Final European Tour 2010

	The Captain's Logbook Final European Tour 2010

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We left Hilo on Monday afternoon, April 26th, flew to Honolulu, then San Francisco, then London, and finally arrived in Munich after 48 hours in the air and in airports. The flights were smooth and Heathrow (London) airport was very organized, which was a nice surprise. The weather in Germany was beautiful, and Alakai Dominik Chudzinsky even met us in shorts to take us to Starnberg, the site of our upcoming workshop. Our hotel, the Seehof, was on the north end of Lake Starnberg and the air was so clear that we could see snow on the Alps many miles away across the lake past the sailboats. We strolled the lakeside promenade, seeing people on the docks getting their feet wet, apple and cherry trees in bloom, tulips up, chestnuts budding, and electric boat businesses open. We dined early at Udosa, a former spa site. For dinner we sat under shaded umbrellas on thick-hewn wooden picnic tables right by the water. Our mean consisted of very buttery Weinerschnitzel (thin, breaded veal cutlets) with currant sauce and golden potatoes garnished with anchovies wrapped around a large caper that looked something like a crispy, grooved, green grape on a stem. All that was washed down with a half liter of helles, (German lager) beer.

On Thursday, April 29th, under a warm sun and blue skies, we were picked up at our hotel by Alakai Petra Sittel-Chudzinsky and joined by her two sons, Timmy and Noa. We all went to Lake Ammer for lunch at an unusual restaurant simply called "The Fishmarket" that specialized in freshwater fish. The restaurant proper was very tiny, no bigger than our hotel room, with a counter from which you could choose your delights. The unusual part was that the seating areas were scattered all over a kind of meadow sprinkled with blooming fruit trees. For eats, the kids had deep-fried fish balls. Petra and Gloria had lake trout sandwiches, and Serge had pickled herring in a curry sauce plus a salmon/spinach roll (and beer, of course). In the late afternoon we strolled along Lake Starnberg again and finally returned to Udosa for dinner by the water. It was spargel season in Germany (spargel is white asparagus about as thick as a cigar that is skinned and served in a variety of ways - it is white because it is grown underground in small hillocks and harvested by digging into the hillock with big hooked forks). Gloria had her spargel with hollandaise sauce and a lake trout; Serge had his with the same sauce and St. Daniel prosciutto from Italy, and guess what he had to drink with it?

Friday evening Serge taught a mini-workshop on "Huna and Love" to over 200 people in a large civic center on a hill by a castle.

On Saturday, the first of May, Serge taught the first day of "The Huna Way to a Better Life" to almost 200 people. That evening we had an Alakai dinner at Rosario's, an Italian restaurant. Gloria had steak with a white wine mushroom sauce and Serge had a veal roll with fried mozzarella and a pizza capricciosa (olives, peppers, sausage, and artichokes). The house wine was rough, but a managizer smoothed it out nicely.

On Sunday Serge taught the second day of "The Huna Way." For lunch, at a Cuban restaurant, Gloria had a ribeye steak and Serge had a big hamburger with a great sauce. For dinner we went to dinner at El Gallo Nero (The Black Rooster) with Petra and Dominik and their boys. Gloria and Serge had lamb with a sauce of olives, capers, garlic, tomatoes, and dijon mustard, accompanied by a nice house wine.

Monday morning, the 3rd of May, we checked out of the Seehof Hotel and went to the small, regional train station. The rail folks had changed the ticket machine from the last time we were there, so a Japanese man had to help us get the right ticket. It is kind of an odd system from our point of view, because you buy the ticket, then you get it stamped in another little machine before you get on the train, and no one comes around to check the ticket. It is all on the honor system. Supposedly they do random checks, but in 20 years we've never seen one. On arriving in Munich we took the Underground (subway to Americans) to stay at Alakai Elinor Kolbeck's apartment along with Alakai Susan Painiu Floyd. That evening we went to a potluck dinner hosted by Alakais August and Sabina Rueggeberg where their young daughter blew the conch and Serge gave a talk on the cultural origins of Huna.

