Chapter 7 - Travels

My travel life has been episodic. I used to travel often, and in this chapter, I’ll describe a few of my trips. These examples will convey how travel changed over time as my physical and emotional life changed, progressing from travel as discovery to travel as solitude and frugality to travel as family connection to travel as imagination.

Travel as Discovery

When my first wife, Judi, and I were in England, I bought a pipe, which I assumed would help me reduce my cigarette smoking. I wanted a really good one, and Charatan pipes, although no longer mass-produced, were considered among the best in the world at that time. Smoking it resulted in an air of unaccustomed sophistication.

The pipe cost me $20, which doesn’t sound like much, but that was 1965, and $20 would be worth over $200 in 2026.

Our next stop on that journey was Venice, Italy. On our first full day there, we had breakfast, took a walk, and rode in a gondola. After lunch, I reached into my jacket pocket, felt and pulled out the leather tobacco pouch, then reached into my other pocket but felt nothing. I unbuttoned my jacket and reached into the inside pocket, and it, too, was empty. The pipe was missing. We retraced our steps but were unable to find it.

As we were walking, I noticed that we were about to pass a police station and decided to go in. I told one of the officers that I had lost my pipe. He apparently didn’t understand my problem but imagined it must be serious for me to appear in person. He found someone to translate and rolled his eyes when he learned I had been concerned about the loss of a pipe. He took my name, the brand and description of the pipe, and the name of our hotel. I was a little embarrassed to mention the hotel because it didn’t match the opulence expected of an owner of a Charatan pipe.

The next day, a police officer called me, said he had my pipe, and asked me to come over to get it. Once there, I learned that one of the newspapers, apparently during a slow news day, carried the story of my lost pipe. You can imagine how much anti-American mirth that created, but someone saw the story, realized they had found my pipe, and returned it.

The Article

With pipe in hand, we traveled to Rome, where I had a delightful and delectable dining experience. We dined at Alfredo di Roma and naturally ordered Fettuccine Alfredo. That was one of my favorite meals back home, and I couldn't wait to enjoy it at its birthplace.

It was everything I imagined it would be. The long, flat ribbons of perfectly prepared pasta slipped smoothly into my mouth and down my gullet, lubricated by its rich coating of heavy cream and butter. The grated Parmesan cheese, pepper, nutmeg, and garlic enhanced its luscious flavor and heady aroma.

A 20-ounce bowl of Alfredo has about 1,180 calories, only 119 more than my then-favorite sandwich, the Burger King Double Cheese Whopper. I knew I could handle another bowl, so I ordered one. Instead of the waiter bringing it over, an enormous man in white trousers, shirt, and apron delivered it. “Grazie, grazie,” he gushed, with a more lavish display of affection than I have ever experienced in any restaurant. I stood up, nodded, and repeated, “Grazie, grazie,” clapping my hands. A broad grin spread across his bulbous face.

I saw signs of approval from people at adjoining tables, and I was sure I had exchanged compliments with none other than the very famous Alfredo. That fantasy lingered until I Googled Alfredo di Roma as part of my research for writing this. I learned that Alfredo Di Lelio, the creator of that delectable, though singularly unhealthy, dish, had died in 1941, over twenty years before our visit to the restaurant, and that the chef who came to our table was not even a member of his family.

Travel as Solitude and Frugality

In 1981, as Judi and I were ending our marriage, I thought that traveling independently would help me learn to be alone for an extended period, something I had rarely experienced over the previous two decades. I was also concerned about how separation and eventual divorce would affect me financially, and I thought I could use a trip to see if I could enjoy myself while traveling frugally.

In May of that year, I drove 2.5 hours in our van from our home in Katonah, New York, to Bennington, Vermont. A little after 5 p.m., I found a Holiday Inn whose sign advertised a swimming pool and happy hours from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. daily. Hungry, I went straight into the bar, bought a beer, and at the crudité table, found chunks of cheese, crackers, celery, carrot sticks, broccoli florets, and a dip. Not a bad meal when you think about it - undoubtedly nutritious enough. The beer cost me a couple of dollars, and that’s all I paid for dinner that night.

