After a refreshing night in my Kuopio hotel, I took on a hefty breakfast before getting down to the business I had come for. I opened the dissertation of the doctoral student I was to examine,  now being familiar with him as the young pilot who had ferried me from Helsinki the evening before. His thesis had been printed professionally; its bulk was roughly equal to a thick issue of Reader’s Digest, and its contents, I had discovered, were suitably encyclopedic.

I had read through his entire volume at least twice before, making marginal notes I might use as questions. Now, with the examination looming, I sharpened my approach. I began on page one and read each sentence carefully, perused each paragraph, and jotted detailed notes along the margins. After all, this was to be a significant public event with faculty, friends, and relatives of the candidate all in attendance. It would be a big deal, and I had agreed to do my part.

My attention to my duty waxed and waned during that weekend. I took breaks and strolled for hours through Kuopio’s streets on the Midsummer holiday. I enjoyed a lovely dinner in the home of my host professor and his wife, and I read a few chapters of a novel I had brought along. But I also completed my preparations. By Sunday evening I was soundly prepped, armed and ready, to perform my job as what the Finns call an opponent.

I knew the entire process would be noticeably formal, that the event required academic regalia. Since I had none, I borrowed cap, gown and hood from a good friend of mine, an academic pathologist. The outfit he provided came in a fine shade of Kelly green, the color denoting medical doctors, and it created a surprisingly majestic aura. After climbing into that costume, and evaluating my image in a full length mirror, I realized that never before had I looked so professorial, or so wise. I wasn’t surprised when the driver who took me to the auditorium called me “sir”.

The preliminaries went off without a hitch. At the appointed time, the candidate and I made our appearance, he stage left, I stage right, in the sizeable hall. I can’t say with certainty how many were in attendance, but I think a hundred or more filled the seats. The candidate and I were introduced to the audience by the chairman of the physiology department, the candidate gave his opening address, and then I was invited to begin my questioning.

We each were provided with a chair and small desk, along with tablet and pencil, and of course each of us had brought our marked copy of the all-important thesis. A number of experiments described therein had a flavor close to several performed in my own laboratory, and others described were sound as well. I don’t like being tethered to desk or lectern, so for much of the time I stood and wandered about the stage.

As I lobbed my questions to him, I took care to portray my positive impression of the work he had done, and I listened patiently to his answers, which at times were quite detailed. Nevertheless, in my role as his opponent, I thought it necessary to press him for further clarifications, thereby forcing him to put even finer points on his results. The audience remained attentive throughout.

And so we went, back and forth, and back and forth again, in English of course, not in the young man’s native tongue, for some ninety minutes. Long before the end, it was obvious to me, and I think to all present, that the candidate knew his stuff, that he deserved his doctorate. After I decided that enough had been covered, and in proper detail, I turned to face the audience.

I had been coached earlier on how to report, in Finnish, that the candidate had passed my examination, this to be done primarily so his grandmother and other older relatives, with no grasp of English, would know immediately of my decision. I had a hunch my joust with Finnish would not go well, for my practices had tangled my tongue. The Finnish language has more than the normal load of complexities, but when the time came I sputtered the multi-syllabic phrase with gusto (knowing the Finns never mumble as the Danes do), and then stepped over to congratulate the man I had grilled.

His grip shocked me. His hand could not have been colder had it been pulled from a snowbank, a clue that his performance on stage had been accompanied by substantial stress. We immediately were surrounded by a group of well-wishers, and after some moments I excused myself and returned to my hotel, thinking the entire affair had gone off smoothly. I had no basis for comparison, but signs suggested the afternoon had been successful, the only oddity being the temperature of the hand I shook.  I managed to catch a short nap before freshening up and making my way to a restaurant just across the street from my hotel, the site where a celebratory dinner was about to begin.

A sizeable group had already arrived when I entered the restaurant. My successful doctoral candidate/pilot was standing near the entrance, greeting his guests. He had a cocktail in hand and offered it to me. How kind of him, I thought, to have a drink ready for me. I passed into the room reserved for our dinner, chatting with a number of guests and feeling relaxed and pleased that all had gone well. Gradually we seated ourselves, and I was about to begin the first course when my stomach alerted me that certain parts of my internal machinery were slipping out of whack. I tried to ignore the message and focus on the delicacy before me, but my symptoms revved up rapidly, sending the distinct message that trouble lay ahead, that I was about to make a mess of my plate, and probably more.

