Got back from a 10 day trip to Prague, Vienna and Budapest - had an amazing time. Something odd happened on Castle Hill on the Buda side - two girls came up to me and asked if they could take my picture, I asked why and they said I was different.

When I asked "different in what way" their response was exotic. I pointed to my skin and they started to smile. These kids were from Serbia Montenegro and they have never seen a black person.

By this time, the entire class of about 30 kids crowded around and were staring at me intensely. Touching my shirt and wanted me to talk more - it was surreal.

I posed w/some of the kids using different cameras but after about 10 pics, I felt uncomfortable and asked them to stop taking pictures. They asked for a couple more and I took about 4 before I cut it off. It was such a strange experience - to think that in this day and age, some people had never seen a black person.

I'm a big traveller and always encourage people to see the world and I'm glad those kids did.

Kind of wanted take one of the cuter boys and show him more but.....

Let me hear your thoughts on this guys and while your at it, talk about your interesting travel story.

[ November 17, 2005, 08:16 PM: Message edited by: kiperoni ]

I bet they would have really been floored if you told them you were doubly "exotic" because you are also gay. wink

Cool story Kip, as some of you know, while not a prolific poster, I do tend to be a bit verbose, but my Father was born in a small town in the Transylvania area called Perjamos (or Periam on Rumanian maps. It is in the area of Timosoara, and was established in the 1750's as a German frontier town to protect the Austro-Hungarian Empire from the Turks. We are of predominantly German, Hungarian and Magyar descent. But my family like many of the other in the region has an extremely high Mongol percentage in our ancestry. We also have some Northern African and Middle Eastern genes thrown in as well. LOL and here I sit, red hair, blue eyes and skin like buttermilk LOL who'd have thunk it.

Most of the people from that region, including Hungary are such a melting pot of various ethnicities that it is almost like Brasil where they are just exquisite. I am planning a side trip there when my father and I go over for the World cup. We spent a New Years Eve in Vienna once My parents went to the Volks Opera for the ball, while my sister and I crashed a Rave near the hotel. Althought I think one of my favorite things we did was to take the tour of the catacombs of the StefansDom. THAT was killer and totally worth it.

Anyway, my Dad walked his way across Europe during the war, beginning in 1942-43. They drove as far as the Danube, but had to abandon all of the trucks and were able to grab one suitcase a piece because all of the bridges had been bombed and they had to ford their way across as the Russians continued advancing. They eventually made it as far a small town in Austria called Ranshofen. Ironically, Ranshofen is the 1300 year old Village next to the town of Braunau am Inn, which for many WWII buffs is the actual town in Austria where Hitler was born.

Just as an aside, on our first trip back to Europe for my father since he came to the US in 1951, the building where Hitler was born housed a home appliance store. This was 1984. On our second trip over in 1989, It had become a Bennetton.

ANYWAY to get to my rambling point KIP which actually DID have some relevance to the topic you started, Ironically enough, the entire region was liberated by one of the all black army platoons. According to both my father and his sister, everyone in the town was just so happy to know the Americans were there they lined the streets and everyone clambered to meet the liberators of the the village, knowing they had brought food and medicine etc. Everyone thought they were just covered in dirt. As the men handed out food and hugs and candy to the kids, My father, remembers laughing that some of the kids and adults looked down at their hands to see if any of the dirt had rubbed off onto their hands as they met the soldiers.

Not the best story in the world, and long winded I know but there ya have it. I would love to hear more about your trip though, I have not been there since 1989 when the Wall came down.

My old college friend recently left the Army and became an expatriate (and, perhaps, an ex-patriot!). He's now in the Czech republic teaching English, and he's the only black guy for miles around. He actually gets a lot of teaching gigs since he's "obviously American" - most people learning English there want an American accent. He does run into a fair chunk of racial ignorance over there: he says if he wears dreds, they assume he's a potsmoking Rasta who only listens to reggae. But if he shaves his head, they assume he's a basketball-playing gangsta who only listens to hip-hop. ("Yeah, I'm a basketball star...at 5 foot 4," he says.) But he says it's cool - the availability of hot Czech women and their "curiosity" more than make up for it.

