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On Friday 10 January I flew with my Uncle, Dan. Kastrup - Le Bourget. We stayed at Hotel Benjamin Franklin et du Brasil in the 1st Arrondissement off the Rue Faubourg St. Montmartre. Uncle Dan went doing business every week day. We would have breakfast and dinner together every day. The hotel was home to traveling business men. Also, Dan told me, and later introduced me to some, the hotel was also used by Scandinavian circus directors (Schumann, Belli, etc.). They would sit ``all day'' in the lounge, ``holding court'', receiving prospective artists and discuss programmes and contracts.
Uncle Dan was a gourmand and perhaps was responsible, as a result of this trip, to also make me one. He would talk about the wines we drank, and we would go to many of his favourite restaurants. One, in particular, struck me: green painted, full height wooden panels, tables along the walls with the center of its two rooms featuring a display table with flowers, fruits, digestives (incl. cognacs). After the dinner Uncle Dan ordered a cognac for himself: Cafe fine. While the waiter was pouring the drink another waiter's flambé went out of control and something caught fire. While our waiter was directing the latter on how to extinguish the fire, head turned in that direction, he kept pouring. The pouring stopped when the fire was under control. By that time the huge sifter glass was just about completely full: 1/2 liter! The waiter did not show any cognition of this. Just kept on putting the bottle back and otherwise seeing to things. Uncle Dan, however, had no intention of touching the glass. So in due time a new glass, properly filled was produced!
occupied by the double fact: Serbian and zither. In fact: Uncle Dan properly introduced me to the fact that France, and in those days in particular Paris, was home to many people who had had to flee their countries. We met many of them on our walks around town together during the week end and later.
I would roam around Paris. Walked and walked. All over. Hungry to see. And I saw. The weather was cold, but that did not daunt me. With my Zeiss Ikon camera I took many black & white photos. They were all put into a special, blue photo album. I look into it now and then.
We flew back from Le Bourget Thursday 16 January 1958.
At the Technical University students could sign up for a summer
training opportunity through IAESTE: International Association for the
Exchange of Students for Technical Experience. I landed a ``plum'':
two months at the BBC
Television Centre at Shepherd's Bush in London. Before going to London
I traveled through Europe: By train from Copenhagen via Hamburg to
Basel, Bern and Lausanne. I Berne I walked around town for a couple of
hours between two trains. In Lausanne I walked down the hill side to
the boat to Geneva and after 30 hours of travel I booked into a Youth
Hostel. Next day by bus to Annecy. The Youth Hostel was so primitive
and well outside town that I changed my mind and lodged at a small
hotel right on one of the city canals facing the small inner city
island and its castle. Annecy became one of my cities after that: at
night I walked around town, and, of course, there was a young girl
sitting on a castle wall, and my heart throbbed. She wasn't there the
next evening. A boat tour around the lake and then on to
Grenoble. Again another small one star hotel before the 365 km. bus
trip along Route Napoleon, on the front seat, in a magnificent
Berliez bus, via Cannes to Nice. From early morning to 6-7 pm. Then
local bus along the middle Corniche. The Youth Hostel close to Monaco
on the middle Corniche was fully occupied so I walked down the
mountain side to the French communist Youth Hostel on the rocky
``beach''. There was room and I stayed there for several days. Visited
Monte Carlo and Menton one day, Nice another. Then by bus along the
coast with a night stop half way between Nice and Marseilles. Again a
small hotel in Marseilles, on La Canebierre. Took a gorgeous photo of a
lady pavement painter. Had Boulliabaise on the
quay of the inner harbour. Saw some of Corbusier's modernistic, cold,
buildings, and sailed out to Chateau d'If. Then bus to Avignon where
again I stayed in a Youth Hostel, on the island in the Rhone river.
Took another prime photo, again back and white, through gateways of
two inner courts in Ville Neuve des Avignon. Pressing on to Arles,
excursion to Les Baux de Provence. From there to Eze and a hotel night
there. Then Carcassone and a Youth Hostel. Then Toulouse. I recall the
red brick Cathedral.![[*]](/usr/share/latex2html/icons/footnote.png){kind=icon}
Then Bordeaux and an evening in the Opera: Vittoria de los
Angeles and the Scala -- en route that summer for their yearly Buenos
Aires trip (by boat out of Bordeaux), but first they played during the
Foire de Bordeaux: The Annual Wine Auction days! Then on to Tours and
again some days in a fine Youth Hostel somewhat out of town, 4-5
kilometers walk. Tourist bus tour to see many castles before a few
nights in Paris. I came to England through Folkestone: Sunday 28 June 1959.
In London I was installed at the BBC Hostel on the corner of New
Cavendish Road and Great Portland Street, just behind the famous BBC
Radio building on Upper Regent Street. I went to the inner docks,
between Tower and London bridge to fetch my bicycle sent over by boat
from Aarhus. That bicycle and I became inseparable the next two
months. I worked ``every other day'': Tuesdays, Thursdays,
Saturdays, Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, etc., from around 9 am till
the studios I were at closed down, usually around 10 pm. On the free
days I would roam all over London. I had brought Steen Eiler
Rasmussen's book London with me and found all the architecture
referred to in that book! With the out-door TV crew we would cover
the Cricket matches at Lord's, the visit of the President of Panama to
the Covent Garden (his wife was the famous ballet dancer: Margot Fonteyn), the
recording of the nine songs for Christmas, to be sent across the
former empire for their airing 5 months later, etc. There were famous
Saturday afternoon interviews in my studio: Hugh Gaitskell, Dame
Edith Evans, the younger Goulbenkain (who came driving into the big
studio in his fancy, open Rolls Royce Corniche), etc. For the Opera
recording we worked nights and just before 8pm on the evening we all
showered in a nearby public bath and changed into rented tuxedos from
Moss Brothers. I also followed Tom Kristensen's short stories Compass and visited the bar in the East India Docks with the
child fetus in a formaldehyde glass! Around the corner was the Danish
Seamen's Church where I would sometimes go playing Billard. The church
building was modern, designed by the Danish architect who designed
many fine modern churches in Denmark those years. On some late
evenings on my bicycle back from Shepherd's Bush I would stop at the
Norwegian Club off Bayswater Road for an evening of dance etc. with
all the young Scandinavians in town. I went out with a friend of Uncle
Dan, a QC who had quarter's in Inner Temple and lived, with his butler
and valet in a splendid apartment next to Westminster Cathedral, i.e. the main Catholic church in England: we had lunch on town once and
then went by jumping busses to Madame Tusseaud's Wax Cabinet, and we
had lunch in his apartment and in his offices also once. Mogens Iuel
Kraft came by and we went to see ``My Fair Lady'' at the Drury Lane Theatre.
