Stanford

Dear parents,

Well, here he is again – and this time, lots of goodies for you, people over there in that materialistic society. But before I get started, I would answer the four letters I have lately received from you – and thank you very much for them.

Letter of April 26: thanks for saying it’s OK to send my Volvo home; I did buy a VW however. Thanks also for mentioning the charter to New York. I am taking it, leaving Paris on September 17 for New York. It will cost me around $100. And thanks for the château recommendation - Jim and I won’t miss the area.

Letter of May 23: glad to hear Tiger is great – I think I miss him more than Bruce and Len put together. Thanks for the tip on asking the Consul about the car. I wrote him, and he sent the dope. And glad to hear Big John no longer is passing bourbon and Bruce got five A’s. Finally, I will write Houghton immediately. Sicily sounds interesting, and he is loaded. Good contact.

Letter of June 1, 1962: this was the big one. I will begin with the car. I decided about one month ago to sell it. Happy? Next point: my money. We have a big misunderstanding here, and it is entirely my blame. First of all, I did not mean for you to foot the bill for the car and it’s transportation home, and I’m sorry if I seemed to suggest such a situation. Secondly, it is my fault on who owes who money. I paid for 3/4 of room and board ($305 times three equals $915), 3/4 of tuition (3 times $20 equals $60), my flight over (around $450), and several bills of yours (for which you later reimbursed me at Zermatt with my skis, I think). You have sent me $1050 for these items. That means I paid around $375 for the above items from my own pocket, and that is quite appropriate. however, I have also paid, from my own pocket, for six months of life in Germany, including weekends and field trips (which are not free), sheet music, books, and my car, insurance, plates, gas, etc. I have been skimping, but I have also bought several expensive items (mostly books and music), which must be taken into account. Now I have three more months of travel, and I will continue to skimp, but I want a safety valve. I have on me about $500, for my three months and my trip home. Since I am now selling my car, I can count on about $600 this summer. Ergo: send me nothing! (Not even the $100 check you said you included in your last letter, but didn’t). I’ll make it easy – and will ask with a heavy heart when the occasion arises. Sorry to have scared you unnecessarily Mom -  right when the stock market was dropping, too.

But on with your letter. Don’t worry about the letter to the congressman from San Jose – I’ll get around to it any week now. Thank you for the Geneva - Chadwick info, but my plans have changed, and I won’t hit the area after all. My finals last winter quarter were rough on me, as you know, and it showed on my grades: B in German, B in Literature, and B in history: my worst Stanford average to date. But keep in mind, my D's and C C's in German at Andover, please. And I’ll send you addresses galore: my next will be Milan, Italy (American Express) from June 23 until we leave for Rome on around the 25th. I’ll have it forwarded, so hang loose. Finally, I am taking my skis with me to Zermatt, where they will be repaired (for free) and shipped home, so I will not be able to take up the Holland American magic ski shipment you mentioned. By the way, I just sent nine packages to 835 Pine Hill: eight contain (and say on the cover) books, and the other clothes (ski pants, sweaters, my heavy suit, sportcoat, parka, after ski shoes, etc.) please let me know if all nine don’t arrive: the book boxes contain very valuable books, in the sense of irreplaceable.

Letter of June 8: included is a check for $76.84, to hold the great bank drainage. Do what you will with the money: I’ll ask for it when I need it. Glad the Buckingham‘s got my letter. I also wrote the Langhorne’s, and got a return from Teri. They obviously haven’t caught on yet, but I am more interested in getting a letter from an unengaged daughter (say, Dana or Julie), but it still was sweet. She confirmed that she is spending some time with Hunter’s family in Austria this summer. Oh, well – another one crossed off the list.

Now to my adventures. I think I left off about one month before school ended, and will begin there.  After our five day Ruhr – Rhine trip (I think I already described to you), we settled down to five days in a row of classes (one makeup class each day), with a lecture each afternoon by Big Cheeses from the Bonn government about Berlin, in preparation for our trip there two weeks later. All were in German, and several were very fine, although admittedly slanted to the western point of view. The following weekend, I drove to Starnberger See, a gorgeous summer resort area for Mücheners, to spend three days in utter relaxation with another Stanford in Germany student (Len Evans) at his “families“place. This was really a weekend. Len is by far the best German student on the burg (he had spent a full year with the family previous to Stanford in Germany), and his “family“, the Süsskinds, is way, way up in the Kultur scale. Herr Süsskind is Foreign Policy editor of the Süd Deutsche Zeitung, one of the three largest newspapers in southern Germany, and was a close friend of Thomas Mann until the latter’s death a few years ago. His wife is also intelligent as hell, and a good Bavarian cook to boot. The kids are simply amazing. All three have played the piano ever since the webs between their fingers disappeared; all three speak French and English (at least, a little bit of each); all three are up on the latest, and everything that is considered proper and-or intellectual, and all three are good looking and charming. Real wild fivesome. They took absolutely no special notice of my presence, which made me nervous at first, but it showed me later that I was just as much a part of the family as Len or the kids were. By the way, personal trumpet blowing time: Len said I was the only Berg kid he would’ve dared to bring home to his parents, since they usually see through to the core instantly. Good old Natural Sam. But to the family. Since we were studying Thomas Mann's works that quarter, Len and I naturally grilled Herr Süsskind quite thoroughly, and he seem to enjoy the grilling immensely. I mean, it’s not so often you can put far-gone intellectualism to such a practical use: priming two kids for an exam. After the grilling, Len and I got together and wrote the score for an operetta the berg students would later put on for their Beutelsbach families (you know: pay them back for all the free meals and free German conversation). This writing took a full day (most of the time devoted to writing lyrics in German for the previously-composed music), leaving one with nothing to do Sunday morning.