On Tuesday there was a parting of the ways. Gloria, Susan, and Elinor went to the fabulous Erding Spa, a really huge indoor/outdoor multi-story super-spa outside of Munich. In addition to having facials every 45 minutes (including tropical yoghurt, white sugar with rose oil, and a salt and aromatic oil scrub) they also got in four saunas: Tibetan (very hot), Rose Petals, Planetarium, and Geyser. For lunch they had spargel cream soup, vegetarian paninis, and eiskaffee (coffee with a scoop of ice cream). Meanwhile, Serge went with August and Sabina to an Ethnological Museum to explore Polynesian and African exhibits. They lunched at an Italian restaurant/coffee house called Luigi Tambosi am Hofgarten and Serge had roast lamb in a gravy of its own juices, potatoes and pea pods, Chianti, and Mascarpone Cream (made with mascarpone cheese, quark, vanilla sugar, coffee, amaretto, cocoa powder, and a raspberry topping). For dinner we celebrated Dominik's birthday at the Tibet Kitchen, the only Tibetan restaurant in Munich. The food was good, but not memorable.

Wednesday we went with Elinor to the Munich City historical museum where we learned about the development of Munich from a village in the 12th century to become "The Great City of Art and Beer." We also saw a fascinating exhibit of international puppeteering and an international collection of musical instruments, including some we recognized from Senegal. Dinner was a delicious meal at "Restaurant Italy" of veal medallions smothered overwhelmingly in a thick gogonzola sauce accompanied by good German beer, and later we drank gift wine into the late hours, probing the mysteries of flexible reality. The next day we left for Poland.

We were met in Warsaw on Thursday, May 6th, by our sponsors and taken to the Marriott Hotel in the center of the city. The weather was very foggy and chilly. Gloria and Serge had dinner at Burger King.

We met with our sponsors for lunch at Pari-Pari, a little restaurant in the ultra-modern Zlote Tarasy (Golden Terraces) shopping complex in downtown Warsaw, right across from the Marriott. The Friday workshop, "Huna and Change," and the weekend workshop, "Living in the Light," went very well. Polish food in general is very good, but the only highlights worth mentioning were a meringue and cream cake at a birthday party at a country house in the forest outside of Warsaw that Susan and Serge went to, and a dish of baked chicken legs coated with sesame, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds that Gloria had in town.

On Sunday the 9th, during the class in Warsaw, we learned that the ash cloud from the volcanic eruption in Iceland was nearing Munich, our destination for the next day, so Serge had the class shamanize the wind for clear weather. Late that night we learned that the Munich airport and others in Switzerland had been closed, so we (Gloria and Serge) kept on shamanizing from the time we went to bed to 4:45 in the morning when we reached the airport and found our flights listed normally, and we flew from Warsaw to Munich to Berne, Switzerland without any problem at all.

Flying into Berne (the Swiss version is Bern) on Monday morning, the 10th of May, our first impression was GREEN! The sun was shining and all the trees had leafed out and it was gorgeous. It was a long taxi ride from the aiport at Belp into downtown Berne where our hotel was. We wandered around the new train station plaza and lunched on bratwurst and beer, then strolled along the main street into the Old Town, window-shopping, and finally stopped at the Restaurant Zunft zu Webern for an absolutely scrumptious cheese fondue served with a delicious local (Heidl) white wine by Johny Tseng, an exceptionally friendly Chinese man born in India who met his wife, a Chinese woman born in Thailand, at the railway station in Berne. The fondue was served with whole wheat bread and baked potato. On the way back to our hotel we watched a golden man strike a golden bell at the top of the clock tower at 8 pm.

Tuesday morning we took a guided walking tour of the city along with a nice Swiss couple who were very willing to listen and speak in English. Among many other things we learned that Berne has 6 kilometers of covered arcade shops with many underground shops and restaurants reached by cellar doors from the main street. There are a lot of beautiful buildings and statues in the mixed medieval/modern city, which sits on a peninsular hill surrounded on three sides by the Aare River. This time, at the clock tower, we got to see the cock crow and flap his wings, Cronos wave his scepter, and the jester swing his legs. Lunch was a fresh ham sandwich and for dinner... we went back to the same restaurant for the same cheese fondue with the same wine served by the same waiter! And it was just as good as before.

