One of the most challenging, enjoyable, and rewarding projects of my career was producing Rick Steves’ Iran for public television a few years ago. This project wouldn’t have been possible (or anywhere near as successful and effective) without the passion and partnership of Abdi Sami. Through the filming process, Abdi (our lead man, guide, and co-producer) endeared himself to all on our crew.
Last month we lost our dear friend and colleague to cancer. He lived his death with the same love, positive spirit, and grace that he lived his too-short life.
In memory of this talented man who courageously promoted the cause of peace between Iran and the USA, I’d like to make the DVD of the hour-long show available to my blog friends for only $5 (plus shipping). I’ll donate 100% of the proceeds to the Seattle Chapter of the United Nations Association, a non-profit close to Abdi’s heart. With each DVD, I’ll also toss in a copy of my 48-page Iran Journal — a colorfully illustrated, behind-the-scenes account of our filming experience in Iran. (The special is also available to stream for free online at Hulu.com)
Please spread the word. You and your friends can each buy up to two DVD/journal sets and help an important cause, through this link only (not via my website), until 5:00 p.m. PT., Wednesday, July 25th.
Regular shipping fees apply. Please allow two weeks for delivery via US Post.
If the shopping cart is slow, just check back later.
Thanks to all of you. And thanks to Abdi, whose life and work continue to inspire us.
The former headquarters of the Stasi (the East German equivalent of the KGB) is now a museum and an archive where former East Germans can come to explore their files. Nearly everyone had a file. Many today don’t want to look into their files to avoid the heartbreak of finding out which of their friends and relatives were informing on them to the secret police.
Each morning that I’m doing guidebook research, I scramble to get to the hotel lobby to meet my local guide by 10:00. I write until the wee hours, and I’m determined to stay healthy and get my beauty rest. Coming down a few minutes late one morning, I apologized to my Leipzig guide. He said, “Let’s not be too German. It’s just a couple of minutes.”
On this trip, I’ve been enjoying several cities that are new to me — and Leipzig is no exception. Noting all the construction throughout Germany, my guide explained that many of the post-WWII buildings, erected on the cheap in the 1950s and 1960s, are now due for replacement. Western Germans are still paying a “solidarity surcharge” of 6 percent of their taxes for building and rebuilding the East to bring it up to Western standards. Imagine the uproar it would cause if two-thirds of the USA were paying to spiff up the poorest third of our country. But rather than complain about the taxes, Western Germans are more likely to grumble that the former East now has even better streets than the former West.
My guide is a Westerner living in the East. Later that day, we sat down to dinner with his wife, who grew up in the communist DDR (the official name for East Germany). The conversation was fascinating.
There’s still a surprising gap between the psyches of the East and West in Germany. My guide said that only about 1 percent of Germans are in “mixed marriages” between Easterners and Westerners. And more than 20 years after reunification, half of all Western Germans still have never been to the East. His wife added, “Psychologically, people don’t want to confront their prejudices.” The German government celebrates the “reunion” of East and West. But let’s be honest: The East was effectively annexed by the West, on Western terms.
We talked about the people of Leipzig rising up against the communist government. The government knew that the security forces were likely to sympathize with the people. It was standard operating procedure that border guards and police would work in pairs. That way, if one lost their nerve and didn’t shoot, the other would — or report on the one who didn’t.
During communist times, the government employed a lot of people steaming open letters, reading them, and then resealing them with fancy machines like this. Amazing gear like this fills Leipzig’s Stasi Museum.
During those courageous days before the Berlin Wall fell, all eyes were on Berlin, but there was plenty happening in Leipzig — the second city of the DDR. I remarked how courageous protesters must have been to gather in solidarity inside St. Nicholas’ Church, not knowing how the soldiers and police would respond when they went outside. My guide’s wife was there, and spoke of leaving the church cupping candles with both hands to let the soldiers know they were unarmed. (Today, this is symbolized by white cobbles scattered among the black ones around the church.) She said people brought their babies and held them in their arms as human shields. Her husband did a double-take — he’d never heard her admit to that.
I never considered the importance of capturing, and then sharing, images of a popular uprising. While plenty of international news cameras were there to broadcast images of Germans partying on top of the Berlin Wall, Leipzig’s protests took place mostly at night, under cover of darkness, deep inside East Germany, where it was particularly dangerous to be seen with a camera. Organizers sent one photographer up the church spire, where he got some of the only grainy images of the streets of Leipzig filled with people bringing down their communist regime.
I remember being in West Berlin as a child in 1969. There were riots in the streets. Even as a kid, I was aware that the government effectively bottled it up and didn’t let any images be shown on TV. In some ways, if you stage a revolution and nobody sees it, it didn’t happen.
As the conversation rolled around to American politics, I complained about how obstructionist I thought the Republicans in our government are these days. She said, “Opposition is good… we’ve tried government without.”
Germany is working hard and producing more than it consumes with strong leadership. Being here is an inspiration.
Asking them what they thought of the political discourse in our country, they were both frustrated by how many Americans confuse social programs with “socialism.” They were offended that some Americans, who don’t really understand how the German health care system works, would use it to make the case that nationalized health care is ineffective and a bad idea. Quite the contrary: These two Germans couldn’t imagine an affluent, developed nation without a nationalized, single-payer system.
Their other peeve: They explained how in 1949, the USA and other WWII victors wrote a constitution for postwar Germany, requiring that the country remain non-aligned. Then, after 9/11, President Bush declared, “You are either with us or against us” — in essence suddenly requiring Germany to become aligned.
Noticing that I’d left the blood sausage on the side of my plate, my friends chided me for not being adventurous. I told them that just the thought of it made me queasy. They said, “What the farmer doesn’t know, he doesn’t eat.”
