due to too much rain in an area that is famous for its warm, tropical climate.
Courtesy of the Library of Congress (https://loc.gov/pictures/item/2003690771/). This poster was inspired by the 1875 Granger Movement in which midwestern farmers banded together to fight against the monopolistic practices of the railroads and grain elevators.
I also thought of a campaign poster from the 1870s that I had seen in my history books as a child. It depicts men (yes, only men) in various occupations. The phrase under each occupation was this:
I (blank) You All.
But the farmer was front and center in the poster. It depicted a farmer in his field with two horses tethered to a plow.
His phrase was also a bold statement, which read as:
I Feed You All.
Gareth and Aunty Joey are trying to feed us all despite whatever Mother Nature may throw at them.
So, it helps to know where our food is from as well as those who grow our food. We should know our farmers and their stories. The phrase “essential worker” has become a catch phrase in our COVID world. We don’t need politicians, movie stars, athletes, or (God forbid I should say this) writers. They are not essential.
But farmers are essential workers. Indeed, they are essential to everyone’s survival. They must be a part of the solution to climate change policies because they feed us all.
The world’s cutest cucumbers are grown right here in Waimea.
My last day in Vienna was mostly spent trying to find the best route to the airport. I was due to leave the next morning and I didn’t want to lose time getting lost.
I also spent some time trying to find the Volkstheater where the Mozart & Strauss concert was to take place.
But one the things I had yet to experience was dining at a Viennese café.
On my first day in Vienna, while touring the Saint Stephans area with Tomas, we passed by a pink café called Aida Konditorei Café. I called it the Pink Café for obvious reason.
The founder of the café, Josef Prousek, an immigrant from present-day Czech Republic, moved to Vienna where he met his future wife Rosa. Together they bought and ran a pastry shop called Bonsaing & Sohne. It was Rosa, who came up with the iconic pink color scheme.
In 1921, they expanded and changed their business name to Chocolaterie & Grosskonditorei Aida.
World War 2 caused a temporary stop in business. Thankfully, the founder and his son, Felix, wrote down all of their recipes, so all was not lost.
In 1945, father and son started rebuilding their business, branch by branch.
In 1974, Josef Prousek died, and his son Felix took over. Felix’s son, Michael, joined the family business in 1982. Together, they continued to expand and innovate. In 2015, Michael’s son, Dominik, joined the family business. They continue to expand in Vienna and Austria.
There so many open-air cafés in Vienna that I could have tried. But since pink is one of my favorite colors, this café just stood out on the very busy Stephansplatz. I had to try the Pink Café.
Luckily, I found a socially distant table outside, underneath a pink umbrella with the logo, “Aida.” Prousek eventually realized that he would have to change the name if he wanted to expand. As an opera lover, he chose the new name Aida.
The waiter, a young man, gave me a menu. It was a bilingual menu, so I didn’t have trouble ordering. I got a quiche and a soft drink. But the thing I had to try was a decadent treat. The one that caught my eye was the Mozart cake.
I had never had so much marzipan in my life. This cake is a Sacher cake, named after the family that created such rich treats. It is a layered cake of chocolate and is covered in a smooth layer of chocolate marzipan and topped with a round, chocolate with an image of the composer.
I left that café feeling gluttonous.
Inside the cafe.
My last night in Vienna ended at the Volkstheater and that Mozart & Strauss concert. Once again, I was stumped about the start time.
In Vienna, as in Salzburg, times never seemed to correlate with the actual amount of daylight. In Hawaii, 6:15 p.m. means that the sun, at least in the summer, is setting, and 8 p.m., the moon is out.
In Germany and Austria, daylight hours are stretched in the summer. Both countries are also much farther away from the equator and closer to the north pole. For someone like me, who is from a tropical paradise, this would take some getting used to.
My ticket listed two times; 18:30 (6:30 p.m.) and 20:15 (8:15 p.m.). The second one was circled as the start time.
Why list two times?
I left my hotel around 5 p.m. I walked to the nearest subway, (yes, I did learn the route and I got an English language map) to the Volkstheater. I figured I’d get something to eat before heading to the show. I remember the meal I had missed at the Hohensalzburg Fortress in Salzburg, so I didn’t want to go to this concert on an empty stomach.
I was still digesting my rich and decadent Mozart cake from Aida Konditorei Café earlier that day, so I wasn’t too hungry. I just wanted something light.
I took the train to Stephansplatz Station where I found an underground restaurant selling Chinese food. There were no customers inside, so I felt completely safe, COIVID-wise.
I had no idea what language the cashiers spoke. They were all immigrants from Asia. I knew they could speak some German because their menus, which were on display above them, were in German. I, however, don’t speak German and I had no idea if they spoke English.
Now is a good time to use my Chinese I thought.
“Qing get wo Yangzhou chao fan,” I said to the young lady behind the counter.
Please give me some Yangzhou fried rice.
“Da de haishi xiao de?
The large size or the small size?
“Xiao de,” I said.
The small one.
“Haiyou ne?”
Anything else?
“Gei wo yi ting kele.”
Give me a can of Coke.
The woman smiled. I think she was happy to hear her native language.
“Ni shi nali lai?”
Where are you from?
“Wo shi meiguoren.”
I’m American.
“Ni de zhongwen hen hao.”
Your Chinese is very good.
I expected that response because I got a lot of that while living in China. I thanked her and took a seat to wait for my order.
I’m glad I came to this place. It reminded me so much of my life in China.
I arrived at the theater around 6 p.m. The door was closed. 6:15 came and went. The door remained closed. I was pacing up and down the street. I didn’t know if I should be angry. But I was definitely impatient. Oddly, it was still daylight and the sun had not yet set. I even thought about just forfeiting my ticket and going back to my hotel to pack.
At around 7:15, the young man that sold me the ticket, arrived with a friend. Both were carrying music stands for tonight’s performance.
“I’m confused,” I said, showing him my ticket. “What time does it start?”
“It’s at 8:15,” he said. “Just stick around an hour. You’ll love it.”
I think he detected a hint of anger in my voice. I gave in.
When I was in China, I have learned that being angry at my hosts is rude and that showing my anger won’t get me what I wanted.
What I wanted was the best concert experience I could ever have in a musical city such as Vienna. I also wanted bragging rights. PBS Hawaii broadcasts the Vienna Philharmonic’s New Year’s Day celebration every New Year. I wanted to be able to say “I’ve been there” when I see them on T.V.
So I thanked the young man and decided to hang around the theater district, take photos of classical buildings, and have another bottle of Coke from an outdoor food truck.
8:15 the doors to the Volkstheater opened and I, along with a large group of foreign visitors, were let in.
The theater was a two storied rotunda. To our left were the ticket offices which were closed and roped off-limits. There were stanchions and signs with arrows telling visitors which way to go. All were pointing to the staircase.
When I got to the second floor, theater employees were selling programs and glasses of wine. Apparently, guests have to pay for a program guide, unlike in the U.S. where they are given out freely.
And as tempting as it was to have a glass of champagne, I opted out because I’d rather return to my hotel safely since I am traveling alone on the subway after hours.
I donned my mask. I looked around and could see very few people wearing masks. Only about three quarters of the seats were taken and most of the guests sat in the middle. To keep my distance, I chose to sit on the far left of the semi-circle of chairs. I would not get a good view of the performers. But I didn’t care. I was here for the music.