I flew home from Southend airport: Friday 28 August
1959 in time for my MSc studies to begin -- with the bicycle being
sent back by boat, this time to Copenhagen! That summer in London
confirmed me as London-phile for years to come. What a summer!
The next summer my IAESTE job took me to Portugal. To work at the hydro-electrical power plant at Vila Nova on the Cavado river, some 160 kilometers north east of O'Porto. I again took the train: The North Express to Paris, arriving at Gare du Nord. In Paris I stayed a few days going out in the evenings with Mai-Britt Gry, Erik Mørch's fiancé. On the train out of Paris I shared a 6 person compartment with four Portuguese spinsters and their brother, all around the late 60'es early 70'es. They were returning to Lisboa from a pilgrimage that had brought them via Compostella di Santiago to Lourdes and Paris. We were to share compartment all the way also across Spain. He taught me some Portuguese by writing in French, which I understood and spoke well, the tale of a Portuguese princess and her marriage, including the display the morning after of the bloodied bed linen! All the ladies giggled! At the French/Spanish border station Irun: 7 July 1960, we changed from normal width gauge to a wide gauge rail track train. In Burgos our train waited for 5-6 hours in the night and early morning. It was bitterly cold, one mile up! Later that day we stopped again for a long siesta at the Spanish/Portuguese border station of Vilar Formosa: Friday 8 July 1960. I had a hair cut and a shave. It cost a pithy and was balmy perfect. I should later, for my stay that summer in Portugal and Spain only be shaved professionally. I arrived late evening in O'Porto and found that the town at those hours was bustling of life. The next day I went to the HICA (HIdro Electrica do Cavado) offices and was later that day taken by car to my destination: Barragem (dam) Vila Nova where I was lodged in the splendidly equipped Pousada. This became my home for the next six-seven weeks. My ``work'' consisted of pouring over the drawings of the Brown Boveri equipped power plant, understanding all the hydro-mechanics and the power engineering electrics, turbines, transformers, etc. Totally boring stuff, made even more boring by my inability to speak much Portuguese, to begin with, and by the total absence for most of the time by the Chief (and only) engineer. Instead he ordered that I use his Mercedes! Every work day had its simple rhythm: sumptuous breakfasts, lunches and diners, with iced wine, cod fish, etc. at the Pousada. Walk or drive down to the turbine station, a mile down for three-four hours ``work: in the morning, a two hour siesta, and three hours ``work'' in the afternoon. Swimming over lunch and before dinner in the Hollywood style pool. Week ends I would rent a boat with a sailor (fisherman) to cross the vast dam. It was like a movie from Kashmir: great Valleys, deserted mountain slope impoverished farms (now isolated because of the dam). Some Sundays we would trek over a mountain ridge to a neighbouring valley where a church festival and market took place. Nuns of the local school taught me Portuguese, in French! One week end evening some workers (four) -- their families living in fine double houses on the mountain slope, with gardens -- persuaded me that the Mercedes need gasoline. So we drove the 30 or so kilometer distance to a nearby town. Along the way I was asked to stop 5 times. Just outside a small white-washed simple cottage: doors only, no windows. One worker ran out and soon came back. Nodding. We got the gasoline fill up. Had a light snack, wine and coffee. And started returning. Now we stopped again, for a long time at each of the five places. Out we went. Entered the last door: it was a local bar and buffet: drank wine, or beer, or a warm mixture (mead) of both, ate dried meet, goat cheese, pickled vegetables. I noted that we were only four in the bar, but seemed to occupied with my learning Portuguese and what it was we drank and ate. At the last stop I was told that it was my turn! To what? To sleep with the whore of the house! Thanks, but no thanks. One week end one of the workers to me into Braga, he to spend the week end with his family who lived there, while I was lodged in a nice little quaint and cute hotel: all red velvet and 1890 styles lamps and lots of mirrors. Again I was too late to discover that it was one of the push bordellos of town! O'Porto was interesting: with streets featuring shoe & leather stores on one side and coffee grocers on the other side. The next street, to one side, would then feature textile stores on one side and shoe & leather stores on the side which was the back to the first street. Likewise with the street to the other side of the first: It featured to back (or front as it may be) of the coffee merchants. After my stay in Vila Nova I went on to visit Portugal: Coimbra and Lisboa. In Lisboa I stayed at the Polytechnic Students' Hostel -- in those days, the vaning years of Salazar, they were ``rebellious'' and believed themselves communists. I remember drinking beer with them at the Portugalia Cervezaria (even Brewery). In the late evenings I went to the Fado places. St. Jeronimo cloister was another photo op! By train through Southern Portugal to Villa Real de St. Antonio: Tuesday 16 August 1960, where I crossed the river in a small boat and from the other side, Spain, by bus to Sevilla which I reach at 11 pm. I had booked room at hotel Inglaterra on Placa Nueva (from around 1500!), but they were full - but had re-booked me into a less expensive very nice hotel right across the square to where they took me and my heavy rucksack! I was astonished: the families were all out: guvernantes took care of the babies, toddler and smaller children. Girls walked arm in arm while their mothers sat sternly watching them, and the young boys played ball while their fathers were deep in serious discussions or played chess! After that, after I was installed in my nice room overlooking the square, everybody, also I, went for dinner! Sevilla