When traveling, having a guide (or a friend who functions as a guide) who actually lived through the local history heightens the experience.
When I was just 14 years old in a dusty village on the border of Austria and Hungary, a family friend showed me the excitement of history by introducing me to a sage old man. As he spread lard on my bread, he shared his eyewitness account of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914 (which sparked the beginning of World War I). That encounter instilled in me a life-long interest in history.
14-year-old me (far right) poses with an eyewitness to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Ferdinand (far left). Between us are my mother and a family friend.
In Prague, I walked the path that my Czech friend Honza walked night after night in 1989 with 100,000 of his compatriots as they demanded, and finally won, freedom from their Soviet overlords. The walk culminated in front of a grand building where Honza said, “Night after night, we assembled here, pulled out our keychains, and all jingled them at the President’s window — saying, ‘It’s time to go home now.’ Then one night we gathered…and he was gone. We had won our freedom.” Hearing Honza tell that story as we walked that same route drilled into me the jubilation of a small country winning its liberty from a big one.
In Ireland, I had a guide determined to make his country’s struggles vivid. He introduced me to Belfast’s Felons’ Club — where membership is limited to those who’ve spent at least a year and a day in a British prison for political crimes. Hearing heroic stories of Irish resistance while sharing a Guinness with a celebrity felon with the gift of gab gives you an affinity for their struggles. The next day I walked through the green-trimmed gravesites of his prison-mates who starved themselves to death for the cause of Irish independence.
El Salvador’s history is so recent, tragic, and fascinating that anyone you talk to becomes a tour guide. My Salvadoran guides with the greatest impact were the “Mothers of the Disappeared.” They told me their story while leafing through humble scrapbooks with photographs of their son’s bodies — mutilated and decapitated. Learning of a cruel government’s actions with those sad mothers left me with a lifetime souvenir: empathy for underdogs courageously standing up to their governments.
My Norwegian uncle, Thor, lived through the Nazi occupation of his country. For him to take me into Oslo’s grand City Hall and appreciate the huge “Mural of the Occupation” offered him a chance to share those dark days with the support of powerful art. Walking slowly, as if the mural corresponded to his experience, he told the story in a present tense whisper: The German blitzkrieg overwhelms the country. Men head for the mountains to organize a resistance movement. Women huddle around the water well — traditionally where news is passed — while traitors listen in. While Germans bomb and occupy Norway, a family gathers in their living room. As a boy clenches his fist and a child holds our beloved Norwegian flag, the Gestapo steps in. Columns lie on the ground, symbolizing how Germans shut down our culture by closing newspapers and the university. Finally, prisoners are freed, the war is over, and Norway celebrates its happiest day: May 17, 1945 — the first Constitution Day after five years under Nazi control. Thor then finished by waving his arm wide and saying, “And today, each December, the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded in this grand hall.”
Germany had hardship under Hitler, too. In Bacharach, a small town on the Rhine River, the long-retired schoolmaster loves taking visitors on a town walk, recounting the difficult days during the war when there were no fathers left, when the sky was filled with bombers, and when he was the class expert in identifying planes. When a plane would be shot out of the sky, he and his buddies would mount their bikes and pedal to the scene of the crash. One day he approached what he thought were the wings of a downed Allied plane. Upon arrival at the sight, he saw it was just the tail section of a massive new American airplane and, even as a little kid, he realized Germany would ultimately lose this war. His postwar memories: hunger relieved only by sporadic care packages from Americans. Those memories power his love of showing American visitors around to this day.
Tourists can go to Prague, Ireland, Central America, or the Rhineland and learn nothing of a people’s struggles. Or, if traveling to broaden their worldviews, they can seek out opportunities to connect with people who can share perspective-changing stories.
I assume this new blog encourages travel stories. Here is mine.
While traveling from Krakow to Warsaw,Poland, my wife and I were the only occupants of a cabin in the first class car on the train. We were the only passengers in entire first class. Into our cabin, barges in family of 5. I assumed that they were gypsies? They pegged us as Americans or British and attempted to speak to in broken English the claim was that we were in their cabin and they MUST see our tickets. They switched to Polish to talk among themselves and the father , the head of the clan started communicating orders to his family on each persons role in robbing our luggage and pickpocketing us. I speak Polish , as my parents were born there. I blocked their access to my wife and after a few moments I ceased to be amused by all of this . I pushed the emergency button to summon the porters. In Polish I explained to the train officials, the plot that I overheard. The group was in shock. To say the least. Ha Ha. They confessed did not have any tickets and had sneaked on the train. They were promptly evicted as the train made an unscheduled stop at the next station.
In honor of St. Patrick’s Day and those with Irish Ancestry:
In 1853,Franz Joseph survived an assassination attempt because of Count O’Donnell of O’Donnell of Tyrconnell, one of many O’Donnells taken in by the Hapsburg’s. The O’Donnells in Austria were then raised to Nobility in Austria as well as keeping their Irish nobility. In 2012 the O’Donnell Clan, from many parts of the world, traveled to Austria and met others with O’Donnell Ancestry who still live there. Because of the oral histories shared by O’Donnells and the many original items that I saw that came from Ireland in the Flight of the Earls in 1607, I came home and had to revise an historical novel about 16th century Ireland, that I am still “tweaking”. Years of research did not reveal what that wonderful trip brought forth.
