Europe 1962

Because of the extraordinary excitement created by my narrative on my first real trip in 1958, it occurred to me that my first REAL trip, Europe over the summer of 1962, might also be of interest. In fact, I am sure it will be, so please read on:

My geographic horizons had broadened somewhat since Spring 1958. My Washington trip in Spring 1959. Boston and New York in the Fall of 1960. But it was my 11 weeks in Europe, at the age of 19, between second and third year at college, with three friends, that was my first REAL trip.

1. It started in the basement family room (we called it a ratskeller; no one seems to use that word anymore; maybe it was only in St. Louis?) where I was sitting with my parents over Christmas break, 1961-1962, when I said to them: "I've saved up enough money; I think I will buy my own car." You would have thought I had said I was going to purchase an atomic bomb: the reaction was the same. My father told me that if I both was going to Harvard and had a car, he would be embarrassed (figure that one out; I couldn't), and my mother, who in such instances was more laconic and more emphatic said "No!!!!" (I think I have about the right number of explanation points).

So I, in my usual way, decided to try retreat and diversion, as opposed to hand-to-hand combat (not much has changed, right?), and said: "OK, then I will take the money and go to Europe this summer." My goal was to have my mother add even more exclamation points to her "No!!!!", and for my father to suggest: "Why don't you just buy a car instead?"

But they both simply said: "That would be a good idea", like a Greek chorus. And I answered: "OK, so I will", saying to myself "What did they say? How am I going to go to Europe? I just wanted a car."

2. I went with two of my roommates, D____ and E______, and our good friend P_______. Before we left, we all had supper at the home of another of my roommates, B_____. B_____'s father was a physician and a man of great generosity, so I was not surprised when he said: "You never can tell what will happen in a place like Europe. So I have prepared a first aid/medicine kit for you", and he gave us a large box filled with all sorts of things, including all sorts of bottles of pills. Never having been a pill person myself, I wanted to know what these various things were for. So I pointed to the first one, and he said: "That's for diarrhea." To the second, he said: "Oh, that's for diarrhea." The third and fourth? You guessed it - "diarrhea".

I felt my leg being pulled (he did not seem to have anything in the box for pulled legs), so I said: "Dr. N________, what if we get constipated?" No problem, he said, in Europe, the cure for constipation is food at any restaurant." He sounded like he believed it.

Luckily, I remember neither constipation or diarrhea as a major hindrance. I also remember that E______ had a number of bad stomach aches, that the medicines did not seem to touch. We were a little concerned, but life went on. Of course, one morning that fall, back at school, E____ was missing from his bed, and no one could locate him. Turns out he had another such pain, and it was appendicitis. Could have happened there, I guess.

3. We flew from Boston Logan to London Heathrow. I think it was a special Harvard Student Agencies charter; I remember the round trip was under $200, a bargain even in 1962. Again, this was pre-commercial jet time, and we flew a BOAC constellation. BOAC, for those who don't know, was the English overseas airway, which along with a couple of other British carriers was later combined to create the now British Air. But BOAC (British Overseas Air Carrier, or something close to that), along with TWA and PanAm were the major English language airlines flying over the oceans (PanAm specializing in South America and the Pacific).

4. The only thing a remember about the flight is the scotch. No sooner that we had left the ground, it seemed, fairly late at night, that the stewards (not stewardesses, but stewards) asked if anyone wanted a drink (included in the price of the flight). I asked for a scotch. (Today, it is hard to believe that I drank scotch when I was 19, but that I think was my drink of choice from the time I first drank anything (17? 18? earlier?) until I was, say, 30 or so. But I digress........) The steward did not seem to be pouring jiggers of scotch; it was more like tumblers of scotch. I had two. It is a miracle I did not tumble out of the plane.

5. When we landed at Heathrow, it was dawn. I remember two things. First, I could not believe it. There is no other way to say it. To be on the other side of the ocean, in England, was something that was completely beyond my comprehension. Secondly, I am not sure what I expected, but modern Heathrow airport (I think a new terminal had just opened; obviously not today's) was not it. I had expected more of a time travel experience, I think.

6. Somehow, we wound up at Victoria Station. And we went to look for a bed and breakfast (we had no reservations anywhere, but were planning on camping everywhere but Britain), which we were told was the thing to do. We found one in an old row house, which was very English and quaint and old fashioned. It was my first experience on a feather bed (you recall from earlier posts that I had not been permitted to attend sleepovers, so my only real mattress experience was at my house (no feather bed), and in camp bunks and college dorms. I hated the feather bed, largely because I could not sleep.