The only story of mine that's similar is pretty lame. I drove through the southwest on the way to college once in 1989. At a gas station, I had one person take my picture because I had an earring. No, really. In 1989. Apparently, this person had never left that gas station (or turned on a TV).

LXN

My mother's younger brother was severely mentally retarded from Down's Syndrome, and as you may know, that disease typically creates a host of medical problems as well as mental retardation. Uncle Abner had the mental ability of an 18-month-old, so he acted like a toddler his entire life. This could be cute, but it made him a bear when any medical or dental procedure had to be done. You can imagine how tough it was for my mother's family to control a fully-grown teenage boy throwing a temper tantrum and fighting back the way a toddler would.

So one time my uncle is, again, in the hospital, and they have to draw blood. It takes 8 people, 2 nurses, my mother, my father, 2 uncles and 2 orderlies to hold Ab down while the blood is drawn. The doctor's orders were to draw blood twice a day, so the day shift nurse warned the night shift nurse to get help before trying to draw his blood that night, as it would be after visiting hours, so the family members would not be around.

The nurse asks for as many orderlies as possible, and the biggest ones at that, to help her after hearing about how difficult it was to draw blood that afternoon. The only orderlies who show up to help, as it turns out, are two black men. Ab had never seen a black man before (this is in the 50s, in Western Mass, where there were not a lot of racial minorities). He was absolutely fascinated by the men's hair and skin, stroking their heads and trying to "clean" the dirt he, too, assumed was covering them. As he did all this, the nurse was drawing blood on his other side and he had no idea she was even doing it.

So, the night nurse reports to the day shift that she had no problem with drawing Ab's blood, and the day shift again has to get a legion of people to hold him down for the daytime blood drawing. This went on for the better part of a week, with the night nurse asking the black orderlies to return (they thought Ab was great, and were not offended by his actions in the least) so she could draw the blood. She never told the day shift until he left the hospital how she accomplished this feat with no tantrums. After that visit, every time Ab was in the hospital a call would go out for black staff members to help with blood drawing or other medical procedures he was likely to fight about.

Years later, after Ab had died (like a lot of Down's kids, he died young - 22), my mother was in the same hospital for surgery, and the original orderlies were still working there - one was still working the night shift in fact. He would stop by her room every once in a while and say "Hey, Mary - black is beautiful!" as a way of cheering her up during her recovery.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by shorejim:
[QB]Althought I think one of my favorite things we did was to take the tour of the catacombs of the StefansDom. THAT was killer and totally worth it. [QB]

Funny you should mention the catacombs at the StefansDom Cathedral. On the same trip to Budapest, we stopped in Vienna and missed the tour by like 5-minutes. They're every 30-mins and we decided not to wait, now I'm annoyed :mad:

Me again, I started out in Prague then Vienna and ended up in Budapest. The encounter in Budapest was the only one of it's kind. I did not expect the Hungarians to stare because of their mostly mixed heritage.

Jim - I'll give you more details on my trip in the am...

I remember a trip my family and I took to Orlando back in 1990. We were visiting my sister and my brother-in-law (no longer wed thank God). I can't tell you the stares and the gawks my sisters received. My family is filipino but to many we probably look chinese. My two older sisters, however, don't look Asian but can pass for Brazilian and Latin if you could believe it. I can't tell you how hurtful some of the stares we got, especially from older white people. You would think that an international destination such as Orlando would receive visitors from all over the world and that they would probably be used to it. My sister noticed that many of the stares were coming from older white women. I jokingly told her it's probably because they're annoyed their husbands and/or boyfriends were staring at you. Your story, kiperoni, reminded me of that.

While veering off thread a bit, I will keep this one short.... yeah RIGHT, BUT as I have explained a lot of my ethnicity already, the people in my dads family are all over the place, until they speak you never know what to expect. My younger sister was married in April, and we had the full contingencey of my dads family together which is cool, in the group picture you have the full rainbow of my family.