Then the musicians walked on stage. They started off with Mozart, playing some of his concertos and operas. They even had several dancers and singers join them. And unlike the concert in Salzburg where they played mostly concertos that I’ve never heard of, this group of seven musicians played Ein Klein Nachtmusik (A Little Night Music) and the overture to The Marriage of Figaro.
Then then moved on to the Strauss family where there were more dancers on stage. They played Johann Strauss II’s The Blue Danube Waltz and ended with Johann Strauss I’s Radetzky March. They encouraged the audience to participate by clapping their hands, just like they do at their New Year’s celebration. I felt like I was in a PBS program.
I returned to my hotel a tired but happy concert goer. What a way to end my day.
Scratch that! Cue in TheMarriage of Figaro Overture!
Salzburg has been on my bucket list of cities to visit ever since I was a school girl.
I grew up with music in the house. As the daughter of a music teacher I’ve always had an appreciation for music. My mother had tons of sheet music and piano books, including the music for The Sound of Music and Mozart’s compositions. She also had shelves full of musical instruments like jingle bells, rhythm sticks, and xylophones.
And yes. She had a piano.
My parents also had a cabinet full of LPs of their favorite music. This included the Beatles, Frank Sinatra, Roger and Hammerstein musicals, Christian praise music, and Disney soundtracks.
Their musical collection also included a box set of classical music from such composers as Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Strauss, Beethoven, and Chopin.
But my favorite piece was, and still is, The Marriage of Figaro. Its bouncy and energetic tempo always puts me in a happy mood. I loved it so much that I recorded it on to a cassette tape and I played that music at night just before going to bed, much to the irritation of my sisters.
It is safe to say that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is my favorite composer.
As a middle school student taking a music appreciation class, I studied music history from Vivaldi, to Bach, to Haydn, and Gershwin.
But Mozart was definitely my favorite.
I took the initiative to read more about Mozart on my own. Afterall, how can a kid become a prodigy at such a young age?
One resource I had was an entire set of Encyclopedia Britannica books from A to Z. I grabbed the book labeled “M” and looked up Mozart. It had a portrait of the composer in his coiffed white wig and a red blazer. My guess was that he was posing as if he was getting ready to play for nobility.
It also mentioned that he was born in Salzburg and had spent the majority off his childhood on the road with his father Leopold and his sister Maria Anna, a.k.a. Nannerl, entertaining the kings and queens of Europe. It also stated that young Mozart started composing music before the age of five and that the family didn’t have a whole lot of money. So Leopold tried to cash in on his talented children by touring Europe and performing for the aristocracy.
My mom also had post card-sized portraits of classical composers, including of of Mozart. I was just so infatuated with his genius that I even fantasized that I was a young, teenaged violin virtuoso that could travel back in time to play one of his symphonies.
Then Mozart’s popularity hit the stratosphere. In 1984, the movie Amadeus, starring F. Murray Abraham and Tom Hulce, won the Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director (Milos Forman), and Best Actor (Abraham).
Then in 1985, Austrian rock star Falco recorded his only English language hit Rock Me Amadeus.
Talk about a crossover.
So I was definitely looking forward to visiting Salzburg.
We left Munich around 8 a.m. Our bus drove through some of the prettiest part of Bavaria. I read in Rick Steve’s guidebook that it took the Mozarts nearly thirty hours to get to Munich from Salzburg. But I was going to cross the border in a few hours.
Gobsmackingly beautiful I thought as we drove through the Austrian Alps. I could not believe I was here in Austria.
The Hills are Alive!
Our first stop was in Obertrum am See in the state of Salzburg, where we stopped at Trumer Pils Brewery. Our local guide, a jolly woman named Angela, greeted us in the parking lot.
Hana had told us a little about Angela while on the bus. “She is the world’s only female brew master.”
We all disembarked our bus to greet the world’s only female brew master and to see how Trumer Pils brews their beer.
Angela’s English was heavily accented so it was a challenge to understand her. But she was so jolly and cheerful that her passion for what she does, really did show. She definitely loved her job.
“Welcome!” Angela greeted all her guests.
Angela showed us around her brewery. She showed us the ingredients; the barley and the hops which we could see growing in the parking lot. She also showed us the brewing room.
But, of course, everyone’s favorite room was the tasting room where we got to sample the beer. Unfortunately I could not enjoy my glass as I would have liked because I was recovering from a stomach flu in Munich. So I was reluctant to drink a large glass of beer. I could only manage a tiny bit of beer. But it was cool, crisp, and light.
After our tour we had our lunch right across from the brewery. As we crossed over I was amazed at the fairy tale houses. I loved the colored mustard yellow and sky blue homes with the flower pots in the window sills.
I was bound to see more of these fairy tale homes on this trip.
Enjoying my beer sample.The town of Obertrum, where Trumer Pils is located.
Our next stop was Mondsee. Between the brewery and Mondsee Hana was talking about how Germans and Austrians hated the movie The Sound of Music.
In both countries the movie was a flop,” she said. “Germans hated it because of the Anschluss scene. Austrians hate it because of the way their country was portrayed.”
Then I hear this over the bus’s speakers.
“Let’s start from the very beginning…”
Didn’t she just say that Austrians hate the musical?
The Sound of Music soundtrack kept on playing on our way to Mondsee. It turns out that the town has a connection to the movie.
“We will be visiting Saint Michael’s Church,” announced Hana. “This is where the wedding scene was filmed.”
“How do you solve a problem like Maria?”
We stopped in a parking lot across from a lake in Mondsee. I later found out that the lake also played a role in the movie. Remember the scene where Maria and the children are biking next to a lake while singing Do Re Mi? Lake Mondsee is that lake in the movie.
As we walked through the little town of Mondsee, Hana pointed out the owners o the fairy tale-like homes must maintain them as agreed in their contracts.
“They have to maintain those marzipan-like colors,” explained Hana.
These houses, like the ones in Obertrum, certainly looked like they had taken the icing off a cake and plastered on their walls.
After a five-minute walk through the town where we passed by shops and cafes, we finally arrived at the town’s center where Saint Michael’s Church stood.
I could hear in my head the choir of nuns singing How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? in my head as I entered the church. To me, it looked quite small compared to what was filmed in the movie.
“You can stand where Julie Andrews stood,” said Hana.
As a result, most of my groupmates chose to stand where Andrews stood at the altar as Maria. I chose to stand where Christopher Plummer, a.k.a. Captain Von Trapp, stood.
After visiting the church, we were given an hour to just walk around Mondsee. I chose to go back to the lake to take pictures of the lake and the mountains.
How do you solve a problem like Maria?
Our final stop of the day was the city of Salzburg.
As we got closed to the city center, my sense of anticipation increased.
I’m actually here!
“If you see any building with an Austrian flag, it is a government building,” said Hana. “That building is the Mozart Residence.”
I strained to see Mozart’s residence to make a mental note of its location. I was going to have some free time the next day. I had planned to hit all the Mozart museums as I could.
We arrived at our hotel where we were given forty-five minutes to check-in and freshen up.
We had arrived just as the Salzburg Music Festival was getting underway. Before I left Hawaii, I had purchased a Salzburg day pass for the one full day I was going to be there. This pass allowed me to use public transportation free of charge for one day, and I could visit museums for free. It also gave discounts on concerts and performances.
At our first meeting in Munich Hana mentioned the Salzburg Music Festival.
“If you are interested, you can book a ticket at the hotel in Salzburg.”
Wow! I thought. My lucky day. Perhaps I can take in a concert with my pass.
