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August

Hi Ruthie                                                                11:10 AM Thur. 08/03/00
 
    I'm in my room at the Grand Marina Hotel.  This must be at least a 4 star hotel, everything is here and in a central location to the city center.  I got my laundry done and all is right with the world.  There is a walking tour that starts at 1:30 this afternoon and I want to try and make it.  There are also bus and harbor tours.  I may try and go to Estonia tomorrow.  Although I've heard it's dirty and smelly,  it will still be the only former Soviet Block country I would have been in.
    There are only 22 more days till you come to Amsterdam.  It will be here before you know it so I should get my order in for stuff for you to try and bring.
 My biking shoes (second pair that he left behind)
New cleats. (I've worn 2 sets out already) The pedals are fine.
Biking shorts, 2 pair. Large. The kind that Scott use to have Cardinal Bicycle put on work the best.
Duofold briefs. 6 pair. Large. I think you got them at CMT.
Vietnam pictures. (Randal was there in "69" and the tour goes there)
Some thin rain booties if you can find them, if not, don't worry. My shoe size is 44. SE Asia may be wet.
  I'm sure I'm forgetting something.
    There is a couple on Odyssey, (they stay off route most of the time) that has a cell phone that works all over the world. They  can use it to connect their laptop too.  I spend much of my off time looking for a phone, especially in these Scandinavian countries. Someone said the reason phones are so scarce is that they have leap-frogged wire phones and everyone has wireless. I think they may be right because I've noticed that some businesses have cell phones.
    If you have time you might check into it. The phone is an Ericsson World Phone  I 888. I think it cost about $300.00, plus $19.95 a month plus per minute charges. They use Omni-Point as their provider. It has an infra-red receiver on it but I'm not sure if my laptop has an infra-red transmitter. If not I would need a data-cable.
     It would be nice to be able to call you from my tent, or, connect to the internet anytime I like. I could also use it when I get home. It may turn out to be too expensive though. (Our friends the Fields are working on the phone for us!)
 See You Soon
 Randal   Helsinki, Finland 

Hi Ruthie                                                                            7:15 PM Thursday   August 3, 2000
 
    I've had dinner and I'm in my room now. Today I went on a 2 hour guided walking tour of central Helsinki.  Helsinki was part of Sweden.  It was founded by a Swedish king in 1550.  In the late 1700s, because it was mainly buildings of wood, it burned.  That happened in the case of many cities.  The Russians took control in 1809.  It was rebuilt to the design of a German architect.
     Finland won its independence from Russia in 1917.  It declared neutrality in World War II but when Hitler and Stalin entered into a pact to divide Europe, Russia bombed Helsinki and there was fierce fighting near its border with Russia. When Hitler attacked Russia, Finland became an ally of Germany. Then in 1944 they had to fight the Germans to get them out of the country.  After the war Finland was considered to have been an ally of Germany and thus a looser in the war.
    Helsinki has a city population of 560,000.  The greater area around Helsinki included brings the population to over 800,000.  The average income for the country is 160,000 Marks, or, in dollars that's about 27,000.  Its latitude is about the same as Anchorage Alaska.  The harbor freezes from January until mid April so they have to utilize massive ice breakers to keep the ports open.
    In Senate Square where the tour began, the city built an ice church with ice sculptures in January of this year.  It would hold about 100 people and weddings were performed in it before it succumbed to the warmth of spring in April.
    Like Oslo, Copenhagen, and Stockholm it is a thriving city with a great tourist business. I hope someday that the two or the three of us(Randal's granddaughter Caitlin) will be able to revisit all these places.
    The pictures I'm sending are from Stockholm. The moose was in a zoo and the statue is of Saint George and the Dragon.
 Love
  Randal    Helsinki, Finland

