Moscow to Berlin   The next segment of the round-the-world Iron Road trip now headed back to far more familiar territory in Western Europe. I walked the few minutes from my second Moscow hotel to Belarusskaya Station one morning at about 8:30, rolling my bag behind me and off we went. It was a cabin in a deluxe car again with a roughly similar layout, but just a bit less deluxe. The trip to Berlin would take the full day and overnight, arriving the next morning after 10, and that includes gaining two hours, but also necessarily “wasting” 2 ½ hours at Brest (see below). I was able to use a lot of time to write, which enabled me to send another installment for the webpage from Berlin.

We left Moscow at 38 (56) and after about an hour or so I was fortunate to notice something I could have easily missed. We passed lots of small, local stations, but I just happened to look up as we went through a tidy, attractive small station in a little town. On the station building I was able to make out, in an attractive semi-script Cyrillic, the name Бородино/Borodino.

Does the name ring a bell [hint]? Does the name set off a cannon [hint, hint]? Do cymbals crash?

It was at the Battle of Borodino on the road to Moscow that the Russians defeated Napoleon in 1812, and where Napoleon’s retreat back to France started, which, ironically, was one of the places I was now headed. And it was to commemorate the Russian victory [boom! crash!] that Tchaikovsky [bong! bong!] wrote the 1812 Overture [ta-ra! ta-ra!]. All based on this little village, and I could have missed it if I hadn’t looked up from my writing at the right time.

Language trivia: The name Borodino always sounded Italian to me. Maybe I was comparing it to words like “bambino”, but that was a fixation in my mind. Somewhere in Russia, maybe in the Armoury museum in the Kremlin, I heard someone pronounce it as it is in Russian, with the stress on the LAST syllable: ba-ra-di-NOH. The name now sounds fully Russian to me, but I have no plans to start pronouncing it that way, nor to futilely attempt to get anyone else to do so.

A digression, now that I’ve mentioned the name Tchaikovsky. There is a standard Romanization of Cyrillic, which is interesting, but which I won’t go into now. Normally, each language transliterates names in Cyrillic according to the spelling conventions of the receiving language. Thus, what is written in English as Khrushchev, is written in Italian as Cruscev. Putin in English is Poutine in French. Yet the pronunciations come out relatively the same. Now consider the name of the above composer, or just the first syllable. In Spanish, it’s Chai-, in Italian it’s Ciai- in German with Tschai-, in French it’s Tchai-, since those spellings suit the spelling requirements of each of those languages. My point is this: according to English spelling, it would work fine to write it Chai-, which sometimes, but rarely happens. Why do we slavishly follow the French spelling?

The train stopped in Смоленск/Smolensk, down to 32 (55), then entered Belarus, stopping at the capital, Minsk at 28 (54). My grandparents came “from Minsk”, but never further defined any details. They were farming people, so they certainly didn’t come from the city, yet the family knows the name of no village near Minsk that they actually could have emigrated from.

A word about the dotted I. Russian had four duplicate Cyrillic letters that were dropped at the time of the revolution. One of them was the dotted I, which was dropped in favor of и. That was unfortunate, since the dotted I would have been one more letter that would have been the same as the Roman alphabet. However, the dotted I has been retained in both Belorusan and Ukranian. Therefore, what is written in Russian as Минск was clearly posted in Belorusan on the station itself as Мінск.

Finally, in Western Belarus, we stopped at Брест/Brest at 24 (52), and at this point we need a discussion of gauge. I will limit the discussion of gauge only to the point that interests me: whether or not it impedes international commerce.

Gauge is the width between railroad tracks. It affects the width of coaches, and just where station platforms should be located. About 60% of the world’s rail services are standard gauge.

Broad gauge is any width wider than standard, and here the story gets interesting. Broad-gauge services in the west of England were standardized long ago. I understand all of Ireland uses broad gauge, but like Japan, Ireland being an island limits the affect of that problem.

There are two areas where broad gauge impedes international commerce. One is Spain and Portugal, which are primarily broad gauge (except for the new high-speed services). Any trains going from France to the Iberian peninsula have a problem. Because of the Pyrenees, there are only two prime routes, along the border at the Mediterranean end of the mountains and at the Atlantic end. It only now occurs to me that we have never taken trains in Spain or Portugal, so I can’t speak from personal experience, but I know that the wheels have to be adjusted at the border, and the Spanish border town of Irún on the Atlantic side comes to mind as a well-known crossing where this is done.

The most widespread area using broad gauge is however Russia, actually the entire area of the former Soviet Union (Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lituania, and much more). Since Finland was part of Russia during the prime rail-building period, Finland has broad gauge, but that’s no problem, since Finland is so isolated in its corner of the Baltic that the only western rail connection used to be a minor one with Sweden, and that is now out of service. Finland only has rail connections with Russia, so there’s no problem.

Since China is on standard gauge, similar truck/bogie changes are made there. However, the gauge problem does slow down crossings between the former Soviet Union countries and Western Europe. I wonder how many locations there are where the wheels can be adjusted. [Note: the Baltic countries joining the European Union have asked for subsidies for a standard-gauge line coming from Poland into their area.]

Germany in 2000   When we started European travel again in 2000 there was no doubt in my mind that the destination in that first year would be Germany. We crossed on the QE2 for our first time and came back on the Deutschland out of Cuxhaven. Another first was that I was now traveling with a laptop, but I had miscalculated the time needed to write anything, and barely even had a chance to check my e-mail, and that only once just before coming home. Of course wheelchair arrangements also used up time. Therefore, letters started coming only in 2001 during our trip to Britain. I’ve been planning for some time to fill in the year 2000 trip, which actually centered around Berlin, along with my next trip to Berlin, which just took place.

The structure of that trip was simple. After once again visiting Mainz on the Rhine, where we had lived as students, it was a matter of seeing the results of Die Wende/The Turning Point in 1989 when the wall came down. I wanted to see the former East German border, other eastern cities, and primarily Berlin.

Since 1961-2 we had been back to Mainz a good number of times. Later visits, where so much more modernization had taken place, kept on giving our old Mainz a feeling of special quaintness that I find hard to describe, since it all seemed so normal when we were living there. Things then seemed so uniquely German and things since seem so international. We revisited the neighborhood called Mainz-Gonsenheim where we had rented rooms at Lennebergstrasse 20. Once, in the 1970’s we had revisited the family we had lived with and they had us in for a glass of wine, but this time I just drove up to the building for a look-see. It was just a short distince further down the road to the Lennebergwald/Lenneberg Forest, where we had occasionally gone hiking. I’m sure you can still go hiking there, but years ago we first saw the Autobahn go through, with an overpass you can see as you look down Lennebergstrasse. It was hard if not impossible to find old haunts on Breite Strasse.