So, Len, I, and Veronica Süsskind (the older daughter – 20) went to a horse show (jumping), then bathed a little, and then drove to a monastery for a look and dinner. After the first liter of that good dark beer, I was absolutely snowed over her. But it was a big secret – I wasn’t telling anybody. I played duets that evening with her, and then drove back to drab (in comparison) old Beutelsbach with Len – the same old girls were there: the same ones for the past six months. You can see how Veronica’s impression on me increased as I saw more and more old, familiar, US, uncultured, faces. I was hooked.

Well, classes, intervened again, but only for two days. Wednesday morning, the entire group headed by bus for the Nuremberg airport, where, after the sheep were cleared off the airfield, we took off for West Berlin, arriving there that evening. The next 10 days were by far the most exciting I had yet spent in Europe. I only have time enough to give you the highlights. 

The next day we were treated to a very fine morning tour of the high points of West Berlin – we were all duly impressed. Two meals each day (usually lunch and dinner) were up to the students initiative, so I of course headed for Ashinger’s  for lunch (total cost on the average for a full meal at this fantastic place: $.60). That afternoon I crossed into East Berlin.

Now don’t panic. We were always in (at least) pairs, as required by Stanford law, and had been quite thoroughly briefed on what we couldn’t do. For Americans there now exist only two ways of crossing through the wall: Checkpoint Charlie and Frederick Strasse train station . The first is so named because one can (if he wishes), leave his name and expected time of return with “Charlie“, an American soldier on the border, who is then officially allowed to search in the east zone, if the person does not return as expected. The American Armed Forces can (and do) of course go to the east sector, as often as they please: the “check“only makes them legally responsible for my safety. Fredericksstrasse Bahnhof is the one subway station in which a person coming from the west sector can get off into the east sector. Explanation: West Berlin has two active subway systems, the western-controlled “U-Bahn “, and the eastern controlled “S-Bahn”.   The S-Bahn is, of course, very thoroughly boycotted by Western Berliners in the west sector. And, incidentally, West Berliners are not allowed (by the East German regime) to enter the east sector. The U-Bahn, then, is the only real subway system in West Berlin (for all practical purposes). At one section, it crosses into the east sector, and out again.

Along this section, all subway stations have been closed except the Frederickstrasse station. West Berliners cannot, of course, get off at the station (four reasons mentioned above). 

But enough of the explanation: that afternoon, I crossed into East Berlin, through Checkpoint Charlie, who gave all the girls, the eye, walked through the gap in the wall, passed three fences of barbed wire, passed the row of train-rail teepees (to prevent trucks from crashing the route, as was done only a week before we arrived), following the zigzags in the road (designed to slow vehicles down, no funny business can take place), and arrived at the Eastern counterpoint of Checkpoint Charlie. Here they decide if our passports are valid, if we are spies, if we are smuggling anything in any way, etc. The delay is 10 minutes at the least, two hours at the most (for my trip across, at least). I only am thankful that I spoke German, and was in no hurry – a lot of Americans in the waiting room were really ticked off, both because they couldn’t say what they wanted to say, and because they had been delayed for quite some time already. The system is: look relaxed and happy– the boys really like to rile you, for some reason.

Well, we got through, changed some money (1DM W. 41DM East; the exchange rate in west is one DM west for 4 PM east: they (the west) tell me, the latter is correct), and looked around. I’ll pass on my impressions by mouth when I see you next September. I can’t try on paper.  The propaganda posters, the people, the police – it all adds up to a pretty grim picture (although not as grim as our West propaganda has made it out to be).

