 for the travel adventures in a time of COVID. International travel adventures with Martin de Spang. Good morning, Martin, Martin, Martin, Martin. How are you? I'm good. Good here in the evening, but early evening, 12 hours apart. Good to see you, Jay. Yeah, this is Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. It's a given Wednesday morning, you had a special show with Martin de Spang. He's one of our regular hosts on Humane Architecture. In fact, his show is following this show, isn't it? Yeah, it is. But we thought we'd take a moment and discuss Martin's adventures because Martin actually represents all of us in many ways, and certainly in connection with international travel, where he's been trying to get his international travel arrangements in order, but he's been running into some extraordinary obstacles in getting back to Hawaii from Germany. Martin, can you talk about it? Yeah, let's get some visuals up here that illustrate that pretty well if you could get the first slide up here. In fact, we talked about this, Jay, about like two months ago, where I was in quarantine with my freshly wet wife on our second half of our honeymoon. And we didn't know why we were in quarantine because we thought we did the best to protect us, not just personally, but us in Hawaii coming back. We got vaccinated, full vaccinated. We were PCR tested, regardless we ended up in quarantine. And so you helped me out with your great connections, Jay, like this one here all the way up to Lieutenant Governor Josh Green, who gave it some thoughts, but his final recommendation was like, why don't you get yourself a booster shot? Because then you would be official here with your vaccination, you know? And we were rather hesitant at that because there's certain parameters, right? First of all, you need to be of that age or risk group or you have to have that six months between your second shot and the booster. And none of them really did apply to me. So we didn't quite know. So we just had to live it through, live through this. And second slide. Finally, here we are, we were free again, right? Here we are on Coheo Avenue at our favorite Paya Fish Marketplace, which we've been talking about in human human architecture because they bring a different tropical exotic flair of some little bit more liberating way because they're run by people from Brazil. So this became our favorite spot. And they started to continue to be loyal because at some point we were in trouble again, although we were out of quarantine, all of a sudden the state law says, show your proof of evidence of vaccination, which they didn't accept to begin with because they put us in quarantine, right? So there we were again, potentially being kept out of all these delicious places that we're supposed to leave our money to keep our economy running, right? So next slide. What they were kind enough to accept is that at the bottom right, which is my University of Hawaii Health Services, which you see me stopping by at the bottom left, which is bottom right, which DeSoto and I discovered as one of the great easy breezy tropical exotic buildings on campus that however should open up a little bit more and get the breeze through. It's rather hermetic and they're not doing open heart surgery in there, right? So you could let some natural air in there, but there's a front desk that lady there is privileged because she can catch the natural ventilation and she's in the shade there. So what one of the employees, there are a nurse in fact, we talked about was able to do that she transcribed my German vaccination records into my University of Hawaii Health Services immunization records. That one I printed out and put in my wallet and then can you imagine the poor person at the door of each restaurant me unfolding that thing and trying to explain why that is equivalent to the CDC card they're very used to, right? So Paya was used to us and then you how, you know, what kind of aliens we were and they were kind of fine with us. Then I was planning to give our students the best intercultural, international, intercontinental, interclimatic education and have me take them to the temperate zones. And so preparing to fly back, I talked to my health specialist doctor there. And, you know, at that point we tried everything. So I didn't see another chance to basically follow Josh Green's recommendation and somehow find a way to, you know, manage the obstacles within. But then my health center said, well, no, you're not eligible for the booster shot that. So we seem to like, you know, run in circles and not go anywhere. Next slide. And the other piece of paper I had was from this lady of the Department of Health who after looking at all our stuff she said, you have more proof of evidence than most people I've seen and her working in that institution means something. You know, being the architect always and forever, I just want to point out the building, you know, there is doctors, the medical realm, the physicians, right? You remember Jay, there was this thing in the 70s that Jay called Sick Building Syndrome where, you know, some tempered hermetic brutalism was accused of making people sick. But in return, there should be, or the other way around, there should be something like the healthy building system. And this building here has it. This is a mid-century modern master building. We put the Google, although we just talked about Google, we have a little ambivalent feeling about Google these days after watching some Netflix series that you recommended to me. But here using a Google picture in the North era, it shows us it's facing straight south where this breeze soleil