Cute Meet

My mom met my dad on a ship sailing from Yokohama,  Japan, to Khabarovsk, USSR, in the late summer of 1973.  She had just finished working at the Barsky Unit in Saigon.  This specialized in burn victims. It was part of the Center for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery funded by Children's Medical Relief International, name after Dr. Arthur Barsky.

Surgery on a child suffering from napalm  burns.

Prior to that she had been a nursing student and then when her brother, who had been drafted, was killed in Viet Nam, she joined the Army and served as a nurse at Cu Chi.  The only thing she has ever said about that episode in her life is that she thought she would never be able to get the blood out from under her fingernails.  She's never said anything at all about her time with CMRI.

Army nurses in Viet Nam. A tough bunch.

So anyway, she decided to return home by way of Japan and the Soviet Union.  It was the era of detente and American tourists were being allowed to visit the USSR I think for the first time since the start of the Cold War.
Her travel plan was, after visiting friends in Japan,  to sail to the Soviet Maritimes and and travel by the Trans-Siberian Express train to Moscow, thence to Europe where she would travel by Eurail pass and other public transportation to as many countries as she could before her money ran out.  She had no job and no schedule, but she didn't have a lot of money.  In fact, the route she chose to get to Europe, her main destination, was the cheapest one she could find.

A Navy F4J over North Viet Nam during Linebacker II.

My dad was on leave from the Navy and had 30 days.  He had been serving with a carrier battle group off North Viet Nam, and had participated in Linebacker II, before being sent to Japan.  He wanted to visit the Soviet Union and took the same itinerary as my mother except, as he had little time, he would fly from Khabarovsk  to Moscow and

Aboard ship from Yokohama to Vladivostok.

On the Trans-Siberian Express.

only from there take the train to Western Europe.  While her initial destination was Frankfurt, Germany, his was Ostend, Belgium.  He would take the ferry to  Dover, and on to London to visit a British friend, then fly to Munich to visit another friend, a German immigrant to the States who had joined the US Navy and become an aviator like my father, but as a civilian

BSA posed next to a Spitfire at RAF Biggin Hill.

worked for BMW's motorcycle division.  Together they would spend a week or so riding around the Alps on R90S sport bikes borrowed from the BMW factory.  Then he would fly back to London where he would buy a BSA Thunderbolt and ride around the British Isles, mostly visiting old World War II-era airfields and the like before flying back to the States and his next duty station.
As I've heard the story, my future mother and father got to chatting as they wandered about the ship, at meals and whatnot, and found, having both served in Viet Nam (though my father never set foot there -- if he had he would have been having, as he said, a very bad day at the office).  They spent time together walking around

Park in Khabarovsk.

Khabarovsk and otherwise spending time together before dad took an Aeroflot Il-62 to Moscow, where he stayed at the Hotel Metropol and spent a few days sightseeing before taking a train for Belgium.

He recalls a few things from Moscow.  One was that there were kiosks selling some clear liquid from a dispenser, but instead of having disposable paper cups, there was only one drinking glass, attached to the kiosk by a chain that everyone drank from.  The other was that there were a lot of pedestrians but few stores and no advertising.  The city was very dark at night with

GUM department store, Moscow.

no neon signs and not much traffic.  At the hotel restaurant, which was quite grand, the menu extensive, but everything he asked for was not available, so he finally asked what they had.  That was chicken and rice, and that's all he ate his whole time there.

 The train trip west was memorable for his noting the fact that whenever the dual-track rail line approached a river crossing the two lines separated widely and there were two bridges far apart.  Having just finished flying combat missions over North Viet Nam, it was obvious to my father  that the crossings had been built with air attack in mind and any raiders would have to deal with destroying not just one, but two bridges.  

Sight seen from the trans-Siberian Express.

My mother recalls the train trip across Siberia as incredibly tedious and seemingly never-ending, without much to see but trees and the occasional rail yard in a small town, and some farms or road crossings that swiftly passed by her compartment window.  Whenever she tried to take a photo, the old lady concierge at the end of her car told her in English "No pictures!"  But she managed to take a few anyway. 

Most of her fellow passengers were Japanese students traveling to Moscow to

View from train compartment window.

study at the university there.  They largely kept to themselves and seemed not to be interested in the other passengers on the train, including her.  She did make friends with a Russian traveler who said he was a musician.  This was not too long after Salvador Allende had been overthrown in Chile and she brought this up as a conversation starter but all he would say is, "I'm a musician.  I don't know about politics."  And that was that.  

She did manage to make friends with one Japanese student, a girl who seemed quite nervous and ill at ease.  Mostly she wanted to know what my mother thought about Japan.  She promised to meet her at her hotel when they arrived in Moscow so they could sight-see together, but she never showed.

Both my mother and father remarked that there was an amazing transformation passing from East Germany into West Germany:  Lights at night!  Lots and lots of them.  It was like transitioning to another planet.  Both also remarked that the doors of their train compartments were locked without notice and they had no food until they arrived at their destinations.  Both were relieved to have passed through the Communist Bloc countries safely, feeling that, arriving in Western Europe, they had reached paradise.

By chance, they ran into each other again when they lodged at the same zimmer near Salzburg, Austria.  She rode pillion on his motorcycle to Munich for Oktoberfest, after which he turned in his BMW and flew to England and she continued on to Italy, the Balkins, Greece and Egypt.

They didn't meet again until 1975, when they ran into each other quite by chance in San Francisco.  Both were walkers and San Fran in those days was still a safe and pleasant city to walk around in, the cable cars not yet mere tourist attractions and no hoards of aggressive homeless, junkies and panhandlers.  So they walked and talked for hours.  They kept in touch over the next couple of years, and spent as much time together as they could, finally marrying in 1977.