The entrance gate to the University of Mainz, the Johannes-Gutenberg University, where we all used to wait for the bus is now pedestrianized. The quiet north-south road coming from downtown and passing the gate now runs below the surface, with exits and overpasses. When driving (which I was), you have to enter the University from a back way. The Mensa (dining hall) where we had so many meals was now labelled Alte Mensa/Old Mensa, and all I could do was wonder about what changes had taken place. From the car, though, much of the university looked the same. Still, sic transit gloria mundi.

Central Mainz was and is a world apart from what we knew. Everything is just so contemporary. In those years we felt the war was so far in the past, but in retrospect, it was only a decade and a half after the war. We just accepted seeing ruins in certain streets and even around Bahnhofsplatz/Station Square. I drove around town as well as I could, but there were so many pedestrianized streets that it was difficult. It was my first trip with the wheelchair, and I was wary about doing too much walking (that changed in following years). I do recall driving past the jewelry store at the corner of Klarastrasse and Grosse Bleiche where we had bought our wedding rings.

But the former border was what I wanted to see and that was our next stop. I think it is reasonably safe to say that over the decades, during many very thorough trips, Beverly and I have seen every city, town, river, lake, mountain range, historic location, and major statue in the German-speaking countries that is worth seeing. At one time we had visited the charming town of Goslar in the Harz Mountains (the people who make the pet products spell it Hartz Mountain). The Harz is also famous for its highest peak, the Brocken, which has all sort of associations with Halloween-type events, and the other cities of Wernigerode and not much further away, Quedlinburg. But only Goslar had been in West Germany. After a quick re-visit to Goslar, we went on to visit the rest of the mountains. I had an old map with me as well as a new one, so I could check border locations. My first shock was what was NOT there. Driving along a country road in the Harz, looking for a border marker, I realized I had gone too far, and turned back. Finally, because of the change in paving in the road, which was normal when you cross state lines anywhere, I found a small marker at the side of the road telling about the border between the Germanies, which was of course the Iron Curtain, going through here. In other words I had slipped across a line without knowing it, what had been such a major impediment just a decade earlier.

Thank goodness the historic preservation movement has made the progress it has. Structures that are protected are described in the US as being on a Register of Historic Places, in Britain they are called “listed” structures. In Germany they are “unter Denkmalschutz/under monument protection”. Yet I still had a shock later the same day when I drove across another point that had been the border and to my amazement, right there on the side of the road, as obvious and everyday-like as if it had been a fruit stand, was a concrete border tower from which East German soldiers would have shot at potential escapees. Why hadn’t that been torn down? Worse, when I got out of the car to read the plaque, this structure was unter Denkmalschutz! Quick, somebody write a letter! But of course they were right. This structure, ugly as it was in looks and intent, is a piece of history to be preserved.

Further along, I drove along the major east-west Autobahn which was the major route to West Berlin, and came across the infamous crossing at Helmstedt-Marienborn. All Autobahn traffic used to have to pull over here to have papers checked by East German authorities. I clearly remember that happening on our first trip to Berlin together, by bus from Mainz. Yet now, as regular traffic would continue to speed by, there was a chain-link fence separating this large complex of quonset-type military buildings from road traffic. There was talk of making it into some sort of a museum. Since this visit was five years ago, I wonder what it’s like now.

In the east, we visited many cities we had seen before under bleaker conditions, and some new ones. We were glad in Dresden to see that the bombed-out and totally destroyed Frauenkirche/Church of Our Lady was being rebuilt by international subscription and was coming along quite well.

Berlin over the Years   The village of Berlin and another village across the Spree, Cölln, joined together to become the center of the growing city. By the 1700’s the city had expanded to where the Brandenburg Gate is. In 1920, a large consolidation took place expanding Berlin to its present size. This consolidation was between Berlin and many suburban cities, some of which were well-to-do and not interested in taking on the problems of some poorer areas. These areas include former cities such as Charlottenburg, Spandau, Steglitz, Zehlendorf, Dahlem, Köpenick, and many others. This large area made it much easier during the division of Berlin, since there were large park-like areas within West Berlin so people could feel less crowded-in. There was one city that logically could have been included in the consolidation but never was, and that’s Potsdam. Potsdam is still independent and lies on the southwest bulge of Berlin. Berlin is now a state of its own, and Potsdam is the capital of the surrounding state of Brandenburg. In a sense, Berlin and Potsdam could be visualized as twin cities, but that’s a rather foolish way to look at it, since Berlin is so very many times bigger and Potsdam could just as well have been included within Berlin in 1920 as was Charlottenburg and all the others.

Beverly had been to Germany and Berlin before I had. In 1958 she had an NDEA scholarship to study, and the German government included some travel, including a flight to Berlin (I never flew there). Beverly therefore saw Berlin before the wall, and remembered walking right through the Brandenburger Tor/Brandenburg Gate. The wall went up on August 13, 1961, which would have been right at the end of the Middlebury summer session where we met. From Mainz we took that bus trip, and that was my first view of both sides of Berlin.

The Soviet sector took up half the city, unfortunately including the historic center, called Mitte/Middle, which bulged out into the West. On the western side of this bulge, the Reichstag building was in West Berlin, and the nearby Brandenburg Gate in East Berlin. The wall snaked between the two of them. Close to that, you could go to Potsdamer Platz and look over the wall at a vast wasteland. All the rubble had been removed and you just looked on into the empty distance.

To the northern side of this bulge was the infamous Bernauer Strasse, where, curiously, the street and both sidewalks were in the west, but the building line on the south side formed the border. This was the location of the famous scene of people jumping out of windows, some fatally, to reach the sidewalk in the West. Eventually those buildings were evacuated, the windows bricked up, and finally, the buildings were torn down.