My one cousin married a beautiful half Japanese girl, he mother is from Nagasaki, and her dad is a Louisiana bayou Cajun Mutt. Their kids are incredibly handsome young men one very tall and patrician with the strong angular face of my older cousin, dark brown eyes, and brown hair. The other son is tall as well built like a tank, blondish hair blue eyes and full on mongol / asian features. My swarthy, dark father with his blue eyes, his brother who looks like a poster child for the Aryan nation, me that looks like I am just off the boat from County Tyrone, my sister who looks Latina, its like a big old melting pot... I can't wait to start adopting, any kid is gonna fit in fine.

The StephansDom... OK on our first trip to Europe, it was 1984. When my Mom had gone over in the 60's there was very little attention paid to what had been rebuilt vs what was original. It was presented in such a way that they either survived the war intact, or had been magically rebuilt over night. On our trip there were postcards showing the devastaion immediately after war available, along with post cards of the restoration. I would estimate that 90% of what you see in Germany is actually a reproduction.

In the Stephansdom, when you enter the Cathedral, immediately to the left of the Narthex is a heavily gated and locked room. Within the room are all of the objects that actually survived the war. There is NOT a whole lot in there. As an artist I think it was part of what has formed my heavy anti war opinion. I find the wanton destruction of creation and objects of beauty to be self defeating to the human condition, not to mention the abject loss of what could have been had the young men and women survived. What brilliance have we lost through mans inability to be civil.

But, onto the catacombs. If you ever have the ability to go, and are NOT claustrophobic, take the tour. It is WILD. There is a room, full of thousands of skeletons piled to be completely level. It is filled perhaps 2/3 of the way to the top, and you look through a grating again, intermixed in the piles of bones you see scraps of cloth, shoes etc, but again, through the anal retentiveness of the Germanic mind, they are neatly stacked LOL with a board atop the pile with an old wooden level showing it is a pefectly level pile. This may have changed, but that is one of the rooms that was there in the 1980's.

It is fascinating to see the architecture and structural supports, and there are level after level beneath you. Just imagine spending days and hours hiding down there during raids and occupation.

The entire tour is VERY cold. I would say it was about 40-50 degrees. The one exception was a room of reliquaries. This room was on a higher level of the catacombs, and filled with the remains of Nobles, Bishops and Kings and Queens, or at least their parts. Lit with candles, and (this may not be reality, but the memory in my mind is such) it was almost as if the whole room was gilded and glowed. Much like the Egyptians, I guess at some time it was fashionable to preserve parts of people as being scared or sublime. The room was filled with ornate gilded boxes containg the hand of this king, the tongue of another, there was a row of ossuaries containg hearts of bishops and nobles etc, brains, livers, whole heads ets were all contained in boxes and sealed chalices it was a bizarre sight to behold.

Within the Parish Church in my Dads village in Austria, There are glass cases within the church itself that contain the whole skeletons of saints. The skeletons are wrapped in gold wire, covered in beryls, pearls, all manner of gems etc. They are wired in such a way that the glass coffins and the skeletons become an integral part of the Roccoco architecture of the structure. Some of the coolest tours we took were to the old churches, but as a kid coming from a distinctly NON religious ex Catholic family, we grew VERY bored, but now as an adult some of the imagery used was remarkable.

I can remember one pulpit, which was built into a support column of the church with a wrap around stone staircase leading to a hollow about 15-18 feet above the heads of the devote that was covered in carved frogs, grasshoppers, lizards, bugs etc I often wondered exactly what the medievil sculptor, or bishop was thinking to commission such a piece. This one whole church was almost an exercise is pagan nature imagery.

KIP, while you were in Budapest did you make it to the Kiraly baths, or to the old Turkish sauna? I have always wanted to see some of the mosaics there. Hopefully all of the nonsense will settle in a few years so that I can hit places like the Hagia Sofia, etc. The one tour that I have always wanted to take is a hiking tour in Greece where you have no roads and must travel from monastery to monastery in the mountains by foot. You pay a small donation and you live as the monks do, and get to experience a absolutely raw and beautiful countryside.

A female friend of mine had a similar reaction when she went to parts of China... only it was because she is a blond. Many of the people in the smaller towns had never seen blond hair before.