became a great experience: the Alhambras, the churches, the former Jewish quarter, now full of white washed hoses, the Gypsy town uphill and the other one across the river. Night shows at either place. The Bodegas with the soft Sherry. On to Granada and one night there. In both Sevilla and Granada I took many good black and white photos which I myself developed and took large prints of. I still take them out to look at! By express train to Madrid: two nights in Hotel Asturia, downtown. Kari and I stayed there 15 years later! Also Madrid became a great experience. The church with Goya's fresco's, the Prado with more Goya's, with Velasquez, etc. The Placa Mayor and Placa Real. Money transfers did'nt materialise -- that is: the Spanish Banks were grossly inefficient, my parents had receipt from their bank of completed transfer, weeks before! So of to Paris, cutting short -- and even shorter because only available transport during this the high season was with the Talgo Express which was expensive. Thursday 25 August 1960 I again crossed at Irun and same day was in Paris at night fall. Again I spent some time with Mai-Britt Gry: she was awfully thin so I had to feed her. She explained that Erik was having a big birthday so she was saving for some big present. Meanwhile her health was ``endangered''. My parents were successful in money transfer to Paris so I could stay a few days extra. What another summer.
Father invited me to Rome, the last year of my
studies at University.
We went by train, changed in Munich. It was a group tour, very
civilised, and we shared compartment with a nice family from Emdrup, a
suburb inside Copenhagen. We later kept the connection with them.
We went via Gedser (Denmark): Sunday 26 March 1961.
I recall having for the first time lunch while the train was crossing
the Alps (Brenner: Monday 27 March 1961) and winding its way down the
mountain slopes toward
Bolzano. Many years later -- but who could know that then -- we were
to cross by train and even more often by our own car the Brenner Pass.
In Rome we lodged at a German Catholic Nun's Hospice: clean, lofty,
cool and just perfect: on the banks of the Tevere overlooking the river.
We visited my father colleague: Rector Per Krarup, then Director of
the Danish Academy in Rome and himself, of course, a great Roman
Scholar.The DSB (Danish National Railways) travel bureau had managed
``tickets'' to the Great St. Peter's Basilica for the Easter Sunday
monring mass. We were well situated, in the western cross, close to
the Main Altar and could see the formal incantations (incl. the Pope)
well. Afterwards we saw the Pope again from the main balcony of St. Peters: Urbis et Orbis: the City and the World. The next day we returned:
Brenner, Monday 3 April and Gedser, Tuesday 4 April 1961.
IBM were introducing a new hardware technology, a pre-chip ceramic substrate manner of assembling discrete transistors, resistors, etc. Called SLT (Solid Logic Technology) it replaced the five or so year old SMS (Solid Modular System). The equipment being designed at the IBM Nordic Laboratories were to use SLT. So several of us, some five or more, went to Paris for European IBM Laboratories' first introduction to SLT. The seminars were held at the then ``ailing'' hotel Continental, soon after completely refurbished. All I can realy remember from those busy days, including week end seminars, was a dinner at ``Roger a la Grenouille'' (``Roger's with the Frog's Legs''), a rather ``naughty'' affair: corkscrews in the form of the male penis, etc.!
At Hursley IBM then had their main European Laboratories. It was here that I would use their IBM 709 and later IBM 7090 computer, its largest commercial main frame then, to check the electrical characteristics of our logic design: impedance matching, load balancing, wiring feasiilities, etc. Frequent two week long trips gave ample opportunity to take week end drives in my (i.e. IBMs) rented car to see England.
With colleagues from Hursley we went for another one of these SLT meetings at the IBM Laboratory in La Gaude, near Nice.
One evening we had Bouillaibaisse, several of us. On the way home we followed the tradition of Monsieur Maigret, at that time tremendously popular on British TV, to have a Pastis after he had solved a case in his favourite bar just before returning to Madame. We, indstead, decided to have one round at every bar on the road back to the Hotel. The next morning Jim Wilkinson did not turn up for our early taxi departure from our Nice hotel to la Gaude. Andy Hoey found him fully dressed in the bathtub where he had obviously slept all night. 1/2 hour delay!
day meeting I took a long week end and flew off to Ajaccio (Corsica). I had rented a car to tour the island only to find out: that week end it was the annual Corsica Formula 3 (or stock car) racing days and all roads were essentially blocked, and it rained cats and dogs, miserably. I neither saw the island nor the race. I cancelled the car reservation and trudged around Ajaccio!
I would, a couple of times, drive up to Berkhamstead, to visit the Hudson sisters. They were teachers my Aunt Gudrun's age, and were her friends from long back. The two spinsters lived in a nice semi-detached in one of these typical English ``tract home'' districts but faced the outer commons on the other side of the street and had 1/2 mile to a nearby forest. I would stay with them a night or two and would then take them on longer all day trips: one time to Coventry to see the new Cathedral, another time to Ely to see the old one there! Also Cambridge, etc.
On other week ends I would criss-cross Dorset and Cornwall, see Bath, Wells, Land's End and Plymouth. Or go into Wales or up to London for opera or concert (in Wigmore Street), to Oxford and Stonehenge, etc. I enjoyed these somewhat lonely excursions into the English countryside. Mostly I stayed at the New Forest Motor Inn, between Romesey and New Forest, two times I stayed at a less fancy hotel in Winchester. I also enjoyed walking around the Cathedral close and the Winchester School courtyards.