On the southern side of the bulge was Checkpoint Charlie, where we crossed more than once. Visualize it this way: you’re in West Berlin and approach the traditional downtown (Mitte, now in East Berlin), coming north on Friedrichstrasse to Checkpoint Charlie. An American soldier checks your passports and you walk through. Then the East Germans check them. Then you start walking up the barren continuation of Friedrichstrasse. There are cross streets, but no buildings anywhere; between the cross streets are just vacant lots. After hiking 15-20 minutes, you reach Unter den Linden, where some seedy, Soviet-style reconstruction has taken place, but there are few people, you’re barred from Pariser Platz because it’s too close to Brandenburg Gate and the wall. Buildings and people give a gloomy impression.

Once we took the S-Bahn to the major station at Friedrichstrasse, just north of Unter den Linden, where there was a border crossing. I remember that at that time you had to change a certain amount of West marks for East marks on an unfair one-to-one basis, then try to see what you could spend the East marks on, since you had to use them or lose them.

If you picture people getting a divorce and dividing up the house, you can understand what east and west were like. I don’t know what they did about water supply, sewage, electricity, but ownership of the S-Bahn (more on that later) in both parts of the city went to the East, so people in the West usually boycotted it, and ownership of the U-Bahn in both parts went to the west, resulting in the following curiousity, which we went out of our way to experience.

You get on U-Bahn line 6, going north under Friedrichstrasse approaching from the south the East Berlin “bulge” of Mitte. The train makes all stops in the West through Kochstrasse. Then you go under Checkpoint Charlie along Friedrichstrasse and you’re under the East. All stations are closed, with East German guards making sure the train doesn’t stop. The conversation level in the train noticeably drops. Pass a darkened Stadtmitte station. Pass Französische Strasse. Stop at Friedrichstrasse, since those with proper papers can go through customs here. Then pass a couple of more stations before arriving at the first station again in the west, where the conversation level in the train noticably picks up again. Some way to live.

The last point about the “past years” involves Steinstücken, which is an exclave of Berlin located as an enclave in Potsdam. I referred to this last year when we visited Baarle, with the multiple Belgian exclaves in that town in the Netherlands. I had discussed the interest we always had in enclaves, although Steinstücken is no longer an international problem, just a local quirk again.

When Berlin was consolidated in 1920, a piece of one of the towns in the southwest that became part of Berlin was, for some reason, an exclave in Potsdam. It’s one of those oddities, and no one paid much attention. It wasn’t even much of an issue when Potsdam became part of East Germany, since the people could still cross over all borders. The problem arose with the wall, because all of a sudden, here was a piece of West Berlin surrounded by East Germany. The issue was on the verge of becoming an international incident by a point, I think, in the 1970’s (I don’t know how the problem was handled before that). I do remember an issue of Time Magazine with the subject of Steinstücken on the cover. What was done at that point was this: a wall was built around Steinstücken and a short corridor was opened through Potsdam to connect it to West Berlin, the wall running up both sides of the corridor as well. On the map, it looked as though a cherry were hanging from the southwest corner of Berlin. If the wall was already an abomination, this detail was just beyond all reason.

We were going to Berlin that particular year, and we wanted to visit Steinstücken. We found which city bus would take us there. We were the only ones on the bus, since it was the middle of the day and the population of this area couldn’t have been that large. Maybe it’s four to six blocks square. It was a wooded area, and the bus went down a road. We came to the wall, but the road went through, with continuations of the wall down both sides. We felt totally encompassed by the wall on both sides of the bus. In maybe twenty seconds we were there, and the bus stopped. We’d made it to Steinstücken, but there was nothing but houses there, so we stayed in the bus until it returned a few minutes later. It was still an unnerving experience.

Berlin 2000   In 2000, after seeing Mainz, the border areas, and a number of Eastern cities, it was time to go back to Berlin. After all our visits, we would finally see how it looked as a normal city. We would also visit Potsdam for the first time, and because of the way hotel scheduling worked, we’d visit Potsdam first (with some trips into western Berlin) for a few days, then drive the hour south to visit Dresden, and then come back to stay in Berlin Mitte for five days. I was apprehensive, but in a positive way, as to what we would see.

Approaching Potsdam, I made the decision to visit Steinstücken first, to the east of downtown Potsdam in a neighborhood of villas. It was the slight change in the street pattern first that indicated I might be there, then I did find a sign that said Stadt Berlin/City of Berlin. Otherwise, Steinstücken blended into Potsdam. I drove around the “cherry” to find the “stem”, the corridor road. There was a pleasant little road (part of Potsdam, of course), totally wooded on both sides, and I drove up it until again there was a sign saying Stadt Berlin. I did a second turn on the road, since it was so hard to believe. Things were so normal! The enclave blended into the town. The road blended into the forest parkland. If I hadn’t known how it had been, I would never, never have believed that the wall had run up and down the sides of that little road, plus around the enclave. The people living in Steinstücken must have a hard time explaining things to their grandchildren. The kids would probably more readily believe Rotkäppchen/Little Red Riding Hood lived in those woods than that a wall had run through it and around them.

We drove past the Babelsberg Film Studios where so many of the famous German prewar films had been made, such as Der blaue Engel/The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich and Emil Jannings. Downtown Potsdam didn’t do too well under the East German regime. It lost some monuments and the buildings sorely needed a lot more restoration. I assume a lot has been done in the five years since. Potsdam must have been a beautiful city, and hopefully, can be one again. We visited Schloss Sanssouci/Sansouci Palace. Actually, we saw the palace, but touring it seemed impractical with the wheelchair. I did roll that chair through the entire Schlosspark/Castle Park from end to end. Particularly interesting was the restored Chinese Teahouse, with brightly gilded statues of Chinese figures.

The Potsdam hotel I had found in Michelin to stay in for the few days was very special. It was the Cäcilienhof. It had been built just before WWI as a manor house for minor nobility in the style of an English hunting lodge, and had its own spacious grounds. You couldn’t feel any further from a big city there. However, this is the only hotel we ever stayed at that had its own historic museum. You may have heard the name before, since this was the building that the Potsdam Conference was held in. Hotel guests, along with outsiders, toured the historic rooms and saw the round table used at the conference.

