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.

My senses sharpened when we finally arrived in Leningrad. Nearing the center of the city, we saw few cars on the streets. The cars were mostly small, and some veered around in odd ways. Buses were numerous, mostly unwashed, and often with multiple dents.

Our tour included rooms in what had been described as one of the city’s best tourist hotels. Its large front windows were grimy. Its lobby had little charm. Martti and I shared a double room. Assuming it came with listening devices, we made little comments to our supposed KGB listeners.

We had dinner in the hotel’s spacious restaurant that night. A large staff of waiters scurried about taking orders and delivering dinners. But other doings were afoot. Waiters would stop at a table, lift a plate to retrieve something underneath, hustle away, and return moments later to place something else under the same plate. Western currency was being traded for black market rubles openly. Bribes likely had been made to keep the authorities at bay.

After some hesitation, after all this was Russia, Martti nervously placed some markkas under his plate and nodded to a passing waiter. His markkas promptly were replaced with rubles at something like three times the official exchange rate.

Leningrad became a blur of elaborate buildings, pedestrian-filled streets, very few restaurants (we ate only one dinner outside the hotel), the majesty and enormity of the Hermitage Museum, pure awe while standing near the remains of Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky, and Sunday evening subway rides to and from a fabulous ballet performance (our tickets amazingly inexpensive).

On Monday morning Martti and I boarded our return bus and watched our fellow passengers, bedraggled to a man, come in. Their morning greetings, Hyvää huomenta, were typically lyrical, but grunted painfully and with scratched voices.  As our bus left the city, conversations commenced, softly at first but growing louder as details of the days, or rather the nights, came to light. Martti translated some of the more salacious details for me. A good time had been had by all!

We again stopped in a number of towns to be checked by military types and have the slanted mirror rolled around our bus to make sure no citizen was slipping about unlawfully. Then we stopped at the border for the now familiar routine. The same sturdy guard I’d dealt with earlier was on duty. He again hand checked my pockets and found a ruble bill I had missed. “A souvenir, huh?” he said, giving it to me and patting my shoulder. We crossed the Finnish side in a breeze and returned to Kuopio.

In 1948, E.B. White wrote in The New Yorker, “Socialism holds itself responsible to the people for the use and management of resources, and in so doing is likely to end up (as it has in Russia) by managing everything, including the citizen’s private life, his thoughts, his arts, and his science.” Decades later I saw firsthand the accuracy of his words.

A letter in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (30 Oct 2020) describes Hungary in the 1950s. “The Communist government claimed 100% employment. Everyone had a job, regardless of qualification, received a paycheck, and survived.  Ultimately the government ran out of money, the system collapsed, the unemployment rate soared, and we all know the rest of the story.”

While I was in Kuopio during the late 1980s, a professor friend of mine suggested we sign up for a long weekend bus tour to Leningrad, as the city then was known. I agreed immediately for I had never been to Russia.

Martti and I sketched an itinerary that included a visit to the Hermitage Museum, a ballet performance, and other options, all of which sounded great to me. Beyond that, I knew a number of my favorite Russians were buried in that city, and I was eager to visit their grave sites, especially those of Dostoevsky and Tchaikovsky.

When we arrived at the bus station, I was surprised to find that most of our fellow passengers were men ranging from perhaps 17 to 40 years of age. The Finnish male crowd puzzled me. They didn’t strike me as a group yearning for culture. Martti, hearing their conversations, explained their goals. Those guys were heading to Leningrad for two reasons: cheap vodka and cheap women.

The southeasterly bus trip was relatively short, less that 250 miles one way, which is about the same distance that Helsinki, the Finnish capital, lies southwest of Kuopio. When we approached the Russian border, Martti prepared  me for what lay ahead as we filled out the required entry forms.

The Russian border guards would be strict, he said. We passengers would be forced to get out while the guards searched the bus. I looked around. There were lots of neat hiding places. Each seat had a little flap of cloth on the headrest. I thought how easy it would be to stow a few Western bills, say U.S. dollars or Finnish markkas, under them and outsmart the Russian Bear. Ditto with the roll-down map above the driver’s head, I thought rather smugly.

Armed guards stood alert as our bus slowed for the border. After quick clearance from the Finnish side, we crossed over the line, the bus stopped, and we all got out. While we were waiting to show our passports and be processed, I watched two guards climb into the bus. One moved to the back, another stayed in front. They began moving slowly toward each other, stopping at each row, looking under the seats, pulling up the little cloth headrests, taking their time. And yes, they even unrolled the map above the driver’s seat.

Another Russian showed up with a low pushcart upon which a large slanted mirror was attached. He rolled it slowly around the base of the bus, the mirror providing him a clear view underneath it. No one could slip into the country by hiding there.

In line for my clearance, I had emptied my pockets as instructed. The stocky guard grinned when he saw my U.S. passport. “Why you come with Finnish group?” he asked. I explained. He bantered a bit, proud of his English, and then without warning stuck his hand deep into one of my front pockets. He then hand checked every one. Welcome to the USSR. Da!

After we all finally were vetted, we boarded our bus and drove on. No passenger entered or left the bus on our final leg, but we were stopped in various towns where a military type came in to check our passports. And at every stop a little cart with mirror atop was pushed slowly around the bus. Martti explained that Russian citizens needed to get permission to travel between towns. Big Brother was making sure none of them sneaked about. That’s enough for this post. I’ll finish this story later.