Oh, the places you'll go

It was not the first time I'd been on a plane. Just the first time I was aware of flying. (My first time, I was almost two years old, flying back from Chicago where the family had assembled for my grandfather's funeral.)

So, my first real time on a plane.

I didn't know how to work the seatbelt.

My college roommate and I had gotten tickets to London on BOAC (precursor to British Airways) - date of departure, April 25, 1973; date of return, open-ended. The tickets cost $206 because, back in the day, if you were a student or under the age of 26, you flew for cheap. Of course, when you factor in inflation, those tickets weren't all that cheap. That $206 was the equivalent of $1,400+ today. And this week I could get a ticket to London for about seven hundred bucks. 

But fifty years ago, people didn't fly as much. 

Today, most middle class kids would have flown a few places by the time they were 23 - which Joyce and I were. Back then, not so much.

So we had our tickets, our new passports - the old green ones with the black & white mug shots - and our American Express "wallets" with a thousand dollars worth of Travelers Checks. Because back in the day, you really didn't leave home without them. 

For some reason, we had decided not to go the typical American young folk route and get a Eurail Pass to train around the continent. We had a vague plan that we'd hitchhike. We had vague plans about where we were going to stay. Camping or whatever. We weren't exactly sure where we were going to go. Lots of places.

We had two guide books: Arthur Frommer's Europe on Five Dollars a Day, and the young folks travel bible: Let's Go Europe! The Harvard Student Agencies. I don't think in our travels that we came across any American kids who weren't traveling with Let's Go. This isn't the 1973 version - I couldn't find that one - but the cover was pretty much the same. I think ours was blue, but I'm pretty sure the logo with the hitchhiker thumb was on iy.

Joyce and I had spent the prior year waitressing at Durgin Park; doing our own version of Route 66, traveling cross country in Joyce's Karmann Ghia rather than in Tod Stile's Corvette; and waitressing at Durgin Park to make the money for THE BIG EUROPEAN ADVENTURE.  

We were traveling light: what we could fit in a backpack. 

We'd both gotten good packs: Kelty's, the top of the line back in the day. We packed rain jackets. Mine was a forest green one from LL Bean. Joyce's was khaki green - I can't recall the brand. We each brought two pairs of pants (one jeans, one heavy cotton); a long sleeve shirt; two tee-shirts; a long underwear top; a sweater (I still remember mine: a very pretty dark fuchsia). One bra, five pairs of panties, five pairs of socks, one nightgown, one pair of shoes. (Mine were Wallabees, quite comfy but not great when they got wet.) A bandana, a pair of gloves. We each brought a dress for going out, and for visiting the Vatican. (Mine was a nylon blue and white checked mini-dress.) And a pair of flipflops to wear with said dresses. Oh, and a bathing suit.

And that's what we had to wear for over three months. 

We also had a tent and sleeping bags. After a few weeks in the U.K. and Ireland, we had figured out that we'd be doing a lot of camping, and at a camping goods store in Paris we bought a Mini Gaz Bleuet cook stove and some cooking gear (collapsible pans and cups, plates and cutlery). A couple of days after sleeping on the hard ground in a campground along the Seine, we went back to the camping goods store and got grey eggcrate mattresses. 

WHAT. AN. ADVENTURE.

It's nothing that you could pull off these days. Mostly we got around by hitchhiking, with an occasional train or ferry trip thrown in. We stayed at B&Bs, camped, and hosteled. Sometimes we stayed with people we met along the way.

We sent postcards home, and once during the 3+ months we were away we called home.

We got letters at American Express offices, which is where we also ran into American finance nerds who advised us on what currency we should transfer our Travelers Check "currency" into. We took what turned out to be their very good advice and were thus able to stretch our $1,000 apiece out to the tune that we each returned home with $600 in our pocket. (About $4,000 in today's dollar.)

We got around: England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Turkey. We hit the big cities and the tourist spots, and stayed in obscure towns that no one had heard of.

There were plenty of times when we were wet, cold, and scared. But mostly what both Joyce and I remember is how much fun we had.

The other day, we were strolling down travel memory lane, and she reminded me of the time outside Oslo when it was cold and raining, and no one was stopping to pick us up. She remembered that she was near tears and completely discouraged, but I cheered her up (or pissed her off) by telling her, "Someday you're going to look back on this day and wish you were back there again."

As Joyce just told me, I was right.

Fifty years...

Where does the time go?????