After our run down to Dresden, I headed for downtown Berlin, and I’ll never forget the feeling I had when, with dropped jaw, I rode north on a Friedrichstrasse filled with traffic, past a replica of the little white wooden house that constituted Checkpoint Charlie, and saw blocks and blocks ahead of me of a perfectly normal street. The buildings were in traditional German style and had already been around for the better part of a decade, so didn’t look over-new. I’ll say it again: Things were so normal! I went around the block and drove up the street again just to confirm that that wasteland we remembered was a normally functioning city. We stayed free on Starwood points at the Westin Grand on Friedrichstrasse at the corner of Unter den Linden. Once settled, I walked with Bev in the wheelchair over all of Mitte, which was a virtual construction site. Pariser Platz didn’t have much rebuilt yet, but we walked through the Brandenburg Gate and up to the Reichstag. We had visited the building before, but this time wanted to see the new glass dome that Sir Norman Forster had designed. After an elevator ride, you go up the dome on a spiral ramp with great views of the city.

We drove up to Bernauer Strasse, which seemed normal, but proper monuments had not yet been established. Potsdamer Platz was totally, but totally under construction, so there was really nothing to see there yet. I really wanted to see how the S-Bahn was being rebuilt and re-connected, and also the improvements to the U-Bahn, so I got a day ticket for both of us and a map of the wheelchair-accessible stations, and we spent an afternoon zipping around town. It goes without saying that we connected to U-Bahn line 6, and watched it stop, after Kochstrasse, at beautifully refurbished stations at Stadtmitte, Französische Strasse, and the others.

Beverly had been corresponding with her pen pal Gerda since teenage years, and we’d gotten together with Gerda and Heinz in northern Germany many times over the years. Ingbert had been an exchange student in Minnesota and we’d visited with him and his wife Ingeborg many times over the years. I had contacted them both, said we’d be in Berlin, and wondered if they could meet us there for a Wiedersehen. I was so glad that they were all willing and able to make it. The couples had never met each other, and we took all six of us out to dinner twice. It was a memorable time, and it was the last time they ever saw Beverly.

From the point of view of the performing arts, prewar Berlin must have been a fascinating place. We have recordings of Marlene Dietrich singing songs from that era. Her most famous are of course Lili Marleen and Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuss auf Liebe eingestellt/Falling in Love Again.

But one of our favorites is “Unter’n Linden”, which describes how much fun it was, and actually, is again, to promenade there with your girlfriend. The geography is this: Pariser Platz (and the Brandenburg Gate) are at the western end of Unter den Linden, and Friedrichstrasse, where Café Bauer used to be, bisects it.

The translation’s good, and I got the rhythm to match. I just couldn’t get it to rhyme. Anyway, this song’s a favorite of ours, and I used it to advantage. On that last visit to Berlin that the two of us made together, we started at the Friedrichstrasse intersection, where Café Bauer used to be, and we promenaded down Unter den Linden with me singing this verse several times. By the time we reached Pariser Platz, Unter den Linden had had its affect!

Berlin 2005   This year then was my first solo visit back to Berlin. I like a lot of big cities, but I’ve watched poor decimated Berlin grow and grow, and will continue to do so. It has so much to offer, and will remain a construction site for some time to come, so I’ll have to keep on going back. One of Marlene Dietrich’s songs was the plaintive Ich hab’ noch einen Koffer in Berlin/I Still Keep a Suitcase in Berlin. The concept of the song might have just been a casual reference years ago to keep coming back, but now that Berlin is again becoming the crossroads of Central Europe, and since I’ve been keeping an eye on it for over four decades, I feel I have a proverbial suitcase waiting for me there.

When sitting in the Adlon lounge and library on the MS Deutschland last December in the Caribbean I said I’d be staying at the Adlon in Berlin, and that is what I booked, online. You cannot get a better location. I arranged for a three-day summer discount package, but since I wanted a room right on Unter den Linden (and I got top floor, the 6th) it was a bit higher still.

Before leaving New York, I rented the 1932 film “Grand Hotel” with Wallace Beery, Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore, and an incredibly young Joan Crawford. Garbo plays a Russian ballerina with her tag line of “I want to go home” to Russia, which is ironic, since I had just come from Moscow. The film describes the mixture of stories and fates of its characters in a big Berlin hotel, and it is very clearly modelled on the Adlon, which was the quintessential hotel of its day. The film was unfortunately shot just on a Hollywood lot, including exteriors at the end where they get in a taxi to go to Friedrichstrasse Station.

The original Adlon was built in 1907 and immediately became the social and political center of Berlin life. Even the Kaiser liked to come and stay there. It almost survived the war, even when the rest of Pariser Platz was bombed out around it, but in 1945 it succumbed to a fire. Being opposite Brandenburg Gate, its site was inaccessible during the East German years. A new, traditional-looking, yet contemporary hotel was rebuilt in 1997 and was dedicated by the President of Germany.

Considering what I had watched happen over the years, I couldn’t be more pleased when I opened my window, looked to the left, and saw: the recently refurbished Brandenburg Gate with the huge Tiergarten Park behind it, and just north of it, the back of the Reichstag Building with its glass dome; Pariser Platz in front of the Gate, continuing to Unter den Linden below my window where I had promenaded with Beverly five years ago. Actually, at that time I had taken her into the Adlon just for a look-see in the lobby, so when this time I saw the wheelchair entrance and ramp, I thought of that visit.

Pariser Platz I suppose could be called Paris Square, although like in the St Petersburg situation where Place des Arts sounded better, here I think Place de Paris sounds best, but everyone says Pariser Platz. The Brandenburg Gate and some other buildings are at the west end, opposite Unter den Linden on the east end. Pedestrian traffic goes straight through, but not vehicular traffic, so Unter den Linden is now a dead end in its last block in front of the hotel, making it quieter. Buildings have been rebuilt on the north side, including the French Embassy, back at its traditional location. Part of the south side is rebuilt, and the only thing still missing on the whole of Pariser Platz is the rebuilt American Embassy (bless their slow-moving hearts) back on its old site in the southwest corner. At least construction is in progress.

Linden are linden trees, although I occasionally see it translated as “lime trees”. The name means “Under the Lindens”, and doesn’t use the word for street or avenue. In another part of Berlin there’s an Unter den Eichen/Under the Oaks.

Every day there was a Leierkastenmann/Organ Grinder in Pariser Platz. That unfortunately has totally died out in the US. I remember that the Netherlands has a society that funds having all kinds of organ grinders in the street. Marlene Dietrich also has a song called Lieber Leierkastenmann/Dear Organ Grinder.

