Writing About Lives

Life at Pension Motu Iti on Moorea has exquisite access to the water for swimming and snorkeling.

A mountain view from a few miles up in Moorea.

PAPEETE, Tahiti – From that first whiff of fresh gardenias on board on Air Tahiti Nui’s late-night flight from LAX, our delegation’s trip from rural Indiana’s flatlands to South Pacific’s plush utopia, had already entered a new realm of sensory bliss.

The flight attendants placed flowers in our ears and switched to traditional Polynesian wraps. Champagne flowed freely. The pilot’s instructions were in English, French and Tahitian. Every passenger had private television screens, earphones, pillows, blankets, and seats that reclined in exquisite comfort. It was as if everyone were flying First Class. French Polynesia and 118 islands’ hospitality had already kissed us and we hadn’t even yet touched her soil. The airline industry could learn a lot from those folks.

For the next two weeks, two professors (myself included) would take 20 American college students on a 10,000-mile round-trip excursion via airplane, bus, van and boat to the islands of Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine and finally, Bora Bora to discover the people and culture of French Polynesia.

Just as expected, locals greeted us at the airport in Papeete (pronounced “poppy eh tee”) and placed leis on every person who got off the plane. Getting through customs went smoothly because of the trilingual agents’ efficiency. While most of the service industry and structure is fluent in English, it would be helpful for someone in the travel party to speak conversational to advanced French.

Our hotel, the Royal Tahitian, had such deep green shrubbery, it was as if we had all entered a new kingdom of greenery. Each morning, we’d get up and find flowers had fallen from the trees and landed on the walkways. The beachfront Tahitian indeed treats each visitor regally. Mornings began with freshly cut pineapples, mangoes, watermelons, croissants and coffee.

For the entire entry on the “I’m Black and I Travel” blog, click on the words “posted under.”

HAVANA –- The woman across the restaurant looked familiar, really familiar. An author, a video auteur or maybe I had seen her in a movie. It’s of course rude to gaze at people but I was irked that I couldn’t figure out how I knew that face. My travel companion didn’t recognize her at all.
Apparently, my gaze was so intense it caused her to walk across the room to the table. She smiled big.

“You’re Americans, right?”

“Yes, we are.”

“Then yes, I am the one who killed Selena in the movie.”

The woman standing at our table was Lupe Ontiveros. She had indeed been the killer in the movie “Selena.” Ontiveros has also played a quirky theater clerk in “Chuck and Buck” and an outrageous maid full of pithy quotes in “Happiness.” She boasted that her latest movie, “Real Women Have Curves” had, in her words, “kicked a** at the box office.”

“I’m from Mexico, so I can come and go here as much as I want,” she said.

It was Dec. 2002 and Ontiveros was a part of a brigade of filmmakers in town for a Latin American Film Festival being held in town. She wasn’t the only celebrity I’d encounter on my weekend trip to this beautifully dilapidated city.

Her sentiment about being able to legally go back and forth between Mexico and Cuba punctuated something that lingered in my mind the entire time.

WHO CAN GO, WHO CAN’T

Last spring, the Obama administration lifted the ban for Americans wanting to visit relatives in Cuba. Prior to that it had been expressly forbidden. Certain categories of journalists, diplomats, religious organizations, educational groups and military were among the Americans who could legally obtain Cuba travel visas.

What strikes me is that it’s the U.S. Department of the Treasury monitoring this activity. Mostly, it seemed that the American government didn’t want us spending money there. As a freelance journalist, I was in a protected category, though I still felt uneasy.

I was there as a journalist and self-appointed sociologist.

There are any number of subversive ways for savvy non-category Americans to travel to Cuba through Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean. Increasingly there have been more and more organized tourists groups traveling through Cuba. It’s tricky, though not impossible.

My travel companion, a friend of a friend, was living in the Cayman Islands at the time and arranged all of the travel. American credit cards are of no use there so I couldn’t have booked it. We took a weekend package from a local Caymanian airline departing on a Thursday night.

