The Gathering of the Eagles
THE STORY OF MENNO PAULS
PART ONE  :  Chapter Eight 
IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE HOLLAND
On March 15th, 1978, we took off for Europe. We'd sold our house, realizing about ten thousand dollars after all the bills were paid. The money I'd received from the sale of my business had been eaten up by the travel to that point.

We travelled very fast, and sometimes very expensively. It wasn't for the luxury though, I can assure you. It was so that we could be in the right places at the right time to make the contacts. We weren't tourists by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, when we left we thought the trip would be a month, at least. In three weeks it was all over. And so was the money.

What we were being shown was that the money wasn't important, the mission was. And if it took it all, then so be it. After all, it was only money. But, for the trip, that money put us into areas to make the connections, and boy did we make connections.

London turned out to be a major stop along the way. We were guided to about ten individuals during the four days we were there.

One afternoon we were walking down a street near Victoria Station. It was just a little street off to the side, you know, off the beaten path. As we were walking along a young woman came up to us and just mentioned something about Belgrade Square. I'm not sure what else she said, but she had clearly mentioned Belgrade Square. Then she walked on up ahead of us. We followed along behind because we were going the same direction.

Well, she reached the corner before us, of course, and when she got there she turned onto another street. When we reached the same corner a moment later, she was gone. It wasn't as if she'd disappeared into a crowd, because there was no crowd. The street was empty, and she was nowhere to be seen.

Later on that evening, I felt like going for a walk by myself. I walked for hours and hours through London by myself, sort of walking in a big circle. Finally I found myself in a large square. A big open area with a road around it, with a small grassy park-like area in the middle. All around the area were buildings that looked like embassies. In fact, that's what they were.

As I stood there taking it all in, a man got out of a red car and asked if he could be of any help to me. So I asked him where I was.

He replied, "You're in Belgrade Square."

There it was. The disappearing lady from earlier in the afternoon had said it, now here I was.

Then the guy asks, "Are you doing anything in particular?"

I told him no and he suggested I go with him. He says, "I'd like to show you the best little pub in England."

It was right off of the square in an alley, and he took me in there. It's funny that I should do that anyway because I don't drink, but here's me going into a pub.

He took me to a round table where there were three others sitting, and introduced me around. This fellow that brought me in said he was an actor on the London stage, and his two sons, one was a student, the other an actor as well.

And when I was introduced to the third man, you could have knocked me over with a feather.
Here at the table was the very man who had been named by my contact on the train from Ottawa to Toronto. His name was David ........  The name was right, and he was a writer in the theatre.

Imagine, a stranger on a train in Canada names a writer in London and says I must talk to him, and two months later in a city of ten million people, while I'm walking aimlessly around London, or so it seemed, I'm taken directly to the man.

This to the average person would seem incredible. Yet it happened not just the once, but many many times. And I mention this to underline that I've gone out on a limb time after time, and I mean way out, but never have I been stranded. It's all been done on faith, and each time it's held up. I've never been left dangling! The guidance has been solid all the way through.

We connected with people from all over Europe. All nationalities, all races. On April 14th, Sharon and the boys flew home, and left me to wrap things up with a final high speed sweep.

I went to Paris, spent eight hours there and never saw the Eiffel Tower, or the Arc de Triomphe. I just rendezvous'd with a fellow, an American black writer in fact, laid the trip on him, and stayed over at his apartment. The next day he drove me to the railway station and I was off again. Stuttgart, West Germany, was the next stop. Overnighted there, then the next morning I was off to Cologne, from there to Berlin, and back again all in a matter of hours. All the time connecting, connecting, connecting!

The trip to Berlin was nothing short of incredible. I never ceased to be astounded at the interplays. When I was in the Cologne station, I was standing in front of the train board waiting for inspiration to strike. It's a big board too, not like here. There were maybe a hundred and fifty or more trains coming and going.

Anyway, as I was scanning it, the Paris-Warsaw Express just seemed to jump out at me, with Berlin as one of the destinations. That's the one, I thought. So I decided that I'd be going to Berlin.

Now I had a couple of hours to kill, and for some strange reason I felt compelled to exchange my money. So I went to the exchange booth which they have in the stations over there, and exchanged my Swiss francs and German marks, converting them all into pounds sterling.

Now for one in the middle of Germany, and going further in, this may appear as a rather silly thing to do. I didn't think anything of it though, and off I went on the train to Berlin.

When I boarded the train I asked the conductor whether or not my Eurail Pass would be good for the trip to Berlin. He said it was. Something kept bothering me about it though, so I asked him again a little later, and again he assured me that it was fine. As a result I never bought a ticket.

When the train crosses the border into East Germany, as it must to get to Berlin, the train crew changes. All of them, engineers, porters, conductors, the works, change off with an East German crew. Then with the change made, off they go again through a rather intimidating barbed wire corridor.

Shortly after we'd left the border at Helmstead, the new conductor came through the train collecting tickets. Wouldn't you know, he told me that the Eurail pass is no good for the section into Berlin, that I must buy a ticket.

"You need a ticket, you must buy a ticket. I'll sell you a ticket now."

All I had to offer were my English pounds and American Express travellers cheques.
"No good," he said, it must be marks, German marks."

Naturally they'll accept West German marks and convert them on the spot, but nothing else.

"You go to second class. " he said, just like a reprimand, as if he's really saying,'you bad boy, you go to second class for punishment'.

So I gathered up my stuff and went back to the second class section, wondering what was going to happen next, would I get kicked off the train, or what?

I found a compartment that had one other man in it, and soon we got to talking. Now, I don't speak any of the European languages except a tiny bit of German. However, I found out that the fellow was a Greek businessman involved in pipelines, and he was on his way to Berlin.

All this accomplished despite the fact we have no common language. Somehow we were communicating! Somehow I managed to get the message across as well, and I had my connection.

As if on cue, as soon as I had accomplished that, the conductor showed up.

"Now I sell you ticket," he says. "Go to dining car and change your money there, then come back and buy ticket."

The strange thing about it all was that if I hadn't changed my money in Cologne, I would have been able to buy a ticket from the conductor in the first place, and would have ridden into Berlin by myself. The first class car was virtually empty except for me.

I spent the night in Berlin, without making a contact, then on the train out the next day I connected with a priest and a school teacher.

Fifty hours it took me to travel from Berlin across Europe, back across the channel to London, then grab a Laker to New York, another flight to Chicago, from there to San Francisco, then on home to Vancouver.

Around the world in eighty days? Would you believe eighty hours?

Another aspect of it all was language. I'm no linguist as I've already mentioned, yet somehow the communication occurs. It's as if the vibrations carry the message and are more important than the crude symbology of the words. Here's one example of how it seemed to work, even though it didn't occur in Europe.

In the fall of 1977, before I went to Europe, I was speaking with some people in a Katimavik group. I was talking with one young man from Montreal, just sitting quietly in a corner talking to him at a normal rate of speed, when another young man from the group came over and joined us. He said that he knew the fellow I was talking with, and cautioned me that if I wanted to be understood, I would have to speak much more slowly because he knew very little English.

As soon as this was said the French-Canadian fellow chimed in, "No, no, no, him I understand," he said pointing at me, "You", he told the other fellow, "I don't understand!"

All the way along, the difference in languages hasn't seemed to affect the communication. It takes place anyway and the message seems to be received in good order.

Go to: PART ONE : Chapter Nine : IT'S NO SHAME TO BE POOR, BUT IT'S NO GREAT HONOR EITHER! - Tevye
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