The Nomad is a series of stories, fascinations, encounters, observations, experiences, joy of the moments by me, Ulrike Reinhard – all around my travels. Stay tuned!
Ulrike Reinhard is The Nomad 🙂
This love story is about my late husband, Peter Mitterhauser, whom I met in the mid-eighties at Muir Beach in Marin County, Northern California. It was the first time I decided to leave everything behind, go out and wonder and see what would happen. At the time, I was in my mid-twenties while he was in his mid-fifties. We were married for eight years. He showed me the “flow” and introduced me to wine and The Well, the world’s first online community. Without his influence, I would have lived a markedly different life.
I met the love of my life in the mid-eighties at Muir Beach, California, when I first took off to become a nomad for one year. I was criss-crossing the United States with AAA cars (American Automobile Association / more about my AAA travels in one of the following stories), and the greater area of San Francisco was high on my priority list. AAA coordinates the delivery of vehicles by connecting people with drivers across the US, making it possible for anyone to drive. The driver enjoys free car use, but must pay for fuel and complete the delivery within a specific mileage and time period. I loved this flower-power image of San Francisco and the picture of the Golden Gate Bridge in the mist – intriguing. Going there was a childhood dream. I made it a point to enter ‘Frisco’ via the iconic bridge, and I pulled into my dream town in a sleek, dark red Saab 9000 convertible. What a feeling it was! Epic.
I lodged at the home of a school buddy in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. It was a given that charming Sausalito, the majestic redwoods of the Muir Woods National Monument, and secluded Muir Beach in Marin County were on my list of must-sees. From Pier 41 in San Francisco, I took the ferry to Sausalito. The boat ride takes 30 minutes, offers gorgeous views of the Golden Gate and the Northern Bay, and passes Alcatraz prison. The ferry drops you right in the downtown of the waterfront community, nestled in the steep Marin Headlands. After a stroll along the houseboats, I hitch-hiked to Muir Woods and continued to the beach. At its far end, I spotted a lagoon; above it sat a handful of houses, likely offering breathtaking views. I was unsure if that part of the beach was private property. I walked there – I passed a scenic cove, a creek, and just before I reached the lagoon, I had to climb a cliff. At the cliff’s edge, I found a man sunbathing in the nude – I asked him: “Is this beach private?” With an inviting gesture, he replied: “It’s all yours!”
Lucky me, I thought.
Before I could go any further, he asked if he had heard a German accent in my voice, and as soon as I confirmed, he continued talking in charming Viennese. I laughed. He introduced himself as Peter Mitterhauser – it doesn’t get more Austrian than that. Originally from the town of Steyr, close to Vienna, he had been living in Sausalito for the past 12 years. We chatted; he obviously enjoyed talking German, and I sat down with him after a bit. I enjoyed his company, he was very present and had a marvelous way with words. We went for a swim. While walking down to the water, I noticed his dance-like gait, as if in a ballet. And, as I would learn later, yes, part of his early education was classical ballet. He said his mother wanted him to master his body perfectly, believing ballet was the best way to achieve that. He was a tall, handsome man with a beautiful smile. His body was nicely tanned – my guess was he was in his late 50ies. A lot older than me.
Time passed quickly. I mentioned that I had to return to San Francisco, and he offered me a ride to Sausalito, where I could catch the ferry back to the city. That seemed convenient. We got dressed and walked to his car. Again, I noticed his dance-like gait. It looked amusing, especially with the short beige silk pants and a faded blue T-shirt he wore.
On the way to Sausalito he took a short detour, and we went up Mount Tamalpais. Its summit was way above the clouds, and in the distance I saw the pillars of the Golden Gate Bridge rising out of the clouds. What a spectacular view! He surely scored a scoop then. I think that was the moment I first fell for him.
A beautiful love story was on the verge of beginning.
