Some time ago (2002/7), I quoted a rather cute anecdote involving a man on the New York subway with a banana, from the New York Times's "Metropolitan Diary", published every Monday. I have two more, one involving language, one involving travel. These are real stories.

Mnemonic Device   You will recall that when you can't remember something, you can employ some expression to help you recall that word or phrase, and that this expression is called a mnemonic device.

This man had met a Japanese woman, and he had trouble remembering her first name, Unome. After thinking it over, he decided it sounded like "You know me", and he decided to use that as a mnemonic device for the next time he saw her.

One day he spotted her in the distance, and he called her name. She did not look up. As he approached her, he called it again and again to no avail. Finally, when he reached her he said "Unome, why didn't you answer me?"

She looked up at him and said "Bob, my name is Inoyu".

New York Delis   New York delis have a number of unique qualities, not all of which spread well around the country. For instance, deli pickles come in two versions. The normal one is the sour pickle. You know you have a sour pickle if on the first bite (and all the rest as well) your face screws up into a sharp wince. For the less stoutharted, there is a weaker version called a half-sour pickle.

A New Yorker visiting Sacramento was guided to a "genuine New York deli" by colleagues. He ordered a pastrami sandwich.

The woman behind the counter asked "Do you want that on white bread?"

Sacrilege number one. "No," he said "I'll have that on rye".

"Mayo?" she then asked. Sacrilege number two. "No, I'll have deli mustard."

He knew he shouldn't ask, but it slipped out anyway. "Do you have half-sour pickles?"

She looked up at him in amazement. "Half-sour? What's the other half?"

Travelers' Century Club   Having just hit my 100 destinations in December, I joined the TCC immediately. Their January magazine came out including my name among 31 new members for the quarter-year. Apparently only every couple of years do they reassess the total number of destinations they list, and decided to drop four (mostly obscure locations, a couple of which were in Antarctica), but to add two, so that their present net total is 315. One that they added was an area in the Caucasus, but the other was the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island. My guess would be that the island probably had achieved a large enough population to be considered separately from Canada, just like Hawaii is considered separately from the US in their totals. So, to my pleasant surprise, since Beverly and I have been to PEI twice, without leaving home I added a destination, for a new total of 101.

The Bull   Spring gradually came to Manhattan, and as I look down to the Esplanade along the Hudson below my windows, the trees are now green. A couple of weeks ago in mid-April I had some chores to do on a pleasant Spring day, and I walked up Rector Street to Broadway to watch the hustle and bustle. At Bowling Green, which is a park at the very beginning of Broadway which the Dutch in New Amsterdam literally used to play Ninepins, a few years ago they put up a large bronze statue of a bull. I suppose it's meant to represent being bullish on Wall Street, a few blocks away, but it's become a considerable tourist attraction. It's massive, about twice the height of a person, and modern in style, rather stylized. The bronze has developed a chocolatey patina, except for where people touch and rub it, where it's developed a bright golden sheen. People take pictures of themselves at the head, where the horns and snout are bright gold, and also take pictures behind the bull, under its upturned tail. There is also an area there that is bright from touching. To put it politely, let's just say the bull should be glad people just touch and don't kick, but people have a lot of fun.

I found myself sitting down for a few minutes on a bench in Bowling Green, enjoying the afternoon. After a while I realized I was the only one sitting, while office workers were scurring along Broadway. It suddenly struck me that I was projecting an image of an old man sitting on a bench in the park. That didn't get me moving right away, although the thought of that image did propel me out of the park after a while.

University Club   I think more and more lately about the large part Middlebury College has paid in our lives. We met there, and each got two degrees from the German School. We've gone to alumni gatherings on occasion, but most of the people there are alumni from the regular-year undergraduate programs, so I have to explain myself again and again. For instance, I can't answer the question "What year were you?" in the way the questioner means. Still, when the New York Alumni had a gathering in early April at the University Club for people to meet the new President of Middlebury, Ron Liebowitz, I went.

The University Club is on Fifth Avenue, at 54th Street. It looks like a Florentine palace, and as you walk by on the Fifth Avenue side, you look up into the huge Main Reading Room at the palatial ceiling. It was my fist time there. The entrance leads you into a square court with large columns on all sides. It's very impressive. I looked around into a number of rooms, including the Main Reading Room, before going to the room the Middlebury New York Alumni had arranged for.