For me, coming to Lutherland in Germany is a bit like a Catholic going to Rome. I’m really tuned in to the churches and the other physical reminders of the courageous accomplishments of the Reformation. Without those hard-fought reforms, the Bible would still be read in Latin by priests, and then interpreted for us on their terms. The 500th anniversary of Martin Luther kicking off the Reformation in 1517 is quickly approaching, and towns like Erfurt will enjoy lots of attention. Here’s a quick visit to a great church in Erfurt, where Luther went to university, became a monk, and was ordained a priest.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
This video does two things. First, it shows the delightful central square of one of my favorite new German towns, Erfurt. And second, it demonstrates why cameramen put windscreens on their microphones. My camera mic is catching the wind to make this video almost unusable…almost.
If you can’t see the video below, watch it on YouTube.
I long ago gave up looking for the elusive “untouristy Rothenburg.” I was once obsessed with the idea, but it hasn’t even occurred to me for a decade. Now, suddenly, it’s back…because today I found it: Erfurt.
Erfurt, a rare city in the center of Germany that escaped the bombs of World War II, was stuck in the strange cocoon of East German communism for half a century, and today still feels sleepy. But it’s gearing up for the spotlight in 2017, when German cities associated with Martin Luther — who studied and became a monk in Erfurt — will be in for a tourist boom, celebrating the 500th anniversary of Luther kicking off the Protestant Reformation.
Today I spent the morning in my Munich hotel room. At 11:45, I pulled the lid down on my laptop and checked out. Just walking three blocks to the station was an exercise in the fun of travel: I walked past women in burkas enjoying a little shopping during their families’ medical vacation from some wealthy Middle Eastern nation. I marveled at how efficiently German sidewalks can be deconstructed to move overhead wiring underground. My Austrian SIM card finally ran out of credit (it goes fast when you cross a border), so I had to buy a German one for my cell phone. The rates are very competitive: €10 for my own German number, including €7.50 of credit for €0.09-a-minute phone calls. The girls in the table-dance bars were pretty forlorn, and the Internet points were filled with immigrants wearing headphones and hammering away on keyboards.
Walking through the Munich train station, I remembered including it in my city walks back when I was leading my minibus tours around Germany in the 1980s. The soundtrack, commotion, gear, and even the smells of a great train station all add up to the essence of travel.
At 12:14, I settled into my first-class seat on the luxurious German bullet train and filled in my Eurail log. (The new standards are strict — Eurailpasses must be kept in their jacket, and each journey must be diligently entered into the jacket’s travel log. I used to ignore this, but now conductors are checking and enforcing this rule.) At 12:16, I glided out of Munich, and in no time was rocketing through the German countryside.
By 16:30, after one change, I was in Erfurt. After Vienna, Salzburg, and Munich (all of which I know well), it was fun to be in a city that was new to me. I was in town for 24 hours to review and update the chapter my ace researcher and co-author Cameron Hewitt had written new for our Germany guidebook last year. We’re finally covering a few northern German destinations. I guess I’m soft: I could have followed the guidebook and caught a tram, but my guest house was on the far side of town, and I was excited to check in, stow the bag, and get sightseeing. So I walked directly to the taxi rank, hopped in, and was at my hotel in five minutes — €6.50 very well invested.
The people of Thuringia love their big, round dumplings and purple kraut, and brag they have better food than Germans farther north.
Now it was sinking in: I’m not in Bavaria anymore. There was that old Tupperware aura of East Germany. People seemed more hardscrabble, less exposed to the world. English was suddenly very foreign. And I didn’t hear an American voice all day.
I’m in a guesthouse run by the monastery Martin Luther called home. His home church spire towers above my head. And a tiny wooden cross decorates the blank wall above my headboard as I type. The inlaid tiles and creaky floor feel like pre-WWII Germany. There’s no Wi-Fi, and the woman at the reception doesn’t speak English. Pushing out my shutters, I lean out my window and survey the scene: a thick deciduous forest, chirping and hooting birds, a babbling brook, and a well-groomed lane with people strolling by who seem delighted with their simple lot in life. After Hard Rock Café Munich, Climb Every Mountain Salzburg, and Boys Choir Vienna, this is delightful.
I scrambled to get oriented, taking the new self-guided walking tour in the book. When I reached the starting point of the walk, I was famished, so I dropped by a characteristic bratwurst stand to buy a basic Thuringian brat. The man paused until I realized I was supposed to pick up and spread open my roll so he could place the sausage there to go. I beaded it with hearty mustard and then snuck in a little ketchup, and sat down to read what Cameron wrote. He kicked off the walk by recommending that same bratwurst stand, reminded me that the tradition is for the customer to hold open the bun, and even scolded me for sneaking the ketchup. It was perfect.
I completed the walk and loved it. Erfurt has history swinging from its eves. An opera troupe was rehearsing on the cathedral square, dark churches rang with the sound of pipe organists practicing, and the cobbles still lead into the river where the muddy river (Er-) was forded (-furt).
Walking home later than I expected, I turned the corner. Before me, just past the babbling brook and under the simple spire that for 500 years has towered above the monastery of Martin Luther, stood my creaky and well-worn guest house. It felt, on so many levels, like a pleasant homecoming.
One of the most challenging, enjoyable, and rewarding projects of my career was producing Rick Steves’ Iran for public television a few years ago. This project wouldn’t have been possible (or anywhere near as successful and effective) without the passion and partnership of Abdi Sami. Through the filming process, Abdi (our lead man, guide, and co-producer) endeared himself to all on our crew.
Please spread the word. You and your friends can each buy up to two DVD/journal sets and help an important cause, through this link only (not via my website), until 5:00 p.m. PT., Wednesday, July 25th.
