Many Friends.

As in other years a large number of friends visited us and stayed often many weeks. Sometimes, when Barbara was on tour, they kept me company, but when Barbara was home, they were given the royal treatment and all the attention Barbara lavishes on her guests and friends.

Cornelius and Merab had barely left, when Mary Robertson arrived for a week. We had met Mary and her husband John in Greece in 1971. We had seen them sporadically since then. Their marrige had come apart and Mary worked at the University of Texas and continued to visit us every few years. In trying to cope with her broken life, she relied on Barbara's friendship. In April Susanne stayed 5 days with us. She was followed by Helga flying from New Zealand to Austria. Mid May Martin and Karla Graef, Barbara's cousin arrived with Dieter and Renate, a befriended couple for several days. They came in fully equipped campers and only used our bathrooms and Barbara's restaurant. The conversations over dinner were lively, in German of course, and informative. In June Heike Rönitz and her friend Christine Glogasa came, as did Uli May for a few days. Heike and Christine went on a tour of the West. In between Barbara worked 4 tours, 9 weeks in all. The circle of friends wer concluded over Christmas by Regine coming back for more, Cornelius, and Emily Maxworthy, who was visiting her wayward daughter.

In March we went skiing in Mammoth for the usual week. We stayed at the White Stag Inn, and the Forrets at a condominium. Despite the late season cross-country skiing was still wonderful, and the noon hours warm enough to sun oneself in the nude. Often I would spend whole days at the Hot Springs and Barbara would ski with the Forrests.

On July 27 Sophia Severino got married to David Thornton in Santa Monica and at Pepperdine. Every of Sophia's friends helped out. We put-up Regine Wörner from Stuttgart. This became the beginning of a friendship with Regine, whom Sophia had met in Jemen! Regine had the money, the time, and the drive to travel a lot. This year, after the wedding, she flew to Papua New Guinea for a trek to the aboriginal tribes in the mountains.

On September 5 Marc and Monique, Cornelius' Dutch friends, came to house-sit for us while we spend 5 weeks in Greece.

August - September 1991, Rolf and Barbara in Greece

It was the year of my 60th birthday. After the travels in South-East Asia, Ladakh, and Anatolia the longing for the clean, blue Aegean and Greece had become overwhelming. I had never taken Barbara to the Peleponnes and the places Gerhad and I had been to. Only with Cornelius had I gone to Mycene and the Mani. I felt that it was time and I old enough to walk again Gerhard's and my tracks and revisit the intense memories connected with them. At the same time I feared, that I would not be able to muster the intensity of 1953/54. - I would be proven wrong. The impressions of 1991 became even stronger.....

Part 1. The Islands

We decided that as long as the weather was still warm, we should first go try Folegandros - "to another island" - and then go to Santorini, Paros, or Amorgos. I had no fixed plan, except that in the last 2 weeks we would rent a car and Barbara would drive us through the Peleponnes.

We didn't last long in Folegandros, it was dry and hot. After 3 days we took a boat to Santorini - but Thira looked so crowded that we didn't even get off the boat and continued on to Naxos. By now it was clear that we were heading for Amorgos. But the only way to get there was on the Psylorelitis, a tiny boat which connected all the Lesser Cycladic Islands between Naxos and Amorgos in a six-hour run. It became a wild ride in very choppy seas.

September 10, my 60th birthday on the Psyloritis to Amorgos.  Only by standing up, hanging to the ropes, was I able to reach Katapola that night without getting sick like everybody else.

But then this most beloved island had us back. Barbara behind the three snowed-in chaples.

.

The wind on the promontory above the escarpment was so strong that Barbar was nearly blown off..

.

Lunch at the Moni Ag. Georgios Valsamides

.

On some mornings Barbara sat at Vitsentzos's writing letters. Maybe this stay in Amorgos was one of our happiest.

.

 And, of course, we spent many hours in the secret garden of the monks.

.

Barbara asleep on the early-morning boat back to Athens.

Part 2. The Peleponnes

For pictures from this second part of our trip click: Peleponnes 91

There is exists also a "story" about our adventures on this journey: On the Way to Arkadia

Here are a few memories from this trip, mostly of Barbara, which are not in the other itinerary.....

 .Agias Apostoli in the Agora of Athens. We rented a little Honda from Pappas Rental Car and headed west, past Daphni to the Heraion Akragas, which we had never been to, and then south to Epidavros and the Argolis.

.

View across the Gulf of Korinth on the Peleponnes from the Heraion Akragas, a very old sanctuary rarely visited.

.

The Gate of Tiryns, which Barbara's great-uncle Wilhelm Dörpfeld excavated.

.

Evening light on the Peleponnes from the citadel of Mykene.

.

Arcadia, taking a dip in the very cold Lousios. Arcadia and especially Bassai became once more the high points of our journey.

.

Lunch in the mountains above Leonidi: olives, bread, feta, yoghurt, and water.

.

