Two days before setting off on this trip, first to Minneapolis, then to the US Southwest, I went to dinner with family at Wallsé, a favorite Austrian Restaurant in Greenwich Village. I had never met its chef, Kurt Gutenbrunner, who also runs Café Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie, but I had hopes. I’m glad to say that, during dinner we spotted him “working the room”, and he came over to our table for a chat. He gave us his card, which also included his third restaurant, Blaue Gans (Blue Goose) in Tribeca, which I have yet to visit. I chatted him up a bit, both in German and in English, including how we had studied in Austria, not only in Vienna but also in the area where his home town of Wallsee is located. I chided him about his re-spelling the name as Wallsé, in a pseudo-French style. I liked his answer: what else can you do when your former wife is French and wanted it that way? I also told him I had spoken with Wolfgang Puck at Spago in Los Angeles. His comment: now the only other Austrian I still have to meet is Arnold Schwarzenegger!

Validation   This travel-and-language Travelanguist website started in 2001 after we had resumed international travel in 2000 after a decade. In 2000 I wasn’t yet accustomed to the convenience of taking a laptop along when traveling, but starting in 2001 I started sending travel reports back. I found it completed and rounded out the experience to do so, and essentially became a part of the trip. But occasional travel e-mails back home do not a writer make, do they?

In 2004 we took the fateful crossing westbound on the Queen Mary 2, the one in which Beverly spent the whole trip in the ship’s hospital. It was a trip which she would only prove to survive by a couple of months. Calling one section of Reflections 2004 Series 15 “Beginning a New Phase” proved to be more prophetic than I realized. In any case, in a section called “Oxford University” I had the following paragraph. (This might be the first time I’ve ever quoted myself.)

Another speaker in the Oxford program ... was ... PD James, the author [of crime fiction, most notably] of the [Adam] Dalgliesh mysteries. She is now Baroness James. The talk I went to was one in which she was encouraging writers, mostly of fiction, but also nonfiction. Of the nonfiction, she said autobiographies, biographies and diaries are popular, and she emphasized the importance of one's developing one's own style. I of course couldn't resist, and went up to shake her hand afterwards. I told her I write a sort of travel and language journal that I self-publish on e-mail to family and friends. She gave me some supportive remarks. I know nothing will ever come of it, but it was fulfilling to feel I could talk "author to author" with someone of her caliber.

I still am impressed by that short conversation after her lecture. In time, some people asked for copies of earlier e-mail essays, and all the e-mails from 2001 on have now been edited onto the website for easier reference for anyone interested. The travel writing continued to have both a rail-and-sail bent, and just a bit of validation started to appear after I got to correspond with Eleanor Flagler Hardy in Louisville of the Society of International Railway Travelers (www.irtsociety.com). She appreciated some of my comments about improvements to their services and website, a number of which she and her husband Owen Hardy put into affect. Eleanor recently asked me if she may quote me (!!!) on occasion where needed, and I said with proper attribution, that would be fine. (I suppose then I wouldn’t have to quote myself!) I had Eleanor arrange my Transcántabrico trip, and she’s also doing the upcoming Blue Train, Rovos, and GrandLuxe for me. The IRT quarterly magazine is to die for if you like train travel. They recently had an entire article on the new Berlin Hauptbahnhof, which I’ve been reporting on as well. But, as usual, I digress.

It has now been three years since my brief conversation with PD James, and my dealings with Eleanor have proven to be a first step in a validation of the work on the website.

A shade more validation came with the upcoming Rovos rail trip in Africa (www.rovos.co.za). Someone I met sailing on the Göta Kanal in Sweden (rail-and-sail people stick together) heard I was interested in Rovos and called someone he knew about a discount. Word eventually came from the assistant to Rohan Vos, the owner (drop the middle syllable and you get Rovos), to the effect that “Discounts are granted to repeat clients but we do make exceptions of course, your booking a perfect example.... We would be honoured to have such a train enthusiast onboard.” I appreciate the recognition, but I wonder how the website influenced it, if at all.