With little grace, I excused myself and tumbled out of the restaurant feeling terrible. I rushed across the street to my room, barely making the bathroom before the eruptions began. That night went on and on, a thoroughly unpleasant interval, with the bathroom as my refuge. During this miserable time, as I passed through the various modes of emptying myself, questions naturally arose. I began to wonder whether the doctoral candidate thought my treatment of him had been unfair, or maybe even a bit rough. The frost on his hand certainly suggested he had suffered an ordeal. After having provided me with a fine flight the night before, did he presume he deserved to be treated gently as a form of repayment? (That made little sense to me, because I thought he had performed very well under my questioning, that with my help he had shone brightly all afternoon.) Still, considering my sudden and unexpected distress, I couldn’t avoid wondering whether he had concocted a clever method of revenge. Why did he have that cocktail for me at the ready? And what else could conceivably have brought on my abrupt distress? Wasn’t all of this quite suspicious?

Now, decades later, those questions remain unanswered. Were my suspicions justified? Who knows? Maybe some mysterious virus just happened to slip into my digestive tract at an inopportune time and trigger my set of erroneous suppositions. So, in conclusion, I have no answer. But even now the question lingers. Did he, or didn’t he?

When I landed in Helsinki, the middle leg of my previously-mentioned tour, I was met by the young pilot assigned to fly me to Kuopio. By odd circumstance that fellow was the very candidate I was to examine on the following Monday. Apparently those who arranged this scheme thought it would provide a pleasant avenue for us to become acquainted before we appeared together on a public stage (I’ll explain that later). I’d been assured the fellow was an accomplished pilot, so I settled myself comfortably in his single-engine aircraft, anticipating a pleasant flight, and having no inkling of the spectacle that lay ahead.

The day was June 19, 1987, an excellent time to arrive in Finland, for it was Midsummer Eve in that country, a special time I discovered, and one loaded with traditions. One colorful custom sends multitudes of folks hustling off to nearby lakes, almost all to gather timber and pile it into huge clumps. Then, just as daylight fades, to set all ablaze.

I knew none of this as I we taxied to our runway, I paying alert attention to the commercial jets lumbering tall around us. After receiving permission from the control tower, we accelerated with all the energy a single propeller can provide and gradually reached the speed necessary to ease us off the ground. Remembering those moments now, I’m sure everything had been carefully planned, for our airplane gained altitude just as light was fading.

Southern Finland, the part over which we flew, is awash with lakes, huge lakes, some of them snaking along for fifty miles and more. From our height we had superb views of those expansive stretches. Large areas of water gleamed like scattered puddles filled with rain. I quickly noticed other things were afoot along the waters’s edges. Sparks flared and rapidly grew into dots of fire along the shores. More and more fires appeared, all with orangish hues of burning timber. Fires exploded everywhere, hundreds of them marking the irregular intersections between land and water, and all of them sliding smoothly beneath us, their patterns changing constantly, each seemingly more incredible than the last.

We probably were some 1,500 to 2.000 feet above the earth for most of the flight, that height providing a broad view of the bonfires.  On and on we flew for a couple of hours, conversing over the drone of the engine, discussing what we were seeing below, and occasionally dipping down for closer observations, ever alert for new sightings.

Although I’ve flown in other small planes, none has gripped me like that singular flight into the dark. Night had taken over completely by the time we reached Kuopio. Bonfires still burned brightly along Lake Kallavesi as we landed, I realizing at that moment, as I suspect the pilot did too, that our next adventure together would play in a different key, for I would be the one with the wheel in my hands. I’ll unravel that story next time.

Two decisions of mine, both made relatively early in life, provided means for me to travel a bit over the years, mostly on somebody else’s dollar. The first was my decision to enlist in the Air Force at age nineteen, a wise commitment that sent me zig-zagging through a number of states before being shipped off to Germany for three engaging years, that interval offering ample opportunity for me to poke around Deutschland from top to bottom, and even to spend months of my furloughs nosing through a dozen other countries, all courtesy of Uncle Sam.

My second path to cost-free travel opened widely when I adopted a physiological laboratory as my second home. When engaging in research, I soon discovered, junkets are part of the process, especially those important trips to national and international meetings, all often paid for by grants, or, in special cases, by those who organize a special meeting. This, of course, is not the only trigger that, in normal times, sends hordes of researchers into the skies. Colleagues at a distance often ignite similar sparks. Those folks, being interested in your work and eager to learn of your most recent findings, frequently send invitations for you to lecture in their department, or to demonstrate a certain technique you’ve developed, or possibly to offer value in other ways. The hosts, of course, almost always pick up your travel tab, and usually add a nice honorarium as well.

Such journeys not infrequently involve multiple stops. It’s fairly common for one to hop about while following an uneven route put together with little advanced planning. Here’s a simple example of my own from years ago. Early in 1987, I marked on my calendar the June days I was to be in Kuopio to examine a doctoral student at the university. This obligation prompted me to follow up on a conversation I’d had with an Oxford professor some time earlier.

