Steve’s memories at age 17:
The Lutheran High School choir made a trip to perform in Europe. Steve was a soloist, singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, and got a favorable review by a small town West German newspaper. In some churches the acoustics were so clear you could hear echoes of voices seconds after the singing had stopped. It was marvelous! One church let me play an organ that J.S. Bach had played. It had ancient wooden keys.
At the time, Germany was still East and West, and the East was part of the Soviet Bloc.
Upon the tour bus entering East Germany, guards boarded the bus to confiscate any Western magazines, newspapers, or bibles. There was a lot of industry and air pollution in East Germany. The city of Jena had a huge brown/black cloud over it. They made a lot of electronics for USSR and Eastern Europe. The cars were 2-stroke Trabants and Wartburgs and gas station pumps had pre-mixed gas and oil or straight gas available. We visited Dresden and other places that still had a lot of WWII was ruins. The reason we went to the East was to visit Wittenberg, where Martin Luther translated the New Testament into modern German, and posted his 95 theses. The room where he performed the translation looked like a small prison cell.
We went to some huge WWII memorials. I recall driving past a concentration camp, but don’t recall crossing into Poland.
There were East German troops riding around in military trucks. When I went jogging through a town the troops might have thought I was a thief and one troop shook his rifle at me. They had enormous sports stadiums and training complexes, and the East Germans had some great Olympic results. Some of the best food I ever had was in a small town East German restaurant with some type of schnitzel and cauliflower soup. Farmers would drop a pallet of milk in bottles on the street corner and families would go pick up a bottle.
In East Berlin I remember going into a duty free store and buying a pint of Johnnie Walker Red scotch.
At some point, I overslept and somehow lost my return plane ticket which required me to take a special trip to the Luxembourg airport later on to get a replacement.
In one city in Bavaria we stayed with local residents, and I wish I had been more reserved and mature. They had a wonderful home, very tasteful.
We stayed in a youth hostel in Switzerland, which was very spartan and austere, but bright and clean. The Swiss cows grazing in mountain pastures were picturesque as were the country houses with flower boxes everywhere.
In West Germany, they had convenient cigarette vending machines on the walls of buildings on the streets, and I think a pack of smokes was 2 deutschmarks (about 60 cents). I had a smoking buddy on the trip, classmate Kim Garcia.
In Cologne, Queen had released the song “We are the Champions” and people were going crazy cheering from balconies. There were some accidents and injuries.
The tour was over but then I went to meet Marni, Scott, and Kaeti in Frankfurt. I had to catch a train from Cologne to Frankfurt. Sadly, I couldn’t get out of the hotel because the front door was locked. I had to leave via fire escape ladder and jump on top of a dumpster to go catch the train.
Meeting the family at the airport I volunteered to drive as I’d been there for a while. We had a rental Ford Taunus wagon with a 4 speed manual that would do 90mph on the Autobahn.
We traveled to Gast im Schloss (guests in castles) and saw many interesting sites. We saw the Lippizaner horses in Vienna and some other horse farms in Germany. We toured the Neuschwanstein castle. Scott and I were able to go to some bars and have beer which was a treat at 17.