facade has horizontal louvers to shade from the southern sun. And then when the sun comes around, it has the vertical ones. And I make this connection that I allow myself because you asked me the question last time, you know, how could we, you know, get people's mindsets shifted to, and I think this lady there who was so progressive to give me this sort of heads up is because she lives in a building that's healthy. So maybe her mindset was healthy because of that. Let's give that some thought. Next slide. Before you leave the building, Martin. Yeah, yeah. What about the aesthetic design of that building? It looks very institutional to me. Yeah, but, you know, the point is it's not about the looks, it's about the feel. And that's what we try to tell the emerging generation. We're still stuck in postmodernism where we debate how buildings look. And we can only afford that. There's some unfortunate single wall unit AC machines in there that didn't used to be in there originally. And, you know, if we turn AC off, if we don't let any oil tanker come anymore, we don't burn this to make electricity, we will love this building because we could actually survive in it with natural ventilation versus in most buildings right over in downtown, you get baked or microwaved, you know? You know, so this building, if we switch our minds back to, it would used to be a pre-fossil, now to a post-fossil scenario, we will find this building actually less institutionally stiff, but actually institutionally legitimate and appropriate. Well, thank you for that. And furthermore, I think that that scenario may actually be coming soon. Yeah, and next slide. So my way to get out of here with the hopes of coming back without getting quarantined again for wrapping up the semester was through more personal connections. The guy on the right is my German honorary consul, Dennis Sully, who happens to be from the town over of my hometown of Hanover, which is in the north of Germany. He's from Hamburg. And so this is, you know, he looks very sour because then as you can tell from the people in the, this brings back the, in 2016 where there was a celebration of the Democratic mayor being re-elected, but at the same time, the national president of the United States was elected. And that one, he was not amused. And I just put this smile on my face because of, you know, that's what you do when people take pictures of you. And then, you know, the guy at the very top left, the mural on that wall, little boy, Barack Obama, waved me through the morning after this tragic election with some 50 other aliens, as they call us at that time. And Dennis was then, you know, foreseeing the challenges that COVID would bring with it that we basically would be locked in the countries where we either are from or where we currently are. And he gave me, the German language is complicated. We thought for a moment we would do this in German, right? But then we decided not to do. So what Dennis encouraged me and processed was the Beiberhaltungsantrag, which is basically the application for keeping my original native German citizenship besides my new American citizenship. So whenever I now go to the other country, I show the passport that they are familiar with, right? Not to confuse them. So next slide. Dennis happens to be married to an MD and we were just at the Department of Health on Baratânia. So just across the street is Queen's Medical Center where she has her practice. And so he said, Martin, why don't you stop by the day or the morning before you leave? So we max it out. Still, it's only been four months. So I'm another prototype of I'm still alive and I'm halfway able to speak. So Booster might actually work at least kill you if you take them a little earlier. And then she and her assistant actually, thankfully, then she wanted to basically rightly so, basically put in my CDC card, which then I finally got one. Wow, that was like Christmas and Easter together. She wanted to put in basically what she had been performing, the Booster shot in her colleague. Basically she said, wait a minute, that might keep this guy in trouble because then people might say, oh, he only had one shot. So they kindly, luckily, also transcribed, like my university health center has done before, the first two shots in there. So now we're rather optimistic that I might actually, when I come back, beginning of December to be there for finals and wrapping up the semester, I might be able to basically bypass quarantine because I can show something prior to departure that they are familiar with, a CDC card. Next slide. So this is me flying back. The plane from Honolulu to SFO was packed. There wasn't a single seat left, but the ones from San Francisco to Munich was only half filled, as you can tell here. And again, I felt pretty safe because this yellow document that we talked about last time is the World Health Organization Immunization Pass that all these Europeans have and I have one. So I thought, I'm pretty good because I'm just returning to where I got my initial immunization. Next slide. But you wouldn't have invited me to the show if this would be boring, right? You want exciting adventure stories. So this is all in German here, but I'm translating to you. I get from the Department of Health here in Munich, that they say, well, you've been coming back from a high risk area, which is the United States of America, and you haven't been showing your proof of immunization. So we assume you have to quarantine. So here we go again. So this is balancing it out because we've been bitching quite a bit about our United States, but Germany isn't much better because day after day, we