I left San Francisco a day later. I had to return to New York City, where my aunt lived. She was expecting me. Though I didn’t see Peter again, I had his number. I spent a brief few days in New York and then headed out on my next road trip – going south to Key West, Florida. One morning – I was already down at the beach watching the raccoons conquering the dustbins – my aunt called me: “Who is this Peter Mitterhauser? Every day, you’re getting a letter or two from him. Terrible handwriting, by the way,” she added. I revealed half of the truth and asked her to keep the letters. I have kept them to this day – they are in one of the boxes, together with my 10.000 books. It is an incredible compilation of bold postcards, typed and hand-written sensual, suggestive, and risqué poetry, and philosophical texts about love and life.
I called Peter later that day – the first call after we met. I wondered how he came across my address in New York. He laughed and said that he looked for my friend’s name, whom I had mentioned in our conversations, called her and she had given him my address. Wow, I thought, that’s an effort! I liked it. He asked me to come back to Sausalito. And I liked this idea as well.
It didn’t take long, and I was going from Key West to Sausalito. Our phone calls became a daily evening habit, and we advanced to good AT&T (our telephone company then) customers. Back then, no mobile phones existed, and it was often difficult to find a phone booth in remote areas. For the most part, I succeeded – because I wanted these calls. Peter “guided” me along the way, giving tips on what to check out and what to miss. He knew the US well. Three weeks later, I reached Sausalito.
This time, I stayed for a couple of weeks in the Sunshine State. Peter and I both felt we’d found someone special, and our age difference didn’t matter. It quickly became apparent that we were going to say ‘I do.’ We cherished every moment we shared. We had endless conversations. He was very well-read – he was reading in seven languages. He’d learned them in the countries where he lived and conducted business. And he had traveled the globe in a classic manner: by ship. He was trained in the hotel business in divided post-war Vienna, Austria, which, like Berlin, was split into four zones by the Allies. His plan was to work and live in the US, but it was difficult to get a visa back then. He had to wait for six years. To bridge the gap, he embarked on a ship and traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he found work at the Copacabana Palace, the iconic Art Deco hotel at the beachfront, in the late fifties. Until today, it is a landmark in Rio.
This was all before I was born.
In the early sixties, Peter reached the US at Ellis Island, New York. Again, by ship. The island was known as the island of immigration; for millions of immigrants, this was their first stop on American soil. So it was for Peter. His name is still in the archives there. In New York, he and Andy Pflaum ran the bar at the illustrious Waldorf Astoria Hotel. Andy would later take over Pflaum’s Post Hotel in Pegnitz, Germany, a quaint Bavarian town. The hotel was owned and operated by the same family for eleven generations. It venerates the memory of composer Richard Wagner and is ‘the place to be’ during the Bayreuther Festspiele (Bayreuth Music Festival). It hosted an unlikely list of celebrities and historical figures from Napoleon and Wagner to Placido Domingo and Henry Kissinger to John Travolta and Michael Jackson! And us! We once paid Andy a surprise visit on one of our travels to Germany. Observing these two old friends at Andy’s hotel bar was delightful, and hearing their stories was amusing and adventurous. Peter left the Waldorf Astoria to become the chief steward on a private airplane owned by a New York-based advertising company. His job was to organize and arrange everything worldwide so that the agency’s clients were satisfied and pleased in the most discreet way possible. I can only contemplate the details of this.
Peter was rather “old-fashioned” – very much a true gentleman. He wore garters for his socks – I had never seen that on a man’s leg before. “It’s inappropriate to show skin between the trousers and socks!” he said. He always dressed in a way that perfectly matched colors and materials; his initials were embroidered on all his shirts – tailored by Sulka in New York, and he was always using the same eau de parfum and the same sandalwood soap. He certainly had style. One of my good friends, who met Peter during a trip to Germany, said: “Peter is an appearance!” And he was spot on.