Ron Liebowitz was very impressive. He was chosen as President just last year from within the college, since he was a Professor of Geography. His field of expertise already impressed me, and when I heard he had gone to the Russkaya Shkola, Middlebury's Russian School, for two summers in the early eighties, that impressed me even more. Not surprisingly, his field is Russian economic geography. He's also a local boy, coming from Bensonhurst in Brooklyn. My kind o' guy.

He turns out to be a good speaker, and his talk about what he's doing at the college and the direction the college is going in, which could have been deadly, was very lively. When I first went to Middlebury in the late fifties, there were five language schools, German (the oldest), French (the second oldest), Spanish, Italian, and Russian. In the intervening years, they've added the schools of Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic. Liebowitz himself added the School of Portuguese just last summer. There are negotiations going on to possibly acquire a language school in California, giving Middlebury a second US campus and a national scope. I knew the language schools each had a program in the country of the language, such as Mainz on the Rhine, where Beverly and I, and Rita, had studied in 1961-2. Now I found that there were multiple schools. The Middlebury German School now also has a second school in Berlin, and there is multiple representation for the Middlebury languages in many countries. I realized how little I had been keeping up with Middlebury growth.

Afterward, I had a chat with Liebowitz, telling him that Bev and I had two of the few doctorates Middlebury had awarded (for graduate degrees, they've awarded far more master's degrees), and that, quite uniquely, we had done a co-thesis. He is very personable. I had been talking with some alumni who felt that Middlebury should retain the small-town, small-college atmosphere it has had since its founding in Vermont in 1800. Considering what Ron had been saying about all the campuses, I asked him point-blank: would there ever be a Middlebury University? If so, I would be for it. He smiled knowingly at his assistant, well aware of the politics involved. His implication was that even if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck, you can keep on calling it a pigeon. He cited the example of nearby Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. They have a Medical School, and other major schools, yet they've never used the word University. Interesting. I like this guy.

The Alumni served a nice buffet afterward. Most unique was the table with a Chinese chef, who kept preparing in a number of woks several kinds of dim sum, served with chopsticks. Very enjoyable.

By the way, I should mention that our doctorates are not PhDs, as some believe, they are DMLs, Doctors of Modern Languages, a very specific, specialist degree given by Middlebury through its Language Schools.

Two Rings   Realizing more than ever the connections we've had with Middlebury, I recently purchased two gold rings. I'm not usually a ring wearer, but these two will now have special significance, although I'll just wear them on special occasions. As a sign of the times, I bought them both online.

I don't know if Beverly ever had a ring from the University of Minnesota (where she was Phi Beta Kappa--I never was that good in my earlier years). I do have a ring from Queens College (of the City University of New York), but haven't worn it in years. When we got our two graduate degrees, the subject of Middlebury rings never came up.

I recently contacted Jostens, the Minnesota company that makes college rings. I didn't want the traditional college-looking ring, which they weren't authorized to do for Middlebury anyway. I got a very contemporary-looking rectangular ring. The top surface has "Middlebury" across the top, "College" across the bottom, and a strip of amethyst across the middle. I wanted amethyst, not only because it's a favorite, but because the amethyst pendant I bought Beverly at H Stern on the QM2 last summer was my last gift to her. The ring says "DML" down one side and "1980" down the other. This is a ring for both of us, and it's inscribed on the inside "Bevin Forever".

The same inscription for the both of us is on the inside of the Mensa ring I also bought, which has the large Mensa "M" logo on its square surface. We both took the Mensa test shortly after getting our DMLs. I recently pulled out our paperwork, and was once again pleasantly surprised about the compatability between the two of us. I had forgotten that, in a group testing situation in NYC, they had had us take two IQ tests one after the other, so if you didn't make it on one, you could possibly make it on the other. My recollection was that we had scored within 3-4 points of each other, which we did on one test, and which difference is statistically insignificant. But I had forgotten that on the other test, we had gotten the exact same score. Talk about compatability.

Mensa doesn't work on raw IQs, which vary depending on the test you've taken. They accept you for membership if your score falls in the 99th percentile, or the top 1% of those taking a given test. We were both accepted in April 1982.