Now picture this: the east side of the square has the start of Unter den Linden in the center, but the Adlon, in the southeast corner, has its front on Unter den Linden and part of its west side on Pariser Platz, so the Adlon’s restaurants and wraparound sidewalk café have incomparable views of the illuminated Brandenburg Gate and other buildings on the square. It’s the perfect location. As a balance, the building across the street has the same corner view—and it includes a Starbuck’s! Morover, a few doors down on Unter den Linden is a Dunkin’ Donuts—it’s a new world.

North of the Reichstag are the new parliamentary buildings of the German Government, and a new Central Railroad Station is being built to replace all the multiple pre-war stations. When this is done, Berlin will be one of the few major capitals with one single central station, helping to make it even more a major rail crossroads.

The street on the right side of the Adlon is the Wilhelmstrasse, where some parliamentary buildings are also going up, and the British Embassy is back behind the Adlon in its old location on Wilhelmstrasse.

Unter den Linden is not that long. Eastbound, once you reach Friedrichstrasse, you’re halfway to the end. The historic buildings have been rebuilt and refurbished, including the Library, the Humboldt University, the Opera House, and others. But at the end there’s been a problem.

The street bends left and on its right side had been the Berliner Schloss/Berlin Castle, so this building closed the view on the east end of Unter den Linden as the Brandenburg Gate closed it in the west. However, the building had been severly damaged (but repairable) and the East Germans in their infinite wisdom not only tore it down, they replaced it with a cheap-looking metal and glass building they used as their Parliament. That’s been closed for years, and then they found it had an asbestos problem. I was delighted to find out just on this trip that the government is now going to rebuild Berlin Castle in its traditional place. These means more trips for me to Berlin to check on its progress.

The five severely damaged museums on the Museumsinsel/Museum Island, which are a UNESCO World Heritage Site and were a major museum center before the war, are also being repaired and should be finished in a few years.

I went to see the oldest Jewish cemetery in Berlin that had been totally ruined by the National Socialists. It now has only a few graves left and is a park. It’s unter Denkmalschutz to preserve at least what’s left for the future.

Directly behind the Adlon is the brand-new Holocaust Memorial, which is quite unique. Below ground is the more conventional museum part. Above ground is a large city block full of steles, which are large black blocks of stone about two yards by one. There are hundreds of them, all in straight rows, with dozens and dozens of pathways between them. The pathways go up and down like a rollercoaster, and sometimes one side is higher than the other, so that nothing is predictable. The steles blend right into the urban fabric. For instance, the first are flush with the sidewalks around the site, the next few are bench-height. But then as you walk one of the paths, especially as the path goes down, the height of the steles goes up, so that the central ones are twice a person’s height. There is no right or wrong way to walk through the memorial. As you do walk, you do get surprised by, and possibly bump into, people walking paths perpendicular to yours. I believe the purpose is to show the uncertainty of persecution, where you never know what will happen next.

Two blocks further south is the new Potsdamer Platz. It is a totally modern conception. Potsdam Square before the war was perhaps the busiest intersection in Europe. It had more streetcar lines converging than anywhere else in Europe. It was the location of the first traffic light in 1924 in all of Europe. The only concession to the past is a reconstruction of that rather unique-looking traffic light that really does work. Otherwise, it’s all modern construction around pedestrian streets, one of which ends at the new Marlene-Dietrich-Platz.

On my last day in Berlin I got a day ticket to see what progress has been made on rebuilding the U-Bahn (Untergrundbahn/Underground Railroad or subway) and the S-Bahn (Stadtbahn/City Railroad, mostly above ground). In Berlin you don’t enter a turnstile to reach a train. You just walk in from the street and get on the subway. Of couse if you don’t have a ticket that you’ve validated at a special machine and a Control comes through, you have quite a fine to pay. It’s amazing how efficient the S-Bahn is and how you don’t notice it. It runs on viaducts between buildings, or off to the side and out of the way. It also seems cushioned for sound. It is nothing like American elevateds that were foolishly put right down the middle of streets, made a great deal of noise, and have been, to a large extent, removed en masse. Riding the S-Bahn is a pleasant experience, and the system is being improved all the time. Of course, I’ll have to go back and check again, since I’ve still got that “suitcase in Berlin”.

The overnight sleeper out of Berlin early in the morning went through Brussels at 4 (51) to reach Paris at 2 (49) later that morning. I immediately bought a three-day pass for the métro to get around. As in Moscow, in Paris machines suck in your ticket, read it, and spit it out again on top.

Paris   As I’ve said, I stopped in Paris in order to stay at the recently refurbished Le Grand Hôtel, which dates from 1862, now the Intercontental Le Grand Hôtel, where I stayed in 1957 on my first ever trip to Europe and where I read the sign that said “avec ou sans filtre” (2004 Series 24). I just felt I had to complete the circle.

I must admit that, although the outside of the hotel is familiar, nothing inside was familiar except for the high-ceilinged rooms. But it was good to be back again where so much had started for me. The hotel is triangular to fit the triangular block formed by the three major streets around it, except for the southeast point, which is cut off because it abuts Place de l’Opéra, with the beautiful Opera House full of columns, marble statues, gilt figures, and everything that a proper beaux-arts building would have. It is now called the Opéra Garnier, since the nondescript concrete bunker of the Bastille Opera opened some years ago.

To me there are two impressive things about the refurbished Le Grand Hôtel. One is the lobby, which has more polished mahoganny paneling than I have ever seen. The paneling must have high-sheen polyurethane on it since it just glows. I just loved to stand in the elevator waiting area looking at the paneling. The other thing is the fact that, in that cut-off southeast point of the building is the world-famous Café de la Paix. It has an outside terrace which I remember using in 1957, and the most gorgeous interior you could imagine. It’s Rococo, with columns, angels, ceiling paintings, much in shades of gold. It’s like being in a palace—maybe better. And the Café de la Paix is where the buffet breakfast was served both mornings I was there.

I had booked this accommodation online as well. Then a nice thing happened. As I was checking in, I told the reservationist that I was coming back to the hotel for the first time since 1957. Was there any chance I could have a room with an Opéra view? I can be charmingly innocent when I want to. She went in the back to check with someone. Yes, and it would be ready in a few minutes. When I checked back, the young man looked at the room I got and said, boy, did I get an upgrade. I suppose it’s similar to the wheelchair upgrades I used to get with Beverly.