Things work at their own pace on those islands. Our flight scheduled for 4:30 p.m. didn’t depart until 7:30 p.m. The flight into Jose Marti International Airport took less than an hour. By 9:30, we had cleared customs en route to the Hotel Habana Libre in a beat-up yellow taxi stitched together with parts from the 1950s, fulfilling every idea I had about Cuba.

I became aware that if I applied too much pressure with my feet, the floor of the taxi could cave.

During the taxi ride, I noticed the road to downtown was more like an agrarian undeveloped road in Arkansas or Mississippi. Even in December, Havana felt damp, wet and muggy. Almost all of the vehicles were remnants from the 1950s, mostly taxis and trucks.

The interior of the Hotel Habana was spacious, with sparkling white ceramic floors. The hotel was located downtown on the famous corner of 23rd and L, where the “La Rampa” district begins, very close to a lively nightlife district and the University of Habana. Not a 5-star hotel nor a run-down dive, the place had decent rooms that were clean and habitable, but was less than an average American hotel.

A DARKER CUBA

We arrived at almost 11 p.m. The staff was accommodating, speaking clear English.

The thing that shocked me most about Cuba was how many black people I saw everywhere. At least 50 percent of the street vendors, hotel workers and every other menial job, were the descendants of slaves. Back at home, I thought of Cubans as light, bright, almost white-looking people I had seen in Miami, such a contrast to Havana.

Apparently, the clothes I was wearing screamed “American tourist.” People thronged me with words in broken English, asking me to drop letters in the mail to their relatives in Miami, Chicago, New York or California. In my Sesame Street Spanish, I communicated as much as I could.

Their longing to communicate with relatives from whom they had been alienated made me feel a ball of sadness in my belly.

My friend and I bummed around the city aimlessly, which is how I’ve come to prefer traveling. I was struck by the splendor and grandeur of the stunning mansions overlooking the ocean. In Miami, these structures would be worth tens of millions of dollars. Before the revolution, they must have looked like palaces from another dimension.

Decades of neglect under Fidel Castro had left them decimated, dilapidated and crumbling, as if bombs had hit them during a war.

Cuba was an unhealed soul with an unquenched thirst for freedom and commerce, despite the hundreds of tourists who were flooding it’s gates.

Near the end of our trip, we found a bar called La Bodeguita del Medio, made famous by writer Ernest Hemingway, one of its regulars. It’s supposed to be where he had his first mojito. A bartender pointed to an inscription on the wall “Mi mojito en la Bodeguita” (My mojito at the Bodeguita) and told us it was in Hemingway’s handwriting.

THE LANGUAGE OF STRUGGLE
At one point, we got on an elevator with Al Lewis, who played Grandpa on “The Munsters” in the 1960s. I had watched enough television to recognize him immediately. He looked exactly like his TV character. He and Ms. Ontiveros were in town for the same film festival.

Probably my most striking experience had to do with two black guys, Adolpho and Michael, who approached us on the streets. They were intrigued by how much we were enjoying Havana and Cuba. They followed us and talked for hours about of growing up poor in Cuba, even taking us back to their house to try to sell us Cohibas, perhaps Cuba’s greatest export, cigars.

I wanted to be able to speak to them in Spanish. I wanted to be able to tell them that just because I was an American didn’t mean I was wealthy, that I didn’t understand struggle.

I do understand.

Some day I’d like to go back to Havana do a Spanish immersion program. I have a feeling I could learn Spanish in an environment as rough and raggedy as Cuba.

While I have painted a very rosy picture of my time in Europe and indeed it mostly was, my luggage was delayed in Munich for half a day. Freaked me out. But the worst thing was the flight back.

I flew from Munich to London’s Heathrow and had to run like a fleeing inmate after going through security again. Remember, I already did it in Munich. Once we got on British Airways flight #183, the plane it was delayed two hours because of severe weather. We literally sat there waiting. People were getting hysterical. It was beautiful.

After finally departing, hours later, we hit about 90 minutes of turbulance that felt like we were filming a scene from ABC’s “Lost.” Definitely the most aggressive turbulance of my life without a doubt.

