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The story begins on Nov 16, 1962

12/21/2010

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PictureJudy and Pat on the Sunadele. The trip begins

We had taken passage on a freighter named the Sunadele.  The cost of this part of the adventure was $190 U.S.  The Sunadele was a Swiss ship! Since Switzerland is a landlocked country, who knew they had ships?  

On Monday Nov 16th, we left the St Lawrence Seaway heading across the Atlantic for Bristol England. 

PictureThe crew. What were we thinking?
The crew was composed of a captain, chief mate, 3rd mate, chief engineer, 2nd engineer and an ex chief steward who, we were told,  had been deported from Montreal for smuggling liquor.   What were we thinking?  Three young girls on a freighter with a bunch of young sailors and a known smuggler?   This was only the first of many risks we would take along the way.

We landed safely in Bristol on Sunday the 25th of November and headed to Rotterdam in the Netherlands where we bought a 1958 VW Beetle with the help of one of the crew, Alois Camenzind.  We promptly named the car after him and from then on only referred to it as Louie. 

By December we had driven Louie from the Netherlands, through Germany and to Innsbruck, Austria.  Innsbruck is one of Austria's best known and fanciest winter resorts.   I wrote in a letter home that the skiing was great but that the Europeans don’t groom their slopes very well.    I wrote that “they don’t have moguls on their slopes, they have sheer drop offs.” 

From this point on, I will post a diary entry that corresponds to the date 48 years ago.  Please take a minute to add where you were then.
1 Comment
Phil
12/23/2010 05:22:55 am

I was there before the story began. Pat, Dede and Judy visited me in Cambridge, MA a few days before their departure. After a day or two I drove Dede and Judy to White River Junction, VT where they caught a bus to Montreal to board the ship. Pat stayed with me a couple of more days and then followed them. (At least that is how I remember it.) While they toured Europe, I slaved away as a grad student at MIT - lots of fun.

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    A daily diary of a journey in 1962.  Please post comments about where you were then on the Background  page.

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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.

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