I kept buying books, mostly second hand, from shops all over: London, Winchester, Salisbury, Wells, Bath, etc.
Again an SLT meeting. What I most vividly remember was a dinner with
my colleagues one
evening at the ``Zur Eulenspiegel'' restaurant. An up market dinner
restaurant. What caught me were the deeply plunging neck lines of the
Dirndl's of the waitresses! Oh yes. Another evening I went alone to
hear Don Giovanni at the local, rebuilt opera. Finally: it was
fasching and a Stuttgarter burger was imitating the rather stiff
street traffic control directions of a policeman: standing behind him,
moving to stay behind him so that the poor traffic warden was
unawares, the faschings (clown) clad burger, in a liberating way,
played on allusions to the past eras of strict policemanships -- even
daring poking fun at the 45
raised left hand! It was all in good
humour and the traffic policment only got ``suspicious'' when the
street corner crowds grew to hundreds of applauding passers by!
When I was first told by my boss, Ingemar Ringström, that I was (and three
to four others were)
asked to go to San Jose for a year, I almost cried from joy! Ingemar
also adviced that if I had wisdom teeth to do something about it. They
were all removed the next day at the dentist in Vällingby. My
colleague, Torsten Åkesson, and I each bought identical super
8mm film cameras. Before
flying over I spent a few days in Denmark: giving a big party at
Otto Mønsted College and visiting my parents in Århus and
family in Copenhagen. The flight, with PanAm (or was it SAS?) went
over Iceland, with a stop in Reykjavik, to Seattle. I arrived a day
after the others -- we were all asked to take different planes so
as to minimize any los to IBM! They fetched me in their rented car
at San Francisco Airport. The first week or so we stayed at the
Hyatt Motor Lodge in San Jose on North 1st St. Soon Torsten and I
had found a nice town house apartment on 101 Oak Rim Court in Los
Gatos. This place became my home from mid December 1963 till mid
August 1965.
Soon after my arrival I took over the lease of a car from my good friend ever since April 1962, Jean Paul Jacob. He was going back to Stockholm (only to return soon to San Jose, and permanently). The car stayed with me all my first period in the US. It was a white Dodge Dart convertible with red leather interior. Quite a car for a young man as I.
Although we were very busy, our ``Swedish'' group at IBM, we did take a few days out to celebrate Christmas, soon after our arrival in California. We were four ``boys'' who shared my car: Torsten, a fine, very clever and kind Turkish colleague (whose name I very much regret to have forgotten) and Helmuth Burge (from Switzerland). On Friday after work, December 21 we drove from San Jose down US Highway 101 towards LA. Saturday 22 December we drove into LA, to drive along Sunset Boulevard, see Hollywood, Star Walk, down to Marineland of the Pacific, which we enjoyed. Saw also Frank Lloyd Wrights Chapel nearby. Next day, Sunday 23 December, on our way through downtown LA, I bought a Samsonite briefcase which lasted from Christmas 1963 till March 1986 (when it was replaced by one bought in Lissabon). In San Diego we saw the ``colonial'' centre, La Jolla, and the Zoo. Monday 24 December we drove across a small mountain range into the souther part of the central valley and along salt lakes, through Mojave and Joshua Tree Deserts to Bakersfield, where, exhausted from a long days drive we hurridly ate dinner and each went to bed, in an arbitrarily selected Motel room. I saw some Christmas eve TV: Danish Ballet! Next day up early and via Kings Canyon National Park back to San Jose!
That New Year's eve I spent with the family of a pen (girl) friend of one of my Otto Mønsted College friends. Her father was a Bank of America vice president, for Latin America. They lived in a grand mansion in Piedmont Hills, up behind Oakland. I later invited the girl out, once, for dinner at a fancy San Francisco restaurant.
With the Yong Scandinavian's Club we went skiing around their hut in Norden, near the Donner Pass, and, one day, at Squaw Valley. I recall getting hoisted (ski-lifted) all the way up, only to spend three hours getting down: not the regular slope. That was far too novel for me. But quietly criss-crossing in the woods on the side!
Torsten and I set out in late May for a long trip: I was only scheduled to stay in the US for 12 months, so it was a matter of seeing as much as possible! The trip took us through Death Valley for a night out, with Victor Borge, in Las Vegas; to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon where we set up tent only to enjoy that the coffee we had left in our cups had frozen during the night and thin snow was on the ground. We nevertheless had some spectacular views across and into the Grand Canyon before driving further east, into Navajo and through Hopi Indian reservations. That night we again camped, now on the river bed in Cheyney Canyon, near Window Rock. Back and up north, again camping, now on the rim above White House Ruin. Next day a long ride through Utah staying overnight in Afton (a Swedish sounding name: evening) before we next day drove through Jackson Hole into Yellow Stone National Park: Geysers and all! Come vening we drove west and stayed overnight in Boise, Idaho. Finally, a long stretch back to Los Gatos through Northern California.
Unluckily for Torsten: his 8mm had set out and all his films were more or less black. Luckily, but at some expense he was willing to cover, a shop could copy my well nigh identical shots: whenever we stopped we both had gotten out of the car, each from our side, to shoot some and same footage!