On Wednesday the 12th of May we met our friend and sponsor Gerhard Schobel and drove out of Berne toward Interlaken and turned into a valley where a large and long waterfall cascades down a vertical cliff to the village of Lauterbrunnen. We drove through the village to the park at Trummelbach Falle. There we took an elevator deep inside the mountain to a point high above the valley. Then we walked up and down steep stairways and into chambers cut into the granite so we could see a series of ten waterfalls roaring wildly through natural channels carved into fantastic shapes over millenia inside the mountain itself from sources like the Jungfrau and Eiger mountains The views were spectacular and the energy was extremely invigorating. After calming down somewhat we came back to Berne for a late lunch on the Kornhausplatz at the Restaurant Brasserie Anker. Gloria had pan-fried pork schnitzel with fries and Serge had a Student Rosti, consisting of a pan of hash browns covered over with melted cheese, topped with a hamburger and an egg sunny-side up, and mixed up with bacon and onions. That evening Serge gave a talk on Huna and Change to about 120 people in the museum area of Berne.

Thursday we were picked up by Gerhard and spent a wonderful day in the Swiss countryside. First we visited the St. Beatus Caves, located in the Beateberg Mountain just above Lake Thun. Starting from the roadway, we walked up a trail past extremely picturesque waterfalls to a former pilgrimage inn set into the cave opening. And then we walked for 1 kilometer through low corridors and large and small grottos filled with stalactites (hanging from the roof) and stalagmites (standing on the floor), rushing streams, and mirror pools. The whole cave complex is many kilometers long. According to legend, St. Beatus came to the cave in the 6th century A.D. and drove out a dragon (amazing how similar dragon wings are to bat wings). After the caves, we had lunch at the Hotel Kreuz, directly across the lake from the caves. Gloria had filet of lake trout with ham saltimbocca, white and green asparagus, and small roasted potatoes. Serge had felcher, a lake fish, in a Pernod/mushroom/dill sauce with creole rice. In the afternoon we all went to what used to be called "Mystery Park" and is now called "Jungfrau Park" just outside of Interlaken. Originally it was designed to feature the mysteries of various civilizations that were written about by Eric von Daniken, and it still is for the most part. We enjoyed video and physical presentations of the mysteries of Egypt, India, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, and England, plus a very good 360 degree show of the Swiss Alps. We also saw von Daniken signing books. That evening, at our hotel in Basel, due to a reservation mix-up, Serge and Gloria had to take separate rooms for one night. So at dinner time Serge called up Gloria for a date and took her to McDonald's for a "Big Tasty" (a half pound burger and very tasty) and a chocolate sundae. Then he invited her to his room for a movie, and took her "home" after.

Friday was a lazy day off spent mostly window-shopping. We got our double room in the afternoon, overlooking the Rhine River and the bridge going over into the Old Town. That evening we had one of our favorite dinners at one of our favorite Basel Restaurants: Walliser Kanne. The dinner was cheese fondue, this time served with a side shot of kirsch for dipping the bread into to intensify the taste.

Saturday began with "Living in the Light" for a group of 95 students. During the day Serge had the class do some thoughtforming for warmer weather. The classroom got very warm, and outside the solid cloudy sky began to break up and the sun did peek out for a bit. We had dinner at a restaurant called Zunge Koenig meaning "King's Tongue" with a bust outside of a king sticking his tongue out, supposedly at the peasants across the river. The meal was lake perch, and "Rosti mit Raclette," Swiss-style hash browns covered with a special melted cheese. For dessert we ate a gift of mixed chocolate pralines.

Sunday the 16th began with blue sky, lots of sun, and a happy group of students. During the day there was a beach volleyball game complete with sand set up in the plaza in front of a church next to our building. Later that night there was a huge and very noisy celebration that reached across the Rhine because Basel won an important football/soccer game against Berne.

Monday, May 17th, we took a taxi to the Badicher Bahnhof - the German train station in Basel. The city of Basel sits by the corner of Switzerland, France, and Germany, and it has three train stations, one for each country. So we took a train from the German one into Germany and north to the spa resort of Baden-Baden in the Black Forest. There we met Alakais Susan and Sigrid Vaupel and checked in to a large, two-bedroom aparment in the center of the shopping district. Gloria went with Susan and Sigrid to spend most of the afternoon at the spa, while Serge wandered through the town taking pictures and buying candy and chocolates. That evening we had dinner at a Czech restaurant staffed by Russians. Gloria had a Czech lamb dish and Serge had half a Czech duck, accompanied by a pretty awful white wine drawn from a tap and so bad that even a Managizer could not help much.