I slept on an air mattress, the van parked far from the hotel entrances, and opened my windows just a crack to avoid them fogging up while I slept, which could alert hotel security to my presumably illegal presence.

I woke up early the next morning and had breakfast of ready-to-eat cereal with reconstituted whole milk. I went into the hotel, walked up to the second floor, saw a housekeeper enter one of the rooms, went over to her cart, looked both ways, and, satisfied that no one could see me, confiscated a towel with a hotel logo, slipped it into my backpack, and, when I got back to the van, hid it under the mattress.

I drove out of the parking lot to do some sightseeing, but learned I didn’t like doing that alone. By mid-afternoon, tired and bored, I returned to the hotel, changed into my swimming trunks, draped the appropriated hotel towel over my shoulder, sauntered into the outdoor swimming pool area, and sunbathed on an adjustable reclining chaise lounge. To cleanse myself, I took occasional dips in the pool until I realized I was just trading sightseeing sweat for an acrid coating of chlorine. After a couple of hours, I returned to the van, changed into my street clothes, and hid the hotel towel for use the next day.

At 5 p.m., I went into the lounge for another meal of beer and crudités, watched TV until dark in the lobby, went back to the van, and slept a little less fitfully than I had the night before.

I tried sightseeing again the next day, but returned earlier and spent more time at the pool. By the time my trip ended, I knew I wasn’t very good at being alone. I found the process of becoming single considerably harder than actually being single, although I never much cared for that status either. No, I believe life is best when shared with others, especially when consuming crudites on the cheap.

Two months later, I decided to take another solo excursion, hoping that I could even appreciate solitude. I had become good friends with a woman named Annie. We were both public officials in different New York State counties and frequently saw each other at meetings and retreats. When we were together, Annie laughed endlessly, and her laugh was infectious. I really enjoyed being with her. Annie and her husband, Dave, lived in Trumansburg, New York, a village a few miles outside of Ithaca. She invited me to spend some time with them.

I immediately accepted the invitation and wondered whether I could take the trip by bicycle. The trip there and back was 474 miles, and I wondered if it was possible for me to do it by myself, a rather sedentary 45-year-old man in pretty bad shape. I hadn’t been on a bike for 22 years. I still had a beat-up 3-speed Raleigh.

My Bike

Trying out the bike, I was dismayed when I couldn’t get up a slightly steep hill near my house. I walked it up and then rode around for a while on level ground. The next day, I got a little higher, and the following day, higher still. By the fourth day, I made it all the way up, feeling like Rocky Balboa at the top of the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps in the first Rocky movie.

I read that if you can ride for an hour without stopping, you can ride forever, an hour at a time. That gave me inspiration. I managed to get up to an hour by my seventh day, and one week later, two weeks after having that seemingly impossible impulse, I started my journey.

Our house in Katonah was not far from the 1,283-foot-high Bear Mountain, which I would need to cross to get to Trumansburg. I was not that nuts, so I got a ride to the other side of the mountain. Then, I had 205 more miles to go.

My first destination was Ellenville, about 50 miles away. Almost immediately, however, I encountered a hill, which turned out to be about four miles long. I had to walk all the way up and wondered if there were many more hills like this one. Sweating profusely, I had to take my helmet off, but I soon worried about ending up with a massive sunburn on my head. Tired and hungry, I checked my map, which showed a nearby campground. Walking in that direction, I soon discovered it was also at the top of a big hill.

As I expected, I spent most of my time alone, with only my thoughts to keep me company, except when buying something to eat or registering at the campsites. Sometimes, if other campers seemed welcoming, I would seek out conversation. I read the headlines in the newspapers displayed on delicatessen racks, but that cursory reading didn’t tell me much about what was happening in the world.

On my third day out, I was riding down a deserted road when I was passed by a pickup truck occupied by three big guys with a rifle in the back window. About 100 yards down the road, they stopped abruptly, did a three-point turn, and headed back in my direction. My mind leaped to the squeal-like-a-pig-scene in the film “Deliverance.” I had only my bicycle pump to protect me, and I felt my shoulders rise and my dread escalate. But instead of stopping, they sped past me, leaving me with a sense of incredible relief. I thought about that for a while. I had been frightened by what I imagined might happen. I thought that country guys in a pick-up truck with an exposed rifle had to mean trouble. I realized how often I envisioned worst-case scenarios and how that may have contributed to a lifetime of fearful thoughts.