As we flew into the New York area, storms had dozens of flights circling JFK. We landed in Boston for another two hours. Then on an extremely bumpy ride back, I got to the airport at about 3 a.m. Many
hours after I was expecting. The atmosphere was emotionally hot. People were angry. No SuperShuttle Service was available from JFK so the taxi was $49.

I had two $20s and $10. Fortunately I had exchanged my last Euros for US dollars at the train station in Munich. Then the taxi driver complained that I didn’t give him a tip.

It’s all good. At least I didn’t arrive in a body bag.

MUNICH – This last portion of the trip was just as restful, playful and fun as Salzburg and Berlin. By the time I get to New York I might be too exhausted to post anything, but I intend to within the next few days. I found Munich as enjoyable and fascinating.

Til next time.

Samuel

The Salzburg part of my trip comes to an end tomorrow when I take a train to Munich. It is indeed a beautiful place, a place where I will come back with a greater familiarity and time to do the touristy things. I was just so single-mindedly focusing my writing project, I just didn’t dare veer off onto a tourist path.

BERLIN – Other than seeing pictures of the bombed out buildings in history books or Hollywood depictions of the American sector, this was a city that had never really popped up on my radar until the summer of 2003. That was when a friend and I took a trip to Paris and made brief overnight stops in Berlin and Amsterdam.

In their own right, Paris and Amsterdam are magical places; Paris for the architecture and stylishness of the people, and Amsterdam for the sheer fun and frivolity of it all. I had never seen that many happy Americans wandering the streets. But that place that I have meditated over the last four years has been Berlin. (The locals here pronounce it (bare-lyn). Why did I like it so much? That trip was a flurry on the touristy path. The history, the majesty, the scale of it all overwhelmed me. I didn’t then nor do I now know not a lick of the harsh-sounding German but the vibe of Berlin spoke to me.

In booking this trip, I opted for a sleepover night train, hoping to be lucky enough to NOT have a cabin mate. When the train pulled out of Munich bound for Berlin and I didn’t see anyone in the cabin I thought I could relax uninterrupted for remaining six hours. Then at about 1 a.m. the train made its last stop before Berlin. There was commotion. My door pushed open, the lights flickered on and in walked a man in his mid 40s, with gray hair, glasses and immediately apologizing for waking me up. I wasn’t very friendly or talkative. “It’s okay, don’t worry about it,” I snarled, pulling my head under the covers on my bottom bunk.

Five hours later when my wake up call came, I pushed the curtains aside and saw the sunshine. He knew I was up and he started talking. And talking. And talking.

“Where are you from?”

“What are you doing in Germany?”

“Do you have any friends here?”

“Oh, you’re from the States? I lived in Atlanta where I got my MBA.”

Blah, blah, blah.

Within fifteen minutes he had given me a list of things to do in Berlin that were not on the tourist list. Taking a boat through the canals. A two-night jazz festival. He told me that if he were gay or married to a black woman, he would definitely live in Berlin. “It’s the most liberal city in all of Germany without a doubt.”

That man, Clase, gave me his business card and cell number. He told me his wife was a doctor and if I got into any medical problem please call them. He then pulled out a map and helped orientate me to where my hotel was and gave precise directions. It was incredibly kind of him. This is why I love Berlin. Throughout my entire four days there, people stopped me on the streets, as I looked puzzled flipping through maps. Strangers told me where to go and have a nice meal on a lake. Another one took me on a tour of a neighborhood which had been lots of signs about things the Nazis had done to the Jews. He translated all the signs that said things like “Jewish children could no longer go to schools too far away from their houses.” “Jewish men could only work at x, z and y.”

I inherited a gypsy gene from my father and it has caused me to wander into many foreign spots in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and Europe. None of those places have I ever encountered kindness like that of the Berliners.

As a tall, black man making my way through this world I have grown accustomed to people staring at me – even in New York City and other places I cherish. In Berlin it didn’t matter if I walked into an upscale restaurant, a dicey part of town or wherever, not once that I get that blank, cold, icy stare that many black people know. I honestly believe I could have walked down the streets in a purple dinosaur suit and no one would even blink.