try to upload our documents. Then in this case, shouldn't be strange to them, but the system somehow didn't take it. So next slide. Again, I'm not the one that we will welcome again beginning November 8th, which is all Europeans. I was sneaking in early and sneaking out early and I'm not doing this for leisure. As I said before, we're in the process of setting up an exchange between the university in Munich and in Honolulu. So I'm here besides giving the students international flair education, zooming them around here, everything that's different. I'm also talking to the university next slide. But again, this is Lufthansa, who is the Star Alliance partner of my preferred carrier United, right? And they're sending out these emails here and saying, hey, welcome back. If you read, this is kind of ironic. I think this must have been an intern who was less experienced with traveling and places. And they say basically, oh, are you up for beaches and exotic places? Why don't you go to Chicago and bicycle? And you're an early bicycle pioneer if people didn't know yet. But it might be a little chilly to do that. And the beaches might be not that comfortable, but never mind. Again, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been opening up, thank you, but then at the bottom right, Aloha, we're open. So how is it about Hawaii, right? So next slide, we have to now be really, really fast. So it won't happen, what we said in the last show were a little disappointed and grumpy that we said there are other places where it might be easy to travel to, which is where we did the first tab of our honeymoon, which some as this writer in the Hawaii Flux Magazine, Paul's Madera, the Hawaii of Europe, right? So what do we do? And back to once to the build environment and its impact on our mindsets, next slide, second to last. This is actually the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and their building. And this is very about international affairs. This is by the modernist Marcel Breyer who you were snapping away when Hitler was kicking them out. And he made this building that we can argue, you know, how institutional it looks like. But again, look at it from this performative lens, Jay, that you say we will look this way pretty soon and you see the windows are in the shade. So this building has a performative aspect, keeps itself cool. So what we're hoping now is that people working in this building and people working in our Honolulu one that we've been looking at that they're positively influenced by the healthy way these buildings represent. And they make smart decisions and act a little different than in the past and basically do their homework, familiarizing themselves with the different vaccines and achieving compatibility and making it easy for people to travel because, you know, we don't wanna forget for us it's a 24 hour door-to-door and this is the fastest connections with United I always have a really kind of tight, you know, stopover connection in San Francisco. Even with that one, it's 24 hours door-to-door and it's in the range of 1500 to 2000 euros or dollars. So right, it takes a lot to do that. So yeah, we should get our acts together and work on this fast because what is it today, October 27th? So November 8th, that gives us less than two weeks to improve. So what's gonna happen to you on the way back? Can you sort of show me the past and any remaining obstacles you expect on whatever day in December you're coming back? I promised you Jay, otherwise the show would be boring because now that I thought I got it all together, they added another requirement, which is you don't only have to show proof of vaccination or full vaccination, but also that we go again, a test and negative test. So I've actually been on the phone with the German hotline of United Airlines that I always get the same nice lady on the phone. Her name is Mrs. Schneider. So hi, Mrs. Schneider. Always a pleasure to talk to you. And she's German, lives in Texas, has a 17 year old son who has some free conditions. He got the booster. Now she was asking me, how did you get your booster? And I said, come to Hawaii. Maybe I set you up with Dennis Sully's wife and she can make a special business out of it. But I basically on a more serious note, I said, okay, are there any trusted testing partners as they like to call it? They're set up and she said, well, coming to the US, I don't think so. You just have to have a PCR test or a quick test. But then again, that brings back memories because that's what we had like two months ago. We had one as we were pretty elaborative in the show. We had one from Eurofins. That's the top number one that even have a branch in the US provider that they didn't know, didn't wanna know. So hopefully now they will accept them, you know? So yeah, that's the next obstacle. So it stays exciting and nerve-wracking. What about me? Suppose I wanted to hop on a plane, say, November 8th, I don't know, whatever day and come and see you in Munich. What obstacles would I find? Well, first of all, I would look for it too. That's most important. Same here. And then I'm just gonna hide you here, you know? And no one will know. No, again, with my... You have to upload the same thing as with me because you have to upload your proof of evidence. But then again, the system... I don't have a European documentation. No, you don't, you don't. But the system then has to basically accept your sort of exotic documentation, right? And that's the point. We just got it on both sides. You know, we got to reopen, not just physically, but also mentally, right? And just, again, they basically say online, they say