I will never forget the approach to Ithaca on my fifth day. I reached the top of a hill near Ithaca College and saw Downtown Ithaca a couple of miles straight downhill. It was a dramatic and welcome view and, going down, the most pleasurable 15 minutes of the whole ride. I knew that once I reached the town, it would be only ninety minutes more to Trumansburg. I initially estimated that the trip to Annie’s house would take me about 24 hours of riding, but it actually took almost twice that, spread over five days.

Annie and Dave were waiting for me since I’d phoned ahead, and we managed to spend a pleasant three days together. We talked a lot, gawked at Taughannock Falls, the highest falls east of the Rocky Mountains, ate good food, and drank samples at wineries on the west side of Cayuga Lake. On my last day at Annie’s house, I went to a bicycle shop and upgraded my bike from three-speed gearing to fifteen.

The trip back was uneventful. With my new gears in place, being in better shape, and going downhill most of the way, I rode about one hundred miles on each of the first two days and a short distance on the third and final one. I could easily climb over all the hills, even Bear Mountain. I had lost fifteen pounds, but most notably, I realized I was OK being alone.

Travel as Family Connection

Judi and I separated shortly after my bike ride, and 10 years later, in 1991, I married Linda. Except for our honeymoon in Spain, partially described in Chapter 1, we didn’t travel very much until the summer of 1997, when we boarded a crowded Friday afternoon Greyhound bus for Atlantic City. We couldn’t drive because our car had been totaled in a highway collision. The Atlantic City casinos reimbursed part of the cost of the bus ride, but they required that we go inside the casino to get our money, assuming we would lose that amount and probably more. But we don’t gamble, so we just took their money and waited for my cousin, Jerry, to pick us up and drive us three and a half miles to his house on South Oxford Avenue in Ventnor. He had invited me and our mutual first cousins and their spouses, to gather with him and his wife, Cathy, for a weekend in their eleven-bedroom house, less than a block from the beach.

For one of our evening meals, we ordered 20 versions of what family members from different parts of the country variously called subs, hoagies, heroes, wedges, or grinders from the 50-year-old local institution Sack-O’-Subs. Once we returned with these delectables, we gathered around the dining room table and swapped tales of family life. When Linda and I finally went to our bedroom, we were delighted with the fragrance of saltwater floating through our open window. Once in bed, we could hear the faint sound of the waves kissing the shoreline as we drifted off to sleep.

Early Sunday morning, Jerry and I drove to Casel’s Marketplace in Margate to get bagels, smoked fish, tomatoes, onions, and cream cheese spreads, a somewhat arduous task because Jews can be pretty picky about bagel breakfasts. Jerry and I tried to accommodate everyone by purchasing four kinds of bagels, four kinds of cream cheese, and two different kinds of smoked fish. Breakfast was served around the small kitchen island, with each person vacating their seat when finished to make room for those who slept late or had not yet returned from the boardwalk.

Sunday Breakfast

When it was time to leave, Linda and I got a ride around Atlantic City on our way to the Greyhound bus station. Growing up, I loved Atlantic City and remember attending my very first concert, when Johnnie Ray played at Steel Pier. Then, I would walk to the back of the pier to watch a horse climb up a ramp to a high perch and dive 40 feet into a small pool of water. I loved the old clapboard-sided houses near the beach, with sand-removing showers beneath the steps you climbed to reach the elevated front porches, where everyone would assemble. Seeing that the casinos had replaced all those wonderful houses was distressing. The city had become a movie set with glitzy buildings forming a façade facing the beach, concealing the rundown houses and pawn shops just beyond. As we arrived at the bus station, I grieved for the Atlantic City of my youth.

Linda and I traveled down to Ventnor twice more on Greyhound casino buses, but then we bought a car and drove. Every cousin who could returned to that house annually. The weekend generally followed the same routine, including the Sack-O-Subs subs and the bagel breakfasts. But everyone also started bringing other vittles to share. Starting in the second year, Linda and I got a five-pound, 18-inch hard salami from Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. The family initially greeted the salami with groans and grumbling about how unhealthy it was, but by the end of the first morning, nothing remained of it. By 2000, everyone welcomed the salamis with glee, having all seen or heard about the fake orgasm scene in “When Harry Met Sally,” filmed at Katz’s, with rows of hard salamis hanging just beyond Meg Ryan’s open mouth.