Moose

Saint George and the Dragon

Dear Ruthie   8/4/00
With a round-trip one day ticket I took the 8:00 AM ferry to Tallinn, Estonia. When I went through customs to leave Finland the customs agent said I needed a new passport.  Remember the passport going through the washing machine when I was home in May?  Well anyway, the front and rear pages had become detatched from the cover.  The agent finally relented and stamped it but warned that Estonia would not let me in the country.
    Immediately after boarding the ferry I went to the information desk and showed them my passport and asked if the had any glue. They found some, I glued it back and was all smiles until I got to customs in Estonia.  The young woman customs agent was dressed in a drab green military uniform, spoke with an artificially rough voice and probably could have whipped Mike Tyson. She took one look at my passport and said "what happened to this"? I explained that it had gotten wet and offered more identification if that would help. She mumbled something to her comrade in her native tongue and then asked me how long I had intended to stay, all the while looking at me like I had just peed on her foot. I said I had a round trip ticket and was going back to Finland that afternoon. She asked to see my ticket, showed that to her comrade, uttered something, stamped my passport with enough force to make the windows rattle in the booth she was sitting in, and without comment handed it back to me.
    I felt like I had been captured by the enemy and then released because they believed my cover.  I walked over to the town from the harbor and spent most of the day walking from one street to the other. There were tons of gift shops and antique shops and restaurants. Everything was quite cheap. The antique shops had wonderful old furniture and relics of all kinds.  I found an original painting of Lenin, just the canvas, the frame had been removed. I looked at it, walked away, and came back and looked again. It was a very good painting. I probably could have gotten it very cheap but could not figure out how to explain to our friends why we had it.
    I went back to the ferry terminal 2 hours early because I was tired and I knew there was a bathroom there and that I could  sit in the lobby.  I went through customs 2 more times but without any trouble. I'm in my hotel room now in Helsinki and glad to be back.
 See You Soon
 Randal

Sweater shop  Tallinn, Estonia


Date: Saturday, August 05, 2000 1:24 AM
Good Morning Sweetie 8:08 AM Sat. August 5th
     I believe the two of us will be really ready for Amsterdam. Not just being together, but for you, being away from the library for awhile and not thinking about work.  (Randal knows that two of my wonderful long-time co-workers  in the library's reference department went off for other jobs and other lives.  Another one went to work in a local elementary school library but will still work with us...Ruth)
I'm in my room now and this afternoon we will pack up the bikes and our gear and not see them again until we fly to Berlin Monday night. We will keep enough stuff to do until then. Today I'm intending to take a bus tour of the city and rest from yesterday's trip to Estonia.

I will pack the computer away this afternoon. but may connect once more before that.
I love and miss you
Randal Helsinki, Finland

Hi Ruthie                                                       2:20 PM
 
    This will be the last e-mail from my room here. I'm getting ready to pack my bags for the gear truck. They will close at 4:00 PM to be ferried to Germany.
    I went on a 2 hour bus tour mid-day and saw more of Helsinki.  This too seems to be a good place to revisit.  There is a daily ferry between here and Stockholm, a 15 hour journey.  The more I think about it the more I can see us traveling with a mountain bike and taking ferries and trains to our destinations.
******************************(Censored, just for me!)
Love, your energetic, slim, spirited, underdeveloped, crew-cut, subtle husband.
(But Still Cute) and keeping temporary residence in Helsinki, Finland

*Note.....Randal spent the next, last day in Helsinki at the American Embassy trying to replace his passport which was nowhere to be found with his stuff still in Helsinki.  It was a long and frustrating day for him, (and apparently for the Embassy.)   I faxed a copy of his birth certificate and also called Representative Goodlatte's office in a panic for help when it looked like Randal might miss the tour plane that evening.  One of Mr. Goodlatte's assistants, Jennifer I believe, immediately must have gone into action because Randal got a new passport and I received a call from the State Department wanting to know about our problem.  So THANK YOU Jennifer, THANK YOU Mr. Goodlatte, and THANK YOU Mr. Donovan in the State Department.  All's well that end's well!

HI RUTHIE    8/11/00
     I'M IN AN INTERNET CAFE NEXT TO THE HOSTEL WE'RE STAYING IN. PLEASE
forgive the way this is written, this is a very strange key board. NONE of
the emails you told me about are on here so you must have just sent them to
my worldnet address.
    DRESDEN would probably be an interesting city to visit.  Maybe we can
come back here. I WAS told that as recently as 10 years ago there was
tremendous evidence of the bombing. The remains of structures were standing
with trees growing up through them. New buildings are being built here but
not at the rate as they were in Berlin.
    One of the guides held up a picture from Berlin in 1945 of a bombed out
area, someone had put up a sign of a quote from one of Hitler's speeches.
"Give me ten years and you will not recognize Germany"

 I guess I should wash my clothes, I have company coming.
  Love
Randal      Dresden, Germany
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

(If you have been following Randal's journal you may have noticed that it hadn't been updated for a while.  It was a combination of Randal being unable to connect easily and his 2 week vacation from the tour to meet me in The Netherlands.  So to catch up.....  Ruth 9/15/2000)

 

Hi Ruthie                                                                              8:45  Aug 8, 2000

