{"id":492331,"date":"2026-10-11T06:14:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-11T06:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/492331\/"},"modified":"2026-10-11T06:14:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-11T06:14:08","slug":"the-story-of-how-a-german-tourist-ended-up-mistaking-bangor-for-san-francisco","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/492331\/","title":{"rendered":"The story of how a German tourist ended up mistaking Bangor for San Francisco"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story was originally published in October 2020. <\/p>\n

Erwin Kreuz, a genial, unassuming 49-year-old Bavarian brewery worker, was quite pleased to be making his first trip overseas from his native Germany, when he boarded a World Airways flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco in early October 1977.<\/p>\n

His arrival in the City by the Bay was delayed, however, by an unplanned two-week layover in Bangor, during which he thought he had landed in San Francisco \u2014 a mix-up that ended up changing Kreuz\u2019s life, making national headlines, and becoming a part of local Bangor lore.<\/p>\n

Kreuz\u2019s plane, a charter flight that made regular trips between Germany and San Francisco, had stopped to refuel at Bangor International Airport. After the plane landed, a flight attendant woke Kreuz from a nap and apparently wished him a pleasant visit to San Francisco \u2014 because she was getting off her shift and wouldn\u2019t see him again, not because he\u2019d actually reached the California city. <\/p>\n

Kreuz, however, assumed he\u2019d arrived at his intended destination and got off the plane and went through customs. <\/p>\n

\"\"Erwin Kreuz, a Bavarian brewery worker who in 1977 became famous for mistaking Bangor for San Francisco when he accidentally got off a plane at Bangor International Airport.<\/p>\n

Despite there being no Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz or Haight-Ashbury district, Kreuz spent four days wandering the Bangor region, assuming he was in San Francisco \u2014 or, at least, a suburb of it. The prevalence of Chinese restaurants in Bangor \u2014 which San Francisco is famous for \u2014 made him think that perhaps he just hadn\u2019t found the city center yet. The fact that Kreuz hardly spoke English only made things more confusing.<\/p>\n

Eventually, Kreuz asked a cab driver, in his limited English, to take him to the San Francisco city center. The cab driver informed him that San Francisco was 3,000 miles away, and that he was in Bangor, Maine.<\/p>\n

Luckily, the cab driver knew someone who spoke German \u2014 Gertrude Romine, who with her husband ran a German restaurant in Old Town. He drove Kreuz to the restaurant, and Romine explained to the hapless traveler where he was.<\/p>\n

A Bangor Daily News reporter was contacted, and after the story ran in the paper, Kreuz became a local celebrity, practically overnight.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the next few weeks, Kreuz was given the red carpet treatment<\/a>. He was given the key to the city by the Bangor City Council, he was named an honorary member of the Penobscot Indian Nation and the Old Town Rotary Club, and he had a meeting with Gov. James Longley. He met Andre the Seal, the famed harbor seal adopted by the Rockport harbormaster, who gave Kreuz a kiss. Kreuz celebrated his 50th birthday while he was in Bangor, and by his own request, he had his birthday party at a local McDonald\u2019s. <\/p>\n

\"\"Erwin Kreuz, a German tourist famed for mistaking Bangor for San Francisco, seen here embracing the German waitress who connected with him in Old Town.<\/p>\n

He reportedly received three marriage proposals, and a couple in the Aroostook County town of St. Francis gave Kreuz an acre<\/a> overlooking the St. John River, in the hopes that he\u2019d return to Maine to live. Kreuz reportedly paid taxes on the land until at least 1984.<\/p>\n

The story made its way into the national spotlight when Kreuz was featured in Time Magazine, and in a segment on \u201cThe Today Show\u201d on NBC, with Tom Brokaw lauding Bangor\u2019s generosity of spirit in how the city treated the wayward German. German news magazines Der Spiegel and Stern reported on it in his home country of West Germany.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people really bought into the fun of it, and they didn\u2019t make fun of him. They really embraced him,\u201d said Bangor historian Richard Shaw. \u201cI think it says a lot about Mainers. He took to us, and we took to him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Magnus Stark, a photographer and marketing director for the Penobscot Theatre Company, became fascinated by the Kreuz story several years ago, and has researched it to try to find out more about Kreuz himself \u2014 what his life in Germany was like, and what ended up happening to him after his last trip to Maine in 1979. <\/p>\n