“We have two concerts you can choose from,” said the woman behind the counter. She whipped out a multi-lingual map that also advertised al the events in Salzburg. “You can go to the Hohensalzburg Fortress. It’s a dinner and a concert that starts at 8:15 p.m.
“Or you can go to the Mirabell Palace concert. That starts at 8 p.m.”
Hmm. I can eat and watch a performance on a fortress overlooking Salzburg.
“How much is the 8:15 concert?” I asked.
“It’s eighty Euros,” said the woman. “But since you have a pass, you get ten Euros off.”
“Great,” I said. “I’ll go to the Fortress concert.
After everyone had gotten their keys and checked in, Hana gathered the group in the lobby.
“Perhaps we should meet back in the lobby around 5:45 p.m. Everyone check your phones. What time is it now?”
It was nearing 5 p.m.
“We’ll meet back here in forty-five minutes,” said Hana. “And don’t forget to bring your listening devices.”
I went to my room, dropped off my luggage, re-packed my day bags, and checked my e-mails and messages from home before heading back to the lobby with my listening device in my day bag.
“Is everybody here?” asked Hana. “Let’s do a buddy check.”
Rick has his version of the buddy system. At the start of our tour in Munich, Hana paired us up with someone in our group who is not a family member.
I was paired with a young man named Casey. He came with his parents who invited him on this trip.
“My buddy is here,” I said.
After everyone did their checks we set off to see the Old Town of Salzburg. After crossing the Salzach River, we were just steps away from the Old Town. It’s as if we had stepped back in time to 18th century Salzburg with its cobblestone streets. Cars were restricted so it’s only pedestrian and bike traffic from here on.
As we rounded the corner of a building, Hana pointed to a sign.
“You can use this as a landmark if you get lost.”
We all looked up to see what she was pointing at. It was a sign that we could all read and recognize.
Footlocker.
The cobblestones may have been from Mozart’s time. But the Footlocker store was not.
“Also, if you look down, you may also find bricks with names engraved on them,” said Hana.
We all looked down to where she was pointing.
“These are called memory stones,” Hana explained. “They honor the victims of the Holocaust. So these bricks have the names of victims who died in the Holocaust.”
We continued on to the center of the town where Mozart’s birthplace was located. Although the museum was closed, there were crowds of tourists standing around at the entrance. Some were taking pictures while others were just milling around. Among them I heard lots of them speaking American English. I also heard Hindi, Spanish, Italian, and several Arabic languages. I also saw several women wearing hijabs.
We soldiered on with our tour. Hana took us through a tunnel of shops that lead to our outdoor café. Along the way, she explained about how signs are regulated in Salzburg.
“They have to be a certain size,” she said. “And they have to meet certain Salzburg characteristics, meaning they have to blend in.” She points to another sign that we all recognized.
It was a McDonald’s signature golden arches, but without the yellow or gold. The arches were just made of solid iron. No color but black.
We continued to our café where we all sat down over a meal of wiener schnitzel and drinks.
“Let’s call it a day here,” said Hana. You have the rest of the evening off to either return to the hotel. Or you can look around town.”
I was beat. After desserts of chocolate and vanilla ice cream, several of us returned to our hotel and just call it a day. We had just ended our first day in Salzburg.
We still had another day of exploring this beautiful city.
After passing through the gates the first notable place of interest was the roll call ground. The field was awash with white gravel. It was about the size of a football field. When the camp opened in 1933, it was designed to hold 3,000 people.
The S.S. kept a strict regimen. Wake-up was at 4 a.m., followed by an eleven-hour workday. Roll call times were at 5:15 a.m. and at 7 p.m. Lights out at 9 p.m. Any rule breakers were severely punished. If you did not show up for roll call and you were found in bed, they beat you. If you died overnight, they will drag your body out to the field to fill the count. Helping fellow inmates was forbidden. That is how many prisoners died.
“What kind of labor did they do?” asked a guest.
“Hard labor,” said John. “Most prisoners worked back-breaking jobs like in the quarries or in factories. These were jobs that helped fuel Germany’s war machine. Jobs were assigned according to your crime. If you were Catholic and you were incarcerated here, then you might get a job that was less labor intensive. But if you were Jewish, then you were assigned the most back-breaking work.”
“How was the food?”
“Food was rationed,” said John. “Unfortunately, it was stale, and the soup served did not have anything substantial and had very little nutritional value.”
Our next stop was behind the bunkers where there was fresh, green grass and a wooden fence. Behind the fence was modern Dachau with brightly colored pink and yellow homes.
“What do you think about having a death camp as your neighbor?” John asked us.
For me it’s a big no. If I had nightmares as a child watching these atrocities on T.V., then there was no way I would be able to block them out if the camp was my neighbor. No thanks.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said a woman in our group. “It reminds us not to forget.”
Then we headed for what was the former camp prison, a.k.a “the bunkers.” These buildings held an S.S. guard room, a registration room, a physical examination room, and prison cells. Some of the cells had a special function like the standing cells, and a cell with a portable altar.
At the entrance (see photo) and to our left was the registration room where prisoners were registered and given badges according to their “crimes.” More on those badges later.
Across from the registration office was the medical examination room. Across from the guards’ room was the interrogation room.
The rest of the building were cell blocks. Most of them were closed. Some, however, were opened for visitors to get a sense of the place, while others had the door closed with only a peep hole to peer through.
But the rooms that gave me the creeps were the ones that were opened but darkened to project a mugshot and a profile of the detainee who lived there. There were also audio recordings in both English and in German coming from speakers inside that cell.
One such cell that made me uneasy was the cell occupied by a man named George Elser, the man who tried to assassinate Hitler in August of 1939. The prison walls were lined with black-and-white photos of who Elser was and what had happened to him at Dachau.
There is something about black-and-white images that just creep me out. I took a few pictures of the open cells before leaving “the bunkers.”
Bunker floor plan.Peering into a cell.
Our next stop was the granite International Memorial put together by survivors from not just Dachau, but from other concentration camps like Auschwitz. The architect behind the International Memorial was a man named Nandor Glid, a survivor from the former Yugoslavia. His proposal won an art competition sponsored by the International Camp Committee.
On the very top of the memorial wall is a sculpture of twisted metal with skulls representing what the Allies found after liberating Dachau.
What they found was mayhem and murder. Piles of corpses that had yet to be properly buried. Walking skeletons who, hours later, collapsed from exhaustion, starvation, and disease. Survivors had no idea what was going on because they were so isolated from the outside world.
“What you are standing on right now,” said John, “is a pile of bones.”
Then he mentions a name that I’ve never heard of before.
George Stevens.
George Cooper Stevens was an American Academy Award winning cinematographer and film director. He directed such films as Giant and The Diary of Anne Frank. He had worked with actors such as Elizabeth Taylor and Fred Astaire.
He also served as the president of the Screen Directors Guild from 1941 to 1943. Stevens was compelled to join the U.S. Army Signal Corps after seeing Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will. Under Dwight D. Eisenhower Stevens lead a film unit from 1943-1946 documenting the Normandy landings, the liberation of Paris, the meeting of American and Soviet troops at the Elbe River, and the discovery of the Dachau Concentration Camp.
Was he the man who took that picture of the crematoriums?
When the Allies liberated Dachau in April of 1945, they found a camp in disarray. When S.S. soldiers realized that Germany was losing the war, they attempted to destroy the evidence and released their remaining prisoners.
Stevens and his team were charged with documenting everything they saw.
We continued our walk down the memorial path. Behind me was a sculptor’s work of colors and shapes.