This letter is getting too long – only general impressions now. My evenings were thusly spent: saw the West Berlin ballet do three modern numbers (best modern I’ve seen today by far); saw and heard the West Berlin opera do Elektra; saw the Berthold Brecht theater in East Berlin do the Threepenny opera, and Frau Flinty  (Helena Weigle, Brecht;s wife, and one of the finest living actresses today played the lead in the latter; we had a personal after-theater interview with her after seeing Arturo earlier), and all I can say, is wow to all three: the East Berlin theater is so much better than anything I have seen in Stuttgart, München, West Berlin, etc., That I begin to wonder; saw Adora in a West Berlin theater – and Adora is now the biggest hit in West Germany theaters, and the first good postwar treatment of the Jewish problem (prejudices, hate, etc.) – We had read it in German class, and had seen it performed in Stuttgart, so it was especially interesting; saw awesome East German anti-western propaganda films (shown especially for us by the east German regime), and had a discussion with the producers and directors of them afterwards; spent an evening with the museum authorities of the Deutsche Museum (the East German Marxist – Leninist  interpretation of how and why history runs), discussing their interesting to say the least – museum exhibits; &, finally, just for the hell of it, saw My Fair Lady in West Berlin. (in German, of course). Oh, yes. Also an evening with a drinking club from west Berlin's Freie Universität: drinking, of course.

You could say, I lived it up those 10 evenings. Afternoons were generally free, and I usually spent them in the East sector: buying books and propaganda (now on the way to you, and eight boxes), seeing the museums and galleries, and just nosing around in general. A friend and I took up an East German invitation to visit the main university library of East Berlin (4,000,000 volumes), where we got a quite candid explanation of censorship methods, cataloging, techniques, etc., from a girl student from Leipzig (whom we later took to dinner, both as a sign of our appreciation, and has a chance to probe the mind of someone our own age – somebody not surrounded by other East Germans, so she doesn’t have to say what they expect her to say). Another afternoon was spent in the east zone. (that is, east, Germany), in order to visit a memorial to the Jews exterminated at Sachsenhausen. Enough said. You know as much as I do about this rabid anti-Nazi kick the east is going through, and the attempts the East is making to link Nazism with the present day west German government.  Add about two dozen lectures, speeches, receptions, etc. from all the bigwigs in the west and east, and you have an idea of how to spend 10 fantastically, interesting and informative days. I left out all the details, but only because my hand grows week. Will fill you in this September.

Well, back to school, study - and the Fest: an annual affair we put on for our families. The opera of course was a big hit (look who helped write it?) – Got on the radio and in the newspapers – and guess who showed up to see it ? Veronica Susskind. All the way from mention to see our Fest? Sounded fishy to me. But I just sat through it, prompting lines, and playing my flute, I decided to see how the ball would rule. After the first dance was planned for the Berg students plus guests, Veronica mentioned the dance a few times during the operetta performance, but I pretended no interest.  When she finally got around to, I said, I was too tired, and, XXX. The party, and had a blast. Looks like I’ll be visiting Steinberger See again this summer.

After the fest, we had a few more days of studying, and then finals. I got a B, in geography, and a B, in German again. I don’t know my Thomas Mann grade yet. Professor Williams, our geography teacher, is too old to be teaching at Stanford in Germany, and he and his wife do not cut the best of figures in the area: they eat all meals together at restaurants instead of with us, they speak absolutely no German , they have not yet tried to learn German, and they drive a white jaguar. Enough said. So entirely factual (both exams consisted entirely of fill-ins), the course should prove to be very much as I now have a pretty good idea of where things are over here.

The day after school was over, I and two other students (Norm Clifford and Ken Jamison), headed south. We spent the first evening on the north shore of the Bodensee (Lake Constance), on the southern border of Germany, and the next morning swam and lazed. We then drove up the Rhine valley, through Austria, and into Liechtenstein. The weather was just gorgeous, so we chose an off-road, drove up a dead end valley, and climbed a mountain. We spent the night in a youth hostel just west of Valdez, and next morning headed further west, leaving the Rhine Valley in favor of the Finstarhorn area. We were consistently hitting passes of over 8000 feet, one so high that I even got some skiing in (the car following me on the road) until we drove down past the Rhone glacier into a tiny Swiss town for the night. The next day (today) was spent in a swimming pool at the town, and then drove a few kilometers further west. I am now sitting in an alpine valley, overlooking Interlochen, the town between the lakes (the town full of tourists, I might also mention). After another youth hostel tonight, we three rendezvoused with two Stanford girls, right at the base of the Jungfrau as we had planned conquering. I also hope to see some more.

Further plans? After the Finstaarken area, we head west to Chamonix for Mount Blanc, then up the Rhône valley to Zermatt for the Matterhorn. After climbing all these peaks in record time, I will meet Jim Hass in Milan on June 23. 

I cannot tell you how much fun I have from having over here these past six months – everything has been running so smoothly that… Well… I kind of feel quietly proud a times.

This letter is too long, and I’ve left out too much, but you get the picture. Write Milan by the 25th or so if you want more letters. Give Tiger a pat for me, say hello to the gang, and hang loose.   

Big Sam