Jim, I did not but I will be going back next summer for a longer time. I too want to visit Turkey but will wait a while - my mother would go nuts if I went. She was worried when I went to Prague and Budapest - my mother will only visit London and Jamaica. Did you read "1000 places to See before you die?" That only got my juices flowing more and reminded me of how enriching travelling can be.

Not to brag but I've been to/seen 15 places on that list only 985 left

Email me

[ November 20, 2005, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: kiperoni ]

Great story, Kiperoni. But it's not just Central Europe. (Great story too, CPT!)

The first time I went to Barcelona, Spain, in 1990, people stared at my partner and me in the train stations, on the subway, and in the street. I remember one middle-aged woman whose eyes were as huge as baseballs as she watched us walk down the street. It freaked me out at first. They seemed transfixed by us--but the looks were neither hostile nor friendly. I would assume that after the Olympics there and the waves of recent immigration black faces aren't that rare, but it was a bit disorienting at first. We didn't have the same issue in Madrid, where we saw some Egyptians and Moroccans who were as dark or darker than us, or in Portugal, where we did see a number of black people. As I said, I assume Barcelona is different these days.

In Belgium, we had people ask if we were "sporters" in English. I guess Black=athlete, and why else would we come to the European Union capital? But people were very friendly (and seemed to be very excited by the very fact that we were black americans).

One of my college roommates, who's black and studied Chinese, told me horror stories about traveling in rural China in 1985-1986 and being insulted to his face. I guess it wasn't such an issue in Beijing and Shanghai, where there were African students, but in the rural areas, he said people could be very unfriendly. They laughed at him, pointed him out, and at one point, I think some kids threw stones. (This was shortly before African students were attacked in some smaller Chinese towns by Chinese men who got upset that they were dating Chinese women, though I think nobody asked the Chinese women what their feelings were!) Another good friend spent a year (it was either 1991 or 1992) in South Korea. He is very tall and very dark-skinned. He said that outside of his host family, he had a hard time. People stared and pointed on the buses, in the streets, in stores, etc. It didn't help that he towered over people. I kind of remembering him saying that he had some Korean women coming onto him, but he's gay and the men were very standoffish. He actually got so fed up with the racism in the US, though, that he moved to the UK (!), and loves it there.

A good friend told me that when she first moved to Munich with her Bavarian boyfriend back in 1988, people not only stared at her in the street, but children actually came up and touched her hair and skin. In the smaller towns, some children even rubbed her skin as she sat in cafes to see if the dark color would rub off. She took in stride, but did find the men who were basically drooling a bit creepy. Again, I assume things are different in 2005.

[ November 20, 2005, 12:19 PM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

This is not a racial profile interesting travel story but more of a dumb travel story really. My partner and I were in Samoa on holidays earlier this year - absolutely fantastic and would recommend it to anyone - not yet fully developed as a major tourist destination, so still an air of your James A Michener's Tales of the South Pacific and Robert Louis Stephenson about it all. Samoa sits just on the other side of the international dateline, which means that Samoa is a full day behind Australia (so if it's 12.00pm Tuesday in Australia, it is 12.00pm Monday in Samoa).

After a fantastic week at the Sinalei Reef Resort, we were in Apia (the capital of Western Samoa) on the Friday and decided to see if we could get an upgrade on our flight out of Samoa (thinking we were flying out that night) only to find that our flight had in fact left the night before. For some unfathomable reason, we had somehow read the date wrong - my partner claimed that it was because of the international date line, but we were just plain stupid. As if that wasn't bad enough, at that time there were only two flights a week into and out of Samoa - and the second flight was due to leave that evening but unfortunately, completely booked out and the next flight in a week. I do not ever want to relive that sinking, sick-to-the-gut, what-the-hell-are-we-going-to-do feeling (and also that quick "who should I blame/make the scapegoat here, myself or my partner").

In our desperation, we even went so far as to beg at the Australian embassy for the High Commissioner to intervene (which of course he didn't - not surprising really) - my partner claimed important work engagements on the Monday and I lied through my teeth and said I had a huge case for the Australian government starting in court. After that failure, we took ourselves off for a drink and a fatalistic acceptance of our position. This is where the Sinalei Reef Resort came into its own - they provided us with a staff member to sit with us in the airline office until finally we were told that seats had become available. Furthermore, the airline office waived the rebooking fee.

