traveldiary.stracke.us

Ivan IV or The Terrible , 1530 to 1584, was the first to bear the title “Tsar” and was crowned in Moscow in 1547 at the age of seventeen!
He actually was a good ruler until his first wife died and he became gloomy and tyrannical. He created a special corps to uncover treason, resulting in seven years of terror. He married seven times and forced his ex-wives to become nuns. At one point he killed one of his own sons during a rage.
Why would anybody name a hurricane “Ivan” and expect anything good to come out of it? Maybe a little study of World History would help.
We were in the old Polish town Wroclaw on Tuesday, September 7th when we saw the news about Ivan destroying Grenada. Apparently 90 % of the homes were destroyed and there was no power, water or telephone communication with the island. The British had a Navy Ship there the next day and helped with emergency surgeries. We were told that all British medical students were evacuated by the British Navy. We had no information about Carsten! The next news were about looting and break down of Law and Order on Grenada. The University would not publish a list of all students that were accounted for after the storm! We finally called the U.S. State Department who took down information about Carsten and filed a Missing Person report with their man in Grenada. The University website Storm Forum was cluttered with rumors and false information and by now Gabi and I were going crazy imagining what could have happened to our son. We left Poland and drove to Germany to use our satellite phone. Still no word about Carsten after 4 days. At this point I had booked a flight from Frankfurt, Germany to Trinidad for Monday, September, 13th so we could get to Grenada to search for Carsten. He finally was evacuated by the British to Barbados on Sunday, September 12th and called us in Germany Sunday evening with the good news that he was unharmed. We were at this point in Moenchengladbach at my niece Birte’s house and I used her internet to obtain a ticket for Gabi and myself to fly home the next day to see Carsten in person. We had the (so far) worst experience of our lifetime and had to come home to convince ourselves that he was ok. Thanks to British Airways we were reunited Tuesday afternoon at home in Clifton Park.
By the way Gabi and Carsten are shopping right now for some clothing for him. He managed to rescue his laptop and his dive computer. He spent the night in his bathroom during the Hurricane and the roof was blown off. The next day he managed to walk to the medical school campus and started to volunteer in the University Clinic. The next 2 days he apparently helped to provide some medical care at the local hospital and will probably write about some of his experiences on his website.
Gabi and I are overjoyed to have him back unharmed and will stay home until October 3rd when we fly back to Germany and plan to pick up our journey on the island of Crete in Greece. We are missing the Octoberfest in Munich and our exploration of Sicily, Italy, but this is totally insignificant as long as our family is in one piece!!!
Writing unexpectedly from 42.85 Degrees N , 73.79 W (Clifton Park , NY)

P.S. Is the U.S. State Department is still looking for Carsten?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 15th, 2004 at 6:15 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.