Jan 23, 1963

1/23/2011

Lake Lugano

We left Lugano early to go to Locarno amd drove to the medieval village of Ronco In Locarno, we saw Anna Maria Banfi from the Sunadele., then on to Milano and the hostel. It was a beautiful new building but no heat or hot water - only every third day and, of course, we were there on the wrong day. But we met an Irish girl who was bicycling to India. She told us that she thought it would take her 5 months and complained about getting her tires stuck in the trolley tracks all the time.

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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.

Jan 23, 1963

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1962 was pivotal. This is the background:

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