The room was just one flight up (out of six), had what were easily 15-foot ceilings, and was not only on the Place de l’Opéra, I faced the Opera House right across the street at a 45-degree angle. I was almost too close. From across the room it was like seeing just the chest of a giant, and only when you went to the window could you see the whole giant. Both the living room and bathroom opened onto a very shallow balcony, and this was the only floor that had them. I regularly went outside to look at my view. As you may imagine, the Opera House was illuminated at night.

We were in Paris just two years ago, but driving. It was wonderful to drive down the Champs-Élysées and out to the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes on the opposite edges of town, where we’d never been before, but now once again I was a pedestrian, so I walked down the nearby Rue de la Paix, home to Cartier and other high-end shops, and through the beautiful Place Vendôme. The Ritz Hotel is there, which gives us the word “ritzy”, so I stopped in to see the inside. I went inside Notre Dame, which we hadn’t done in some time. As a pedestrian, I was able to use the métro to move around. Some of the lines have beautiful new trains. I was particularly impressed with a couple of lines that had totally articulated cars. Sometimes buses are articulated, having two sections connected by an accordeon area, but these trains had very large and nicely articulated connections, and had them throughout the train, which, to me, is a whole new concept. No longer do you really have separate cars connected like sausages. Instead you have on these trains a long hollow interior running the length of the train. If we had had that on the TSRR, moving forward or back in the train would have been so much easier.

In the evening I went back to where we had stayed two years ago, on the Avenue George V off the Champs-Élysées in the Hôtel Prince de Galles. I really like that neighborhood better. I went to the Bistro de l’Olivier/Olive Tree Bistro, where we had had a nice dinner one time on our last visit. I asked the owner, who I recognized, for the same corner table we had had, and told him about Beverly: Elle est décedée. He was so nice. He treated me on a glass of champagne as an apéritif, and after I had paid for dinner, including the glass of Grand Marnier I had ordered, he treated me on a second one. It was a nice tribute to Beverly.

I continued down the Avenue George V to the Seine. Here, just before the avenue goes over a bridge is the Place de l’Alma. Standing here, you have nice views in most directions, including the Eiffel Tower to the southwest and the Sacré Coeur atop Montmartre to the northeast. The road along the river goes under the Place de l’Alma at this point, and this is the underpass where Princess Diana died. I had quickly taken a look here last time, but had double parked and popped out with Beverly still in the car. Now I could take more time. I took a lot more time.

This place is not marked for the accident in any way, yet everybody knows it’s here. There’s a low wall around three sides of where the roadway emerges from the underpass. Along the top of this wall, people have been writing messages on the stonework since the accident. The rain washes all but the most recent away, but there are plenty being added all the time (you can tell, because many are dated). The ones in English are only maybe about 25%, and are clearly not only from Brits, but Australians, Americans, and other English speakers. A sample: “Good night our sweet princess.” and also “You weren’t only England’s princess but also America’s”.

You’d be amazed at the languages represented. The Travelanguist, reporting on the spot with pen and pad in hand, can’t help you with the ones in Chinese, Polish, and Lithuanian (it said Vilnius under the signature), but note these:

French: “Lady Diana, toujours dans nos coeurs, repose en paix.” (“Lady Diana, always in our hearts, rest in peace.”)

Spanish: “España llora tu pérdida.” (“Spain weeps for losing you.”)

Portuguese: “Diana no meu coração.” (“Diana in my heart.”)

A rather dark one in Italian: “Ti hanno voluto morta, ma sei sempre viva nei nostri cuori.” (“They wanted you dead, but you’re always alive in our hearts.”)

German: “Prinzessin Diana, auch wir Deutschen vermissen Dich sehr.” (“Princess Diana, we Germans also miss you a lot.”) and “In Gedenken an Dich, Diana.” (“In tribute to you, Diana.”)

And please do not think that in today’s modern world, Cyrillic hasn’t made it literallly to the banks of the Seine:

Russian: “Диана, мы скорбим по тебе./Diana, my skorbim po tyebye.” (“Diana, we grieve for you.”)

The next day was my last full day in Paris, and I persued the cemetery theme with a vengeance. I went to the granddaddy of all cemeteries, frequently visited by tourists and others, Père Lachaise. Beverly and I had gone there years ago, and we had particularly fond memories about the Edith Piaf site.

The cemetery is on a hill, and the day was hot, so there was a lot of resting. From the main chapel there was a nice view over Paris. I saw Colette, Rossini, Haussmann (who created the boulevards of Paris), Molière, Corot, Alphonse Daudet, Victor Hugo, Modigliani, Proust, Balzac, Delacroix, and others.

Together were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, who died many years later.

I’m not overly familiar with Jim Morrison (and am not sure I want to be), but I knew it was worth seeing that site. There was a stream of visitors to it, and it was watched over by a guard. It was also rather cramped and hidden behind other stones. Some visitors were commenting that his bust was missing, but I don’t know anything about that.

It is also a well-known fact that Oscar Wilde is buried at Père Lachaise. I can’t remember that Beverly and I saw it the first time. I’m afraid it is a sight to see. It’s very high and massive, and very modern. A sign says it was designed by the sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein. Although Wilde’s name is written quite large, it’s hard to see, and I almost walked past it, except for the fact that someone was taking a picture of it. The reason the name is hard to read is that there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of red lipstick kisses all over the monument. A sign to the side in French implores people not to defile the memory of Oscar Wilde by defacing his monument, but that doesn’t seem to stop people.

There were fresh flowers on Chopin’s grave. When I got there, there were three people humming tunes by Chopin for quite a while.

Later on I came across the grave of Gilbert Bécaud, which wasn’t on Michelin’s list, probably because he died too recently, in 2001. He’s a contemporary singer of people like Edith Piaf, and the same three people were humming some of his chansons, but I’m really not quite as familiar with his work.

I was having trouble finding Sarah Bernhardt, and walked back and forth again and again to no avail. I then asked some people who had a different map, and we figured out where she was, also hidden behind some other stones.

When I had walked way across to the other side of the cemetery, two little ladies without a map came up to me (remember, I have “Info” tattooed on my forehead, apparently in Roman as well as Cyrillic) and asked if I knew how to get to—you guessed it--Edith Piaf. I shouldn’t have been surprised, since she’s one of the most popular ones in Père Lachaise. The ladies had a long walk. Oh, là, là, mesdames, c’est très loin. Vous prenez cette route .... If the Travelanguist accepts info to find Bernhardt, he gives it to others to find Piaf.