Stark said Kreuz grew up in what became East Germany, and escaped into West Germany after World War II. He was an accomplished beer brewer, and also made and sold cheese. He had a kind of happy-go-lucky attitude, Stark says, that served him well as he was squired about on his unintentional Maine vacation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI totally feel for this guy, because I remember when I first moved to Bangor, and I didn\u2019t know what I was getting myself into, and I kind of had to go with it,\u201d said Stark, a native of Norway (the country, not the Maine town) who moved to Bangor in 2012. \u201cIt actually reminds me of how I felt when I first moved to the states in \u201879.\u201d<\/p>\n

When people in San Francisco got wind of Kreuz\u2019s story, the San Francisco Examiner flew him out to the city<\/a> for another round of celebrity treatment. He met the mayor, George Moscone, was given a tour of Chinatown, and was the guest of honor at a rodeo at the Cow Palace. When he finally boarded a flight to return to Germany, he wore a sign reading \u201cPlease let me off in Frankfurt.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following year, in October 1978, Kreuz was invited back to Bangor for a few more weeks as the guest of honor for the grand opening of the Bangor Mall, cutting the ribbon on the brand-new shopping complex. Upon returning to Germany, however, Kreuz\u2019s luck started to run out. <\/p>\n

\"\"Erwin Kreuz, flipping burgers at McDonalds as \u201cmanager for a day\u201d on his birthday.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d taken many extra weeks of vacation time in order to visit the U.S., something his employer did not approve of. Kreuz also reportedly wanted to be compensated for the public appearances the brewery had him do to capitalize on its employee\u2019s fame. And when Kreuz reportedly told a newspaper that he actually preferred to drink a competing brewery\u2019s beer, that was the last straw. He was fired that winter. <\/p>\n

Kreuz returned to Bangor a third time, in March 1979, to look for work. The opportunities available, however, were not so great. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he came back the third time, he kind of thought he\u2019d be getting a job in Bangor,\u201d Stark said. \u201cAnd when he goes to the mall to see what\u2019s available, the only job they offered him was as a janitor. I think, to Erwin, he was kind of like, \u2018I\u2019m a brewmaster, I\u2019m a cheesemonger and I make good money doing it.\u2019 It wasn\u2019t what he wanted. And so he went back to Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to the BDN,<\/a> Kreuz was not bitter about his situation, and was instead grateful for his experiences in Maine. Very little is known about Kreuz\u2019s life after he returned to Germany for the last time. Stark, in all his research, hasn\u2019t even been able to find out if he\u2019s alive or dead, though if Kreuz is still alive he\u2019d be 93 years old. He did not have any children, apparently, and Stark hasn\u2019t been able to find any other family members.<\/p>\n

Ironically, if Kreuz\u2019s memorable journeys had happened more recently, he undoubtedly could have found a more gratifying job at one of Maine\u2019s more than 150 craft breweries, rather than as a janitor at the Bangor Mall.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink of all the employment to come his way later, with all of Maine\u2019s microbreweries,\u201d Shaw said. \u201cHe supposedly quipped during a meeting with the governor that he kept his youthful looks by consuming 23 glasses of beer a day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Watch more:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story was originally published in October 2020. Erwin Kreuz, a genial, unassuming 49-year-old Bavarian brewery worker, was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[191807,12475,191808,101,103,102,104,106,105],"class_list":["post-492331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-francisco","tag-bangor-history","tag-evergreen","tag-maine-history","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-francisco-headlines","tag-san-francisco-news","tag-sf","tag-sf-headlines","tag-sf-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}