Tuesday, after a Bavarian lunch of Schweinehaxe (pork shank) and weisswurst (veal sausage) we all packed into Sigrid's car and spent hours driving through the hills and vales of the Black Forest trying to find the village of Fuernsal, which we did reach by early evening. There we checked into the Graether Health Resort, a complex of buildings on a large plot of land where Alakai Jutta Hahr had organized an International Lomi Conference. In addition to lots of residential rooms, the resort has many exercise and therapy rooms, saunas, meeting and dining rooms, and its own vegetable garden. The menu is ovo-lacto-vegetarian (they "do not serve anything with eyelashes"), but they do serve very nice wine.

Wednesday, the conference began with ancient-style Hawaiian dances by a local German hula troupe led by Susan chanting and playing a gourd drum. Then Serge gave a mini-workshop on Huna and Change to an audience of students and teachers of Aloha International's Lomilomi Nui type of Hawaiian massage from Germany, Switzerland, Italy, South Africa, Russia, Austria, Spain, Hawaii, and Iowa.

The conference was going to last through the weekend, but on Thursday Gloria and Serge had to take a local train from the small village of Horb in the Black Forest to the city of Stuttgart where we boarded a plane for London. The weather in Germany was cold and cloudy, but we landed at Heathrow under blue skies and temperatures in the seventies. We took one of the famous "black cabs" and after settling in to our small Holiday Express hotel, tucked into an alley of the Hammersmith district of London, we went out to a nice Thai dinner of spicy stir-fried pork, coconut chicken soup, a chicken/mushroom/corncob stir-fry, and Singha beer with Alakai Pete Dalton who was sponsoring Serge's London workshops.

With a full day on Friday to explore London, which you cannot do in a day, we opted to visit the British Museum, hoping to see an advertised display of regalia from Captain Cook's travels, but that did not exist. We did see an Easter Island statue, the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, and a money exhibit, though. Serge was pleased to see that they were making replicas of famous sculptures again, including one of a Benin bronze that he had bought in 1965 for $100 and that now was selling for almost $2000. Lunch was ribeye steak and a pint of Carlsberg at the Plough and Harrow, a local pub, and in the evening Serge talked about "Huna and Change" to about 70 people.

Saturday the 22nd was beautiful and warm as Serge began teaching "Living in the Light" to about 75 people. We had lunch at the Plough and Harrow again - Morrocan meatballs and couscous, sausage and chips and beans, and ginger beer. After the workshop we took a long walk down to the Thames River and then had dinner at Shilpa Indian Restaurant with Pete and Alakai Candidate Romilla Ready. Gloria had Lamb Chop Adharaki (with yoghurt, tomato, onions and garlic dressing), and Serge had Erachi Mappas - cubes of lamb in a thick, spicy sauce from Kerala. Both of us shared garlic Naan (a type of thin, soft bread), raita (a sauce of yoghurt, cucumber, and tomatoes), and Kingfisher beer.

On Sunday it was beautiful and warm again. Serge started the wortkshop morning with "King's Helicopter Theory of Time" and the afternoon was spent exploring alternate realities.. During lunch we took a walk in the sun and shade through Rivercourt Park with lots of people sunbathing and children playing in a pool and had soft serve ice cream. After the workshop we went to dinner with Pete at the Capri Italian Restaurant. Pete had spinach ravioli, Gloria had lamb chops, and Serge had Scaloppini Vesuvio (veal stuffed with ham and cheese in a mushroom/garlic/onion sauce). The wine was a very, very nice Valpolicello, and we finished with coffee laced with Strega.

We got up early on Monday morning the 24th of May for a smooth flight from London/Heathrow to Vienna, where we were picked up by our good friend Elke Lieben and taken to her country place in Neudorf. There we spent a lazy afternoon in a grassy meadow by a stream surrounded by fruit trees, spring flowers, birdsong, and pleasant conversation with friends.

