It was Monday afternoon December 3rd when I finished my walk from the Heineken Brewery back to the big Amsterdam train station on the south shore of the Ijsselmeer, the huge human made lake just north of the city. The large amount of beer I had consumed at the end of the brewery tour was still sloshing around in my belly, and the alcohol (which, unlike in the States with its shitty beer, was only half the motivation for drinking the good stuff here in Europe) was still juicing my brain. So it was a jovially tipsy frizzy haired eighteen-year-old in an orange poncho that grinned at the twenty-something male ticket agent with his well-ironed collared shirt and short coiffed hair. And in keeping with the trend since I’d gotten into town, he spoke some English, and enough to not only sell me my tickets, but give me the necessary logistical details for my travel to England.

I would start my journey by train from Amsterdam to the Hook of Holland port in the south part of Rotterdam, which was itself a huge industrial port city, Europe’s largest port even. I would then have a short walk to the boarding platform for a ferry that would take me across the North Sea to the English port town of Harwich. From there I would board a British train on to Colchester. It cost 43 Dutch guilders, about $12 U.S., gratefully within my budget, given my diminishing remnant of funds with still a week of travel and living expenses to finance. I duly noted that I was able to buy a ticket in one country’s train station for a train in another country, even another country with a body of water intervening. It seemed so much less parochial and more international than how we interacted with the world in the States.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was late Sunday afternoon December 2nd when the train I had boarded in Best arrived at the big Amsterdam central station. The mostly clear skies in Best and across the Netherlands had given way to more overcast as we neared its capital city. The two hour trip had been uneventful but otherwise kind of fun, enjoying the view out the window of chaste, white and wintry Holland, plus enjoying the mouth feel of the gooey, cheddary, grilled cheese sandwich that Hugo’s girlfriend Femke had made and wrapped up for me. And I had to give it to the Dutch, their trains were the prettiest I had seen in Europe, all bright yellow on the outside with slashes of red forming abstract designs on the sides. And unlike yesterday’s train from Munich, the compartments, at least my compartment, was toasty warm.
Coming into the city, the train tracks had already crossed a handful of its iconic canals, and finally there was a view of the huge man made Ijsselmeer (Lake IJssel) to the north just before we came into the station. I would learn later that it was the largest “lake” in Europe, having originally been part of the Netherlands’ Zuiderzee bay, but had been separated from the bay by a 32 kilometer dyke in 1932 and became a freshwater body filled by the Rhine river. All these views were very exciting, particularly from my cozy train compartment, and took my mind off my homesickness.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was Saturday evening December 1st when I parted company with Angelica and Helmet and left Munich on the train headed west toward Ulm and beyond. Since my student rail pass did not allow me to sit in first class coaches, I had learned to board a train at either the very first or very last second class coach so I could walk through all those coaches and check out every possible compartment without having to double back. In this case I had boarded at the very back, and walking forward I had found none with other young backpackers like me or other young people I might share my current passage with. All the compartments were very full, so in the forwardmost second class coach, I finally entered one with what looked like a big family, with mom, dad, a male teen, and two younger female children. In theory there should be a sixth seat for me, though the compartment was pretty full with the five of them and all their suitcases, tote bags, toys and other stuff. My thinking on choosing this compartment was that maybe the family would get off at one of the upcoming stops and then I’d have the compartment to myself. Maybe then another fellow young traveler, boarding at a later stop, might join me.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was Monday December 1st and I awoke in Angelica and Helmut’s guest bedroom. A real bed with real bed linens, not the sleeping bag on the bunk mattress that had been my nightly resting place for much of my odyssey, including every night in the past three weeks since Steve and I slept in that bed together, platonically, in Walter’s hotel room in Paris. I had been so relieved last night when I called them from the Munich train station and Angelica answered the phone, said that of course I could stay with them, and offered at that late hour to come and pick me up. I felt so bad that I had boarded the train to Munich in Bern forgetting to call them from there to give them a heads up. After I hung up I had a moment of angst wondering if I had displayed too much entitlement in expecting them to retrieve me and put me up that late on a weekday evening, without any prior notice!