I don’t know exactly when it happened, but one year, and every year after that, the first evening of our get-together began with what I called an organ recital, not the melodious kind, but rather the sharing of our physical infirmities. We spoke about everyone’s hearing and eyesight diminishing, knees and shoulders eroding, and stomachs and backs acting up.

But, as the years went on, some cousins developed more debilitating disorders, including cancer, Parkinson’s, and Alzheimer’s diseases.Of the original group of ten first cousins who came together in 1997, only four of us are still alive, and we haven’t been back to Ventnor for several years, but those weren’t our only travels as family connections.

Early in our marriage, Linda and I traveled to Germany, where we connected with some of her cousins. On our first trip in 1999, we booked a room in East Berlin. The small hotel had been converted from a large residence, and to provide a bathroom for each guest, they had to raise the floor in part of each bedroom to accommodate the necessary plumbing. One night, Linda had been washing up in our bathroom after I fell asleep. She didn't want to wake me by turning on the lights, so the only illumination in the room came from the street. Linda forgot that the bathroom floor was higher than the bedroom floor and tripped. She grabbed the door of a flimsy wardrobe in the bedroom to stop her descent, but it pulled off. Fortunately for me, she and the door fell on her side of the bed.

In the morning, we told the hotel manager about her experience. Knowing that some Americans can be litigious about such events, we tried to reassure him that we were not planning any legal action. He didn't understand and, in a harsh, accusatory voice, he demanded that we pay to have the wardrobe fixed. Since the door was not broken, but only needed to be reattached, we agreed to cover the cost.

This event occurred 54 years after World War II, when I was only a child. But books and movies and museum exhibitions about Nazi atrocities, seemingly tolerated by most of the German public, were never far from my Jewish eyes and ears. I didn't like the manager's attitude or his voice. I was concerned about what other experiences we might expect on this, our first trip to Germany.

We had come in part to attend the Berlin International Film Festival, where our friends, Joan Grossman and Paul Rosdy, had been invited to show their award-winning film, The Port of Last Resort. This film tells the story of the 20,000 European Jews who fled to Shanghai, China, between 1938 and 1941 to evade Nazi persecution. As a Jew, I found the subject matter very personal, and I wanted to discover what the local German reaction to it might be.

After seeing the film and spending time with Joan, Paul, and other members of the film crew, we left Berlin to visit Lemgo, Germany. Linda's maternal grandparents had emigrated from there, and Linda knew that many relatives were still in the area. The family of Gunter Strohmeier, Linda's cousin, had invited us to be their guests during our stay in Lemgo.

When we arrived at a nearby train station, we were shocked but delighted to see eight relatives waiting for us by the tracks, arranged almost in a triangle, like bowling pins. Our subsequent connections were always delightful. Each morning, we joined them for traditional German breakfasts featuring hearty bread, rolls, butter, jams, and an abundance of sliced meats and cheeses. I had studied German in college, but that was over 40 years earlier. Yet the table conversation was somewhat familiar because all four of my grandparents usually spoke Yiddish, a closely related language. Gunter and his son spoke a little English, but the rest spoke only German.

During our stay, we were guided, with typical German efficiency, through the community's sights. Lemgo was glorious. During World War II, the then-mayor, Wilhelm Gräfer, secretly appealed to the American forces to avoid bombing his beautiful city because it contained buildings dating back to the Middle Ages. German authorities arrested the mayor, accused him of betrayal, and executed him. But the Allied forces were sympathetic, and when we toured the city, Lemgo looked much as it had centuries before.

Gunter escorted us to the homes of local relatives. He knocked on their doors authoritatively, having long before lost any timidity about door knocking, being a very active Jehovah’s Witness. All of the relatives expressed much love for Linda and always provided coffee and cake. My favorite was Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte, or Black Forest Cake, composed of rich chocolate layers with fresh cherries, cherry liqueur, and whipped cream frosting.