“That just doesn’t happen here,” said David Brewer, an American black man who is a singer and vocal coach who moved to Berlin four years ago. He has no plans to move back to the United States. “If you ever get into an elevator and you see a white woman snatching her purse back and pulling away into a corner, she is more than likely an American white woman.”

Brewer went on.

“A lot of black people who move here lose themselves for a while. They get so many invitations to people’s homes and dinners they are just overwhelmed – the kind of thing that doesn’t seem to happen much in the States.”

In addition to being a world class city, steeped in the history of World War II and some of the best museums, shopping and cultural life, the people are friendly. They don’t stare you down like a criminal waiting. The city is clean. Navigable in English by bus and subway. For as horrid as the Nazi history that will forever blemish the place, Berlin is proof that any city doesn’t have to be stuck in an ugly past. They have indeed embraced it, learned from it and moved on. We could still do a bit of that in many American cities.

For the sake of space, I will offer a few observations from my trip to Berlin. Lots of Americans love it and come through here. My to do list of restaurants and places to see from friends would have kept me busy for a month. I saw a good bit of the touristy stuff but I focused on the neighborhoods and where locals hung out.

~ Berlin’s Hauptbanhauf (Central Train Station) is a stunning sight. The five level glass structure, only built a year ago, is one of the busiest crossing points in all of Europe, Clase told me. Some people come to Berlin just to see this magnificent structure which has trains coming in on three levels. You could spend hours just shopping or eating. The only thing I found strange was they charged .80 Euros to use the bathroom.

~The Hotel Sylter Dof was pretty much a draw. I paid under $100 a night to stay there. The staff was friendly and helpful but it seems when you get an Internet special they put you in a smaller room with no air conditioning. I had to keep the windows open – not only allowing a lot of noise into the room but dozens of mosquitoes. When I saw a clump of dead ones on the window pane I knew to spend as little time as possible there. DO NOT stay at this hotel.

~The Kaufhaus Des Westens (KaDeWe) is one of the biggest department stores in all of Europe at six floors, a consumer’s dream or nightmare depending on your financial condition. I found some my size (49) of Birkenstocks while shopping in Berlin.

~I ate at many fine restaurants, Italian, German and Vietnamese cuisines to name a few for some very cheap. I drink a lot of water and had to learn very quickly that if you ask for water without gas they will always bring bottled water to the table. Very quickly I had to ask for water from the tap.

~Unlike my experience with Parisians, almost every Berliner I met not only knew some English but were willing to speak it. This point cannot be minimized. As a person wandering around in a city with a German phrase book and a dictionary, unless you know the language of a place, you are at the mercy of the locals. Shop clerks, servers in restaurants, hotel employees, taxi drivers – almost anyone interacting with the public, especially tourists, knew English.

~On the Sunday before I left I had found a great area to read and rest, park with a fountain called Viktoria-Luise Platz. The fountain was gushing 20 feet upward. The air was cool, about 70. People relaxed on the park grounds – some almost nude. I came to Berlin to feel that feeling of magic that I had felt the first time, to allow the hundreds of books read and pages written from graduate school, to began to seep into my being. It was indeed a perfect moment on a perfect trip

BERLIN – I suppose there will always be a journalist in me because I love attaching dateline in travel dispatches to friends. It just makes the place seem more vibrant and relevant and adds something that not using it undercuts. Last night I took the train from Salzburg to Berlin, a city that just makes me want to cry it is so beautiful. My email minutes are about to expire so expect a longer dispatch later.

Samuel

SALZBURG – On the afternoon of May 31, I took a fast train from Munich’s central train station and listened for the conductor to say the magic words “Hauptbonhaf Salzburg.” I grabbed my two bulky pieces of luggage and my shoulder bag, making my way to the district where taxis gathered. I hopped in, showed the driven the written address of my destiny and I was on my way.

