Dreams, Moments, Travels
We’ve rented a mini-van and are traveling north of Flagstaff, Arizona, on our way to the Grand Canyon National Park when we passed this cowboy and just had to stop for our German friends to see a real cowboy in person. Not many photographs were taken over the days we were in the States for Caroline and me to get married; this is the only one from this day.
It’s just hours before Caroline Engelhardt and John Wise are about to be married but first up, dinner at Excalibur with jousting in Las Vegas. So, this would be the very last photo of Caroline before she became Caroline Wise. Why there are no photos of us getting married is not a mystery; we were operating on fumes after going non-stop for weeks leading up to this day. Add to that, my mother was being difficult as the witching hour for our exchange of vows was approaching at 12:12 on January 12, she was tired and cranky. While likely mentioned elsewhere, this created a state of chaos, and the mess of that drama is better left in the past. That’s Klaus Singer with the beard and Jo Lincke on his left. As for Connie and Uwe, who were with us, they did everything they could to avoid being in any of our photos.
You only turn 25 once, so why not do something spectacular, like head to Euro Disney in Paris, France? That’s what we did back on the weekend of December 12, 1992. While Caroline had been to the United States and even to Southern California the year before, we didn’t have time to visit Disneyland. So we went all out and bought a couple of plane tickets from Frankfurt, Germany, to Charles de Gaulle Airport and caught the shuttle bus to the park. Our hotel was one of the pueblo-themed units, which was exciting all by itself.
The day we arrived, we wandered around the facilities outside the Magic Kingdom, visiting the ice rink and gift shops before stopping in a classic American diner for dinner. In the morning, when we entered the park itself, we were as excited as any child visiting one of these amazing treasures. As for me, while I’d visited Disneyland a dozen or more times at that point, I’d never been to Disneyworld or the park in Tokyo, Japan.
There’d been much controversy leading up to the opening of Euro Disney, as valuable farmland was being used for American Trash Culture (according to French media). Then there was the question if high-minded Europeans would even go and which of the snooty French would visit such a déclassé blight on their historic Paris? The park was constantly maligned in the press, and its early demise was frequently predicted. In was a chance meeting while Caroline and I were attending CEBIT back in March 1992; an American tech engineer shared his photos of the park with us, which to us looked amazing. We were incredibly jealous as not only had he already visited and taken photos, but he had been able to do so more than a month before Euro Disney officially opened on April 12th, 1992. With the constant negative chatter about the place, we decided we’d need to see it with our own eyes before the bulldozers moved in and turned the grounds back into farms.
Euro Disney was far from packed, but it wasn’t empty either. Then again, it was mid-December, and anyone who’s been to Paris in the winter can tell you that nice weather isn’t guaranteed. What seemingly was guaranteed were smiles. Not only smiles from Caroline and me but, to our surprise, from the many French people in the park. We entered Disney with the expectation we’d see very few French and mostly visitors from other countries; we were wrong.
The park was pristine, and the presentation was flawless. It was a great destination for any birthday.
While technically in Paris, you couldn’t see the city from any vantage point out this way. In the park, you were immersed in the fantasy of being transported to a happy place. The contrast between playful Disney and serious and old Europe made for a spectacular opportunity to wander into the imagination that Disney has mastery over. Our dreams were coming true.
It was difficult to get photos of Caroline looking at the camera as her eyes darted over every detail, taking in something she’d never seen the likes of. While we’d go to Disneyland years later, this park had the benefit of starting from scratch and improving on things that couldn’t have been accomplished in Anaheim when that park opened back in 1955.
Let’s return to the gift shop for a moment. In the very first photo, Caroline has a Euro Disney hat on, but that’s not all. This jacket, the shirt under it, and even a red t-shirt below were all bought here at Euro Disney. The striped shirt would be the one she wore 13 months later in Las Vegas, Nevada when we got married at the Little White Chapel. There was also a pair of Mickey Mouse shorts she bought, though it was too cold to wear them outside this weekend. Almost 30 years later, here in 2021 (when I’m writing this), she still owns the shorts, shirt, and t-shirt.
I’d like to point out that I was very thin at one time and prone to fits of silliness.
The two people in this photo in front of the Sleeping Beauty Castle were a couple of Bohemian adventure-seeking, occasionally reckless, madly in love, somewhat troubled individuals who had a long and, at times, arduous journey of finding happiness. While we’ve stumbled over many if not all, the speed bumps life can throw at people, we still swoon when walking hand-in-hand with When You Wish Upon A Star echoing through our memories.
Thanks to Laiki Kostis, whom I’d first met back in 1985 at his “Buy or Die” record store in Wiesbaden, Germany, Caroline and I were commissioned to create a digital record cover that Laiki needed for a new “White Label” he had in his possession. The record was from a guy who was a rising star with his project “A Homeboy, A Hippie, and a Funki Dredd,” and it was exploring a different sound. The project was called “The Hypnotist,” and the tracks were titled “Death By Dub” and “Rainbows In The Sky.” It was Death By Dub on the B Side that caught my attention, but I had to explain to Laiki that I had no experience using the computer for making graphics. He explained that I was the only person he knew with a computer and that he didn’t care what we did; he just knew he needed to release this with cover art as he felt he had a hit.
So this is our first record cover, and it opened the door to making even more covers for people all over the place, but I will forever be grateful to Laiki for the opportunity and to Caspar Pound for making such an amazing couple of tracks. Today was the day the record was officially released.
Caroline Engelhardt, four years before we were married on her first trip to America. This photo was taken shortly after landing at the San Francisco International Airport in San Francisco. We picked up a Lincoln Towncar land yacht for some idiotic reason and headed directly for Stockton and Broadway to find parking so we could go to City Lights Bookstore. I had an appointment with the most important location in this city by the bay that played such an important role regarding the poetry and writings of the Beat Generation.
After picking up a few books and a tip of a place to eat, we headed around the corner to have some seriously amazing Chinese food compared to what we knew in Germany. The place was called Brandy Ho’s Hunan Food, and in the years that followed after moving to America, we’d eat there a few more times for the nostalgic value of reliving our first couple of hours in California. After lunch, we explored Chinatown in a jetlagged daze.
We were in America largely for business as Caroline and I worked for a white box PC manufacturer in Frankfurt, Germany. With family in California, our trip also took us to points south, but that was after wandering around San Francisco, San Jose, and a quick hop down to Monterey, California, where I watched Caroline cry as she gazed upon the Pacific Ocean.
We only spent a couple of weeks over here, and most of it is lost in the blur of time. If we had taken more photos, they are now lost, but the overall impressions of this visit to California were impactful and began Caroline’s relationship with America as a place beyond the movies she grew up with.
Edit: This wasn’t part of the original post, but I had to add it as this was our second selfie after taking our first in a window in Munich, Germany, back in 1989.
This was a part of the gift Caroline Engelhardt gave to me for celebrating my first birthday with her since we started dating. While Caroline was at the Psychic TV concert last year in the early hours of the 4th, we weren’t interested in each other at that time, and hence, I don’t think I even pointed out that it was my birthday. I turned 27 on this day, and besides the much-needed shoes (mine were falling apart), she also gave me some balloons that sat on top of a cabinet near the hall door so I could see them all the time. This is also the very first post I’m making after starting to scan in our archive of materials here at the end of August 2018.
Those balloons stayed there and, for years, still had a tiny bit of air left in them in 1995. We finally got rid of them when we moved to the United States in April of that year.