By Kathy Hughes
Contributing Writer
When I was a senior in college, three of my friends and I made the Grand Tour of Europe. It seems as though everyone was doing it; some of our classmates had spent their junior year abroad, and those of us left behind wanted our turn to experience the wonders of Western Europe.
I don’t remember any of my male classmates participating in such ventures, for one thing, Vietnam had begun to loom large on the horizon. Another explanation would be that expectations were still very different for young women and young men. Young men were at an age when they were expected to get serious about a career and earning money. The major expectation for us was that we find a husband and get married. A European tour was to be the icing on the cake of our education, and our last fling, as it were.
It was a delight, but not a big surprise, that we ran into two of our classmates while touring the Vatican. We had never shared our plans with each other, it was pure coincidence.
We rented a car, a Peugeot, after our first stop in Paris, and what an adventure it was, mostly having to do with the car. We ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere, in the empty desert between Madrid and Barcelona, only to be rescued by a gallant passerby who spoke no English. Without question, he figured out our problem, and filled our tank front his own reserve can of fuel. As he drove off in the opposite direction, he waved and said, “guape,” and thus I learned how to say, “pretty” in Spanish.
Our next incident was more serious, as our engine began to smoke and give off a terrible smell, like rotten onions. Complicating matters was that it was the middle of the night since we were pushing on to make our next destination in one day. As we limped into the first village on our route, we were relieved to see the “Garage” sign right as we entered. Of course, it was closed, but there were lights on in the adjoining house. What the mechanic must have thought when, responding to the frantic banging on the door, he found four American women standing on his doorstep. Given the situation, it was awfully nice of him to open his garage to allow us to spend the night sleeping in our car, inside his locked garage. It was something to do with the battery.
The last car incident I remember happened in Milan, Italy, and I was driving. Coming to a giant roundabout of six or eight lanes, I panicked. I must have been holding up traffic (duh, you think?), as a gentleman approached our car to find out what the problem was. When he gathered that the problem was me, he moved in behind the wheel and drove us safely to the other side. “You just need to cross one lane at a time,” he calmly instructed.
Now, it all seems pretty crazy, but the times were different, and, more importantly, we were very young. In 1968, Europe was just emerging from the devastation of World War II. Tourism, especially American tourism, was part of their ticket back to prosperity. It was no accident that Arthur Frommer had recently published the best selling, “Europe on $5.00 a day.” He was serious about the $5, and it became our bible of places to eat and stay along the main tourist routes of Europe.
I have often imagined retracing our route on that trip: which of the places where we stayed still exist? How much would it cost today? Since I turned 21 on an Alpine mountainside, I know that I couldn’t make the trip again now and have it be the same. I knew it then, too, as I cried and cried because I would never be 21 on a Swiss mountain again.
I don’t understand economics, especially in their view of inflation as a good thing. I strongly disagree. Surely no economist ever saw Europe on $5 a day.