A digression here about German names in French. There are many, since many people in Alsace-Lorraine are ethnically German. The French notoriously pronounce these names as though they were French words, sometimes with amusing results. If I had asked for (the Frenchwoman) Sara Bernhardt using the standard English/German pronunciation, I doubt if they would have understood me. In French the lady is sa-RA bair-NAR. Emile Durkheim, the philosopher, is dür-KANH. Waldteufel, who wrote the Skater’s Waltz, is vol-tö-FEL. Those are all Frenchman, but the German poet, Heinrich Heine, fares even worse. First of all, in French he’s Henri Heine. And his last name is pronounced ENN. Picture it: anh-RI ENN.

Père Lachaise didn’t satisfy my cemetery urge for the day. I went to the Montparnasse cemetery, where I found Sartre, the American actress Jean Seberg, and Bartholdi, whose stone had a reference to La Statue de la Liberté. I also went to the Montmartre cemetery, but it was late afternoon and it was about to close, so, despite an interesting list of eight prospects, I’ll leave that for another time.

Edith Piaf   Edith Piaf is one of those people, such as Judy Garland and Elvis Presley, who lived their lives too fast and too intensely, and died, to the consternation of their friends and fans, as physical wrecks while still in their forties.

She was born in poverty as Edith Gassion, and sang on the streets of Paris for coins. Her life was riddled with larger and smaller tragedies, such as having her illegitimate daughter die at the age of two. She was a tiny woman, and usually performed in her signature little black dress. When she auditioned to get her first job singing in a nightclub, it was commented that she looked like a kid, une môme, and was tiny as a sparrow, un piaf. Thus her first nickname was La Môme Piaf, The Sparrow Kid, or Kid Sparrow, and her stage name became Edith Piaf, Edith (the) Sparrow. [I refer the worthy reader to my great surprise at finding Piaf on my wall in 2003 Series 14.]

She wrote or collaborated on many of her songs. Her fame spread, but it was pointed out to her that no one knew her across the Atlantic. She learned English, translated some of her songs to English, and in the 1950’s appeared regularly in New York.

A digression here for a lovely language point. She had been named after Edith Clavell, a British nurse who had been killed in the First World War and whose name had become iconic throughout the allied countries. As I recall, there’s a Mount Edith Clavell in the Canadian Rockies. At any rate, Edith is not a common name in French, but it is pronounced ay-DEET. When she came to sing in New York, she was amazed at the English pronunciation of her first name. She wrote to her sister Simone, nicknamed Momone: “Momone, here they call me I-diss!”

She was always looking for love, and a loving relationship. Could it be ascribed to her upbringing? Who knows? She had plenty of love affairs, some with famous entertainers, but she always moved on.

The great love of her life with a French boxer named Michel Cerdan. When she was working in New York once, he had just finished a series of appearances in France and was planning on taking a ship to New York to come and see her, which was the standard mode of travel in those years. She was so eager to see him that she talked him into flying the Atlantic. The plane crashed and he was killed. She was doubly devastated by his death and the fact that she was the one that had talked him into flying, against his will.

Later in her life, in the fifties, she had fun playing around with her image. She recorded “L’homme à la moto”, which became famous in the US as “Black Leather Jackets and Motorcycle Boots.”

In the last year or two of her life, she said she had finally found happiness, in the form of a young Greek named Théo Lamboukas, who she married. However, he was half her age and the media had a field day. It of course didn’t bother her a bit.

Beverly and I had been married only a few months when the news of two deaths in France on the same day came through. We had heard that Jean Cocteau had died earlier in the day. I remember very clearly that Beverly was standing at the ironing board ironing when the news came through on the radio that Edith Piaf also died later that very same day.

Piaf at Père Lachaise   As I’ve said, Beverly and I had both visited Piaf’s grave a number of years ago, and the memory of what it said had stayed clearly with us over the years. This trip I revisited it.

It’s on a slight slope in the shade. Like many of the tombs, it’s not a headstone but a lower slab of stone supporting a large coffin-sized slab above, which had a huge crucifix on it. Because of the slope it was possible to sit back on the neighboring tomb diagonally across on the right. People kept coming and going, since this is one of the more popular spots. People still brought flowers, even after all these years. There were maybe 40 bouquets of fresh flowers all around the grave, on top of the stone almost hiding the crucifix, and continuing around the neighboring tombs, those to the left, and those behind the head of the tomb.

There were three handwritten notes next to the crucifix. One said “Merci pour la musique (Thanks for the music)”, another “Merci beaucoup pour les chansons (Thanks a lot for the songs)”, the third “Danke schön für die wunderschönen Lieder (Thanks a lot for the wonderful songs)”.

At the foot of the tomb is inscribed FAMILLE GASSION-PIAF and on the sides the names of her daughter that had died, and presumably, her father. But the principal inscription next to her father is what’s so meaningful. It says:

(“dite” means “called”). If ever an inscription gave an entire biography, this is it. She wanted to be remembered primarily that she died having a loving relationship, and, oh, by the way, she was also a world-famous singer. As you can see, she was 48.

Théo’s inscription is to the right:

He apparently also had a stage name. A little math shows he was 27 when she died at 48. It’s also surprising that he didn’t live as long as she did, dying at 34.

I wasn’t planning on doing anything but moving on to my next stop, but on a whim I did two things. On a corner of the paper with the German inscription, where there was a lot of space, I wrote “Merci à la Môme Piaf” and my initials.

I had been at Chopin and Bécaud, where people were singing the appropriate music. At the moment, no one else was nearby, so, sitting on the edge of that next tomb and looking down diagonally, I quietly serenaded la Môme Piaf with two of her best-known songs.

Then I skipped ahead a bit in the song:

So far, this is typical Piaf, cynically throwing out the past.

And this is Piaf even moreso. Why is she throwing out the past? She’s not being cynical. She has a new loving relationship. I think this song of hers says exactly the same thing her inscription says, and it was perfectly à propos for me to sing it.