Lesson - check and double check departure dates.

Also, cannot but sing the praises of the Sinalei. Wonderful resort, great staff and owners (Samoans), acceptance of my partner and I and now a no kids zone (love kids (in small doses, and at arms length) but last thing you need really when on holidays and trying to relax).

[ November 20, 2005, 05:40 PM: Message edited by: Mixie ]

This travel story is one that I never expected, and one that touched me a great deal. My partner and I loved to travel through the German speaking part of Europe, for the beauty, the kindness of the people and the ability to practice our somewhat shaky German skills. When the wall fell in 1989, it opened up new areas to explore, and we jumped at the chance, taking a late summer trip in 1990 into the new East Germany, before the Einheit.

One of our goals was to visit the Wartburg, the castle above Eisenach. We arrived in that town late afternoon and looked for a place to stay, but we could not find a hotel room. That was fine, we often before had ventured into small towns and stayed at bed and breakfasts, in German called Fremdenzimmer, but we had never tried that in the East before. We drove into the mountains and found a sleepy town on a hiking trail called the Rennweg, where we found a bed and breakfast. We asked the owner to recommend a place for dinner, somewhere local, and she gave us directions to the place she always went.

The town itself had such potential beauty, built in a steep valley surrounded by mountains, but for the huge, incredibly ugly, East-block factory in the middle of town. We learned that it had been shut down recently, putting everyone out of work.

We had a hard time finding the gasthaus that was recommended, finally we discovered it, the enterprising owner had turned her garage into a small restaurant/bar. We opened the door and it was a moment from a bad western, everyone, probably 10 men and a few women, stopped what they were doing and silently stared at us until we sat down. The owner/cook/waitress came over and took our order, and with our passable German we passed muster enough to get a very good meal with even better beer. We talked quietly but were lazy and slipped into English, and someone overheard us. He came over to the table and asked in German if we were English. We said no, American. In ten minutes every patron of the restaurant was sitting either at our table or close enough to hear. Only one of them had ever met an American before. Of course they thought we were from New York or LA or Florida, were amazingly rich and had wives out of Dynasty. They could not understand why someone from America would ever visit their town.

Many of the people we talked to that night were unemployed, they were happy about the fall of the wall but very worried about the future under a somewhat capitalist society. They wanted to see a dollar bill, we distributed several. We paid for our meal, but the patrons paid for the many beers that we and others consumed that night, as well as the local specialty liquor that they insisted we try, a blue drink that tasted more like moonshine than any other drink I have ever purchased over the counter.

The most touching question of the evening, however, was why did the Americans hate them so much. They told us that in 1945, the waning days of the war, Patton’s Third Army pushed into this area and began setting up reconstruction. But after about 30 days they pulled back out and the Russians came in. The Russians told the populace (they said it was in their history books) that the Americans hated the Germans so much that there was some sort of plot to commit genocide or round up everyone and send them to camps, and that the Russians saved them from the Americans. Of course in reality the Three Powers at Yalta had divided up Germany and Patton had gone too far. So a deal between governments had doomed the people of this region to five decades of communist dictatorship, while the freedom of West Germany was only 50 miles to the west or south.

We closed the place down, made many friends for the day, woke up the next morning with one of the worst hangovers of our lives, and learned more in 3 hours than we did on the rest of the trip. Mostly we learned of the resiliency of people, of their hope and faith in the future, and how people who had been oppressed for decades looked to us, to America, with all its faults and failings, as the best that this world can offer.

[ November 20, 2005, 07:00 PM: Message edited by: Swampbird's Bitch ]

Mixie - Any interesting travel story is good. My story was not about racial profiling at all. I just thought it was strange experience.

Think of me going to Africa and seeing someone w/a bone in their nose and being astonished

Those kids were curious

I've done a lot of travelling and will continue to do so - now I know what to expect when I head to Kiev & ST. Petersburg.

BTW fantomas - I'm heading to Barcelona and Madrid on January 6th; getting a car and driving to Madrid. Anyone recommendations from anyone?