I'VE COME FULL CIRCLE. After six weeks of travelling old Europe, being shown around Tallinn, Rostock, Halle and Hamburg by city tour guides, I'm back at my job as Victoria Harbour Ferry skipper -- now telling tourists about my town. But things have changed. Travelling alone one cannot fail to learn about the world and about oneself. Of course, much of that will still take time to absorb and digest. But along the way I have also learned to put myself into other people's shoes, how to talk to them and to sympathize with their needs. Strangely enough I have also [View Full Entry]

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In Tallinn, Estonia: Karoli (tour guide) for the private tour of Old Town and for finding my grandfather's apartment building; Kulno (music retailer) for giving me such detailed information about Estonian artists and cultural events in Tallinn; Viive (communications manager) for teaching me some useful Estonian language phrases and an insight into the Russian-Estonian dilemma; Kustav-Agu (costume/set designer) for generously spending his birthday afternoon to take me on a private tour of Tallinn City Theatre. In Halle, Germany: Andrea (English teacher) for inviting me to [View Full Entry]

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13 July: "AND THE LIVIN' is easy..." Up at 4:45 a.m., off on subway, regional train and express bus to Hamburg Airport (yes, that's what the sign says, not "Hamburger Flughafen" as it would have years ago). The trains are busier than one would think, with early workers and late night revellers. But then this is a port city that never sleeps, and public transit runs around the clock. Hamburg - Frankfurt 55 minutes, then onto an Airbus 330-300 for the flight across the Atlantic. The best seats in Economy Class -- as I found out on the flight out -- [View Full Entry]

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12 July: THE ARTIST who conducted guided tours in the Bergedorf castle park had told me, "On Saturday you must go to the Deichtor (dike gate) exhibition grounds." Problem is, when I get there I find not one but two art retrospectives going on simultaneously in separate buildings. Which one was I supposed to view? I should pay more attention. At first I'm not interested in the show of fashion photographer F.C. Gundlach, but find it increasingly fascinating as I wander around looking at location shots taken of models in such bold natural settings as the Sahara desert or grandiose man-ma [View Full Entry]

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10 July: AFTER THE SECOND NIGHT at the guesthouse I again get lucky. A small ground floor bedroom -- the only one with internet plug-in -- becomes available. I move... in a hurry. I now can post these scribbles with snapshots again, even in the middle of the night, if I wish. When my mother was pregnant with me after the war, she was warned about high infant mortality statistics at the hospital in Bergedorf where she lived, so off she went to deliver her baby just outside the boundaries of Hamburg. Today I am checking out Reinbek, this small town [View Full Entry]

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8 July: TRAIN TRAVEL IN GERMANY is a joy. Halle - Hannover 2 hours 15 minutes (travelling by car on the Autobahn you'd have to add at least another hour)! Thirteen minutes wait for the InterCity Express to Hamburg, 1 hour 20 minutes. And they are on time... by the second! I have a six-seater compartment -- like you see in those old movies -- window seat all to myself for much of the trip. Ah, feet up on the seat opposite (shoes off, of course), write on my laptop computer for a while, then doze as the landscape whizzes by [View Full Entry]

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5-7 July: AN OPERATIC PLAY about Joan of Arc with full orchestral complement set in St. Marien cathedral; a Dr. Marcuse horror show interpreted by a dance troupe in two-dimensional fashion behind a black-and-white screen to a constant underlying droning sound. One earns ten minutes of applause, the other yawns and walk-outs. This is the nature of the performing arts during this Theater der Welt festival -- so varied, so unpredictable. Then a rather conventional play with corner staging -- audience on two sides -- three men fishing (not an exciting premise to start with) in an abandone [View Full Entry]

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1 July: I'M TAKING A FEW DAYS' break from the performing arts, heading south to the city of Naumburg, 40 minutes by railway, to go canoeing. A little girl in the train compartment is looking in the direction of the disappearing station platform, crying unconsolably as grandma is taking her away -- for the summer or just a few weeks? I walk over and show them a small Canadian pin and how to attach it to my shirt collar, then hand it to the girl. I picked up 25 of these keepsakes from my local Member of Parliament's constituency office in [View Full Entry]

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29 June: MAINSTAGE PROGRAMS at Theater der Welt are turning out to be almost exclusively new creations and works in progress. While there have been some disappointments, I have also experienced sublime moments that will, no doubt, do what I hoped for in coming here, namely provide inspiration for my own artistic work. One observation that recalls theatre experiences from my youth: There have been looong applauses following most performances -- not the phony standing ovations, but the sustained multiple-curtain-calls types you rarely see in North America. Can you imagine enthusiasti [View Full Entry]

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24 June: THREE UNUSUAL city tours are on my program. 1. A fleet of "Trabbis" (pet word for Trabant), those notorious yet oddly endearing people's cars without frills but plenty of gasoline fumes from the German Democratic Republic days, chauffeured by local actors, take us into the world of the old East. We shop for apple and plum pie at a bakery that has produced such goods since the old days under communism in a section of town that looks as if it's in a time warp. Finally, with a backdrop of tacky cookie-cutter subdivision of cheap townhouses (that look like [View Full Entry]

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