UPDATE: 15 October 2003
Europe
"European
Vacation" is one of my favorite movies. My parents sent me to see the
movie back in the summer of 1985, just weeks before we, somewhat like the
famed Griswolds, departed for our first trip to Europe. Dad had accepted a
teaching position with Boston University's European program, which meant I
would spend the year in schools in Germany and Italy. Dad only taught 3
days a week, so Mom acted as our travel coordinator, and I missed a lot of
school. (Yay!)
My parents were experienced travelers, having spent some time in Egypt, Israel, Jordan and Greece. As for me... well I had been to Disney World four times! At 15 years old, I had never been on an airplane.
On the whole, there was and is significantly less crime in Europe than in the United States. But back in the mid-80's there were a lot of terrorist attacks in Europe, so our extended family was not happy that we were moving there. On the up-side, the dollar was the strongest it has been since World War II.
MAP: The pink dots
show you where I went to school, and the blue dots show some of the places
we visited that year in Austria, Belgium, East Germany, France, Holland,
Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, West Germany, and Yugoslavia.
My brothers, Hal and Steve, were students at Auburn University and thought a year in Europe sounded like a lot less fun than a year of turning our house into the real-life version of "Animal House". So, they didn't come over until June when school ended. (And then they were REALLY regretful that they had missed being there all year!) Here's Hal, Mom, Steve and Dad the day they flew into Frankfurt. (It was Hal and Steve's first flight ever and they had managed to lose their passports at the Delta counter in Atlanta. So it was an exciting day.) Hal was 21 in this picture and Steve was 19.
These pictures are all a little blurry. I wasn't much of a photographer back then and had a cheap camera.
This is where we lived in Stuttgart, Germany from August-December 1985. The arrow is pointing to my room. We lived in an area called Zuffenhausen which is home of the world headquarters for Porsche. (FYI: Porsche's headquarters building was painted in pink and lavender stripes!)
One of the highlights of the year was going to East Germany and passing through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin. Traveling to a communist country in the height of the Cold War was a little scary and very exciting! The week before we were there, an American tourist had been shot by the police for taking a picture of a government building. They thought he was a spy - maybe he was. I was snapping pictures of everything and Mom was about ready to kill me herself! Terrorists set off a bomb in a disco in Berlin while we were there. I think it was March 1986.
This is Hal and Steve looking out across the Alps in Switzerland in June 1986.
This is Heidelberg Castle. Heidelberg is a college town with pubs that have been serving steins of beer to students since before the U.S. became a country. The great American writer Mark Twain spent several years living in Heidelberg. I lived there about 100 years later, from January-April 1986. (Heidelberg hadn't changed all that much.)
We spent Thanksgiving 1985 in Berchtesgaden, Germany in a hotel that served as Hitler's headquarters during World War II. It sits on the German-Austrian border in a stretch of the Alps where salt has been mined for centuries. These days tourists can put on traditional salt miners outfits and ride the train down into the mines. This picture was taken in June 1986 at the Salzbergwerk when Hal and Steve came to visit. |
 Here I am in rowing a boat across the Koenigsee in Bavaria's German Alps in the summer of 1986. Hal and Steve were in another row boat until they decided to strip down and plunge in. (Here's a hint: Alpine lakes are cold in the summer time, too!)
This is Linderhof, one of Mad King Ludwig's many castles. It's in southern Germany - in Bavaria - and was taken on a sunny Spring day when it first hit me what a cool opportunity I was having.
In the Spring, we traveled to Holland to see the tulips and while we were there we watched a guy break into a car in Amsterdam and drive away with it. Exciting stuff.
This is a picture of me (wearing hideous green and red plaid jeans) standing next to Roman ruins on the shores of Lake Garda in northern Italy. We had the poor timing of moving to Italy the day before America decided to bomb Libya. (Look at a map sometime and note how close Libya is to Italy.) There was a lot of added security, but in the end, we enjoyed 4 very peaceful months in a warm and lush country.
Aside from East Germany, our only other foray into a communist country was a quick trip into Yugoslavia. We went to a coastal town on the Adriatic in what is now called Slovenia. It was interesting - very quiet. There was no evidence of a booming tourist business, no groovy little shops, or post card vendors. But it was beautiful and the teenage boys we saw were cute. I think we were there in July 1986.
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