They had both seemed happy enough to see me at the train station, Angelica giving me a big hug and Helmut a hardy welcoming handshake. He drove their little sedan home through the brightly lit snow frosted streets of the city, while she grilled me from the front passenger seat on my adventures. I was sitting in that same back seat where I remember throwing up, that night back in early October when I consumed way too much sweet white wine and Leberkäse (liver cheese) at their friend’s thirtieth birthday party. That had certainly been the most embarrassing moment of my entire now ten week odyssey. And it was right up there with my other worst moments, including being pulled over by Swiss police and given a breathalyzer test in Chur, losing my passport and railpass boarding the train in Bar-sur-Aube, and being turned away from that youth hostel in Liege at five minutes past midnight and having to trudge the eight kilometers back to the train station with my fifty pound pack on my back, dead tired and sneezing from an oncoming cold.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was still Friday November 30th when I parted company with Beth at the Interlaken train station and boarded the train to Bern, from where yet another train would take me to Munich, scheduled to arrive at my destination about 9pm. She had been the last vestige of the little community of backpacker types we had put together briefly in Grindelwald, as we had in Venice, Florence and Rome. In retrospect, the best two weeks of my odyssey to date, particularly the last three days up in Grindelwald. Now it was just a fond memory, and I was on my own again, but unlike Bob Dylan’s classic lyric from “Like a Rolling Stone”, I did have a direction home.

It was not lost on me that though I’d been traveling basically on my own for the past two weeks, which made for some lonesome moments, I had been able to connect with and interact with some of the most interesting and bigger than life people in my young adult cohort. While I had been traveling with Steve for the previous two weeks before that, I had not connected with so many new people. Certainly part of that was staying in hotel rooms in Spain rather than youth hostels brimming with my backpacker cohort. But another aspect I pondered was that when I had a travel partner, a lot of my need for connection was satisfied by my partner, and particularly as a shy person, I did not necessarily make the effort to reach out to other people or give them the opportunity to reach out to me, though maybe Randall and Zo were the exception. If I had had a travel partner at the time, would Trix have taken me under her wing on the train to Florence and invited me to share her compartment with the four other young women? Would I have gone for gelato with Sarah in Florence? Would Sophia have engaged me in our somewhat amorous exchange on the train to Venice? Would I have connected so much with Jacques in Venice?

Read the rest of this entry »

It was Friday November 30th and I awoke to the diffused light through the high windows of the bunkroom indicating another cloudy day. I had not slept well overnight, my mind buzzing with so many thoughts about the experiences I had had here over the past three days, the little temporary community we had built here, feeling like this had been the climax to my European odyssey, high in this winter wonderland, and that now I was starting my long journey down from the real and proverbial heights home.

Our evening at the tavern had been more low key last night. There were no less pitchers of beer, but the old German guys had not been there on the bar stools to sing their song and inspire us to sing ours in response, replaced by trendier tourist couples. I had talked more with Schuman and others about music, and with Beth about the details of her own European odyssey, which in ways paralleled my own. She had lost her own travel partner Christine, who while they were traveling in Spain had decided to return to Australia, Beth deciding to continue on, a challenging venture for a young woman alone.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was Thursday November 29 1973 and I woke up to a softer more diffuse light coming through the small hostel bunkroom windows, high up on the walls so some natural light came in though you really could not see in or out very well. The energy of the outside felt very different, subdued, quiet, and very calm. A couple guys were still sleeping but most were up and out. I generally slept in a t-shirt and underwear, my long underwear here in wintry Grindelwald, so i pulled on my jeans, grabbed my towel and wash cloth hung on my pack frame overnight to dry, dug my toiletries and my flannel shirt out of my pack. I sniffed the shirt to make sure it did not stink too much from past days’ sweat… so so. I headed to the bathroom and tried the shower to make sure it would actually get warm before committing to taking my clothes off and entering the stall. Most of the hostels I had stayed at only had cold water, and I had not been able to bring myself to taking that cold shower, even if my body really needed it, opting for a wet washcloth “birdbath” instead. This place was the exception, but after two morning’s of glorious hot showers I still did not trust it. But the water was hot, so for the third straight day, a deliciously long hot shower, my body started the day completely squeaky clean.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was Wednesday November 28, 1973 and I awoke that morning from a memorable yesterday, which had been my first full day in Grindelwald, a day full of camaraderie and special moments. When I emerged from the bunk room after a long hot shower and getting dressed, I could see out the big picture window that the sun was shining, and so presumably the clouds had finally lifted and the featured mountains would reveal themselves. I went immediately out on the balcony and the view was stunning beyond anything I had anticipated.