That professor had introduced himself at a meeting of the American Heart Association in Dallas. While studying a poster of mine, he expressed interest in my data and urged me to notify him the next time I would be crossing the Atlantic, adding that he would be pleased to arrange for me to lecture at his university, providing I could find time for a stop in England. So, after my Kuopio event had been confirmed, I dutifully alerted the man, and he in turn scheduled my lecture for just a few days after my Kuopio obligation.

Not long after these developments, a third option came out of the blue when I was surprised by an invitation to speak at a symposium on catecholamines in Jerusalem, the dates of that symposium conveniently being only days before my Kuopio commitment.  Now, to be candid, I had done little investigation of catecholamines, and those compounds weren’t really a major interest of mine, but the opportunity appealed to me, for I had never been to Jerusalem, or even to the Middle East, historic grounds to be sure. The timing was good, the location appealing, so I sent my acceptance to the symposium’s organizers with considerable zest.

With all in place at last, my fluctuating flight plan was finalized to include stops in Tel Aviv (with bus to Jerusalem), Helsinki (with private plane to Kuopio), and London (with train to Oxford). It proved to be a eventful journey in many ways, but perhaps the most memorable event turned out to be my joust with the doctoral candidate in Kuopio. I’ll relive that incident next, but in the meantime here’s a hint of what’s to come. The person examining a Finnish doctoral student is called the student’s opponent. From the bulk of evidence, that’s exactly what I turned out to be.

Up to the time I enlisted in the Air Force at age nineteen, I had rambled through only two states, both with names ending in Dakota. After my basic training in Texas and a later course in weather observing in Illinois, I was shipped (on a seven-day waterlogged and bumpy cruise) to Germany for my three-year assignment with a weather squadron. I began planting footprints in other countries soon after I arrived.

As I neared the end of my lengthy stay in Germany, still having an itch to travel, I set out to explore unseen targets, namely Berlin, Copenhagen, and Amsterdam. I was reminded of this plan recently when I unearthed my 201 file (a three-quarter inch thick relic that contains all of my military orders) and found evidence that my 20-day trip to visit those three cities began on February 21, 1955.

In the file were the yellowed documents, written in both English and Russian, that had enabled me to travel through East Germany to Berlin, the city at the time lying deep within the Russian-controlled part of post-war Germany. I didn’t have a passport then, didn’t need one as a U. S. airman able to travel freely through most of post-war Europe, but without my bilingual documents I would not have been able to penetrate the Russian zone and get to Berlin.

Other than a number of train stops within the Red zone, where my papers were checked determinedly by grim-faced Russian soldiers, my trip to Berlin was uneventful. I disembarked in West Berlin, the section of the city that had been subdivided after the war into American, British, and French occupation sectors. I found a small hotel in the American sector, dropped off my suitcase, and wandered through the neighborhood. The city had been heavily scarred by bombardment during WWII, and rehabilitation efforts were in full swing throughout the area. Heavy machinery rumbled. Flocks of cranes poked into the sky.

It was dark by the time I found myself in front of the Brandenburg Gate, which stood roughly on the border between West and East Berlin (the latter under Communist control and the grim Wall yet to be built). The Gate had been heavily charred and nicked by bombings so it wasn’t a handsome sight, yet the colossus retained its elemental grandeur. It stretches over 200 feet across a broad avenue and rises up over 60 feet, where it was topped at that time by the tangled remains of four life-sized horses pulling a goddess in a chariot. Five separate passageways lead through the Gate, which is almost 40 feet deep.

As impressive as that huge gate was, the scene around it somehow affected me more. I stood facing the gate from the west. Beyond it to the east stood a clutter of buildings still shattered by the bombings that had ended a decade earlier. Restorative efforts had been minimal. Few lights were visible in that depressing scene, and a gloomy darkness loomed above it all. In contrast, the buildings behind me, a good number rebuilt, were ablaze with light, and the gleaming sky reflected their brilliance.

The difference between East and West Berlin was that stark. No wonder a continual stream of East Germans crossed daily into West Berlin and did not return, a continual one-way flow until the infamous Wall was built in 1961 to stop the bleeding. By that time some three million East Germans had fled to the west through West Berlin, many staying in that city and others making their way through East Germany to freedom.

Why had they fled? For a number of reasons. The Russians had gutted East German factories and lugged the equipment home. Communists naturally had taken over the government. Private property was seized from landowners and redistributed to workers. Industrial and crop production, suddenly under control of the state, plummeted. The economy, with the newly minted Ostmark, was tanking. Meanwhile, the western part of Germany, being reconstructed by the Allies (the United States, Britain, and France), was blooming with Capitalism.

That’s all for now. I have a more personal story to relate from that particular time Berlin, along with other stories from that same journey, but I’ll hold those for a while, because I had another close encounter with the Brandenburg Gate, one that’s scratched deep in my memory and demands to be told next. Stay tuned.