[Later insertion in March 2008: Here’s Piaf singing it on YouTube: Edith Piaf: Je ne regrette rien Now here’s Marion Cotillard playing Piaf in the 2007 film La vie en rose. Look how Cotillard, whose actual age is 33, appears so stooped and jowly as the aging Piaf toward the end, particularly at 1:33. I think it’s obvious why Marion Cotillard won an Oscar this year as Best Actress for this role. It isn’t surprising also that the other Oscar the film won was for Best Makeup: Cotillard Wins Best Actress Oscar]

Piaf’s most famous song, either in French or English has to be La vie en rose. Just as you would talk about buying dress in red, not in green, this expression is literally “life in rose”. It has the idea of “seeing life through rose-colored glasses”, but it simply states that you want to live your “life in rose” and not any other way. The convention in this song is to always keep that expression in French, even in the English version, and I will follow this convention.

The other issue that comes up is that Piaf’s standard English translation starts out “When you take me in your arms”. By using “you”, her English version avoids the gender conflict in the French version, which starts out “When he takes me in his arms”. But Beverly and I never resorted to the English version, we always sang songs in the original, which means we had to solve this gender problem. When we sang it together, she always sang Piaf’s original, and I always transposed it to the French for “When she takes me in her arms”. It is this transposed version of mine that I always sang to Beverly, and that I also quietly sang to Edith Piaf.

Here’s Piaf singing it in the original, standard version on YouTube: Edith Piaf: La vie en rose Adieu, adieu.

London   Taking Eurostar from Paris, there was only one stop, at Lille/Rijssel, in Northern France, where Beverly and I had boarded last summer, so from here on in, I was retracing last summer’s trip, except for staying in a different London hotel (2004 Series 14). Eurostar then whisked me under the Channel to Waterloo International in London at 0W10 (52). Greenwich, with the prime meridian at 0 is in East London, so I completed the fourth quadrant and was now about to start the part of the first quadrant back to New York. I got day pass on London Underground (sucks ticket in, returns it). I hadn’t been on the Underground for quite sometime, and I wanted to see some familiar lines, and some new lines, like the Jubilee Line, and the short East London line. Primarily I wanted to see the by now not so new DLR, the Docklands Light Rail, in the rebuilt areas of East London. The trains look like heavy rail to me, are mostly above ground on viaducts, and, although they run automatically, do seem to still keep conductors overseeing them. The line I took actually did go to Greenwich, so I was back at zero degrees for a bit. The only above-ground looking around I did was rail-related in North London. I went to Euston Station, where some years ago they tore down the historic station building to put up a nondescript steel-and-glass structure. A couple of blocks away is the new structure of the British Library. They listed that they have a copy of Magna Carta and other interesting items, so I’ll have to put that on my mental list for the future. Right nearby was St Pancras and Kings Cross stations. Kings Cross is yellow brick and has its two distinctive huge arches in the front. St Pancras is a Victorian wedding-cake palace. It’s being restored right now, and they are working on having the station ready for receiving the Eurostar service in the future.

I stayed in the charming Goring Hotel, dating from 1910, located right behind Buckingham Palace and near Victoria Station. I’d read a lot about it, and it is a fine, old-style, full-service Edwardian hotel, about to complete its first century. The service is so discrete. When I had a drink in the bar in the evening and at breakfast in the morning they just discretely asked me my room number; they didn’t have to ask me to crassly sign for anything. Knowing that I like a Kir Royale, and that Beverly and I started to enjoy Pimm’s Cup, I tried in the bar the Goring Pimm’s Royale, which includes champagne as well, and it was quite refreshing. When Beverly and I stayed at that Victorian hotel attached to Victoria station a few years ago, I had checked out the Goring, and now I got to stay there. Between the two is the lovely triangular park called Grosvenor Gardens, and I remember sitting there with Beverly enjoying the peace and quiet.

QM2   The next day I took the train for an hour and a half to Southampton at 1W25 (51). The train goes to Southampton Central, but I’ve now heard a rumor twice that, now that there’s more ship passengers in Southampton than even at the height of sea travel years ago, there is talk of possibly starting up once again the old boat train that brings you from London right onto the dock next to the ship. If that were to happen, it would be a sign to me that the proper civilization is returning to the world.

On the QM2 I made sure first I was seated at the Engineers’ table (I hadn’t been, but then was), and then went down to the medical facility. None of the doctors from last summer were on board this time, but I did speak to Sister [Nurse] Caroline and told her about Beverly. Not only did she remember me, she called me by name. I also spoke about Beverly to a number of other people working on the ship that were there last summer.

Dinner conversation was pleasant, but only occasionally as lively as it’s been in the past. I spent much of the crossing writing, catching up on everything since Russia. I was involved in three special cocktail parties before dinner, the Captain’s, the World Club (for frequent Cunard travelers), and the Senior Officers’, for being at an officers’ table. Most of the lectures didn’t attract me, except for some by someone talking about theater. He pointed out that, since the Elizabethans had a raked (sloped) stage in order to better see the actors, the front of the stage was literally downstage, and the back being higher, was literally upstage. Afterward, I went up and told the speaker about “box office” and “drumming up business” (2004 Series 7). He hadn’t heard either of them, and was glad to do so. Movies shown on board rarely interest me, but this time they showed the new film, “Ladies in Lavender” with Dame Judi Dench and Dame Maggie Smith, and since I had wanted to see it, I did and enjoyed it.

I have a very strong sense of geography, and, now, after this trip, I can visualize this “necklace” route around the world through North America and Eurasia and have a feeling for compactness of the globe that I didn’t have before. I also have a very strong urge that Canada was a very intergral part of this experience, and not some frivilous attachment. Although this trip lasted one day under seven weeks, it doesn’t seem to me to be more than a couple of weeks, three at most.

Starting from just over 1 degree West at Southampton the daily ship announcements of how many more degrees we kept on covering had more meaning than otherwise, up until returning to New York at 74 (41) to finish the early part of this first quadrant. It was also nice to keep adding hours, my last five extra hours of the whole trip.

Shortly before we arrived in New York I was aware of Beverly’s ashes in the waters around Jones Beach.

Leaving the ship, for the first time ever, I was able to use self-help. This is where, as long as you can manage your own luggage, you can get off the ship early, beat the crowds, and be on your way. This had never been possible with the wheelchair. Getting off early means the taxi lines were shorter, but this time, even though the taxi lines were nonexistant, I had another plan. I purposely walked over a few blocks to the subway and finished this railtrip on the Iron Road, taking the subway downtown to the Rector Street station and walking the last few blocks home.

[I was home by 9 AM and spent the day settling in. Just after 6 PM, as I was entering these last two letters onto the website at my demilune desk, the Queen Mary 2 sailed by right outside my windows down the Hudson and out to sea.]