“What does this mean?” I asked.
“This is where things turn for the worst,” said John. “September. 1939. Who remembers what happened?”
“Kristallnacht,” said a woman.
“Germany invaded Poland,” replied a man.
“Yes. Kristallnacht or the Night of the Broken Glass. That is where Hitler makes a final decision on the Jews.”
Up until 1939 the camp was primarily a detention center for political prisoners. After Germany invaded Poland, S.S. soldiers were detaining Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, Roma, and Hitler’s favorite target, Jews. The camp went from 3,000 prisoners to just over 6,000 people.
Those colored shapes were actually the badges each prisoner received. The most common shape was the triangle followed by a circle. All inmates were given an upside-down triangle and a number that identified them as prisoners. Jews got an upside-down triangle and a right-side-up triangle super-imposed on each other, thus creating the Star of David.
The colors also had meaning.
Red = political prisoner
Green = criminals
Blue = foreign laborer
Purple = Jehovah Witness
Pink = homosexual/sex offender
Black = Asocial
Brown = Roma (Gypsy)
And then there were stars representing the Star of David.
I also noticed that some of the triangles and circles had no colors.
“If they don’t have any colors then then have been arrested but not yet charged. But if they have multiple shapes with colors, then they have been charged with multiple crimes.
“And the circle means that that person tried to escape the camp.”
I had no idea the Nazis had created such a classification system. I was only familiar with the Star of David badge.
If I had lived in 1930s Germany, I would not have made it I thought to myself.
The International Memorial at Dachau.Badge sculpture to honor survivors.
The original camp had thirty-four barracks housing some 3,000 detainees. By April of 1945, the camp was bursting at the seams with some 30,000 prisoners crammed into those thirty-four barracks. At its height of operation each prisoner had only one square yard of personal space.Each building measured ten yards by one hundred yards. Barracks had several rooms with three-tiered bunk beds, a public toilet, and a washroom. No showers as we know them today.
John pointed out the bunker that was left.
“Unfortunately, this is the only bunker left,” he said. “And it’s a replica. All the other bunkers were torn down, so what you see are the grooves of the foundations.”
We entered the lone, operating bunker. We were not alone as there were several other German tour groups and school children on a field trip even on a Saturday.
Several of the rooms were converted into a museum with walls lined with more eerie black-and-white photos documenting what Stevens and his crew saw. There were also several T.V. screens showing the original footage. It was broadcast in German and subtitled in English, so we watched it with the children.
“Nazis had converted Dachau from a detention center to an extermination camp. Prisoners were used as human guinea pigs for medical experiments…”
I could not watch anymore of the video. Instead, I chose to watch the youngsters’ reactions. Most actually sat down, trying to watch. There were a few kids walking around. All of them were at least middle schoolers who had to be at least thirteen years of age. Children thirteen and up can visit Dachau. In Germany it’s mandatory for middle schoolers to visit the camp.
At least they are being reminded of their past I thought. In Japan this would never happen.
Japanese history textbooks are revised regularly. Unfortunately, the Japanese government refuses to acknowledge their role in the war and they continue to refuse to apologize to their neighbors like Korea, China, and the Philippines. When their textbooks are revised, people in those countries stand outside the Japanese Embassy or consulate and launch a protest holding signs and shouting through loudspeakers and megaphones.
But I digress.
After the video was over, John led us to the next room.
This was another replica. There were twelve three-tiered bunk beds. They were all replicas since the originals had deteriorated and it was obvious by the color of the wood that these beds were recently constructed. Nonetheless, they still gave that feeling of claustrophobia among inmates. I found it ironic because some of us, myself included, donned our masks.
“Imagine that you are the poor bloke on the bottom bunk,” said John. “If the man on the top bunk soils his pants or vomits, then whatever disease he has you will get it.” He draws an invisible line on one of the bed posts from the top to the bottom to illustrate his point. “This camp was rife with contagious diseases such as typhoid and cholera. So, if you think what we are currently going through with COVID is bad, well, this should be a lesson.”
The prisoners’ beds.
John gave us another ten minutes to browse and take pictures of the bunker. Then it was on to the next stop, the three religious memorials. John continued his lecture as we walked past the old barracks which no longer existed.
“Do you see the grooves?” he asked.
I could barely see them as I was deep in thought and full of emotions.
How could the good people of Germany allow this to happen? I thought. How could we have allowed someone like Trump to be president of the United States? I was so angry that I was weeping as I walked with my group.
But I was also happy. Happy that there were courageous people like George Stevens who eventually used his footage to build the Allies’ case against the Nazis for the Nuremburg trials.
I am going to need therapy after this trip I thought. If I am going to need therapy after seeing this place, then I wonder what kind of therapy Stevens needed after seeing what he saw with his own eyes.
But I was also glad I came. I had made the right choice.
If we don’t learn from our mistakes, then we are bound to repeat them.
Meanwhile, some of my fellow Americans kept asking John more questions.
“Were there any women at the camp?” asked a man.
“There were female S.S. guards,” said John. He rattled off a few of their names. “But women were not allowed into the camp as prisoners until the end of the war. The reason why female prisoners were not allowed was because women were considered the lowest of the low and unfit for work.”
Great. Another strike against me.
“It wasn’t until Germany started losing the war. They had a serious labor shortage of men in the factories. They were getting killed on the front lines. So, women were brought in to work in the factories to help prop up Germany’s war machine.”
We continued on to the three religious memorials at the other end of the park. To our left was the Catholic Mortal Agony of Christ Chapel, a cylinder stone structure to honor Polish prisoners, the largest group in Dachau.
Over to our right was the Protestant Church of Reconciliation.
But the Jewish Memorial, the one in front of us, was the most popular. The funnel-like memorial depicts what victims and survivors saw as they entered the gas chambers at camps like Auschwitz. Inside were the names of victims in German and Hebrew along with the dates they were born and when they supposedly died.
Our last stop was the Peace Garden. This is ironic because this is where the S.S. had their crematoriums and a gas chamber disguised as a communal shower.
We first stopped at a scaled down model of the crematoriums. The two models were ovens that were supposed to be used for everyday cooking.
“These ovens you see here were used for roasting pigs,” said John.
According to him, the S.S. had asked the manufacturers to build bigger ovens.
“Did they know what this was for?” asked a woman.
“Yes. They did.”
I was just shocked. I asked the woman to repeat her question.
But what was even more shocking, and puzzling was the company’s response when questioned at the Nuremburg trials. They claimed that their ovens saved lives.
Some of us were scratching our heads. Others of us just had a quizzical look.
John went on about the trials.
“The judges were former Nazi judges. They gave very light sentences to Nazi war criminals. So, you have people like Klaus Barbie living long lives before they are captured. These judges were very biased.”
I took a moment to just stare down these ovens. They may have been models used to roast pigs. But to me these ovens haunted my entire childhood.
Thank God it is such a beautiful day.
I could see these ovens in color. No ghostly black-and-white pictures. No fear. I took out my cellphone camera and took a picture of my tormentor.
The ovens.
Next to the model ovens was a brick building.
“This was where the experiments on victims were conducted on a small scale,” said John. “Remember that Dachau was seen as a model camp, so that is why you won’t see a large-scale gas chamber like the ones in Auschwitz or in Sorbibor. This was just a testing ground.”
Once again, John gave us ten minutes to look around inside the building. The first room contained the two life-sized crematoriums that were, according to survivors, used to burn victims. The blueprints on these ovens were used to build the large-scale crematoriums in Auschwitz and other extermination camps in Europe.
