tower at Taize as it is today (above).
MY EUROPEAN TRAVEL ON A FEW DOLLARS
Part Two
Between 1971 and 1976, I made 5 back-packing trips to Europe with students from Somerset Community College in Somerset, Kentucky, where my first assignment was as a newly ordained priest. Ignorant of how risky and challenging it might be to be responsible for young adults who had never been out of Kentucky, I managed to accompany small groups of from 5 - 10 at a time. After landing in Paris, we always made our way south to Taize, France, where 1,500 youth a week from all over the world would gather for a week-long retreat while camping in the open fields around the tiny town of Taize. Taize was the location of the ecumenical monastery of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox monks half-way between Paris and Lyon, about two miles from the ancient ruins of the famous Catholic monastery of Cluny. In this second of two blogposts, I will report a few of the odd experiences we "enjoyed" during those trips.
When our week-long retreat was over we would drive through Switzerland, northern Italy, Austria, Germany, Luxemburg, Holland, Belgium and back to France for our trip home. On one trip we crossed the border into Spain for an hour so so just so we could say we were in Spain.
There were two times in Switzerland when 2 of us were forced to sleep in a tent and 4 of us were forced to sleep in a car because of the rain. Otherwise, we would have slept outside on the ground. Both times, the rain was drizzling most of the night which caused the inside of the tent and inside the car to create a seal to the point that it woke us up in a panic because we had breathed up all the oxygen. In the tent, up a mountainside, we woke up so panicked that we practically tore the zipper off on the front of the tent trying to get out to breathe! In the car, on a side road, four of us in sleeping bags woke up at the same time, opened all four doors and rolled out on the wet ground in our sleeping bags, trying to breathe.
There was a time in Switzerland when we pulled off the road in an orchard and found what we thought was a safe place to sleep. About the time we all dozed off, I was awakened by a crunching noise about a foot from my head. Startled, I looked up to see a car tire rolling past my head. We all started screaming which caused the car to stop. It was another car with a young man also looking for a place to sleep in the orchard. We all got up, introduced ourselves and became instant friends. He had one of those cheap French cars out of which he had taken all the seats except the drivers seat. He tried to convince us to go with him to Spain, (probably to share gasoline expenses) but we said "no" because we were going in the opposite direction - to Austria. After a bit of negotiation, and a bit skeptical about getting in a car with no seats with a stranger, we agreed to go with him to the next town for a beer. He drove the car and the three of us sat on the floor of his seatless car, seated so low we could not see out of the windows. We had a beer with him, he brought us back to the orchard, wished him well and sent him on his way to Spain.
It seemed that every young adult in Europe was hitch-hiking during the summer. You could see them everywhere. We had heard that it was safe to pick up hitch-hikers back then because youth jobs were scarce and so parents gave their young adult kids a couple of hundred dollars and told them to "go see Europe!" One of those summers, when there was only three of us in the car, we always picked up a hitch-hiker to fill the empty seat and get to know some of them in the process. I remember picking up a young man from Scotland in southern Germany. He was headed to Holland and we were going half-way there so we took him as far as we could. When it came time to get in our sleeping bags, he insisted sleeping in the trunk. I did not like the idea, but he insisted that we help him into his sleeping bag and lifting him into the trunk and shut the door. About an hour after we put him in the trunk and got into our sleeping bags for the night in the the car, I was awakened by a sound that sounded like scratching coming from the trunk. I immediately concluded that our friend from Scotland had been overcome with fumes from the gas tank and was scratching to be let out before he died! I work everybody up, got out of my sleeping bag and opened the trunk, fearing to see a dead Scotsman right there in a sleeping bag! What I actually saw a grinning Scotsman eating a green apple that we had taken to bed with him if he got hungry during the night! Relieved, we slammed the trunk and went back to bed!
I remember one very embarrassing moment in Austria. We met a hitchhiker not far from the area where we picked him up. He invited us to his house for a bite to eat. When we sat down, his mother put a plate of "speck" in front of us. "Speck" is a fatty salted bacon, air-cured, lightly smoked, but uncooked! I later learned that it was a delicacy in that part of the world. I took a piece of speck and put in between a slice of her delicious rye bread and bit into it. It was like biting into a slab of uncooked bacon. The rawness made a crunch that I knew I would not get down my throat. When the host left the room, I pulled it out and put the "speck" in my pocket to get rid of later. The bread however was delicious! When she came back into the room, I went on about how delicious the bread was, but never mentioned the "speck!"
My experience in northern Italy was the very opposite. We stopped to visit an Italian student that we had met in Taize. His mother served us coffee and the most delicious little pastries I has ever eaten. I tried to wait till she left the room to "go back for more" so as not to appear piggish. She must have noticed how many we ate because when we got ready to leave, she boxed up the rest of them to take with us. I was thrilled with the news, so thrilled that after we got in the car and had driven out of sight, I stopped the car and finished off the rest of them right then and there! After a few weeks of camping out and eating so minimally, I was absolutely ravenous!
As you can imagine, traveling in Europe under such conditions can wear on one's nerves. I remember one evening, after driving north for three hours when we should have been driving south for three hours because the student I was in the car with simply could not read a map! We were on the Autobahn in German, which can fray one's nerves in the best of times, and we had quit speaking to each other. We stopped at a roadside restaurant with only a small amount of cash with us and had no chance to cash travelers checks. It was cold and rainy on top of the coldish atmosphere between us. When we received our menus, we knew we would have to get something cheap - like a hot dog! We did not know what kind of "wursts" we were ordering so we went by the prices. We ordered in silence. He ordered one type and I ordered another. When the waitress brought out our plates and sat them down in front of us, he had two "wursts" that were thin as pencils and about eight inch long and I had two "wursts" about an inch thick and about four inches long. We both sat there staring at our plates for a a while, looked at each other, and burst out in outrageous laughter!
At the end of my fifth and final trip to Taize, I was what was called "over it!" I knew that I never wanted to do that kind of traveling ever again! In the airport in Paris, right before getting on the plane, I took all my clothes out of my backpack and threw all of them in the garage can. I looked around the airport till I found a local young man who had just gotten off a plane. I went up to him and asked, "How you you like a newish backpack and tent? I am going home and I never want to see them ever again!" He was delighted and so was I!!!!!
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