There were thunderstorms Monday night, and Tuesday morning was heavily overcast, but we decided to go for a walk in the woods anyway. So, armed with umbrellas and rain jackets we headed for the Foehrenberge Nature Park not far from Neudorf. We took a long mostly upward trail through spring woods of pine, oak, maple, elm and others, with a multitude of wildflowers decorating the trail on either side. To our delight, the sun came out and blue sky prevailed. On our way we passed a massive outcropping of rock nicknamed "The Matterhorn," and at the top of the trail we stopped at the "Husarentempel," a neo-classical Greek temple first built in 1809 to celebrate a battle won by the Hussars. It was surrounded by dense forest and had a great view of the village of Hinterbruhl far below. Finally we made our way down to the Landhaus Restaurant at the entrance to the park for a delicious lunch of moist breaded chicken, tender pork loin with crispy skin on a bed of sauerkraut, lager beer, and expresso.

Wednesday morning was quiet, and after a lunch featuring Augsburger sausage (pork sausage made with nutmeg and marjoram) in the afternoon we went for a walk at Leopoldsberg, a park at the eastern end of the Vienna Woods overlooking the Danube and parts of Vienna and surrounding communities. It is also the last hill of the chain of the Alps. Then we visited a friend for Campari and orange juice with snacks and enjoyed her unique collection of African artifacts. The weather followed our suggestion of not raining until we got home, where we had a simple dinner of smoked ham, sauerkraut, elderberry flower crepes sprinkled with powdered sugar, and a local red wine.

Thursday morning the 27th was for leisure time (we do not do a lot of that) and after a light lunch of lamb's lettuce (a type of small leaf lettuce popular in Europe, but seldom seen in the States) and sorrel salad, a spelt and ham broth soup, white asparagus with homemade hollandaise sauce and parmesan cheese, an apple tart and eiscaffee we left Neudorf for Huettendorf on the far northwest side of Vienna and checked in to Europahaus, the seminar center and former private estate next to the Vienna Woods where Serge would be doing his workshops.

Friday we went into the center of Vienna to Stefansplatz, named after the large Gothic cathedral of St. Stefan located there and visited our favorite shop, Manner, the main store of the company that makes those delicious hazelnut creme wafers (plus those delicious rum and vodka-filled chocolate balls that Serge likes). Then we window-shopped, chuckling over $50,000 Patek Phillip watches, and had a Coconut Mocha Frappicino at Starbucks, right across from the Sacher Hotel, famous for a cake called "Sacher Torte." That evening Serge spoke on "Huna and Change" for about 170 people and afterward we joined friends for a late snack, where Gloria had a soup with fried asparagus stalks followed by an apple strudel, and Serge had a liver dumpling soup (he mistranslated the menu) and half a liter of beer.

Saturday morning Serge taught a new workshop called "Huna Therapy and Counseling" to about 180 therapists, counselors, and clients. In the morning he presented basic guidelines for working with clients and in the afternoon he did demonstrations. We had lunch at J421, a very modernistic Asian restaurant. We both had pumpkin creme soup with pumpkin seeds, pumpkin oil, and coconut milk. Then Gloria had Zander (a local lake fish that looks and tastes a lot like perch) cooked in an Indian Tandoori style, and Serge had a very light lunch of "Thai Toast" (shrimp paste on toast) and half a liter of beer. For dinner we went to a very local restaurant called 7 Stern Brau (Seven Star Brewery) that featured seven unique types of beer. Gloria had lamb shank with a small lager, and Serge had Mexican Spareribs (ordinary spareribs with a sprinkling of chili pepper seeds) and a Prater Dunkles, a very dark, very malty, very aromatic beer. We also sampled Chili Beer, which was made with chili peppers as part of the breweing process (quite spicy, but good), and Hemp Beer, brewed with hemp leaves (don't go out of your way for it - we didn't notice anything unusual about it).

Sunday the 30th Serge did a lot more demonstrations, and quite a few healings took place over the entire weekend as people tried out techniques they had learned. For lunch we went to Antep, a Turkish restaurant, and had assorted kebabs. Dinner was spent with good friends, including Alakais Susan, Jutta, Dominik, and Petra, at a very Viennese restaurant near Schonbrunn Palace called Plachutta. Gloria had Tafelspitz a traditional tasty stew made with boiled beef, and Serge had a very good beef tartar (raw beef molded into a thick disk and filled with spices). We also sampled Grappa and Apricot Schnapps, and Serge mellowed both of them with his hands. The evening ended with a gathering at our hotel room where we shared a bottle of Dom Perignon supplied by Susan to celebrate Serge's last workshop tour in Europe (No, he is not retiring, No, this was not his last workshop, and No, this will not be his last trip to Europe).

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