Russia 1972   In discussing past travel and past studies, I know I've mentioned that in 1971-2 we both got sabbaticals at half pay from our schools and took two major tours of Europe, including study periods. In the summer-fall of 1971, we studied French in Pau, which I'll describe sometime, and then we drove into southeastern Europe in a rattletrap of a French Simca we had leased that kept on breaking down. Our car was broken into in Rumania, and we had it fixed. We drove along dark roads when evening fell early, in between donkey carts with lanterns hanging behind for "safety" purposes. At one simple restaurant we weren't able to order anything because of the language barrier until the resourceful waitress came out of the kitchen with a slab of raw beef on one plate and raw pork on the other, for us to choose what we wanted her to cook. We visited some relatives in Bucharest of Jewish friends in New York. A couple of years later the friends in New York got their Bucharest relatives out of Communist Rumania after visiting there and making a couple of well-placed bribes. We ended having them all over to dinner at our condo in White Plains some time later.

We were in our low thirties at the time of this trip, were already experienced travelers, and took it all in stride. As I reflect back now, I think we were definitely a bit crazy, but it was all fun.

I'd like to discuss a bit more in detail the second part of that sabbatical in the spring-summer of 1972. We went to the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg and bought ourselves a blue Beetle, which we called "Wolf" from then on. We did a tour of the northern part of Eastern Europe. I remember getting a room in Warsaw that was clean, but that had newspapers spread across the floor for carpeting. In Wroclaw in Poland, which had been the German city of Breslau, we went to a fine-looking old hotel and spoke to the elderly clerk in German. He greeted us profusely, and quoted us an amazingly reasonable room rate. When we handed him our American passports his face fell. He had inadvertantly quoted us the wrong rate, assuming we were from East Germany. For Westerners the rate was something like double, for which he profusely apologized.

Anyway, to the point of the story. We were to take a course in Russian that the Austrian government offered in the village of Unterweissenbach, near Linz. (Don't be daunted by that name. Although names are not to be translated, this one conveniently would work out to be Lower Whitebrook.) We had been studying on our own, and were accepted into the intermediate level for the three-week course. It was enjoyable, and two things stick in my mind.

In the first couple of days of the course, two other Americans showed up. The two women were supposed to take some sort of Russian course in Munich, which had been cancelled, and were sent here, so their time would not be lost. There was just one problem. This being Austria, these Russian courses were taught in German, which the two women did not speak. Fortunately, they already knew enough Russian to get by, and Bev and I were able to help them out with what was said in German. But it was an adventure.

The other memory was the singing, which took place in the evening. They had a woman from Georgia (in the Caucasus) teaching the music, and it was delightful. I remember her saying (in German) that there was something she just couldn't understand about people from the West. Why couldn't most of them sing harmony, even just two-part harmony? In Russia, everybody, but everybody (???) could not only sing harmony, but could break out with ease even in five-part harmony. (More on this later.) Anyway, Bev and I did learn a Russian song, Tonkaya Ryabyna, which the two of us could sing in two-part harmony, which I felt was a great accomplishment on my part, since Bev could already harmonize a bit.

But the major part of this trip is yet to be described. We were to drive to Russia. We had made strictly required plans with Intourist, the state tourism agency, and had to battle with them again and again to do things as we wished. Sometimes we won, sometimes they won. I remember making phone calls and sending telegrams from Unterweissenbach to Vienna to make arrangements. We then had to wait in Vienna for a few days before leaving, where we rented a room from a Frau Tomassi, who had taught us at Unterweissenbach. It was staying in her little town on the outskirts of the city that I got to know the "back door" into town through the Vienna Woods, that I described last summer.

Our "drive to Moscow" in Wolf, our little Blue Beetle, went from Vienna through Slovakia (then part of Czechoslovakia), and into Ukraine (Lvov, Kiev), and up to Oryol. It was a delight to stop at Yasnaya Polyana, Leo Tolstoy's estate. (Again, you shouldn't translate names, but the name of the estate does translate so nicely as Clearfield.) We met a young man at the entrance who was delighted to be able to practice his (excellent) English. Consider how few Westerners visited Russia in those days, and how few went outside of Moscow, and you'll realize that he was happy to take us around the estate. He was more familiar with American movies than we were.

The roads were long and potholed. Every once in a while there would be a police kiosk on the side of the road (I understand they're still there), and sometimes they'd pull you over to check your papers, and sometimes not. Intourist supplied you with a map that showed which towns (lying far apart) has gas stations that supplied gas decent enough for Western cars, and not the gunk for local cars. It tended to be nerve-rattling watching the gas guage going down and trying to find a specific filling station.