7. Being used to St. Louis summers, the cool London weather (almost every place was cool that summer) was depressing to me. "The poor Europeans", I thought, "get cheated out of summer."
Boy, has my opinion on that one changed.

8. I loved London. In 1962, the English still dressed like English. Men wearing dark pin striped suits and bowler hats, carrying walking sticks, and the like. Hippie-dom just starting up. English ladies (who all looked alike to me, and seemed passably attractive, but certainly not glamorous) dressed in dresses (certainly not in trousers). The black taxis. The cars in general, not only driving on the left, but also of tremendous variety in those days, Rovers, Morris', Vauxhalls, Jaguars, Rolls-Royces, and (what a strange thing, I thought, English Fords).

I think we just did all the typical first time tourist things in London, and found we could go to the theater for virtually nothing. (Our budget was obviously limited, but in those days never seemed to create a problem for us; we particularly splurged on food, since we were going to save so much on lodging.) I remember we saw The Mousetrap, which even then had played for years and years (E______ had been to Europe before, and seen The Mousetrap already.). I have seen it since; it is an extraordinary play since, not only do you not know 'who did it' when you see it the first time, you have forgotten by the second time you see it, so you can see it an indefinite number of times, and each time is like the first. I think this is why it played for 40+ years.

We ate at the Cheshsire Cheese (oldest restaurant in London, or England, or the world, or something) and had a Wimpyburger at London's first fast food hamburger restaurant (awful, awful, awful). We ate at the Hotel Montana (I remember it only because of the name) and on the subway were verbally accosted by some London toughs, one of whom, in a pretty good cowboy accent said: "I bet you are from the wild west of Kansas." I decided not to give him a geography lesson.

British Museum, Tower of London, National Gallery, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey. Everything you would think. Surprised to see Abe Lincoln's statute across from Westminster in front of a court building. Went in the building, and actually sat through a day of a criminal trial. Lawyers in wigs, and all of that. Did the teenager break into the store at night, or not? Did not stick around to find out, but it was as good as tv.

Went to a BBC prom concert at Prince Albert Hall, and saw a violin soloist - Herman Szering. I think he died shortly thereafter.

9. Then, we split up for a week. E_________ and P______ went to Ireland, while D____ and I explored southern England and Wales. By bus.

Salisbury Cathedral (for some reason we did not go to Stonehendge - reason is we probably never heard of it) for an hour or two, and the first night in Exeter. No good reason for that; it was a bust. Only restaurant we found open was Chinese. It was like being in the U.S.

But then on to Wales. I think we stayed one night in Aberystwyth, where we saw the National Library and an extraordinary number of English families camping (maybe ten million), then on to Colwin (small town with a mountain in back), Llandudno, Carnaervan, and who knows where else. D_____ and I found a bed and breakfast in Carnaervan where the family was actually speaking Welsh. That was a shock. [It was more of a shock when they showed us to our room, and we saw it contained one bed. We are not sure what they were thinking, but it was too late at night in a place where people spoke Welsh to go back out on the street. We contemplated possible arrangements and decided that a head to toe relationship would be acceptable.]

Then back into England proper, with the first stop in Chester, where on a rainy afternoon, we went to see Rio Bravo, which I hated. The English loved it. And we went on to Cambridge, which I thought was absolutely extraordinary. We toured some of the colleges, walked along the Cam, etc.

Then back to London, meeting up with our friends, and the train/boat/train to Paris.

10. Ah, Paris. First, we had to pick up our car, which had been ordered. A white, Opel Rekord station wagon, with Danish plates (this becomes important later in the story). Then, we went somewhere and bought two pup tents and whatever else we thought we needed for our camping. Then we found our first camp site, in the middle of the Bois de Boulogne.

Here, the story gets interesting. Our car was a stick shift. We didn't even think about that possibility (naive, huh?), and I for one had never driven a stick shift, and really had no more intention to do so than to captain a diesel train. But, now I was stuck. So here I was, having to learn to drive a manual transmission on the streets of Paris. I assume that, had I decided to learn this skill in St. Louis, it would have taken me twenty years. When you do it on the streets of Paris, I learned that it took about 3 second to know how to upshift, downshift, use the clutch, and everything else. No problem, once those 3 seconds were up. But for those few seconds, I was sure we would all die.