We spent the whole winter of 2000 talking with our camping friends in Benidorm, Spain about their childhood WWII experiences. This is from that time:
Jack, our camping neighbor right behind us, told us about his war experience. He had just turned fourteen when the Germans swept through Belgium and occupied his town. The townspeople tried to avoid the soldiers as much as possible, but one day walking home from school with some of his friends, they met several coming in their direction. When they tried to move to the other side of the street, the Germans pointed their machine guns at Jack and his friends. Jack turned around and noticed a large truck blocking the end of the street. They realized they were trapped with no place to run. The Germans forced Jack and his friends, all just 13 or 14 years old, into the back of the truck which immediately started up and drove away. Jack was terrorized, not knowing where, or why, they were going. He feared they were going to be shot. They traveled for several days until they reached a factory on the Ruhr river in Germany where he was forced to labor long hours in a hot factory making some kind of cast metal machine parts. Besides the terrible working conditions and a near-starvation diet, he had no idea if his family back home knew he was kidnapped by the German soldiers. When the Allies started bombing the industrial Ruhr River valley, Jack hid under the heavy metal machines in the factory. When the war was finally over, he had to walk most of the way back home to western Belgium through bombed out towns and the countryside littered with corpses. With very little food or shelter on the journey, he was finally reunited with his family.
One of the most chilling accounts we heard that winter (Benidorm, Spain 2000) was from our Dutch friend, Jeanne. This is what I wrote in “After They’ve Seen Paree”:
Of all the war experiences we heard, what our friend, Jeanne, told me effected me the most. She was only four when the Nazis invaded Holland, setting up their headquarters not too far from her home in Amsterdam. The first couple of years of occupation weren’t too difficult, but then food became harder and harder to find. She remembered having to stay inside, even on bright, sunny days, with her small brothers while her mother waited in long lines for what little commodities she could find. Her father was forced to work on one of the road crews.
Then Jeanne told us some of her neighbors started to disappear. She didn’t fully understand at the time that they were Jewish and were being sent eastward to concentration camps, or worse. Her next door neighbors were good friends of her family and, although they were Jewish, the children often played together. All of a sudden one day the lady came frantically beating at their door. When she opened it, the neighbor pleaded with Jeanne’s mother to take her newborn baby. Her neighbor kept crying and begging, pushing the baby into Jeanne’s mother’s arms. She kept refusing and finally had to slam the door in her friend’s face and lock it. Jeanne told us she remembers her mother slumping to the floor and sobbing. The Germans came just a few minutes later and took her neighbors away. It took Jeanne many years to understand that if her mother had taken that baby she could have been accused of harboring a Jew and would have risked all of their lives.
Life became even harder when food became scarce. There was nothing in the city to eat so Jeanne’s mother didn’t spend her days standing in bread lines. They were near to starvation when Jeanne’s aunt and uncle managed to come into Amsterdam from their farm for a visit, smuggling an egg and some bread in their coats. Jeanne told us her mother cooked the one egg and she shared it with her brothers. Along with a little bread, that was the only food they had for days.
One afternoon word spread that the Allies were on the outskirts of Amsterdam and everyone was excited as they sensed the liberation of the city. She told us they all watched from their attic window as the German soldiers loaded up and marched out of town. The next day those Nazis that remained in the city all gathered at a warehouse next to the harbor. The townspeople came out of their houses and went down to the quay to watch the Germans officially surrender the city to the Allies, who were just blocks away. A huge crowd was gathered when all of a sudden the Germans opened the doors of the warehouse and started firing their machine guns on the crowd of civilians in one final act of defiance. Jean’s father threw her into a sheltered doorway and laid down on top of her, the crowd screaming and running in all directions. Her family was all safe but she remembered seeing several people laying in the street bleeding. She said they were so happy and relieved that the city was now in Allied hands but that it was a long time before things returned to normal.
Great Site and stories. Here’s one from me.
When I left the Royal Navy in 1979 I had a job as a Service Engineer travelling across Europe by car servicing printing equipment. We used to stay in Guest Houses or Local Pubs/Taverns as it was before the days of low cost hotels. One of the places I used to visit on one of my ‘routes’ was Essen-Werden in Germany and I used to stay at a small guest house/tavern in the city.
I soon discovered that it was a meeting place for a number of German ex-POW’s who had been held captive in Kent in the UK during WW2. Many had worked in the farmland fields during their time in Kent and some used to tell fantastic stories about their time in WW2 before their capture and all of them told of the ‘kindness’ of the people that looked after them when they were in Kent. They always mentioned a Captain McCabe who was head of their guard camp in Kent.
Looking back, I wish that I had recorded their tales both of the war and afterwards. Hearing their stories in person seemed to make it so real!!
I will never forget an encounter my husband and I had while bicycling through France in the 70’s.
As we were consulting our road map and discussing which turn to take, an elderly Frenchman realized we were Americans. With tears streaming down his face, he hurried over, repeating, “Americains, Americains. Merci, merci. ”
He wouldn’t let us leave until he had warmly shaken our hands. A very grateful survivor .
Greg-had a similar experience in Itsly. My brother and I were targeted and then when we started speaking to one another in Italian, the would be crooks left the train. The best part is that I do not speak Italian, my brother does, but I was quietly reading “italian for dummies” on my kindle and pulled off a believable accent for the 3 sentences we exchanged. It’s always good to trust your gut!
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