And their palettes, which were pulled out for people to see, looked like they could fit one adult male in the oven.
I did not take any photos of the human-sized ovens. I had enough of them. I didn’t feel like I needed to take any more pictures of crematoriums.
The next room was the disrobing room. It was a concrete room with benches for victims to leave their belongings. Victims were ordered to strip down and take everything off including glasses and jewelry. Their personal belongings were taken away by S.S. guards.
They were never returned to their owners.
Adjacent to the disrobing room was a hallway leading to the back side of the building. The sign above the doorway said this was the disinfecting room. S.S. guards sprayed down internees’ belongings.
After walking through the disrobing room the next room I walked into was the gas chamber.
The chamber was disguised as a shower. The floors were lined with bathroom tiles and drainpipes. And back in 1945, the overheads were fitted with shower sprinklers.
But instead of sprinkling water on detainees they sprinkled them with something lethal.
Gas.
The model gas chamber.
The sprinklers have since been removed leaving only the holes for visitors like me to gape at and contemplate.
I was just speechless.
We were allowed another ten minutes to look at the crematoriums, the de-robing room, the disinfecting room, and the gas chamber. After that, John had asked us to meet him outside in the gorgeous sunshine.
This was the end of the tour.
“I want to thank you for coming out here today,” said John in his closing remarks. “You could have gone to Neuschwanstein Castle or Nymphburg Palace. There is nothing wrong with that. You could have gone to a beer hall. Nothing wrong with that either.
“But you chose to visit Dachau because this is important. So, thank you for coming here today.”
As I write this the world is just learning about the FBI’s raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Someone had posted on Facebook a meme of the former president and called the FBI “Joe Biden’s S.S.”
Here’s what the real S.S. did. They detained their own citizens for holding opinions different from their own. They arrested people who chose to have a set of beliefs different from their own. They eventually moved on to starving, torturing, and murdering people simply because they were of a different race.
That is genocide. That is what the real S.S. guards under Hitler’s Nazi party, did.
If we don’t learn from our mistakes, then we are bound to repeat them.
I had grave reservations about visiting this place. And yes. The pun is intended.
I did not have television growing up. If my family wanted to watch T.V. we had to drive twenty miles to my grandma’s house.
I saw two programs that terrorized me as a child. Both were about the Holocaust which I knew nothing about. I was just a five-year-old kid who could barely read much less know what the word holocaust meant.
The first program was a made-for-television movie titled The Holocaust. It was from a book with the same title. I buried my face in a pillow because the scenes were horrific. One scene I remember vividly was a massive grave. German soldiers were tossing skeletons into a giant pit the size of a football field.
In another scene soldiers had ordered skeleton-like men to dig a pit. Then the soldiers would bury the diggers.
Alive.
I had no idea that the bodies the soldiers were tossing were dummies. I had no idea that these were actors acting out a true event. To my five-year-old mind this was real.
How could people be so cruel?
Then there was a commercial break. I jumped up from my seat, ran to the T.V., and turned it off.
“Let’s go home,” I begged.
I didn’t get any sleep that night. I feared that if I fell asleep an imaginary soldier hiding beneath my bed would kill me.
The other program that scared me was a 60 Minutes story. I was probably six or seven years old. But I was still naïve about Germany’s role in World War II.
60 Minutes had a story about those crematoriums. They showed black and white photos of two workers in white clothing. They had just finished cleaning the crematoriums and they had their baking palettes out.
These photos were eerie. Black and white pictures of World War II events make the human subjects look like ghosts.
Then the reporter on this story explained the photos. I don’t quite remember his exact words. But his explanation haunted me.
“These ovens were used to burn people. Alive.”
I could not watch another 60 Minutes story for years. Once again I could not sleep. Once again I had nightmares of a soldier killing me in my sleep. It wasn’t until my sophomore year in college that I could watch another 60 Minutes show and not be fearful.
These childhood fears crossed my mind as I was thumbing through my Rick Steve’s guide book. The Dachau tour was not on my Rick Steve’s Europe itinerary. But I was planning to arrive in Munich at least four days ahead of my tour. I had some time to explore.
The other two options were to visit either the Neuschwanstein Castle or Nymphenburg Palace, two other day-trips Rick recommended. I decided against both places because I figured I’m going to see lots of castles and palaces on his tour.
I finally decided to visit Dachau, not only to confront my fears, but to go with a new mindset:
If we don’t learn from our mistakes, then we are bound to repeat them.
Since this was not on Rick’s itinerary I booked the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial with Viator, a Trip Advisor company. On the day of the tour I was scheduled to meet my guide and my group at Wombat Youth Hostel which was several blocks away from my hotel in Isartor.
Our guide was a young man from Ireland named John. After all of his American guests arrived and checked in with him, John took us to the Munich Hauptbahnhof or Munich’s Central Train Station. Our train to Dachau was due to leave ten minutes after we arrived at the station so we had to hurry to buy provisions for our journey since lunch was not provided.
The train was about a forty-minute ride from Munich. After disembarking at Dachau Station we had to catch a bus to the memorial.
Rick described Dachau as idyllic and picturesque. As we rode through this tiny town, we passed by a green park with benches and several shops. I even saw a Chinese restaurant.
We Americans also found it funny that there is a square in Dachau named John F. Kennedy platz.
If it weren’t for the camp Dachau would be a different place to visit.
It was a beautiful sunny day.
After we had arrived, passed through the memorial entrance, and taken bathroom breaks at the visitors’ center, John had all twenty-five of us sit down for a break while he gave us a very thorough introduction as to how the camp was established. He started with Hitler’s service in the German army, then covered Germany’s loss in the first world war before talking about Hitler’s failed coup attempt and his arrest. John also covered Hitler’s rise to power and how he consolidated his rule after the death of Germany’s aging president Paul von Hindenburg.
John went into great detail about how the Jews took over the business and banking sectors through their industriousness while ordinary Germans needed a wheelbarrow of cash just to buy a loaf of bread.
“People were looking for scapegoats,” said John.
After giving his fifteen-minute introduction John took questions from his guests.
“How was Hitler accepted in Germany?”
“What was the basis for this camp?”
“When did Hitler write his book Mein Kampf?”
John certainly knew his history. He answered every question in great detail.
“Hitler would go to the beer halls in Munich where he would meet up with members of the German Workers Party, the predecessor of the Nazi Party. He was sent in to spy on organizations meeting in beer halls…
“This camp was originally a detention center for anyone who disagreed with Nazi ideology. So you’d find Catholic clergy, political leaders, and dissidents who had disagreed with racist rhetoric here at the camp. You’d also find scholars and intellectuals…
“Remember when I mentioned that Hitler was in jail for his failed coup? That is when he wrote Mein Kampf. He originally wanted to call it Viereinhalb Jahre (des Kampfes) gegen Lüge, Dummheit und Feigheit. Four and a Half Years [of Struggle] Against Lies, Stupidity and Cowardice. But his publisher convinced him to shorten it.”
I loved watching the interaction between John and his guests. John was someone who felt that we should learn from history.
My fellow travelers also had the same mindset. It felt great to be with a group who cared so much about learning from our past mistakes in the hopes of not repeating them. We continued to pepper John with questions and he tried his best to answer them.
After he gave his introduction to the camp, we finally arrived outside the steel gates. Behind us, some 500 meters from the gates was a sandy-colored two-storied building surrounded by a yard and enclosed in a wall.