In Paris, again, we were first time tourists, doing just what you would expect. That included the museums, cathedrals, Eiffel Tower, Versailles, and a day in Montmartre, where we saw the painters painting their paintings, and I bought one for about $20. A Montmartre scene, but I thought very nice. Still have it. But I did not plan very well, because after I bought it, my friends asked where I thought I was going to keep it while we tooled around Europe. The four of us and our gear and luggage made our car pretty crowded. I was not sure what to do, and when we made our last visit to Paris' American Express (in those days, pre-cell phones, etc., communications were made generally through American Express; you could get your mail directed there, you could meet people there, and so forth; it was a virtual community center for young American travelers like ourselves), I asked a young woman who worked there where I could store the painting. Did they have lockers? Or a luggage room like a train station? No, she said, there was nowhere at American Express to leave the painting.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach, because I had already become very close to this painting (as you can see, since 43 years later it is still hanging), and she must have sensed this and taken pity on me. She said, "If you want, I will take it home. Tell me when you are going to be back in Paris, and I will bring it in for you." Extraordinaire, I thought, and left her the painting, not expecting ever to get it back, but confident that, come what may, the painting would have a good home, and that someone in Paris would remember that once I was there. (I have already given away the punch line. Eight weeks later, on the appointed day, I walked into the American Express office expecting nothing, and there she was, and there it was. Extraordinaire.) As I usually say, girl from Paris, if you are reading this blog, please say hello.

11. After a half day diversion to Chartres, we drove north from Paris, had lunch in Soissons, and crossed into Belgium. It was cold, and windy, and rainy, and Brussels did nothing to me, at all (we had first gone through Antwerp and saw where the diamonds are cut). In fact, I have not been back to Brussels, although I know it is now reputed to have the best food on the Continent. We found a camp site in a suburb called Uccles (did not know how to pronounce it then, and don't know now), which was a fair way out of town, in an uninteresting suburb, but run by a crazy couple who wanted to be everyone's best friend, and had parties and other social events. They were sort of a kick.

I think it was in Brussels that we met the four Australian girls, about our age, who were doing the same thing we were doing, but for longer than 11 months (they may still be there, as far as I know). I think they were very excited to meet four Americans, but I didn't want to give them any ideas of long term companionship. We had places to go, and did not need to be slowed down by the need to negotiate among eight, rather than four. They were very nice and fun, it is true, but I couldn't wait to get out of Brussels and away from them. And besides, whoever heard of girls from Australia (remember, for me, Minnesota seemed exotic). I was surpised that they didn't have flat tails and pouches.

(There was a later entanglement, and unfortunately, I cannot place it geographically. D_____, at one point, met the love of his life. She was blond and Danish, and camping with her family, but they seemed just as happy to have D_____ take her off their hands. They were from Odense, and for a while, if my memory is correct (D______ ?), he even contemplated leaving the group and going to Odense for the rest of the summer. We were aghast at this as a possibility (and of course a bit jealous as well). Then, it turned out that she was only fifteen years old. That spooked even D_________, and that was the last we saw of her.

12. While in Belgium, we did go to Bruges, Liege and Ostend, all of which seemed like very nice places to me (especially Bruges, of course), so I decided Belgium was not all bad.

13. And so we moved to Holland. Loved it, even though the weather was still Belgish.

Rotterdam had been totally devestated by the Germans in World War II (remember, the war had ended only 17 years ago - that would be today like 1988), but the port had already been totally rebuilt, and it was the most modern city I had ever seen. Amsterdam's canals and bicycles and museums surprised me. Visited the Anne Frank house, and saw that a good friend of mine from St. Louis had signed the guest book two hours before we arrived. Tasted the cheese. Wondered why the girls were all so pretty (much more so than France, England or Belgium). Went to an avant garde ballet, or was that in Brussels? (Now I am confused, it was Maurice Bejart's Ballet XX Siecle; sounds like it should have been in Brussels. Probably was).

Also, the Hague, and the museums there (looks like Kalorama in DC, but I did not know that then). Volendam (miniature city), Harlem (Franz Hals museum), Schevinengin for the beach (sort of like Rehoboth in March, too cold and windy), and drove along the dykes and across the Zaijder Zee on the way to Germany.

THIS POST IS ALREADY TOO LONG, SO I WILL END IT HERE. GERMANY, DENMARK, AUSTRIA COME NEXT. THEN ITALY, FRANCE, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE AGAIN, AND ENGLAND. YOU'LL HAVE TO WAIT.