Then came Minneapolis. Ever since riding the private Transsiberian train in 2005, run by GWTravel in the UK (www.gwtravel.co.uk), I’d been in e-mail touch with its principal, Tim Littler. GWTravel not only runs private trains in Russia, but also in China (Silk Road to Moscow), India, Tibet, Mongolia, Canada, and Africa, so Tim’s interests in the field are extensive, in travel in general, rail travel in particular, and luxury train travel most in particular. Over the last two years, we’ve had occasional correspondence, then Tim expressed an interest in our meeting (!!!). We considered the GrandLuxe trip in the Copper Canyon last January, but that trip was changed from the form originally planned, and was cancelled. We considered the Transcántabrico trip, but Tim had other commitments. Nothing seemed to work.

For reasons explained below, I had planned to go to Minneapolis this year earlier than usual, in late August. When Tim wrote in passing that he’d be in Minneapolis on business—the last part of August—we decided to try to work out getting together. He would have stayed one night, but expanded it to two so we could meet that day in between, and he also stayed at the Sofitel, where I’ve been staying for some time.

It was an invigorating 24 hours, very close to midnight-to-midnight. We had a chat on arrival, had lunch at the Sofitel, worked separately during the afternoon. We took the light rail downtown—I commented that with our rail interests, light rail was the only way to go. We stopped at the first of four downtown stops, at the Metrodome, to go to the Guthrie theater’s new viewing area, where you could see the bridge collapse. Then at the end of the light rail line, we walked to D’Amico Cucina, where I had made reservations. Conversations all day long were revelatory and interesting.

Tim got interested in rail watching trains running through his town to and from Manchester. In a school rail club he started arranging rail trips for members. His family had until recently run a fine wine business whose roots went back a couple of centuries, so his interests run deeply both in wine and rail. After arranging a luxury train trip for wine clients to the Champagne area of France, the rail travel aspect developed. Taking the initials GW from the name of the wine company, GWTravel was formed.

I’m glad I had chosen D’Amico Cucina, since their wine menu was extensive, and Tim found us an excellent white. Although rail discussions predominated, we discussed wine as well, and Tim was quite familiar with the famous wine cellar of Bern’s Steakhouse in Tampa. I would say “small world”, but with Tim, I should not have been surprised. Maybe my horizons are expanding enough nowadays so that the world is getting smaller for me, too.

Tim is informed on all aspects of rail, but I think I came reasonably close to holding my own. A case in point was India. I now know a lot more about rail gauges in India, and we also discussed the several luxury rail services available. By chance I had recently looked them up online, and I commented that some went to interesting places, and others didn’t seem to go anywhere at all of interest. I had apparently hit the nail on the head, since Tim explained that political interests that fund the special luxury trains in India had restricted where some can go, forcing the lines to lose money. Also, apparently the old British rail bureaucracy remains very much alive in India, with everything done in triplicate—with carbon paper. Whether it was wine or rail, I added to my education. Which, of course, is a prime purpose of travel.

Tim was also interested in my background, which I found flattering. I filled him in on all the language study and travel with Beverly, and made sure he understood that my connection with the city we were in came through her, so that we were in Beverly’s City.

I knew that all the guys in luxury rail must have known each other, but I was amazed to find out the extent. While we were waiting at the Metrodome rail station to go to dinner, Tim had to make a quick call. It turns out he just wanted to say hello to the guy in Denver that runs GrandLuxe. (!!!) Then I reminded him that I’d be meeting Rohan Vos on the Rovos train next June, and asked if I could give Rohan Tim’s compliments. Well, apparently Tim had been talking to Rohan on the phone only a day or two earlier, but I said “Tim, let me try to gain a couple of points here!”, and we had a good laugh.

I knew why I wanted to meet Tim, but I had wondered in an e-mail to him earlier why he had wanted to meet me. Then at dinner, he did point out a few things. He had had my entire commentary from 2005 about the GWTravel Transsiberian trip printed out and given to his marketing manager. Given that those commentaries run over six Series of essays, that is substantial, and also flattering.

He also said he realizes how long it takes to write material of substance (which is true, not forgetting the advance research to substantiate and broaden what you want to say). He had tried writing something that could have become a chapter to a book, and knew how long it took. He also felt it could have been edited down by half, which I doubt, but I know what he means.

Finally, Tim said he recalled and appreciated my distinction between travelers (British: travellers) and tourists, either on the website or in a private e-mail to him. Afterward, I re-organized my thoughts on the matter, which I sent him, and am including here as the next section.