“That is where SS soldiers lived and trained,” said John. “Dachau was a training camp for officers who were later sent to other camps like Auschwitz and Sorbibor.”
He mentioned the names of the most notorious SS officers who were sent to Auschwitz but were trained in Dachau, which was seen as a model camp.
“Unfortunately, we are not allowed to visit the compound because it is currently being used to train new police recruits. But that is where SS soldiers lived and trained.”
Then John turned our attention on that steel gate leading into the camp itself.
Arbeit macht frei.
“Who knows what this means?” John asked the group.
I cheated. I had read and memorized the English translation from Rick’s book.
“Work sets you free,” I said.
“Why do you think the Nazis would have such a slogan?” John asked. He was about to answer his own question.
“You have to remember that Germany had to pay the allies war reparations from the First World War. They had lost all of their overseas colonies and inflation was rampant. So they were looking for scapegoats to fit their racist ideology. Those who disagreed with them were deemed lazy. If you were dissident or clergy you were arrested and brought here.
“But the Nazis had an image problem. They needed to project to the world a positive image of Germany. So they came up with this slogan.”
Arbeit macht frei.
“The idea is you can redeem yourself and improve your lot in life by hard work. But it really was an extermination program.”
After John had finished his explanation of the sign he opened the gate for us to enter.
We had entered a hell on earth.
At the gate. This one is actually a replica. In 2014 the original gate was stolen. It was found in Norway and returned to Dachau in 2017. The original is now in the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Museum.
I felt guilty booking my trip to Europe this year. After two years of telling people to postpone their vacations to prevent the spread of the coronavirus I felt like I was abandoning my platform. Who travels in the middle of a pandemic?
Apparently many people travel in the middle of a pandemic.
I had originally booked a Best of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria tour with Rick Steves Europe (http://ricksteves.com) in October of 2019. I had paid my deposit of $400 and had signed up for a June 2020 departure date.
In February of 2020 I had just booked my airline tickets but still had not paid off the balance for the tour.
It was probably a good thing. About a month later Italy was in lockdown and Austria had recorded its first case of COVID. I ended up e-mailing RSE and asking them to remove my name from the tour list and to hold on to my deposit for a future tour. I still wanted to go on my dream trip to Europe. It was just a matter of when.
I also had to cancel my airline reservations and asked for a flurry of refunds on my credit card. At one point, I was on the phone with a CheapOair agent asking her if she had had an exorbitant number of requests of cancellations requests and refunds.
“Unfortunately yes,” she replied.
So why did I decide to go this year? Well, when Hawaii, my home state, had its statewide indoor/outdoor mask mandate and its safe travel program in place I had several friends travel off island and then return. As far as I know they followed the proper testing protocols.
I stayed put. Yet I would see their Facebook posts and think: Why can’t I do that?I’m doing all the right things — wearing a mask, staying away from crowds, and keeping my hands sanitized.
And I am fully vaccinated.
So this year, 2022, I decided to reward myself and rebook my already postponed RSE tour to Europe.
Why Rick Steves?
My sister and her husband had gone on an Italy tour back in 2018. They enjoyed their trip so much that they recommended him to me. So I went with their recommendation.
There were several additional factors that went into my decision. One was Rick’s commitment to keeping his guests and guides safe from COVID.
Guides and guests must be vaccinated.
Tour participants must agree to Rick’s COVID-19 Waiver of Liability.
But what really sealed the deal for me was on the Q and A section of his website. When someone asked if unvaccinated travelers could sign up for his tours Rick’s answer was an unequivocable no.
To an immunocompromised traveler like me, it meant that all of my fellow travelers would be vaccinated. I would not have to worry about traveling with my group because Rick had created a relatively safe atmosphere for his clients. I booked an eight day Best of Germany and Austria tour using my $400 deposit, along with my airfare and other tour activities not on Rick’s list. I decided to not go to Switzerland because visiting Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg was on my bucket list and I wasn’t sure if I could physically handle a longer trip.
It was the flight journey that had me on edge. After a Miami judge ruled that mandating masks on planes was illegal, I had to look into taking extra precautions. I had already made the switch from wearing cloth masks to KN95s, and I had also ordered protective eye wear from Amazon as I was definitely going to be in tight quarters with other, possibly unmasked passengers.
But what really had me biting my nails was eating and drinking on flights. How was I going to manage that?
I decided that I was going to gorge myself at airport restaurants and refrain from eating and drinking on planes
Easier said than done.
I was scheduled to leave Kona on June 27th,2022 at 10:45 p.m. on United Airlines. My journey to Munich was supposed to take twenty-eight hours. But it took me two and a half days.
I had stop overs in Los Angeles and San Francisco. On my flight to L.A.X I tried to sleep. United served drinks and snacks. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty, so I refused.
I looked around the cabin. The plane was full and most of the passengers were mask-less. I was definitely in the minority wearing my mask and my eye gear. Even the flight attendants were mask-less.
As soon as I got off the plane in L.A.X I headed for the nearest coffee kiosk to get a cup of coffee.
L.A.X. was packed with travelers. Some were masked, but the majority were not even though there were announcements stating that all travelers over the age of two were required to wear masks on public transport. I continued to wear my eye wear and my mask throughout the airport unless I was actively eating or drinking. Even then I tried to find an isolated space where I could eat and keep my distance from others.
That didn’t last long. I had picked an isolated charging station to eat at. Right in the middle of my breakfast an unmasked man placed his briefcase on the other side of the table facing our gate. He was barely six feet from me. However, I could not easily pick up my things and move. I had to turn away from him and eat as quickly as I could.
My flight to San Francisco mask wise was no different. I was a minority in my protective gear. However, I was able to find a sandwich kiosk where I was able to eat and drink away from others.
From San Francisco it was on to Munich. By order of the German government, all passengers flying into and out of Germany are required to wear their masks unless they are actively eating or drinking.
Like my other two flights this one was full. And although everyone was masked I thought: How am I supposed to know if they are vaccinated? Can I trust these people? I kept my gear on even if it got uncomfortable.
I was able to have breakfast and lunch in relative isolation. But dinner was tricky.
Is it possible to refuse dinner?
I had no whether I could refuse dinner or if I could wait until all other passengers had eaten their meals. In the end I decided to eat as quickly as possible because I was on a ten hour flight to Munich. I just kept stuffing my mouth and eating as fast as I could. It was the same with breakfast. I could not wait to land in Munich where I could finally remove my mask in the privacy of my hotel.
Rick suggested I arrive at least three days in advance to recover from the jetlag. I arrived June 29th. The tour started on July 3rd.
On the day of the tour all participants had to take a COVID test. I took mine in the morning and brought a picture of my negative results along with my CDC vaccination card to our guide prior to our first group meeting.
As we were waiting for our meeting to begin I asked one of my new friends about their previous RSE tour experiences.
“Did you have to wait in long, crowded lines?”
“No,” said my new friend. “Our guide bought our tickets beforehand. We were allowed to bypass the lines. I felt like waving at those people in those long lines.”
During my trip I also found out our guide had reserved restaurant tables ahead of time. Sometimes we had a room just for our group. Other times we had the entire restaurant to ourselves. We also had reservations at outdoor cafes where we could eat outside.
I had a Hawaii friend whose husband caught COVID on a trip to Spain and Portugal with a different tour company. My friends felt trapped while waiting in a long, crowded line of tourists trying to gain entry into a church. Usually they would wear their masks and eye wear. But because it was raining they only had their masks for protection. They suspect they were standing too close to an unmasked person.