A frequent presence during our stay was Ruth Lommas, Linda's mother's first cousin. She told us that her daughter, Petra, lived in Berlin and gave us her contact information. When we were ready to leave, she hugged Linda and said, with noticeably moist eyes, " Bitte umarme Petra für mich," Please hug Petra for me.

We contacted Petra when we returned to Berlin, met her a day later, and, as we fulfilled her mother's wish, she began to cry. Jehovah's Witness elders had shunned Petra, which they called disfellowship, for not following their norms and requirements, which are very explicit and demanding. "They called me in three times," she said, "and told me what would happen if I didn't change my ways. But I didn't want their kind of life. " Excluded from the community, she missed her mother and sister terribly but, otherwise, had no regrets.

Our trip lasted seven days, and a few days after we left, Gunter ran into Connie Strohmeier, another of Linda's cousins, and told her of our visit. Connie was disappointed that she had not seen us and, in a letter, invited us to stay at her place whenever we returned to Germany, which turned out to be four years later, in 2003. As we prepared for that trip, we asked how to recognize her when we arrived at the train station. "Just look for a man with one leg," she said, referring to her partner, Hans Wolf. When she asked how they would recognize us, we recalled a photograph taken two years before that we thought would be perfect and sent it to her.

Our filmmaker friend, Joan Grossman, had earlier asked Linda and me to serve as extras in a German film she was producing in New York City. Die Liebenden von Alexanderplatz starred Inge Meysel, who graciously posed for a photo with Linda and me. That's the one we sent to Connie and Hans. I wrote that it was as good a picture of us as we had and asked them to just disregard the old lady in the middle. Of course, Connie immediately recognized "the old lady" as the then-most-famous actress in Germany and wrote, "Do you have any idea who that woman is, any idea at all?"

Inga Meysel with Linda and me

The breakfast spreads prepared by Connie's daughter, Sarah, rivaled those produced by Gunter's family during our 1999 trip. There were fewer people at the table, but much more food.

Gunter arranged for a family gathering at a local restaurant in our honor. Approximately 40 relatives attended a splendid evening. I took photographs of each family group, and in the process, we learned a little about their lives, and they learned a little about ours. Almost everyone said they were honored by our visit. Some of them had come to the United States in the 1960s, but Linda was one of the only U.S. relatives to travel to Germany, which meant a lot to them.

World War II had ended almost 60 years before, so the oldest people there that night were only children during that period, and none, as far as I could tell, were sympathetic to Nazi beliefs. During our stay, we had breakfast with Connie's parents. Her father had been in the German Army during World War II, and, as a Jew, I was expecting, at best, a cold, detached tolerance. But he was a sweet, frail old man and treated me and, of course, Linda, with grace and great respect.

The antipathy I harbored from feelings related to the egregious behavior of many Germans in the 1930s and '40s had diminished somewhat because of my contact with Linda's extended family, which could not have been more loving.

That trip effectively ended our travels. I was in my mid-60s, and knee problems made travel difficult as did Linda’s arthritic condition. My knees, with hardly any cartilage left, rubbed together like grain-grinding stones at a gristmill, making travel undesirable. Standing in line at airports for security or tickets was tiring. Lugging our luggage to a hotel was excruciating. Sightseeing was appalling. Sitting for prolonged periods on airplanes, trains, tour buses, or in restaurants was debilitating. Our solution was to travel while staying home.

Travel as Imagination

One day, in 2012, Linda visited her friend and coworker Marilyn Zagha-Keeshan, who was planning a trip to China, and asked if Linda would be interested. Linda thought it would be fun to see the country and spend time with her friend. However, she was influenced by my cautiousness about travel and her own aversion to airports. She decided she didn’t want to go but was interested in expanding the cultural awareness she might gain from the trip. She wondered how much she could learn about China while Marilyn was away and asked if I wanted to join her in discovering that country virtually. I agreed.

Sunset Park, our Brooklyn neighborhood at that time, includes a large Chinatown, almost twice the size of its more famous Manhattan cousin. The businesses were concentrated along Eighth Avenue, presumably because the number eight in Chinese folklore is considered lucky for financial matters. Others claim that the undulating hilly topography along Eighth Avenue resembles a dragon, a mythological symbol of power in China.