I feel more and more validation for the travel-and-language writing on the website, particularly from Tim, who, as I told him face-to-face, I’m nominating as “King of MY World”. After we parted, Tim would be doing a bit more travel in Canada and the US, then, after a quick stop home in the UK, would be going on to India to check out his train, while I would be flying to Albuquerque to drive to Los Angeles. It reminded me a bit of Christian Morgenstern’s Windgespräch in the last Series, with the Senior Wind doing Minneapolis-UK-India and the Junior Wind doing a mere Minneapolis-Albuquerque-LA. And that’s just fine with me.

Traveler vs. Tourist   I was pleased that Tim also found of interest my differentiation between Traveler and Tourist. I appreciate that, because I find the distinction fundamental to my outlook of what I do and what I describe on these pages. Originally a tourist was just someone on a tour, but now it’s used as a catchall word for anyone traveling, including vacationers, serious travelers, and others. I've referred more than once to the distinction between all these terms, but would now like to expand on it. Much of this comes from a half-century of travel, but a lot of the insight about people comes from 28 years of standing in front of a classroom.

Actually, being able to think logically to break down the categories below was enhanced by the fact that in the late Eighties I had learned the simple computer language called Basic, prepared the student manual used districtwide in my school district, and taught it myself to seventh graders full time in the last several years of my teaching career. No, a computer language is not language, but the logic of programming is evidenced below in my first putting aside the other categories, then leaving the field cleared at the end for my major point.

I will also note that my major point involves what could be called “travel-for-travel’s-sake” or perhaps “pure travel”, in other words, enjoying the history, the geography, the art and architecture, the story of peoples. Although I could, I really hate to use the S-Word, because it describes the matter at hand as such a frightfully trivial, throwaway concept, but I’ll use it once, just here: Sightseeing [ptui, ptui, ptui]. Of course, many people consider [S-Word] a trivial pastime in any case, to be either skipped or squeezed in between beach time and shopping. (Sadly, the S-Word—in English—has even slipped into other languages, maintaining its superficial meaning.) But that’s the point of this clarification.

You can take care of business without traveling. You can also vacation at home. You can even be an armchair traveler at home. But each of the three activities can also be done on a trip.

1) Business Traveler Add a trip to taking care of business and we first get the Business Traveler. With luck, he or she can also include some [S-Word], often very casually, and/or some vacation activities. But all or most of his or her time is devoted to business.

2) Vacationer A very large category of people on a trip would be the Vacationers, who will go somewhere as recreation; sitting by the pool, going to the beach, gambling, shopping, playing golf, tennis, hiking, or other sports—or partying. The Vacationer might also need to get a bit of business done, or might also do some [S-Word], but both of these would be minor activities compared to vacationing, or having “fun”.

3) Traveler or Tourist Having now put aside the Business Traveler and Vacationer, we come to the people who use a trip to spend the major part of their time becoming involved with PLACE or LOCATION, and find this to be fun. This is often very casually referred to as [S-Word], and maybe it should be if one’s purpose is less serious. That’s the distinction between a Traveler and a Tourist, as further discussed below. Of course, these people may get some business done, or may also do some vacationing, but in this case THOSE would be the minor activities. Here are some bases for a distinction.

A traveler engages in travel actively; a tourist does so passively.

A traveler's attitude is serious; a tourist's is casual at best, frivolous at worst.

A traveler is more likely to be traveling independently, either alone or with family or friends. A tourist, faithful to the original meaning of the word, is more likely to be on an organized tour.

A traveler, active by definition, is preinformed as to his travel; a tourist, passive by definition, waits for a guide's last-minute explanation. It follows that a traveler will retain any knowledge gained better than a tourist will, having done original research in advance. In addition, a traveler will even retain a guide's explanation better, since it just acts as reinforcement for his current knowledge.

Motivation is entirely different. A traveler travels to gain experience and knowledge, and to enhance his education. A tourist travels as entertainment, and his [S-Word] is often merely an incidental adjunct to vacationing.

We all on occasion will read about travel, or watch travel documentaries on television. When we do so it is with serious purpose, and we are called armchair travelers. We are NOT called armchair tourists. In these cases, the travel of others that we enjoy is vicarious, yet we gain both knowledge and (vicarious) experience. We are not vacationing in the armchair.