After my parents had left -- they came for a month and I had rented a nice apartment off University Avenue in Los Gatos -- I went, in my car, picking up others on the way, in the San Francisco Marina district, to Clear Lake where the Young Scandinavian's Club had a summer house. Main features were the water skiing and the BBQs. I may have gone there more than once. On the way back from such trips, to Clear Lake, Napa Valley, the Highway 49 Mother Lode Country, etc., I would stop up at Vanessi's: a great Italian Restaurant on Broadway. With its counter and gentle staff it became one of my favourites. I also went there, one of the first days my parents were with me. I had
Svend Larsen, my Danish friend from IBM in Stockholm, came over for a month of work. He had rented a red Mustang! We drove through trees in Yosemite, and, unable to find room for the night, slept, rather uncomfortably, after Tioga pass, on the road down to Mono Lake. Next day to Virginia City and Reno where we overnighted. Third day via Mount Lassen (Volcanic) Park and Weaverville to Eureka. Here we had a fine seafood dinner before going to sleep. On our last day we drove down highway 1, back to work!
Mogens Iuel Kraft had written: Could we meet. He was sailing to New York and would land early October, a few days after my 27th anniversary. So I drove across the US: Down Central Valley (Fresno) to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon, from there via Navajo and Hopi reservations, Window Rock into New Mexico and las Cruces into Texas at El Paso. Carlsbad Caverns. A long stretch across Texas to Dallas and on to New Orleans.
In New Orleans I enjoyed the Mobil Guide which prescribed: When in New Orleans, try a Progressive Dinner. I followed their advice:
itemize Sazerac at the Sazerac Bar of the Fairmont Hotel:
In those days the bar was grand: stately, club like, Men only. It was, to recall, 1964. The Sazerac is an exquisite drink and requires precision. After the first Sazerac I went on to a creamy, foamy, frothy Gin Fizz, and ended with another Sazerac. Almost lethal. After that, after having enjoyed, for well over an hour the leisurely ``club'' atmosphere -- remember the Civil Rights Act of 1964 had hardly had any impact yet -- I staggered on to:
Gumpo Soup at The Gumpo Shop:
Oyster's Rockefeller at Antoine's:
Chicken Galloire:
Patisserie Aux Quatres Saisons:
Café aux Laits (with Chicory) &t Beignets -- Morning Call Café:
Then via Mississippi:
I stopped overnight somewhere in the then still race troubled south. Next morning I was to have breakfast at a road side diner: the waitress put the place mat down and took the order. The mat showed a map of the world. Some countries, like Denmark, were painted dark red, the US was pink. Paraguay was white. Courtesy The John Birch Society. I quietly left the place, revved my car fast north, leaving the still unserved order behind me.
After Mississippi, a corner of Alabama, through Tennesee, Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, to New York: Niagara Falls. Then across to Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Boston, Cambridge and Cape Cod's New Providence. Here I celebrated my birthday before turning the car around -- having ``bridged'' the distance from The Pacific to The Atlantic! Then New York, where I stayed at Times Square Hotel, where my parents had stayed a few months earlier. Next day I fetched Mogens from his YMCA near (or on?) 34th Street. We drove around: roof down, through Central Park and down 5th Avenue.
Approaching the pedestrian walk at St. Patricks Cathedral and Rockefeller Centre, Mogens observed: ``they were also on the (Norwegian American Line) boat over''. And ``they'' were Kari and Frederik! I enjoy to continue the story by saying: ``the next day Frederik was seen floating down the East River''. But it was not quite as dramatic as that. Frederik was going to Oregon, Kari via family in LA to San Francisco. I offered to drive her to LA! But her uncle and aunt with whom she stayed on Staten Island adviced against it. Taking the Greyhound Bus, as always planned, was deemed safer! Well, it became, for Kari, quite a harrowing journey -- but that is her story. We all had lunches and dinners somewhere, Sardi, etc. And breakfast at Stage Delicatessen.
I shall of course never forget that chance meeting -- more elsewhere in these writings.
So alone I again set out: In one day, 885 miles, New York -- Chicago, where I stayed at the Conrad Hilton! Next day the Art Institute, one of the grandest galleries in the world. Then through the wheat belt to Lincoln, Nebraska. From there to Boulder, Colorado; and next day, Friday 16 October, over the Rocky Mountain National Park, trailed by a Ranger's car, the latter closing the various Park gates after me for the winter whose first snow was gently falling. That night I came in late to Salt Lake City after a long drive. Next day in another long stretch back to Los Gatos! A few days later I delivered Kari's very large wooden trunk and her wood cased skis to her future address: outer Broadway.
In November and December, up to and including Christmas I travelled a couple of times east again. I flew, of course, and managed to stay week ends in New York, always also managingto get tickets to the Metropolitan Opera which had then moved to Lincoln Centre. In fact getting those tickets was as easy as walking up to the box office!
Over Christmas 1964 I went down to visit Frederick Jackson for the second time -- I had made a long, one day trip there when I was in New York in October. I stayed over Christmas, driving there all the way from Endicott, returning to Poughkeepsie before I returned to the SF Bay Area for New Year. My Christmas with Frederick shall never be forgotten. He was such a sweet person: kind, considerate and always cheerful. There were Christmas parties all over: at his home and at the homes of his friends: Dr. *** (I have temporarily forgotten his name) in Bridgeport, and at Mrs. Mae B. Hall. One day we drew out to his summer cottage on the Atlantic coast. I came to like this man very, very much. His Antique Store & Barn was fabulous. Part of his home it was brimming full of all kinds of Americana knick-knack. Wood carved Indian Chief heads, Tivoli Mary-go-Round (Carroussel) horses, rocking chairs, braided rugs -- which he himself made! There were years supplies of material inthe Barn, neatly stacked up. He always send us such imaginative post, and especally Christmas cards. On my parents earlier trip that year he had given them one of his paper cut ``paintings'': frame mounted behind glass. It is still somewhere around. Maybe with my sister.
it in the usual very shy way, always soft and wonderful. I had to guess it, much later and my mother confirmed it. He was always a homosexual. Among them you find some of the most beautiful people -- of the mind; some of the best, enduring friends.