The hostel sat on the north slope of the little valley, looking south with the village below at its base. Rising from the other side of the valley was a row of five magnificent mountains that filled the sky. The winter morning sun was behind them, and though there northern faces were shaded there was enough diffused sunlight to see that all of them were sheer rock and ice, literally rising from the valley floor almost three kilometers (a mile and a half) nearly straight up like giant jagged teeth. Those jagged tops caught bits of the sunlight behind them and glittered like a silver aura that made their shaded faces that much more foreboding, like one was viewing those teeth from inside the impossibly large gaping maw about to close and consume you.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was still Tuesday November 27 in the Grindelwald youth hostel and as most of us were finishing our hostel supplied dinner somebody in the group shouted out, “See you at the pub!” and everyone else laughed. I noticed that some people were hanging on to their plastic trays after bussing all their dishes and silverware, including the Cleveland gang. I looked at Peter and pointed at the tray in his hands. “Transportation” he said with a grin, “At least getting there!” They were going to use their trays to slide down the road into town as we had seen the kids do earlier today on their sleds, a noble nod I thought to the goddess of play.

So I followed suit and kept my tray. There were about two dozen of us in that initial batch that headed down the mountain, including the Cleveland Gang, Beth and her Aussie guys, Ragna and Monika still with her unbuttoned jacket, t-shirt and no bra. That woman was indeed a total polar bear, impervious to the cold, presumably from years of living in the frozen north. About half of us had trays, including Monika, but not her travel partner who said to her, “I’ll walk behind, and drag your unconscious body to the side of the road so you don’t get run over!” as Monika got a running start and planted her rear end on the tray with clear indication of athleticism and skill.

Read the rest of this entry »

It was Tuesday morning November 27 and given little good sleep on the long overnight train ride from Venice the previous night, I managed to sleep in and missed the breakfast I had paid for. It was 9:05 when I got down to the little dining room and breakfast was served just until 9:00, and things ran on schedule in Switzerland. They were lowkey about stuff but they stuck to their schedules. My first reaction was frustration, not so much because I was hungry and there was nothing to eat but more because I had missed a meal I had paid for with my limited remaining funds. After contemplating my initial reaction for a moment I realized that the good long sleep had been more than worth it.

I had heard the night before, that unlike most other hostels, the showers here had actual hot water, and in lieu of a big breakfast of delicious yogurt and granola, I confirmed that the shower was hot and indulged myself a long one, including washing my hair. Naked, my body completely cleansed of dirt and sweat as it rarely was, the deliciously warm water raining down upon me, my mind wound my narrative back to my last real shower. It had been nearly three weeks ago in the Hotel in Paris where Walter, who had picked up my travel partner Steve and me in Southern France and driven us to the French capital, paid for our night’s lodging. Since then I had only had what my mom called “bird baths”, where I dabbed a wet maybe soapy washcloth on parts of my body. And since then I had traveled through Italy and been in so many famous old locations and met such interesting people who had touched my life in one way or another, all of whom I would most likely never see again, and there was a lot of sadness with that thought.

Read the rest of this entry »