I am a traveler, as was Beverly. I do on occasion mix in the odd vacation activity, and even a business activity or two, but those are merely minor supplements to being a traveler. I on occasion have to play the part of a tourist, as when side tours are included in package trips, and I feel a bit hampered on those occasions when I can tell I’m being led around like a child. In addition, this Travelanguist website—even as indirectly as it developed out of writing e-mails to family and friends--is an excellent outlet for me to summarize for the record what I’ve learned and experienced from being a traveler.

I also have to regularly correct people I meet if they say I “vacation” so much, since they’re missing the point, since I’m just supplementing my education. Maybe I appear to be having so much fun as a traveler that they automatically assume I’m vacationing!

Minneapolis   Three things conspired so that I decided, almost a year earlier, to visit Minneapolis at the end of August this year, before leaving for the US Southwest, rather than in the fall, as I often have done of late. 1) I wanted to see the new Guthrie Theater, now at its new site on the river. 2) I wanted to see the musical “1776” that the Guthrie was doing this summer, since Beverly and I both have history with it, and liked it, and it was ending for the season on Sunday, August 26. 3) Our 45th anniversary would have been Saturday, August 25th. To me it was a no-brainer, and almost predestined, that I should get myself a ticket to the Saturday performance.

The original Guthrie Theater had opened in 1963 after Sir Tyrone Guthrie offered to a number of American cities to help build a premier regional theater. Minneapolis responded most enthusiastically of several cities, and the theater became fact, with its notable thrust stage. We saw a number of performances there over the years. Most notably in my mind was in the Guthrie’s first years the production of “Death of a Salesman” with no less than Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy. That performance was, with no doubt in my mind, the most spellbinding performance I have ever seen on any stage, anywhere. At the end, the audience was transfixed, almost stunned with what it had just seen, and there was not a dry eye in the house.

Typical for a minimalist thrust stage performance, there was little scenery, only a table here, a chair there. I also remember a great deal of darkness interspersed with floodlit areas on stage. But what was most unusual about the performance illustrates the power of theater. Jessica Tandy had broken her leg, and she did the entire performance not only in a wheelchair, but with a leg in a cast sticking straight out. She wheeled herself on and offstage, and it mattered not a whit that she wasn’t standing erect as you’d expect the character would, and it diminished her performance not at all. Maybe by showing this physical disability it might have even enhanced her performance as Willy Loman’s wife. But after the first two seconds you did not notice the wheelchair, or the fact that she was sitting down--that was the strength of this performance, and of theater’s ability to enrapture and envelope one’s perceptions.

At any rate, after four decades the Guthrie wanted to move and expand. The “old” building was torn down—I put “old” in quotes, since the original theater building came to Minneapolis one year AFTER I first did, to get married—and the new one was built on the Mississippi, in the rapidly and magnificently redeveloping downtown. The new one opened in June, 2006 and not only has the traditional thrust stage, but also a classical proscenium stage as well, plus many more facilities, and a marvelous view of the Mississippi.

When I heard, a couple of years before the Bicentennial, that a musical called “1776” was being written about the signing of the Declaration of Independence, I was incredulous, but we saw it and loved it. It also won the Tony that year for Best Musical. I also recall seeing the film version sometime afterward at Radio City Music Hall, while they were still showing films there. Then, during the summer of the actual bicentennial, when we heard that they were doing performances of “1776” in Philadelphia under a tent on Independence Mall across from Independence Hall and near the Liberty Bell, it was too good an idea to miss, so we went to Philadelphia and enjoyed it again. This is the “history” we had with the show that I referred to.

It’s humorous, has good music, and shows the signers as real people, trying to make difficult decisions. It’s incredible that, after they decided the decision had to be unanimous, that they eventually managed to make it so. The actions of many individuals stand out, particularly Caesar Rodney of Delaware, who was dying, yet appeared in time to swing the Delaware vote favorably. Except for allowing for some changes for improved dramatic effect, it really happened this way.

The fourth-floor deck extending out toward the river from the Guthrie affords an excellent view of the reviving downtown, in this area that used to be the “Milling District”. Just a few blocks to the right were visible the remnants of the bridge collapse of I-35W on August 1st this year, a bridge I had driven across on several occasions over the years.

