Schuh column: Experiencing the world
By Jim Schuh
Many years ago, I was startled to learn of an older woman who had never set foot outside of Portage County. How could that be, I wondered? Hadn’t she ever gone to Wisconsin Rapids or Wausau? Milladore or Mosinee? But the people I spoke with assured me that she’d never traveled outside of the county.
I can’t imagine being such a “prisoner.” The rest of us have done some traveling, to places near and far. Perhaps our travels have been close to home, as in the state of Wisconsin, while others have experienced the world.
I’m among the latter and think my life’s been better for it. Without question, travel broadens a person’s outlook, provides new perspectives and helps reorient parochial thinking. It gives the traveler wonderful and lasting experiences. And it’s fun.
My travels have taken me to many locations around the world, but I realize there are places I’ll never see first-hand because my long-distance traveling is over.
I’ve not been to India, Africa, or South America. While an excursion to India hasn’t been at the top of my travel itinerary, I would like to have visited that country along with South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. I’ve missed the Middle East and am sorry I never made it to the Holy Land. I’ve also never been to Australia, although we’ve been to nearby New Zealand five times.
I’m fortunate to have spent enough time in some of the places I’ve visited to get an appreciation for the peoples there along with some of their customs. Staying with a woman and daughter in their apartment in Yaroslavl, Russia, 160-miles northeast of Moscow, was a great experience. I traveled there in 1985 with a group of Stevens Pointers as part of a Sister City visit.
The daughter, Luba Ryzhenkova, had been an exchange student in Stevens Point. She and her mother were most accommodating. Though the daughter spoke English, mom didn’t. Still, we got along fine, using gestures and the few words I knew in Russian.
I also spent three weeks in the Orient – a week in Japan and two in China – with a group of U. S. broadcasters, where Chinese-American friendship was a major theme. Our hosts treated us almost as if we were royalty.
In Beijing, my memories include standing in Tiananmen Square and marveling at its size. Our host, Mr. Yuan, told us it could accommodate one million standing people. Loud-speakers strategically located throughout the square made it easy for the communist government leaders to rally those gathered there.
We visited the mausoleums and saw the remains of Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai encased in glass-covered caskets. There were long lines of Chinese waiting to pay their respects, but our hosts guided us past all of them to see the communist leaders’ remains even though some in the cue didn’t appreciate it. We also bussed a short distance from Beijing to visit and walk on the Great Wall – an unforgettable experience.
Our stops included seven Chinese cities –Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou among them – before winding up in Hong Kong, then under British control. I loaded up with souvenirs and remember having dinner on a boat in the harbor before returning home with a stop in Tokyo.
Our New Zealand trips have taken us to just about every part of that wonderful country – from the far north to Bluff at the southern tip.
One of our trips was a “working” visit – my wife, Martha, was a coach of the Wizards Jump Rope Demonstration Team, which the American Heart Association of Wisconsin and the Stevens Point School District co-sponsored. The New Zealand Heart Association arranged home stays with Kiwi families for the team members – a truly great experience for them. They performed 28 rope jumping shows throughout the country during our two-week stay and appeared on national television. All of us came away impressed with the great Kiwis’ hospitality.
Martha and I have enjoyed vacations in the Cayman Islands, in Italy and Greece, and twice in Germany, where my brother-in-law was stationed in the army. We’ve rafted on the Colorado River.
We’ve been to Canada – from Alberta to Quebec. We also spent time in Fiji on the way back home from New Zealand.
We’ve visited all but a handful of U. S. states. Although I count Hawaii as one of the spots we’ve visited, we weren’t there for very long. In fact, it was just two hours, and it was in the middle of the night. It came during a stopover on a flight from Auckland to Los Angeles, and all of us were locked in a large room while the ground crew serviced the plane. We couldn’t even breathe the tropical air.
Martha says we can’t count that stopover as a visit to Hawaii. She’s probably right.