again, okay, if it is something that both Americans and Germans know or even have developed together, like Pfizer, which is a German-American collaboration to begin with. And the first vaccination that was around, they're gonna be more open to it, right? Don't come with Sputnik or something like that. Don't do that. Don't be suspicious. Yeah, so, you know, the question I suppose is whether this is something I can research in advance on my computer at home and then be reasonably confident I met all the requirements when I, you know, amble off to the airport. Or is it something where I can expect surprises where I'm gonna have to take, you know, clever methods and clever steps to complete the trip? What's your thought on that? Yeah, I mean, we reached the point, you know, we've been talking about the, what's it called, the billion dollar code Netflix series. That's the one we're talking about. I'm talking about general magic, which shows us kind of the dark sides, you know, of technology. And so here the biggest trap is basically technology. All these softwares that, you know, they had to scramble to get together to work and they're not bulletproof. And so I think, again, if they would just use common sense and really do a quick training, you know, for their personnel and just have, you know, the specifications of the vaccinations here and there, put them side by side. As we said, this is no rocket science. I mean, it's all, so just train qualified personnel and put them at the airport, you know, then you don't risk your supposedly smart softwares just failing on you, you know, which is what we went through. It was basically, or it was people hiding behind the softwares, I'm not, you know, sure, or both. But I don't know how long you wanna, you probably wanna stay. Well, we have human-humane architecture next. So we don't, you know, we're not, I don't know how much you wanna stretch out the showtime. Well, I may wanna stay a long time depending on what happens in the next elections. Go to the next slide because I don't wanna have missed out on talking about this one here. This is familiar to you. You've been on the review of one of our inventions, which is called Primitiva 3. And it's basically based on the awareness that, you know, going back to business as it used to be before COVID is no option. And it shouldn't be an option because COVID just pointed out things that we just didn't wanna see, all the things that were, you know, full of flaws and errors. And especially our economy based on solely our majorly tourism and then secondly, military needed an overhaul, but as long as it worked, you know, as long as it was profitable, that's just the problem in capitalism. It's not changing unless it's profitable for it, right? But COVID has shown how vulnerable and how fragile that is. And so what the Primitiva has tried to do is basically set sort of a beacon sign of a different mindset of saying, we're gonna fully embrace our unique selling proposition of a unique climate in Hawaii. And we built, you know, environments that are unlike anywhere else in the world. And we first of all build it for ourselves again, for everyone in need and the increasingly many on the island, everyone out on the streets and out of work and struggling to make a living. We wanna basically, without being sentimental or romantic about it or nostalgic, but realistically saying, we have been able for the longest time in Hawaii we were self-sustained and self-sufficient and they were living as many people on the islands as there are now. And they were all doing it without any help or things from outside. So what these things are aiming for is do this again. And once we reach this, it will be paradise again. And all of a sudden the tourists that we needed so desperately, we have this love and hate relationship with, right? Because it's based upon dependency and dependency is never good. Just imagine you wouldn't fight for oil anymore in the world. You could just be friends with the Arabs, right? You could be friends with everyone and you can argue without suppressing each other. So that's kind of the dream to say, well, we're then reopening basically, what Kili, I will never forget one of your friends and my friend and longest holds Kili Akina. When he was saying, Martin, my culture is by nature welcoming, very welcoming. We don't care where you guys are from as long as you behave and mean, well, you're one of us no matter where you come from where your blood is from or whatever. So then we can invite people and we say, but it's conditional that you can just deplete or abuse this here and do things that you wouldn't do at home. I just had my, as one of my little surprises, things for when I was back on the island, I had the main sewage pipe been clogged and all of a sudden filthy smelly black water was rising up in my bathtub. And the plumber basically said, well, someone threw diapers or whatever into the pipe. And would someone living there permanently do it? I doubt it, right? So we don't wanna be hostile against tourists, but it's likely to say, they just thought, who cares? I'm here for that little time. It won't bother me. So we need to get back to this mindset of like, okay, this is the most beautiful place on earth. I'm privileged to be here as a temporary resident and that's why I will behave like that. So I think- I wonder if that would be everywhere, but that's basic inconsiderate. This is what it is, no matter how you cut it. But what about other places for primitiva? You mentioned that it's perfect for Hawaii, but what about Munich? Could you do, would you do? Is there a possibility that you can do projects like Primitiva