Which is why I asked that question.
Towards the end of our meeting, our guide Hana (not her real name) addressed what she called “the elephant in the room”.
COVID-19.
Negative. Yay!
She picked up a copy of Rick’s COVID-19 disclaimer that we all signed prior to our trip.
“All of you have agreed to abide by Rick’s safety protocols,” she reminded us. “Unfortunately, our friends (she was referring to hotel staff and other non RSE guests) have decided that the pandemic is over.
“The pandemic is not over. Therefore I’m going to overrule all local laws and insist we wear our masks indoors and on our bus.”
I was very impressed that RSE guides could reinstate COVID laws and enforce them.
“Do we have the option of opting out of an activity if we do not feel safe?” I asked.
“You do have that option of opting out,” Hana replied.
She also explained that travelers who tested positive and notified her would get a partial refund.
“You will be refunded for the portion of the tour you were not able to participate in,” she said. “If, however, you test positive and you fail to inform me, then you do not qualify for a refund.”
Fair enough, I thought.
“Also, I do reserve the right to ask you to re-test if I suspect you are not healthy enough to travel.”
“Also, I do reserve the right to ask you to re-test if I suspect you are not healthy enough to travel.”
“Has anyone tested positive?” asked one of my new RSE friends.
“Yes,” replied Hana. “One group I had twenty-five travelers. At the end of our tour I only had eleven. Half of them tested positive.”
I wanted to cheer out loud because I favored these additional precautions. But since I was in a group of people I didn’t know I could only say danke shon or “thank you” in German.
However, I was definitely doing fist pumps in my heart.
At the end of our first day I told my Hawaii friends about RSE’s COVID protocols. She was so impressed that she said she might consider going on a RSE tour the next time she and her husband travel to Europe.
Our tour included visiting Munich, Salzburg, Lake Hallstatt, Melk, and Vienna. It was an eight-day tour and there were twenty-one travelers two guides, and one bus driver driving our fifty seater bus. We could all socially distance in comfort. But, unlike past tours, we were not allowed to eat or share food. We could only remove our masks to drink water.
About halfway through our trip as we were about to leave Salzburg, one of our members tested positive and had to discontinue her trip. At the end of our day in the town of Hallstatt, I took a second test as a precaution.
Negative.
Our tour ended on July 10th in Vienna. But my flight back home didn’t leave until July 12th so I had two whole days to explore on my own. The night before I left I took another test as a precaution and also to lighten my load.
Negative.
All that was left on my journey was a thirty-seven hour trip back to Hawaii.
Ugh.
Once again I tried to eat at airport restaurants rather than on planes.
Tried is the operative word.
I had my breakfast at Vienna International Airport. I bought a sandwich and sparkling water and chose an isolated seat near my gate.
Once again, the airport was a mixed bag of mask wearers and non-mask wearers. And unlike in Germany there was no mask requirement for any travelers flying to or leaving Austria.
The first leg of my return trip was to Washington Dulles. Just before I left my hotel in Vienna, I found out from a tennis website that all travelers to the U.S. must be vaccinated. It was a step in the right direction. But it was little consolation for me. As far as I’m concerned, I’m the only one that is vaccinated. Once again, I donned my mask and glasses. I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of my lack of fashion sense at this point.
I was able to eat a sandwich in relative safety. Lunch, however, was on Austrian Airlines where I ended up eating as quickly as possible.
I had an eight-hour layover in Dulles. Part of the layover involved going through long lines at U.S. Customs and TSA checkpoints. People were crowded in the stanchion created maze. Very few people were wearing masks. I kept my safety equipment on even though my goggles were fogging up.
After going through Customs and TSA, I finally made it to my gate where I got a chicken salad, bottled water, and a muffin. My gate was full of unmasked travelers. But I was able to find seating at another gate that didn’t have as many people.
My eight-hour layover became a ten hour layover due to a thunder storm and a crew shortage. This extra time actually worked to my advantage in that food service would be limited. They would not be serving food on my flight to L.A.
I left Washington D.C. at around 12:30 p.m. July 13th and arrived in L.A. at around 2:30 a.m. Once again, the flight was full and very few people were wearing masks.
I was pleasantly surprised on my return trip to L.A.X. I was expecting to be the only one at my gate since I’d be arriving at an odd time. But to my surprise there were several airport employees and passengers waiting for the first flight out of L.A.
So I felt safe in sleeping at the airport. And since there were so few people, I felt comfortable enough to at least remove my goggles to sleep.
But at 4 a.m. the airport opened and I could hear people going through the TSA lines downstairs. I could also smell a kiosk brewing coffee. At around 4:30 a.m. there was a line at one café. I was hungry, soI donned my glasses and my mask and stood in line. I ordered a fruit parfait, a muffin, and coffee.
I was lucky enough to find a table in the café. I was even luckier that no one else chose to sit next to me.
Thank God!
Still, I wasn’t going to linger anymore than I needed to. I ate my food and drank my coffee before heading back to my gate.
My final flight to Hawaii was scheduled to leave at 9:15 a.m. That flight was also full and mainly mask-less. Even the flight attendants were unmasked.
I know flight attendants were bullied while the in-air mask mandate was still enforced I thought to myself. Bless their hearts for serving us. But how can they work like this knowing that we are still in the middle of a pandemic?
I continued to wear my mask and goggles. By this time, I had worn them for nearly thirty hours straight. I had not taken them off except to eat, drink, or sleep. The loops were irritating the back of my ears. The only way I could relieve my poor ears without removing my mask was to pull back on the loops.
Yet I soldiered on through the final five hours of my journey back home. After passing through baggage claim at Kona International Airport I was finally able to remove my safety gear for a few minutes before my ride arrived.
I wore my mask and eye wear for twenty-eight hours to Munich and another thirty-seven hours from Vienna to Kona. That is a total of nearly sixty-five hours.
And I survived.
The next morning, I got up around 3 a.m. I was definitely jetlagged and hungry. But at least I was home.
Since I had nothing else to do I decided to take another COVID test.
Negative.
So it is possible for someone like me to travel halfway around the world and back and not catch COVID. But that is because I took extra precautions to minimize exposure.
I also went with a reputable tour company that understands that the pandemic is not over and therefore took extra precautions to ensure the health and safety of their guests. Hats off to my guide Hana and her boss Rick Steves.
I am not advocating that everyone jump on a plane and go somewhere. Everyone has different levels of safety and comfort. But if you do decide to travel, please take the extra precautions to minimize your exposure to the virus and to ensure the health and safety of your fellow travelers.
A box arrives at a woman’s office with a return address that she does not recognize. The return address reads as follows: Alexandria, VA. 22206
“Daddy is my provider.”
A conversation between two friends.
A: Do you think I should wear this shirt at the Summer Conference?
B: You can. But I’d wear it inside out if I were you.
4. A leader at that international conference is making an announcement.
Leader: Our seminar on swimming will start at 2 pm in conference room 3.
5. At that same conference there is a note on a participant’s hotel door that says, “I’m in conference room number 3”.
6. A pastor is giving his sermon to his congregation at a Saturday night service.
7. “Vinegar is flying off the shelves!”
I’m going to lump 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 all together because in addition to falling under the censorship category they also fall under the idea of religion.
2. Daddy Is My Provider
Citizens of The People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief.
Article 88 of Constitution of the People’s Republic of China
I have a Chinese friend who currently lives in the U.S. and thus enjoys the right to freely express herself under the U.S. Constitution.