 
    I'm back in the hostel now after doing a walking tour of old East Berlin today. It lasted about 4 hours and I got tired of walking. Its surprising how the wall and the government fell. In the summer of 1989, Hungary had relaxed its border security with Austria and since many East Berliners went there for vacation, some just went across the border and never came back.
    Mikhail Gorbechov came here in Oct. of 89 and he and the East Berlin chancellor publicly disagreed on the government taking a hard line stance. Before that, people had begun to hold demonstrations wanting more freedom. After Gorbechov left the chancellor ordered a crack down on demonstrations but the military and police ignored the order. Meanwhile the chancellor got sick and dropped out of site. His replacement was more liberal and was trying to figure out how to satisfy the demonstrators. He held a news conference trying to defuse the tension, only the second news conference to be held in 40 years.
    Near the end of the news conference an NBC reporter asked what he was going to do about travel restrictions, he sort of off handedly replied, "oh, we're going to lift them". Within minutes the radio and television stations were announcing that travel restrictions were being lifted. Thousands of citizens gathered at the gates to West Berlin. The guards didn't know what to do, they had heard the same announcements. Finally late in the night one guard opened the gate and soon all the gates were open with thousands of East Germans flowing into the West side. A three day party followed and the rest is history.
    The tour guide showed us pictures of some of the restricted zones near the wall. They were taken only 10 years ago and you could not believe the change. Still today, construction is going on all over the former East side. I stood in one spot and counted 17 construction cranes working. Almost all the museums are being renovated.
    You can still see some evidence of the war too. The few buildings that survived have marks of gunfire and shrapnel. From what the guide said the city was practically leveled.
    The picture is of a monument in old East Berlin that shows war damage, note the statue and the construction crane in the background.
   See you Soon
   Your Randal
 PS Would you bring a couple of zip disk with you to Amsterdam? I have filled another one and put my last in the computer.

 
 
   
Hi Ruthie                                                           7:40 PM  Aug. 9, 2000
 
    I'm  at the hostel getting packed for riding out of Berlin tomorrow. Tomorrow is 98 miles but the rest of Europe is relatively short, 40, 50, 60, or 70 mile days. Tim has added some layover days in the rest of the trip and knocked off over a thousand miles of riding because everyone was complaining.
    I can hardly wait to see you. The closer it gets the more anxious I get. It will probably be anti-climatic like Rome though, I think I thought that you were a vision. Only when you pointed out Kim did I realize the two of you were real.
    All this talk about California is bringing me to the realization that this trip is coming to a close. I guess I can spend the rest of my life evaluating it, or, reliving it. You're not going to bring it to my attention when I contradict myself are you? You could remind me later when the guest have gone.
**************************(just for me!)
  Your Servant in Life and Love    (Not necessarily in household chores)
   Randal                  Berlin Germany

Czech Republic........

Hi Ruthie                 12:10 PM  Mon. Aug  14, 2000

  I've just finished a 4.5 hour walking tour. The guide was a student with a
fair amount of historical knowledge. The tour started at 7:00 AM and there
were 14 O2K riders among the 25 or so people. The guide gave us a discount.
 As you can imagine, the tour covered only a small portion of the old town
and part of the "Lesser Town". The lesser town is where the Prague Castle is
and we spent most of our time there.
  I'm afraid I went off this morning without the ATT access number for this
country and since I've used it so few times I can't remember it. I'm a long
way from the hotel so it may be tonight before I can call you.  I don't know when I can get my computer connected.  
Only 10 more days until I escape to Amsterdam. I can hardly wait.

*******************  (more just for me!)
Love
Randal    Prague, Czech Republic

 

Hi Sweetie                                   Tuesday  August 15, 2000

 
    Not much to say.  I opted for a room tonight after the bus ride from Prague. I'm in the motel at the campground. Bob Warfield and I are sharing a nice room. Over the next two days we ride to Munich.  I'm looking forward to getting back on my bike. We are getting close to the Alps, so some climbing will be in store I'm sure.
    I keep thinking about you and Amsterdam and the fun it will be.  It will also be a good training ground for future trips together.  I wish somehow you could come to Malaysia or Singapore or New Zealand.
    I saw another rider reading a biography of Picasso today and asked to be put on the list to read it.  I only have a few pages left in Bill Gates' book Business @ the Speed of Thought  I'm going to keep it though for future reference.
    The picture is of a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust in a Jewish cemetery in Terezin.  Terezin was used as a detention camp and a staging area during WWII.
Randal   Passau, Germany

Randal also went to the Dachau concentration camp.  In Amsterdam we visited the Anne Frank House and Museum

 

Austria....Randal only sent a picture.....

but one picture is worth lots of words.

 

 
 
 
 

 




 
 

 

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