in Munich or other European cities? Absolutely, and in fact, you remember, and we refer to, we have a show quote there in the water there, that's just the one show, that was the presentation show, but then we had two Q&A shows after that. And in these, you guys, when you will revisit them, you will see that it actually comes from Munich because it's based on the philosophy of fry auto and his mother called him fry because she wanted him to be a free spirit because that's- I remember this, I remember this, yes, yes, yes. And so he in fact was struggling because he was Mr. through the most with the least with tensile systems, that's how Tarzan and Jane basically move most elegantly through the jungle, right? Not with elephant legs that trample everything down and talking these massive buildings in Kakaako, they're elephants, right? We want them to basically like monkeys and Tarzan and Jane basically swing through the jungle and that's why tensile system is perfect for that one. And he did, he did with a 67 Montreal pavilion, the German one that our mentor Larry Medlin was collaborating and then here in Munich, the 72 Olympics, right? And then he was doing in Berlin a case because his heart was also as an ecologist, not just as he sort of was getting tired. They said, they call me the 10th guy, but I'm more. I'm the green guy as well. So he made this in the tear garden in Germany, he made this eco village. And in this eco village, you can see the struggle that he wanted it to be. We think the perfect, and this is sort of a posthum homage or to him that he should have been in Hawaii, he could have accomplished it. But here, it's already a bit low freezing and the temperatures will get low and low and low. So you need to make that puffing coat threshold between you and the environment. So you need a lot more effort. So yes, you can do them, but they're gonna be way more complicated. They're gonna be way more costly. So the best way to prototype this to showcase that is guess where with us in Hawaii. Martin, before we run out of time, I just wanna ask you a couple of things about the future. You've been examining this issue of international travel, the obstacles in COVID. And we know, in fact, you mentioned that COVID has profoundly changed the world. And those changes are not necessarily reversible. We may find that our world has changed at least in some ways permanently. So my question to you is international travel from your observation of your experience with it, is it changed forever and how? Well, again, we're towards the end sort of a concluding. So let's take a positive and optimistic angle. It has changed, it will have changed forever. I mean, I was privileged to when I returned to the US to coach to start my coaching career, they made a plane for me that was the Airbus 380, one of the most comfortable airplanes. I used to have terrible air pressure problems, not in the 380 anymore. So it was just beautiful, but they're all out commissioned now because they're not efficient and effective enough anymore. They were too big and they were too kerosene consumptive for. So, but it's ironic because they've only been around for a little more than a decade and they're all basically now disposed. I mean, just think about, it's like surreal, right? But they have instead bought a fleet of 30 or something supersonic jets. And this is something into the future. They're more economic, they use less fuel, they're faster, they're supposedly more comfortable. So, and there's in one of the shows, we've been technology, by the way, is there to run airplanes with algae, which guess where could we produce algae the best in the tropics, right? Where it's always warm and humid and the sun is always out there. So, how about we basically cash crop algae kerosene on the island and fuel our airplanes with that? So, there's lots of really good stuff and promising stuff out there. So, I'm optimistic, but again, this is sort of a midterm or long-term range. Yeah, right. I certainly agree, you have to look into the future. And my final question is when and under what conditions do you think that the international air travel experience will return to some degree of normalcy? What will it take and when will it happen? I, you know, everyone is optimistically talking about reopening my provost Michael Bruno, who you had on the show a couple of times, you know, been repeatedly spreading optimism. And I just got this email we all got as of this morning as UH employees of, you know, most optimistic about the spring. And the airlines are sort of massively, massively reopening, of course, because of countries and culture are opening up. So, I believe and I'm personally because of the students most interested because of the exchange that we try to put together. And there's some resistance to sort of virtual exchanges, which I sort of understand as well. So nothing beats the real deal, right? So you really want to have seen, you know, snow, you can look at and say, oh, it's white and you're rather dressed, you know, warmly, but nothing beats to make a snowball, right? So we, you know, nothing beats the real deal. So I'm probably, you know, sort of in a biased way, optimistic that by next fall, hopefully we have reached a point where we are sort of as much as we can be back to normal. Well, there you have it. There you have it. And I hope you wrote that down because these issues will be on the final exam to subjective exam. It's coming soon. Martin Despang, Professor Martin Despang, UH School of Architecture and host of our Humane Architecture Program coming soon in half an hour. Thank you so much, Martin. Thank you, James. Aloha.