Unfortunately, she is not comfortable with expressing herself online as I see posts like this on my Facebook feed:
“Daddy is my provider.”
My friend is a Christian with family back in China. Using such religious terms like “God” or “Father” can get her and her family into trouble.
I’ve also had to resort to euphemisms to avoid conflict with the Chinese authorities. I could never say things such as “God bless you” or “hallelujah” in letters or e-mails even if they were written in English.
3. A Conversation Between Two Friends
This next conversation involves a very graphic t-shirt I had bought as a college student at UH-Hilo.
Prior to attending another international Christian conference in Beijing in the summer of 1998, I showed this shirt to a fellow American. It was a brown, short sleeved t-shirt. On the front it had a picture of Jesus on the cross. On the back was the verse John 3:16 (KJV).
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
I wanted to see how much I could get away with this shirt. I was able to bring it with me to China as a part of my luggage so I had no problem bringing it in.
But I had never shown it to anybody until now.
“Do you think I should wear this shirt at the summer conference?” I asked my friend.
She was very careful with her response.
“You can,” she said. “But I’d wear it inside out.”
I brought that shirt to Beijing. I caught it in my suitcase until the last day of the conference. On that day all the leaders of all the international fellowships across China wanted to take a group picture before everyone left Beijing.
That’s when I decided to take my shirt out of my suitcase and wear it.
Inside out of course.
That was the only time I wore that shirt. I have no idea what has happened to that shirt since then.
4. A Leader Making an Announcement
In the summer of 2004 I attended on international Christian conference on the campus of Beijing’s Jiaotong University where they have a campus hotel that can hold conferences.
Only foreigners can attend such meetings. No Chinese are allowed.
At one of our meetings Kennedy, a student from Africa and one of the conference organizers, made the following announcement:
“Our seminar on swimming will start at 2 p.m. in conference room number three.”
I have been in China long enough to know that none of us were going swimming. This was a class for those interested in getting baptized.
5. A Note on a Hotel Door
At that same conference I was paired up with an African American woman named Michelle as a roommate. She was an English teacher like me. But unlike me she had only been in China a few months and was still learning what can and cannot be done in that country.
I had left our hotel room to get snacks outside the university gate. When I returned the door was locked and there was a post-it on the door.
I’m in conference room number three.
I was nervous about that note being posted in plain sight where fuwuyuans (hotel employees) can see it. But my hands were full of snacks and bottled water and I had to dig into my purse for my hotel room key.
Michelle returned just as I was putting things away and getting ready to go to the next meeting.
Behind her was another one of our conference leaders, a man named Emmanuel, another student from Africa. Emmanuel saw the note on the door. I didn’t have a chance to remove it as my hands were full.
“Who posted this?” he asked.
“I did,” said Michelle.
“I just got back from shopping,” I replied. “That note was for me.”
Emmanuel removed the note from the door and stuck it in his pocket.
“Next time please don’t do this,” he warned us. “You don’t want to give the Chinese any reason to report us.”
6. A Pastor Preaching to His Congregation
I had a friend from Norway named Ana whom I met in Hainan Island, China’s southern most province with weather much like my home in Hawaii. She told us about a visit she made to a house church in Sanya, a city on the south end of the island.
Places of worship in China must be registered with the Chinese authorities to be recognized as an official church. Those churches, mosques, or temples that are visibly open in public, are definitely government run. Pastors, imams, and priests agree to have their messages viewed by government censors.
International churches are also subject to China’s regulations regarding who and who cannot attend. Pastors are free to preach what they feel God is leading them to say provided Chinese nationals are not present.
Those churches who refuse to register are called “house churches”. They meet in a private home and in secret. Their pastors are also under intense scrutiny since they are not registered.
Ana visited a small house church where they did not have a pastor in the room.
“How did you hear the message?” I asked.
“The pastor is in the United States,” she replied. “He preached his entire message over the phone.”
I found this remarkable that a pastor would go so far to evade the authorities in this manner. By living in the U.S. this pastor was able to preach what God had put on his heart and avoid censorship.
I deliberately withheld crucial details to show how censorship works especially under an authoritarian regime. This results in confusion which is what I got when I asked my friends what they thought about this test. One even went so far as to describe my test as “crap”.
So here is the truth. All of these events and conversations have ties to China, a country with an authoritarian regime that strictly enforces censorship.
My school had loaned me a radio that had short wave capabilities. I’d tune into Voice of America(VOA) for the news of the day in native speaker’s English.
VOA also had programs for English learners. They called these programs “special English broadcasts”. This was usually a half hour segment of programs read in English but at a much slower speed for non-English speakers. These programs featured news reports and stories of life in America.
VOA also gave away items upon request. I wrote to them explaining that I was an American English teacher in China and I would love to have any of their special English stories to give away as prizes.
I forgot I had sent that letter. I also didn’t realize that VOA was a U.S. government organization that could be seen by other governments as problematic.
One day I got a call from our school’s foreign affairs office asking me to come in. My mail would normally be delivered to our school’s foreign affairs office so I was thinking I got something from my family. I hopped on my bike and biked to the office thinking I got a letter from home. Instead, I was given this box about the size of a cooking pot. It was wrapped in brown paper. It was properly addressed to me in English. But the return address I did not recognize at all. It was written in English, at the top, left hand corner of the box. Nothing unusual about that. But it read the following:
Alexandria, VA. 2226.
My excitement turned into suspicion.
In those days it was not uncommon to receive questionable mail. I have received envelopes with missing postage stamps as well as envelopes that had holes in places where stamps should be. It was pretty obvious that someone had taken a scissors and cut the stamp out, leaving a gaping hole. I learned that some Chinese are avid stamp collectors and international stamps were a prized commodity.
I also had an American colleague Casey, who repeatedly shared her postal experiences in China.
“My parents sent me a parcel from California,” she said. “When we got it we found that someone had taken a bite of our Snicker’s bar and then put it back in the box and resealed it.”
Gross I thought.
“We also got another parcel with Head and Shoulders shampoo all over,” Casey continued. “I suggested to my parents to make a list of items and send it with the box so I know what should be included.”
I had Walter’s and Casey’s experiences in my mind as I examined this box. I did think of returning the parcel to the sender. But for some reason I did not. Instead, I examined the box. There were no obvious signs that it had been tampered with. I ripped off the brown paper. Underneath was a label that also served as a tape for sealing the package.
VOA.
What a relief!
My mail had to be smuggled into the country without getting the attention of the Chinese authorities. The only way VOA could hide their connection to the US Government was to disguise their parcel by wrapping it in brown paper and putting a fake return address in the top, left hand corner.
So that is what this is I thought. I had forgotten I had made this request. Inside were the materials I had requested;booklets of VOA stories in special English. They also sent VOA pencils and several copies of paperback versions of Merriam Webster’s dictionaries. When I opened the parcel, I was pleased they sent their Special English stories. But I was even more surprised that they sent those dictionaries. Some of my students had a strange hobby. They like to memorize entire dictionaries believing that would improve their English vocabulary. I knew these dictionaries would be well used and appreciated. I also felt a sense of appreciation because I got a package from someone other than my family. Although the contents of this parcel was not for me, I still liked the fact that someone was kind enough to honor my request and to think of my students.
Even teaching materials from a U.S. government entity such as VOA, could be seen by the Chinese government as subversive. So much so that VOA had to go to great lengths to hide their identity in sending me that parcel.
xinghuajiangsu 