Perhaps it was only to me (and to the Viennese) that another, very similar bridge collapse had taken place just over three decades ago, one that had eerie similarities. In the mid-seventies, the Reichsbrücke (Imperial Bridge) in the center of Vienna suddenly collapsed. It happened at 4:43 AM on a Sunday, with minimal fatalities at that hour (otherwise it carried 18,000 vehicles a day). When we studied at the University of Vienna for three weeks in 1971, we used to take the streetcar across the Reichsbrücke from where we were staying on the other side of the Danube, and when we went back to Vienna in Beverly’s last year, 2004, we drove across the modern bridge that replaced it, just for old time’s sake.

But the weird similarities between Vienna and Minneapolis are these. At the points in question, both the Mississippi and the Danube run NW-SE. Downtown Minneapolis and downtown Vienna both lie on their rivers facing NE. The bridges in question cross the rivers just to the east of downtown in both cases. The Reichsbrücke collapsed on an August 1. The I-35W bridge collapsed on an August 1. This last point is a real stretch, but I’ll make it anyway. The Reichsbrücke collapsed in nineteen SEVENTY-SIX, and the nearby Guthrie was playing “Seventeen SEVENTY-SIX” at the time of this collapse. Just a bit eerie.

I visited relatives and friends, and the restaurant dining was good. Following an article in the New York Times some months earlier about new dining venues in Minneapolis, I ate with relatives at Wolfgang Puck’s new restaurant in the Walker Art Center weirdly named “20-21” after the centuries of the modern art shown in the museum; I dined alone at Cue in the Guthrie; and dined with friends at Spoonriver across from the Guthrie, and this last one comes with a story.

A couple of years ago I took three elderly family members on a trip downtown using the light rail line, which they enjoyed. I found a certain Café Brenda near the last stop of the light rail, and while dining, met Brenda herself, who was delighted that not only had we made an extensive excursion with people using walkers, but had used the new light rail line. I had heard more about Brenda Langton and her activities downtown, and found out that Spoonriver is another restaurant of hers. When I stopped in to Spoonriver to say hello, although she didn’t at first recognize the face, as soon as I mentioned the walkers and light rail story, to my surprise she immediately remembered the incident and I got a hearty greeting. I find myself making more connections all the time, everywhere.

Standing right next to the Guthrie is what at first looks like a ruin—and it is--, but which in reality is the remnant of a flour mill that was later taken over by Pillsbury. It, General Mills, and the others are now located elsewhere, and the removal of industry over the last half-century is what is helping the downtown revival. Within the ruined building the Minnesota Historical Society has established the Mill City Museum, and the adjacent river area now encompasses Ruins Park.

As I explained in Reflections 2003 Series 3, Saint Paul started downriver from the originally settled area at Fort Snelling, and Saint Anthony started upriver from it at Saint Anthony Falls, on the north side of the river. Minneapolis grew on the south side and eventually engulfed Saint Anthony, which is now a Minneapolis neighborhood. But all the mills were built here on both sides of the falls, and the water power generated by the falls made Minneapolis Mill City.

Saint Anthony Falls is the only significant waterfall on the entire length of the river, but I’m mentioning this because of a new fact I just discovered at the museum. Just as Niagara Falls has carved its way backward through the terrain (Reflections 2005 Series 14), what is now Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis 12,000 years ago was instead located downriver in what is now Saint Paul! It was a full two miles wide and 200 feet high, making it larger than Niagara. However, over the years it carved its way eight miles upriver to its present site, and continued to diminish. It would in time have become nothing more than rapids in the Mississippi, but has been sustained by the construction of a dike to support it vertically. Unfortunately, the falls now look more like a spillway than a real waterfall, but I find impressive the fact that it has moved the distance it has over time, and was about to disappear.

A final point about the bridge collapse: after it happened, many pictures of it were being sent around online, and one of them that I got was a series of Russian satellite images someone had found and distributed, even though all the captions were in Russian. I can’t say I followed more than a miniscule bit of the Russian captions, but I enjoyed seeing two words in Cyrillic, that can now be used as a review of what we worked on in the summer of 2005 (which can be used as a reference).

The river where the collapse took place is not too difficult to decipher from the Cyrillic alphabet, since it’s spelled exactly the same as in the Latin alphabet, and only four different letters are involved, anyway:

and the city involved can also be deciphered without much trouble. There are only six additional letters, some of which are extremely easy:

Although I didn’t notice the state mentioned in the captions, its name has only one additional Cyrillic letter, but one that’s the same in both alphabets:

Happy deciphering.