Mystras, inside the Peripleptos. Neither had I ever seen Mystras, the Byzantine ruins of the city near Sparta where Goethe placed his Faust II, and which Katsanzakis describes with nostalgia....

Delphi, the Castalian Spring. After tearing ourselves away from Bassai, we fround that we had two days more than I had calculated. Barbara drove us all the way north to Ioannina and Dodona, across the Pindos Mountains and south through Thessalia to Delphi.

Athens, view from Lycabettos in late September, after our return from the Peleponnes.

I flew back to LA to an increasingly hostile work environment at Aerospace. The Cold War was over and so was the liberal financial support of my research in nonlinear optics. Barbara stayed another 2 weeks with Marga in Tübingen and returned only on October 14, 1991.

For Christmas Regine Wörner returned, she had liked it so much, and Cornelius was home until early January.

.

1992

March 6, 1992 Eliso Virsaladze in Los Angeles

 At a symphony concert at the Music Center, one night in 1991, Eliso Virsaladze, a Georgian pianist played a piano concert with the old conductor Sanderling. I was so fascinated by her that I cannot remember what they played. Tall, erect, a strong face, in complete control of herself, a highly poetic presentation.... A few months later we visited Maibi Michel-Beyerly, an old friend from my days in Göttingen. Maibi, a professor of physics in München, had started a new sideline business, recording and publishing CDs of eastern-European performers. She put fancy earphones on Barbara and me: a Schumann piano recital. When I asked who was playing, she said "Eliso Virsaladze, my new friend." I became very excited, and implored her to arrange for a meeting with her....

On March 5, 1992 Maibi called at an impossibly early hour, Eliso was on her way to give a concert in LA, would we take care of her. This is how we met Eliso. Barbara picked her up. We had her for dinner with Henry Helvajian and Nina Evtuhov, and she got us free tickets for 2 concerts: the Schumann piano concerto under Yuri Temirkanov - who was so drunk that he clowned more to the audience than directed the orchester - and an evening of chamber music at Hebrew University. Rhereafter I have met her again for maybe three or four intense evenings in Los Angeles and Bavaria. She became the model for the aging Alexandra of my novel....

Spring, Dos Cabezas with Lissa and John.

Barbara and Lissa on the way to Mortero Palms. Early in April, around Easter, we spend a weekend with John and Lissa, my technician and helper at Aerospace, at our secret hide-away Dos Cabezas in the Anzo Borrego. It was still fairly cold and there were dozens of frighteningly large rattlesnakes everywhere. Lissa was paralyzed with fear. She had as a child been bitten by a rattlesnake and barely survived. A crippled left foot often gave her trouble. Poor Snakefoot. .

Barbara in snake boots and Turkish pants in the rocks above Mortero Palms

 .

 .

Cornelius in New Haven

Cornelius in his New Haven garden, which he had planted together with Tamara, a motherly English-Jewish socialist agitator at Yale University. We met Tamara when she came to LA for Kelly's and Jenny's christening.

April 25 -27, 1992, Kelly's and Jenny's Christening at the Way Farer's Chapel in Palos Verdes

"Gruppenbild with Baby" - held by Cornelius! Too many people to name. Zanette with hat off the picture, Tamara between Barbara and Arleen.

.

Cornelius, who was not in the most happiest state, and his sister.

.

.

.

Sophia, Arleen, Bud, and Heidi in a rare and charming picture.

.

Mira Kasliwal, Pari's daughter, proudly holding Kelly .

.

Sophia cooing to Kelly. I don't know where is Jenny?

June 21 - July 21, Rolf in München for two Weddings

Jürgen + Irene Grosskreutze's and Heike Rönitz + Martin Kirsch's

Invited to the weddings of two dear friends, Heike and Jürgen + Irene, I flew to Munich. Heike's wedding took place in most ur-Bavarian circumstances in the old Baroque church in Weyarn (near Holzkirchen) and in the adjacent school, of which her grandfather had been the director. They had been married in a civil ceremony long ago. - Christine Glogasa and I took care of their 3 year old son, while his parents stood before the altar (Martin hyad been brought up Catholic Heike Protestant, both were only moderately religious).

Jürgen and Irene celebrated their wedding - for both the second marriage - in their new house in München. The entire large family clan was there - Jürgen's three famous sisters, his three semi-adult children, Irene's two sons with their companions, a number of members of their church choir, poems were read, pictures held up, the choir sang..... A "well-educated" wedding ceremony as Barbara would have liked but we had never had. A few days later I had invited them to a chamber concert by Eliso in Bad Kreuth. A warm Bavarian July evening - without airconditioning in the concert hall!

.

Christmas 1992

.

Robert Forrest. Illa must also have been there, but I cannot find a photo of her.

.

Barbara beating the cake dough for her guests on the desk in her room..

.

Cornelius playing with the stars. Decorating the Christmas tree.

.

Christmas Eve 1992. Cornelius inspecting a present from his mother, Rolf looking over his shoulder.

.

Christmas Eve '92, Rolf happy, watching the opening of presents.