Europe 1971

Forty-six years ago, the summer of 1971 to be exact, my ex-wife, Bonita, and I decided to have the adventure of our young lives.  We were going to spend a month in Europe, but because we did not have a lot of money, we would have to do it on the cheap.  Arthur Frommer's Europe on $5 a Day would be our guide.  

I remember our late night departure from JFK to Paris on an Air France flight.  My brother Paul and his wife, Janet, drove us to the airport in our Corvair, which he used while we were away.  They brought a bottle of champagne to celebrate the occasion.  

When Bonita and I arrived at Orly Airport early the next morning, we were exhausted from a lack of sleep and jet lag.  On the other hand, it was incredibly stimulating to be in a foreign country, especially one with a different language.  We took public transportation to the heart of the city.  When we came up to the street, there in front of us was the Champs-Elysees and the Arc de Triomphe. What a view!  It was like a picture post card, only it was real.

We walked to what we thought would be our hotel for our three-day stay in Paris.  I had sent a telegram requesting a reservation. However, the owner very curtly told us she had no room for us, that she never sends telegrams back to those for whom she has no space. So, we spent our first few hours in Paris walking around, lugging our bags, looking for a hotel with a vacancy.  We finally found one we could stay at, but only for one night.  We accepted and then laid down and slept.  What a beginning to our adventure.

Well, Paris is the most beautiful city in the world.  Of course, we went to the Louvre, Notre Dame, and Montmartre.  We traveled along the Seine, drank coffee in outdoor cafes, and experimented with couscous.  However, we were also snubbed by waiters who couldn't understand our poor attempts to speak French.  English was out of the question. 

Next we flew to Rome.  On the way we got the most gorgeous view of the Alpes.  I sat on the plane next to an Australian guy who asked me, "Are you on oliday?"  I asked him to repeat his question three times because I couldn't understand his pronunciation of the word, "holiday," which in his culture means vacation.  From the airport, we took a bus to a terminal in the downtown area. When we asked for directions to our pensione, a young man grabbed our bag and said to follow him.  We were suspicious, so we took the bag back and found our own way there.  

The locale of our pensione in Rome was beautiful, on a piazza, but the place itself was a dump.  We had to share a bathroom with everybody on our floor and newspapers served instead of toilet paper.  In Paris, we had warm croissant for breakfast.  In Rome, it was a very hard roll. 

On our first full day in Rome, we attempted to do and see everything, and all on foot.  We didn't realize they had buses and a subway system.  I remember in the afternoon we visited the Forum Romano.  But, what I remember most was a wonderful lunch. From American culture, we were used to spaghetti as a main course.  In Italy, it is an appetizer.  So, we ate a lot of great food, plus we drank a bottle of Chianti.  When we returned to our pensione on foot, our stomachs were full and we were exhausted. 

On our second day, we went to the Vatican.  Bonita was wearing shorts which we discovered was prohibited attire inside their church.  A couple of nuns wouldn't let her enter St. Peter's. However, she wrapped a sweater around her legs to make her outfit more acceptable.  

One night we discovered a very good neighborhood restaurant, where nobody spoke English.  When we got to the dessert, I asked for gelato, Italian ice cream.  Then I noticed our waiter leaving the restaurant.  After some delay, he reappeared, entered the kitchen, and then brought the gelato to our table.  Bonita tried it and she ordered more.  The waiter again left the restaurant, apparently to go to same store to buy more gelato.

Next, we traveled by bus through the mountains to Naples.  One day while there, we took a chartered bus up to the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii, which was destroyed in 79 A.D. when Mount Vesuvius erupted.  I remember the tour guide referring to the name of his company, C-I-M-A, pronounced "chima."  Before arriving at Pompeii, we made an unannounced stop at a cameo factory, where we were strongly encouraged to buy some of their hand-made products.  We didn't.  However, we felt sorry for the worker whose deformed hand was raised by the tour guide in an attempt to evoke sympathy.  
          
My lasting memory of Pompeii was at one particular elaborate house, apparently of two gay men, with a mural by the front entrance.  The mural was covered and, by law, was only to be viewed by men.  We were also told that there would be no pictures allowed. However, as soon as the mural was uncovered, you could see numerous flashes going off.  The mural was of a man with a giant erect penis that he was using to carry some object.  

At the end of the day's trip to Pompeii, the guide announced, "Now, it is time for the tip."

From Naples, we also took a boat ride to the nearby island of Capri and its Blue Grotto.  Inside the grotto, it was so dark that if you fell overboard, you would be lost.