From now on whenever I see tourists dragging luggage through the streets of Manhattan and flipping through maps or guidebooks written in other languages, I will have even greater empathy. That’s one of the first things that goes while living there. This trip to Germany and Austria marks my first time traveling to a region of the world alone and where I didn’t know the language. In both Munich and Salzburg I have relied heavily on the kindness of strangers.

Within minutes I was in the car listening to the driver, who spoke a little English. He told me I had chosen to come at a good time of the year. In July and August, because of the Mozart festivities, the town is crammed with tourists from all over the world. He spoke quite a bit of English it seemed to me.

In three minutes I jumped out onto a cobblestone square. Dozens of shops and restaurants with outdoors seating abounded. In the very center of the square stood a gigantic statue of Mozart himself. That’s right next to the Salzburg Museum. Right smack in the middle of town.

I’ve traveled a bit in Europe, Central America and the Caribbean, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a place quit as charming as this classical music capital. With castles on the hillside, a riverside dividing city almost more a moat, and shopping allure, it’s everything I’d imagine Monaco looks like or 100 times the charm of Park City, Utah.

Since I have mostly been interviewing and taking notes for my project, I have not ventured into any of the Sound of Music tours or even any of the museums. (Sorry Glenn.) I have observed that all of the shops close right at 6 p.m. I eaten quite a broad swathe of international cuisines on the road, most notably and fantastic Vietnamese place and a wonderful Mediterranean restaurant.

I’ve been hanging out a bit with Ann, a soprano who grew up Toronto and was born in London. She told me that when she arrived here a few years ago, she asked an official from the Austrian government what were her rights as a person who was born in the European Union. The guy told her “we have a NON-immigration policy.” Fluent in French, Italian and English, she moved here and is now fluent in German.

Ann warned me to always keep my passport with me “just in case.” The area where I would take the bus to costs 2.20 Euros. She said if I got on the bus without paying the fee a uniformed man would hold my passport until I paid the 60 euro penalty. Not that I would have done that, knowing the penalty makes me aware of the attitudes and opinions of the authorities.

One does see quite a few uniformed “polizei.” They don’t seem to be bothering anyone.

But I digress. This is a lovely European city, just a train ride away from Vienna, Switzerland and München (Munich).

On Wednesday night I’m taking a train to Berlin where I will bum around for the weekend. I’ve only been there once but it totally captivated me.

I couldn’t be more pleased with how things are turning out on this trip. My host is extremely gracious in every way.

Samuel

Greetings:

Quite a few people are telling me they have been checking the blog for how everything has been going. Life is grand here in good old Salzburg. I’ve been doing so much interviewing and preparation for the interviews that I have not taken the time to do any of the touristy stuff. Not in that zone. If all goes according to plan I will be spending more time here later this year and or early next year.

All of my blogging so far has been on a computer at an Internet cafe. I have started writing down a few of my impressions and observations on my computer and at some point before I head out to Berlin, hopefully, I will find a way to post my musings over the restaurants I’ve been able to enjoy and give a lay of the land from an outsider’s point of view.

SALZBURG – This is how you cook your travel iron.

1. Follow the directions. Even though the maker of the travel iron promises this gadget is made for the 220 volts of European electricity, as opposed to ours which is half that, it is not.

2. Plug it into the outlet and go into the washroom.

3. Smell the smoke.

4. Step out of the washroom and see a gray smoke plume swirling into the atmosphere.

“But this iron is supposed to work in Europe,” a bit of reason flashed through my head.
Fortunately I had the wherewithal to unplug the iron before any damage was done to me, the room or the gadget.

And even more fortunately I had a converter that enabled me to resume ironing. Always take an electrical converter. Once I cooked a printer in my dorm room in Madrid and vowed to never cook any other gadgets. The flames came fast, mighty and created a rainbow of colors.

That was the most exciting thing that happened in Münchenland.

Now it’s all about Salzburg. I knew the pictures on the travel guides were lovely but I had no idea just how gorgeous this place would be. Beyond post card perfect. Got here safely at 2 p.m. and am all settled into my flat right on the square next to the Salzburg Museum.