In May 1965 we drove a last long trip -- over the Memorial Day Week End. We saw the Mother Lode gold mining boom towns along highway 49, Virginia City, Reno, Mount Lassen Park and, as for trip described in item larsen, across to Eureka and down highway number 1.
We left San Jose after quite a few farewell parties and visits to The Popes and The Baerwalds.
First encounter, during summer months, with the deep, sweaty, hot and humid south as we stepped out for a change of flight at Houston airport. Stayed overnight at an airport hotel at Miami. No desire to sightsee: late night with early morning BWI Airlines flight to Charlotte Amalie.
We enjoyed going to the beach every day in the morning and to window shop around in the late afternoon, to dine in the evenings listening to music, and to see remnants of a Danish era gone by.
One long day we made an excursion to the Rockefeller owned resort at Caneel Bay, St. John, swimming and picniq'ing.
Aquatic flight between the two neigbouring islands: taking off from and landing on water.
In Christiansted we stayed at the Pink Fancy hotel. It had a swimming pool. We would go out and shop for a quarter of white rum: US 75 cents and a quarter of orange juice: US$2.75 ! Lie around the pool and sip it all ! One day we rented a car and drove around the western/norther part of the island visiting defunct sugar mills and Frederikssted.
Sightseeing around the Spanish fort.
Reconnoitering on my first revist since 1960.
In Madrid the housemaid one lunchtime surprised Kari and I in our Hotel Asturias room. I also stayed at this hotel in 1960.
Kari and I motored, in our light blue MGB through Europe and via Geneva to this place 40 kms. south-south-west of Grenoble.
It was a three week summmer school: Boliet, Ole-Johan Dahl, Tony Hoare, Edsger Dijkstra, Calvin C. Elgot, Robert Floyd, and one more. Peter (Assistant Prof.) and Jytte Johansen were also there. My parents helped finance the trip. No monies then for PhD students then, in Denmark, to attend summer schools -- for which they were intended! Michel Sintzoff and his wife were there. So was Jean Paul Dufy. Francois Genuys, IBM, was a co-organiser. We ran out of money, just enough to return to Denmark, at the end of the second week.
I made a deal with Francois: to re-lecture Elgot's Finite Diagram Closure lectures based, instead, on Martin Davis' exposition of Turing machines, in return for a rather substantial NATO funding. That enabled Jytte, Peter, Kari and I to dine, sumptuously, at Restaurant Rostang in Sassenage, a suburb of Grenoble. We drove there, four of us, in our tiny MGB. Jytte, pregnant, in passenger front seat, Kari across the gearbox, Peter double-bended in the back! We made a grandiose swing into the Restaurant forecourt where one also sat for dinner. Ordered a Vosne Romanée Malconsort 1959 which they proceeded to claim that they did'nt have. So I made motions to leave. The sommelier looked a second time and had a bottle. I told him: better have two. And we drank two. The meal was phantastic, and the wines were out of this world.
It was my first real exposure to computer and computing science and to some of the great scientists -- several of whom I have since met often. Some of us are members of IFIP WG 2.3 (Tony, Edsger), Ole-Johan at Oberwolfach events, etc. Dijkstra was lecturing on his semaphores, Tony on Structured Programming, and Dahl on Simula. Boliet on Algol compiler implementation, Floyd on Precedence Grammars.
We made long walks in the week ends. On one such, up over the mountain ridges, I got a terrible migraine. Went ahead of Kari, Jytte and Peter -- so that I could throw up in quiet. At the end I recovered: arrived an hour or so earlier at our hotel, rested, and was 200% active at dinner time !
After the school Kari and I drove via Dijon to Paris (on the Nato funds). Overnight in Dijon. In Paris we stayed at the hotel on Montparnasse where I had stayed in 1959. First day we had Couscous lunch on Blvd. des Italiens: 100% humidity and very warm in Paris. The North African spiced dishes made us feel light and refreshed.
Then on via Cologne home.
On this trip, flying there and back, I prepared for the next three sets of lecture series. Met, for the first time, Dani and Gerald Weinberg. Carlo Santa Croce was Director of ESRI. He had been #2 at IBM Italy and been bypassed for the top job. ``Left'' IBM, but was given this ``holding position'' job until he two years later got the plum job of founding the state Computing company ITALSIEL.
With Kari: again in our MGB across Europe. Stayed for six weeks at Hotel Metropol.
One week-end we went via a Fri./Sat. night stop in Berne to Zürich. Stayed at a hotel in the suburbs. Sole purpose: To see the royal marriage, on TV, of Crown Princess Margrethe and Henrique. Could not be seen in Geneva. We shopped for top wines, crackersm cheese, grapes, etc., and arranged ourselves, the wines and food, comfortably in bed etc. and turned on the TV. Two minutes into the programme the TV broke down ! Rushed to the phone to order another set. It was rolled in and set up. Once they left we discovered that I had been naked throughout ! Great wedding. Later that evening we had a great dinner at a Zünfthaus: Typical such food, on the Limmat.
Next day: Drove over some mountain passes and, by autotrain through others and came out at the begining of the Rhone Valley seing the great Rhone Gletcher!
On this trip we motored -- on a Friday afternoon, after my lectures, to Stresa. Via the Rhone Valley, up over the Simplon Pass, with train through it! Lodged in Stresa and drove down, for a full Saturday in Milan. Learned the trick of having Fernet Branca with coffee on the hot and humid day: felt refreshed afterwards. Saw the Duomo and other things, walked the Galleries. Drove back to Geneva Sunday via Aosta and the Mont Blanc tunnel.