In those years, gas stations in the West were all still full-serve, and self-serve had not even started to come in. Yet in Russia, self-serve was already the norm (talk about following trends). We would pull up to a filling station that had the special pump we needed, and at first someone would come over to help us get started, until we realized we should be doing it ourselves. I never really thought about it, but I suppose I can say I learned to pump my own gas in Russia, of all places. By the time it came in as the thing to do in the US, I already knew my way around a gas pump. Life is funny.

In Moscow, since it was unusual to have a car, Intourist placed us in a hotel on the Ring Road, which had a shuttle bus into the city. I also remember it was a blazingly hot summer.

Now comes the unusual part. Intourist strictly limited the roads you could drive on. We knew from the start that out of Moscow, we could only go North. So we had planned a side trip. We took the night sleeper train out of Belorusskiy Vokzal (Belorus Station) to Minsk, the capital of Belorus, and then a train to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. Then the only way to get to Riga, Latvia, was to fly. Our one and only flight on Aeroflot was memorable in that as we took off, the cabin vents started shooting out white condensation, which everyone took in stride. From Riga we took another night train back to Rizhskiy Vokzal (Riga Station) in Moscow. I note that Bev had commented in the travel diary how nice the free hot tea from a samovar on the train tasted.

Now you must realize that we had left the car, unattended, in that hotel parking lot on the Ring Road during this side trip. Nothing happened to it, yet this was a time when you were advised that local people often removed their windshield wipers when they parked to prevent them from being stolen. All's well that ends well.

An argument we had had with Intourist was that we could make the long haul from Moscow, via Leningrad, to Tallinn with a reasonable overnight in between, but they insisted that we stop in Tver (then named Kalinin after a Communist offical), which is really quite close to Moscow. We couldn't argue. We did see Tchaikovsky's home in Tver, and I remember sitting on the banks of the Volga. But that next day was a really long haul. Just before reaching Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, a shock absorber gave out. A woman in the hotel in Tallinn helped us get it fixed, just as a woman in the hotel in Rumania had helped us get that car hood fixed after the break-in I mentioned. We then stopped in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad), and left Russia via Finland.

I recall two sensations the Blue Beetle caused. Once, as we parked and were getting ready to get out, a crowd gathered and peeked in. Remember, cars were rare, and Western cars were from Mars, even a little VW. Somebody looking at the dashboard remarked: Kak samolyot! (Like a jet plane!)

We left Russia at the Finnish border. We'd had enough of the bureaucratic pettiness coming in, having every bill of our paper money counted, and the rings on our fingers tallied. Now leaving, it was all happening again. We emptied the luggage out of the car, and a couple of young soldiers in brown uniforms, rifles over their shoulders, were inspecting the emptied car. One looked inside the empty trunk (in front on a Beetle), noticed some large odd-looking bulge in the metal, and asked : Chto eto? (What's this?)

In retrospect, it was just a kid being curious about a car from Mars. But this kid was wearing a Soviet uniform with a rifle over his shoulder, which to me trumped his youthful curiosity. He was bureaucracy, and I lost it: YA NYE ZNAYU! YA NYE MEKHANYIK! (I DON'T KNOW! I'M NOT A MECHANIC!) I exploded. All went fine, but it was an unfortunate closing to the Russia visit. Yet it makes a good story.

After visiting Helsinki, we took a cabin on the two-night Finnlines car ferry to Travemünde in Germany, then drove Wolf to a shipping agent to sail of to New York, while we flew home. Without really planning to, we kept that car for twenty years. After a while, it became our "other" car. We just kept it, and kept it, until we were ready, after retirement, to sell our house in Purchase NY that we had built, and our second car was sold at that time. A woman from Connecticut bought it, and we made sure she knew that Wolf was the car that we had "driven to Moscow".

I almost forgot--I was going to comment on the singing. In Saint Petersburg, we went to the Alexander Nevski Monestary, where Tchaikovsky and just about everyone else famous is buried in the cemetery. While we were in the church, which was still a working orthodox church, apparently a service was about to start, and the most amazing thing happened. There are no instruments in an orthodox church, just voices, and the choir was about to gather. We looked around and five workers, let's say, three cleaning ladies, a janitor, and a gardener, put aside their brooms and shovels, brushed off their work clothes and adjusted their kerchiefs, gathered together in one spot and absolutely BURST OUT GLORIOUSLY in the most beautiful five-part harmony you could imagine. The orthodox hymns were marvelous, the five-part harmony made them even better, and the music coming from every-day people was startling. The music teacher in Unterweissenbach had been right.