52
Hancock-Washington-Penobscot Counties
Erwin Kreuz
I
Bangor’s accidental tourist
by James Nalley
Airways flight from Germany to San Francisco as his first international trip. When the plane landed at Bangor International Airport to refuel, Kreuz, still half asleep from the transatlantic journey, missed the announcements regarding the stopover to clear U.S. customs. According to the Bangor Daily News, as the passengers disembarked, a flight attendant stopped by Kreuz’s seat and told him, “Have a great time in San Francisco!” Upon hearing this, “he took his suitcase through customs, walked out the terminal, hailed a taxi, and asked to be taken to a hotel.” Amazingly, for four days, Kreuz wandered the streets of Bangor in search of the Golden Gate Bridge and
n the days before the Internet, smart phones, and heightened U.S. Homeland Security and Customs regulations, travel was in many ways much simpler. Such simplicity, however, sometimes resulted in outrageous cases in which travelers unknowingly took detours in their itineraries. Take, for instance, this story about a San Francisco-bound German tourist who, for four days in October 1977, believed that downtown Bangor was actually the iconic “City by the Bay.” Erwin Kreuz (b. 1927) was a friendly and down-to-earth Schaller Brewery worker from a village near Augsburg, Germany. Although he spoke no English, he booked a World
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