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Feb 22, 1963 - From the Castle Tower

2/22/2011

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Beja's Castle

We drove into Beja, Portugal which is situated on a hill with the valley on all sides of it. We stayed at the one and only hotel and I think everyone in town turned out to watch us unload the car. Then we walked around town and up to the top of the hill to see the castle. We award the prize for the cleanest city to Beja. We bought chestnuts and the streets were so clean that we wouldn’t think of dropping the shells on the sidewalk as we walked around.

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1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

It was a year colored by the Cuban Missile Crisis, an escalating involvement in Vietnam, the Berlin Wall and the Cold War with Russia, Civil Rights issues, a nascent space program, Nelson Mandela in prison, Betty Friedan's, The Feminist Mystique, the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the death of Marilyn Monroe.

In the face of all of this, Pat, Judy and I blithely took off for Europe with the intention of traveling through Europe and North Africa until our money ran out. We had a travel guide and a book titled Europe on $5.00 a Day. Since we had all read The Ugly American in preparation for the trip, we thought we were very smart to buy a used Volkswagen with Dutch license plates. We dubbed the car "Louie" since a cute guy from Switzerland named Louie had helped us acquire it.

There was no such thing as a cell phone, a computer, Twitter or Facebook. Our parents didn't hear from us for weeks on end. We wrote regularly, but letters took forever to deliver and we only vaguely knew where we would be next. It was a very cold winter and we followed the sun.

Feb 22, 1963 - From the Castle Tower

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1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

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