Went alone, flew. Kari was seven months pregnant. Got time to work on my PhD thesis.
Charlotte was born April 9. They came home 15 April and I flew off to Nice the day after! To give an opening session talk on computer organisation: from byte to 128 bit data flows, from micro-programmed to circuit controlled, from sequential to parallel, from SISD to MIMD computers. I would call Kari, busy breast-feeding Charlotte, from my hotel suite terrasse, at breakfast, out there in the morning sun, eating strawberries. Poor Kari, how cruel I was !
Sat. we went, a few people, to near Monaco, to fetch Jacques Yves Cousteau, ``the other opening session speaker'' (!). Instead of our car he drove his own Maseratir, me sitting next to him, at break neck speeds along the Corniches !
The IBM Systems Engineering event was held at the Congress Center where also the Cannes Film Festivals take place.
Carlo Santa Croce was the one who proposed the IBM people that I give this presentation -- which went very well. Many are the IBM people from many corners of the world who remember my talk and later thanked me for it.
Carlo Santa Croce had also organised this. I am rather thankful to him for doing this. Somehow it gave me confidence: Being trusted with this, preparing and ``executing'' the talks. At The Hague I gave my Cannes talk to top and middle management of The Royal Dutch Shell at Scheveningen. I stayed, comfortably, at Hotel des Indes in The Hague. I remember having, on my own, a rather great dinner at a fish restaurant: The special river shrimps to begin with !
Again Carlo Santa Croce had given me a budget: To travel to this IFIP Congress, onnly time as a ``passive'' participant, first time anyway. Having booked late I stayed in a Bed & Breakfast in the suburbs. But I could and did entertain people for lunches and dinners, three or four, during the week. Some that I had met at Villard de Lans. It was also on this occassion that I first met Ivan havel and invited him for dinner, with many others, at a lovely riverside inn outside Edinburgh, ``under'' the Firth of Forth bridge.
Again I went alone, flew. Spent a lot of time writing on my PhD thesis.
This was to say Good Bye: I was going (back) to the US. Carlo, on this occassion told me that he was leaving soon thereafter, for the ItalSiel job ! I met Peter Lucas on that occassion for the first time.
I presented my first paper ever ! An extract, OK, the essence, of my PhD thesis. Now I started meeting all those people that had been ``famous'' names to me till then.
It was at this occassion that I sat a long night going over his paper for the SIGFIDET conference with Jack B. Dennis. The paper was rather bad, but Ted Codd seemed awed by the man's prominence, so the paper had to be made passable.
Dick Stearns introduced me and the speakers of our session through Limericks. He was kind enough to write ``mine'' in the Proceedings. He later, many years later, shared the Turing Award with Juris Hartmanis -- for work in founding complexity theory.
Ted Codd has trusted me the editorship of the proceedings for this the first SIG-FIDET/MOD event. I did not present our work at this time. But again I met all the ``big'' database names. At interminable discussions around dinner tables. The field was then rather immature.
But I presented a paper on Finite State Automaton Definition of Data Communication Line Control Proceedures at the co-located Fall Joint Computer Conference. IBM had made phantastically expensive multicoloured transparency foils for my talk.: US$60 per foil, around 20 !
My father died in July 1971. Before that we spent more than four weeks around him in Århus.
He was so serene, as he laid there, mostly, in bed (upstairs or downstairs, two beds) or on the sofa. That years Christmas photo shows him sitting on a chair at the veranda to garden door with Kari behind him holding Nikolaj and Charlotte standing in front of him. Nikolaj holding his left arm stretched over him, as if it was a sign if blessing.
His later years, up to this his last month, were blessed with happiness and tranquility. Gone were his eruptions of rage.
He said: Would I mind that he would take early retirement ? Probably his way of saying good bye to a fine life.
For us, he died much too young. He would have loved seeing more grandchildren around him.
Jean Paul Jacob organised this great event in Rio. Paid for by IBM. We were Michael Harrison and his wife Susan Graham, Richard Karp and his wife then, Bruce W. Arden and me -- a la carte. Four of us, the men, gave the lectures, over two weeks, at PUC/Rio. My first of many visit to PUC/Rio.
My lectures were early mornings and late afternoons: first and last. Semantics of Programming Languages -- from LISP 1.5's and Landin's Mechanical via Knuth/Wirth's Attribute Semantics, to early version of Scottery: Denotational Semantics.
We would all meet for a drink on the terrasse -- at aroound 7 pm -- deciding then where to go for dinner. Susan and Michael usually put up so many ``obstacles'' that one such evening I basically gave up. When a beautiful black woman, all dressed in a long flowing white dress walked by, I, athletically, jumped over the terrasse rail and walked after her. At the first corner -- it was along the beach avenue at La Copacabana -- I turned inland. Had a fine fish dinner at the restaurant just 100 meters from our hotel. Proceeded to ``circle'' the block. Bought Somerset W. Maugham's Of Human Bondage at the Avenida Copacabana Penguin Store. Continued my clockwise tour around the block. Was back in the hotel at 9 pm. Went to my room. Took the shoes off. Started reading the book. Kept on reading. At 1 am someone knocked on the door -- two male voices were heard. I jumped up, flung the door open. There I was, fully dressed, with a book in my hand, the bed basically untouched. Someone had complained about the air conditioning. Could they inspect my AC installations ? So they did. The next day I told the incident at breakfast. Most laughed. But not Susan. So I went to the Hotel Manager and complained that he had acted on a tip and falsely concluded something (about a woman in my room). He fingered Susan !
I spent three or four weeks at IBM La Hulpe, near Brussels, giving lectures at the IBM Systems Engineering school there. I worked between lectures on writing lecture notes for my university course at Lyngby. One could borrow ``IBM''-bicycles so I often took a tour, including taking dinners at Istas in Jesuz Eik. After 1976 Cliff Jones joined the ESRI faculty. Thereafter Aad van Wijngaarden occasionally gave lectures and we met.
