Travels and Tours Archives - Michael N. McGregor

A Celebration of the Triumph of Freedom Over Tyranny

The festive atmosphere as the Wall came down in 1989 (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

Thirty-five years ago today, I stood in my apartment in Seattle and watched images like this on my TV with tears in my eyes. I’d been in East Berlin just weeks before and seen new friends there shy away from Checkpoint Charlie, the crossing point to the West, while I passed through freely. My tears were tears of joy for them.

My forthcoming novel, The Last Grand Tour (publication date: January 28, 2025), takes place in Germany and nearby countries in the years right after the Wall fell, when there was hope and even belief everywhere that freedom would always eventually triumph over tyranny.

1989 was an extraordinary year, and that day, November 9, when the Wall came down, was the most extraordinary of all.

Scenes from My Time in Cold-War Russia in 1986

In the fall of 1986, my buddy Steve Smith and I spent two weeks in St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad) and Moscow with a student exchange group. Mikhail Gorbachev, who would eventually dismantle the Soviet Union, had been in power only a year, but the students we met were already testing the possibilities for more freedom.

Because Gorbachev’s reign was so new, conditions throughout the country remained the way they’d been for decades. One of my first realizations upon seeing the relative poverty and the poor conditions in which people lived was that the US government had been overselling the Soviet threat for years. This feeling was enhanced by how generous (though reticent) the people we met were.

That’s me in the blue coat–and is that a KBG agent taking my picture?

Among the things I remember most clearly were the lines everywhere for basic goods, the empty grocery stores, and the restaurant where I tried to order off a menu full of items, only to be told again and again that they didn’t have my choice. Finally, I asked what they did have and the waiter pointed to two or three things.

I shot only slides in those days, and I took these iPhone stills with the slides set on top of a light table, so they aren’t as clear as they might be–but you get the picture, so to speak.

Locals heading into a Russian Orthodox church

My First Video: A Look at My Passport from the ’80s and ’90s

The other day I found my passport from the late ’80s and early ’90s, with all of the stamps from Western and Eastern Europe in it, and thought it might be a good subject for my first video.

In 1986 alone, I traveled to Finland, the Soviet Union, Ukraine, East Germany, and most of the countries of Western Europe, including Spain and Portugal, which were new members of the European Union.

In 1989, I started leading annual tours to Greece and Turkey, and in 1993, just four years after the Berlin Wall fell, I led my first tour into Eastern Europe: Austria, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. My little tour company, Halcyon Tours, was one of the first to take Americans into what had only recently been Soviet-dominated countries.

I’ll post more about those old tour days in the coming weeks, as we move toward the January 28, 2025, launch of my novel, The Last Grand Tour. (For a synopsis of the book and pre-ordering information, click on the title.)

For now, here’s my first video. I’d love it if you’d let me know what you think of it.