Dotting Eighth Avenue were numerous Chinese food markets where we could obtain the proper provisions to prepare delicious Chinese meals at home. There was also a shop where I could purchase fresh noodles, which I used to make my specialty: the best cold sesame noodles in the world. I can assure you that this is not hyperbole. It takes me four days to prepare this delicacy.

We ate at some excellent restaurants in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Experiencing some of the highest quality Chinese cuisine in the Western World was within easy reach.

On a guided tour of Sunset Park Chinatown, we visited shops that sold medicinal herbs, and we both had Chinese massages and facials. Linda had already received acupuncture treatment from a Chinese physician.

We didn’t have to go far to experience another aspect of Chinese culture, their involvement in communal exercises. Linda and I frequently went to a park, two blocks away from our house. We went there almost every morning to do Tai Chi, and always saw hundreds of Chinese Americans assembled there for various forms of exercise, including Tai Chi, Qi Gong, group calisthenics, and even ballroom dancing. It had never occurred to me that slow dancing could be considered a form of exercise.

Ballroom Dancing in Sunset Park

We borrowed many superb Chinese travelogues from local libraries and bought a wall-sized map of China to follow along. The scenes in these videos, many of which were shot from the air, were magnificent, and the narration was clear and informative. It was a pleasure to see all these wonderful sights in the comfort of our living room, without the pain of walking on bad knees.

We borrowed videos of outstanding Chinese movies, including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , The Last Emperor, M Butterfly, and The Joy Luck Club . They were all culturally enlightening. I was fond of the warmly received but later condemned Charlie Chan movies, and also watched some of them.

We spent many hours in the Asia Society's museum, which houses priceless Chinese artifacts and masterpieces dating back to 2000 BCE and spanning the 19th century. The American Museum of Natural History has an entire hall devoted to Asian Peoples, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art has an enormous collection of Asian art. We learned much from those institutions.

Utilizing similar resources in New York City over the next few years, we virtually visited other countries. The routine was essentially the same: watching travelogues, history videos, and movies; visiting museums; eating at ethnic restaurants; and buying groceries for at-home dining. Linda is an excellent cook and has done in-depth studies of foreign cuisine. We filled our shelves with esoteric spices, seasonings, and other condiments for authentic culinary creations. We bought assorted Ukrainian beer and Scandinavian Aquavit when we virtually visited those areas.

When we visited India virtually, we spent a few days at a nearby Hindu Ashram, and on our combined trip to Greece and Turkey, we took a memorable round-trip ferry ride. Linda has a soft puppet figure resembling a rabbit named Louie Pipper. Dressed in an outfit to resemble Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s TheOdyssey, Louie joined us on our brief reenactment of Odysseus’ ten-year voyage home after the Trojan War.

Louie Pipper AKA Odysseus

I posted details and photos of all our experiences on Facebook, as if we had physically traveled to those countries. I even started a page specifically related to virtual travel. We heard from those who, like me, were too infirm to travel comfortably or could not afford those trips. We encouraged all those individuals to take their own virtual journeys, and some did.

During our various virtual trips, we learned as much, or perhaps even more, about those countries as we would have if we had traveled there in person. However, that doesn’t mean that virtual travel is superior to physical travel; it’s just different.

When Linda and I traveled to Germany, we visited family and were consequently immersed in the country's culture. We saw many of the sights through their eyes, lived for a time as they lived, and experienced the country with all five senses. You can’t have that kind of experience virtually.

On the other hand, I recall sitting at outdoor cafés in Paris, where Parisians presumably gather to meet friends or conduct business. But all I heard was English spoken at the tables around us. And the same was true of the restaurants we selected. The only Parisians we met in Paris were hotel receptionists, restaurant servers, and other vendors.

Traveling as a tourist can feel empty compared to the richness of virtual travel, but virtual travel can also feel equally lacking compared to the immersive experiences of traveling with family and friends to experience a country's culture.

But I couldn’t get to those countries. Our ages and physical conditions prevented us from doing so, but we certainly did not feel deprived. Virtual travel did not feel like a poor substitute. We never felt as if we were settling for second best. When it came to traveling, we had no unfulfilled bucket list, and certainly no list of regrets.