IFIP WG2.1 organised a meeting at LaGaudel Plage. I was invited and gave a talk. Kari and I flew down from Copenhagen, stayed a few days at the Starks -- they were away. They also lent us their Volvo 240 and we drove to LaGaudel Plage and later around Brittany: Concarnon, Quimper, Brest, St. Malo and Mont St. Michel.
Lectures in Novosibirsk, attending the dual city IFIP World Computer Congress(es) in Tokyo and Melbourne, stopping over in Hong Kong, 34 hours in Melbourne and then onto London for an Infotech lecture.
Checked in for my onward flight via Irkutsk and Khabarosk to Tokyo around midnight -- after long drive with Vadim Kotov from Akademgorodok. Usual stuff: A milling crowd of garlic chewing asians and europeans in the check-in hall. Special line for Intourist passengers and then two flights up with suit case, still, 1996, without elevator, to their international lounge. There I was told two hours later as we were supposed to board the flight that it was some seven hours delayed, so far. Coming from Tashkent. One should recall that the Soviet Union was then deeply mired in a war in Afhganistan for where the aircraft was undoubtedly more useful!
So I started negotiating with the lady Intourist staffer: If that much delayed I would miss my weekly connection in Irkutsk to Khabarovsk, and from there to Japan! So it was better for me to go back to Moscow, next morning, on the usual 8 am flight, and buy a new ticket there to Tokyo. My negotiation took two hours: pleading, arguing. When the lady, some 25 years of age or so, can't quite remember, saw the chance to buy me a 65 rouble ticket for US$ 100, one that actually would cost her some 10 roubles, then I got it. Towards three am I went to the airport hotel, a dismal, ordinary apartment block building some 300 meters away, to sleep for the night: Again arguing for a single room. Lice-infested! I hardly slept that night, those less than four hours I had before the Moscow flight. Then I pleaded with new Intourist staff to telex Vnukovo (one of the domestic airports in Moscow, some 35 kms. southeast of the city), to get me a car to the intl. airport: Sheremetjevo II, some 35 kms. to the north of the city: a taxi ride of some 70 kms. Oh, yes, no trouble. Hearing from a Russian those soothing words: no trouble, spoken with a cat sweet voice, endearing left me somewhat uncertain. Of course there was no car at Vnukovo. One lands after four hours flight from Novosibirsk, also at 8 am.! Another round of haggling: And at almost noon I was in the check-in hall of that -- then just completed -- airport. At the perennial Intourist desk I inquired: Where is the Lufthanse office? From the Intourist lady in Novosibirsk I knew that, amongst many international airlines, Lufthansa had a 4 pm Boeing 707 departure for Tokyo. What do you want the lady asked; I want to know: Where is the Lufthanse office? After a few more repetitions of this non-progressing interchange, I shouted my question, at the top of my lungs. A few minutes later, there he was: Mr. Thomas Klein, Lufthansa's Station Manager. His office was six floors up! I got my ticket, paid the US$ 1,490 at the Intourist office, cash. Good I had that much, and more cash! Next item was: Where to have a shower? I used the ladies rest rooms on the fourth floor, next to the $ restaurant. A homely, voluminous Russian lady from the Lufthansa office stood guard outside. I changed clothes completely: washed myself all over using old underwear as wash mat and towel. Shaved and ``spritted''. And sat down for a nice Russian lunch: ordered vodka and kaviar for a starter and chicken Kiev and Grusian white for entré. When it came to paying: Oh no Sir, courtesy Lufthansa! Mr. Klein. When I finally went through exit customs Mr. Kelin reappeared and handed me a first class boarding card in return for my business class ticket! Next morning I was woken up by the stewardesses singing Happy birthday. Yes, it was my day: 4 October!
On the flight to Hong Kong the following little incident shows the great blessing of modern travel. One that makes you long to go out again! Or? Walking out to the gates, in Narita, I observed that the United Airlines aircraft at gate 32 apparentrly had trouble with its rightmost of the four engines: Two ladders -- with maintenance staff peering into the ab of that engine -- were raised. Luckily it was'nt my craft. Ours was at gate 33. So I thought. Until I got there: Change of gate. Now it was my craft! We took off, on time, and as we flew down past Mount Fuji, I sitting in an A seat, in Business class, the captain informed: Those pasengers seated in the right of the aircraft can now see the majestic Fuji. Shooks! Also not this time. Later, as I was talking to some former IBM colleagues, towards the rear, we heard a small thud, quiet sound. The captain later informed us: Ladies and gentlemen: You may have notied a small sudden sound. Our leftmost engine had set out. I waill try restart it. No worry. If I succeed we will fly onwards to Hong Kong. Later he came back: Sorry, we shall return to Narita, 40 minutes back. And later again: Ladies and gentlemen: Those of you seated in the left of the aircraft can now see the sun setting behind Mount Fuji -- a breathtaking view. Back in Narita, one, of four UA flights to the US West Coast was emptied to take us, in a hurry to HKG as that airport would close at 11:30 pm. We landed on time: 11:30, five hours late!
Charlotte had been visiting Macau during her Christmas stay at T.C.Chen's in Hong Kong. And she asked me during our Tokyo stay whether I had been to Macau. I had not. And she was quite happy to have been a place where I had not been. Then the phone rang in our Imperial Hotel suite: Vagn Kjellberg, the UN University, speaking. ...Would I be available for a three day meeting early March, some seven weeks later, in Macau ? So I was. Charlotte ``swore'': ``It's unfair !''
Dines Bjorner 2010-06-01