By the time I met Peter, he was leading a modest life, content with his circumstances. He lived in a small rented place up in the hills of Sausalito – his studio offered a reasonable view over the bay. He owned a wine business – selling European wines to private people and businesses. That was when I started to develop a taste for wine. I tagged along on his wine-tasting trips when he was seeing his clients. It allowed me to get to know California. To support his wine business, he’d coded his own customer-care and accounting system – this was in the mid-eighties, when personal computers were not yet common. He had self-learned coding and was fond of his customized software.
He was a member of The Well, which was founded in 1985 – the world’s most influential online community, according to WIRED magazine. The Well became my mecca. It left a lasting impression on me and shaped my views about the Internet. An illustrious crowd gathered there: The Well’s founders Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant, Howard Rheingold, Jerry Garcia, John Perry Barlow – just to name a few. Several of them had prior ties to the Whole Earth Catalog, whose last edition featured Apple’s first iconic THINK DIFFERENT ad on the back.
In 1987, I followed Peter’s footsteps and opened my first email account at The Well, which is still valid today! This was seven years before the World Wide Web introduced pictures! Until then, the web was purely text-based. I was present at many of their forums and events. Their office was just below Peter’s studio. Whenever the sweet smell of weed drifted in, we knew the office was open. I was part of the early Internet crowd in Northern California, long before Silicon Valley became a household name. We envisioned a much more participatory culture and a world where everyone has a voice and can participate equally. There was an incredible sense of a new dawn. The door to more democratic structures seemed wide open, and we genuinely thought the Internet would make the world a better place. In hindsight, it appears as a very one-sided, way too optimistic view of a predominantly old hippie generation. Our idealistic hopes for ‘a better world’ have been drowned under the heavy tide of realism.
Peter was very even-tempered and always at peace with himself – he remained calm and collected whether good or bad things were happening. Sometimes, this drove me nuts, and I wondered if he was blasé – but no, he wasn’t. He was just balanced in nature. He never made plans; things simply seemed to happen. He gave me all the space I needed to get comfortable in Sausalito. We weren’t always together – I spent some time in New York, Los Angeles, and Germany – trying to get my business going. I wanted to bridge the US with my home country and develop product placement and sponsorship opportunities in the film industry back home. This idea emerged from my doctoral thesis, which I wrapped up before heading to the United States.
What I had planned as a one-year ‘break’ ended up being eight beautifully intense and vibrant years overseas. Ultimately, Peter presented me with a grave obstacle. When he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, he urged me to depart the moment he felt any discomfort. He wanted to shield me from his suffering. And he preferred not to be seen struggling. This was very hard for me to deal with. And it took me a while to understand. Yet, in my heart, I recognized that I had to respect his decision. When the day arrived, we celebrated an exquisite and unique farewell party – there wasn’t a single word about death or leaving; it was a celebration of life, a celebration of the extraordinary time we shared. Nothing left unsaid – no ‘angst’ to find. I left, fully understanding he would choose to end his life. He died when I was 34 years old.
I’m penning these words more than 30 years after Peter’s passing, and reading them feels almost surreal, as if I am glorifying him. No, I am not. He was a very special person. We never had a dull moment in our relationship. It was energizing from the first to the last day. And I am extremely grateful for that. Without Peter, my life would have taken a very different path. I wasn’t aware of this at the time. Yet, as the years went by, I began to understand more and more the profound effect Peter had on my life. He planted the seeds in me to understand what it means to live my own life, not the life others want me to live. The inner peace he radiated was something I wanted to achieve for myself. He showed me how to embrace the flow of life, accepting what comes my way and making it my own; he not only planted these seeds in me, but he also gave me the space to interpret and live them in my very own way. He was never the “old wise guy” who knew everything and told me what to do.
He often confronted me with new things and sparked my curiosity in many areas. He took away my fear of the unknown—he showed me that new things always have a positive side and that it is my choice to see the new as an opportunity, not a thread. He enhanced my self-confidence. He believed in me and encouraged me to do whatever I wanted. I always had his full support. The sky was the limit. And it just felt like that.
Peter was one of the greatest gifts I ever received.
I had the time of my life. And I was able to take it further in his spirit.