Next, we took a train to the east coast of Italy and the town of Bari. From there, we took a boat across the Adriatic to Yugoslavia.  It departed at midnight for a six-hour trip.  We bought a ticket for the cheapest cabin on board which was below the water line.  Bonita and I were so unnerved by the sound of the water pounding our side of the ship that we finally decided we would sit on the deck awaiting our arrival in the ancient walled city of Dubrovnik, in what is today Croatia.

We stayed in the Hotel Zagreb where the price of our room included breakfast and dinner to be served at an assigned table. Enjoyably, we shared the table with two young men from Malmo, Sweden.  As one of them spoke very good English, we spent some interesting hours discussing various topics, including a love of basketball.  Sadly, we didn't share contact information which would have been helpful, because two years later, on another trip to Europe, we stopped briefly in Malmo.  

The beach by Dubrovnik was rocky, but it attracted many tourists from various European countries.  We relaxed on rented reclining beach chairs and ate local ice cream.  I remember being there when I read in the International Herald Tribune of the death of Samuel Bronfman, the head of Seagram's, my employer.  (See blog post, JES.)  

One day on the beach, on the way to buying some ice cream, one of those responsible for renting the beach chairs grabbed me by the arm and escorted me to his assistant who was under the impression we had not paid the very low rental for such chairs that day.  In spite of a total language barrier between us, I was finally released from his custody.

Next, we flew on a very bumpy, but short, flight to the capital city of Belgrade.  We grabbed a taxi requesting to be taken to the train station.  Again, no common language.  However, Bonita made a "choo-choo" sound which was immediately recognized by our female driver.

Our train to Budapest left at midnight.  By then the station platform was full of people waiting along with us for the train to arrive.  It reminded me of a scene from Doctor Zhivago.  We need not have worried about finding a place to sit on the train as, even with our limited resources, we could afford first-class tickets for a reserved cabin. When we reached the Hungarian border in the middle of the night, our sleep was interrupted when an immigration official entered our compartment without knocking.  When he asked for our papers, it seemed as if I was in an old black-and-white Hollywood movie. Luckily, he didn't speak English so he couldn't ask us any questions and our papers were in order.

Budapest is actually two cities, Buda and Pest, which are divided by the Danube River.  Our hotel, the nicest one we had on our trip, the only one with a private bath, was on an island in the Danube, called Margaret's Island.  The island reminded me of Central Park in New York City, but with wild peacocks roaming around.  There was an outdoor cafe and an outdoor movie where an American film, The Strawberry Statement, was being shown.  It starred Kim Darby, the actress who, in 1969, played opposite John Wayne in True Grit. Perhaps the movie was shown because Darby's mother was from Budapest.

Outside the hotel, it seemed as if nobody spoke English.  However, in my desire to eat goulash, I found a restaurant that had one waiter whose English was passable.  We ate there all three nights of our stay and ordered goulash every night, even the third night when our waiter wasn't there.  It was spicy, but great.

From Budapest, we took a train to Vienna which was on the other side of the "iron curtain."  I could sense some of our Hungarian fellow-travelers being nervous as we approached the border.  We stayed in the Hotel Fuchs in Vienna, which was a strange name, except that in English, it means fox.  It is a beautiful city with some great pastry.  Unfortunately, my only lasting memory there was of a livery driver kicking his horse for some perceived misdeed.  Awful!

We then took an overnight train to Venice where something happened that would affect me the rest of my life.  When we entered the train, we discovered it was very crowded and had difficulty finding a compartment with two vacancies.  Each one had room for six people.  Finally, we entered one with only four occupants, but who had strewn their bags over the remaining seats to make it appear as if there was no room for us.  But, we were assertive and got the two extra seats that were face to face.We put our bags above us in the overhead racks.

Some time during the night, while all were asleep, one of our bags fell and landed on my right knee which was extended across the compartment to Bonita's seat.  I didn't feel anything at the time and fell back asleep.  The next morning we arrived in Venice and found a very cheap rooming house.  We walked to the Piazza San Marco and its millions of pigeons.  After lunch, we returned to our rooming house and rested.  When I got up from a nap, I felt pain in my right knee and had difficulty walking.  It got better the next day, but my knee continued to give me difficulty until I had an operation to repair torn cartilage four years later.  The knee has periodically given me problems over the years.  That train ride was where it all began. 

Next, we traveled by train to Florence where we saw Michelangelo's magnificent statue, The David, in the Accademia Galleria.

Finally, we returned to Rome and an Alitalia flight back to JFK and the USA.  Our adventure was over, but it was a big success.  I'm amazed I still remember so much of it.