/Summary, Introduction to the European Trips

If we have no schedule we aren’t late!
If we don’t care where we are, we aren’t lost!
If we have no itinerary, we’re exactly where we ought to be!
If we can’t see IT this trip, we’ll see IT the next time.

We had originally planned to visit Alaska in 1970, but when Emmy mentioned that she had never met any of her uncles, aunts, cousins, or grandparents, and only one of her father’s sisters was still alive, we decided to visit Europe and meet her family. We have savored nine fantastic trips (the latest in 1995) to Europe, ranging in length from one month in 1970, to nearly six months in 1980 — 968 nights in 452 different places, in about 30 countries — and we still haven’t seen Alaska.

In Europe, most countries have distinct and interesting cultural communities. When cultural groups are living the way they wish to live and are not bothered by, or fighting with others, these background enrichments can make a trip interesting and stimulating.

We have visited a thousand cities and towns in a host of European countries and found that whole towns, and considerable parts of others, have not only been preserved, many have been freshened and revitalized, and thousands of ancient buildings, bridges, and streets are in everyday use.

Sometimes the amount of renovation and rebuilding that has been needed to keep these places beautiful over the centuries, reminds us of the 100-year-old hammer that has had ten new handles and five new heads.

While it would be nice to travel to all parts of the world, the cost to do so is out of our reach. There are thousands of places to (re)visit throughout Europe, and we will never see enough to satiate our travel and sight seeing appetite.

In addition to clothes, money, and a passport, the most important thing to take with you is a positive attitude. I always say it’s amazing how many stupid, ignorant, inefficient, obnoxious people we meet when (if?) we are in a bad mood.

Our European Travel Journal fills nearly 1200 printed pages, with about 500,000 words filling over 800 daily entries out of the 968 days we had traveled in Europe. Almost every evening Emmy would note the name of the town where we were spending the night, the speedometer reading on the RV, and add her comments on the highlights of the day. She missed few if any nights while we were "on the road," but often when we spent a week or two with her cousins, some nights the diary would be missed, because some days we didn't do much that was exciting or important.

The early years of our travels were long before I had a home computer, but my travel memories seem to last forever. (I could most likely tell you more about my 3-day visit to Calcutta, India, 60 years ago, then I could about where I had lunch last week.) So with the notes in Emmy’s diaries and my travel memory (not my “normal” memory), I almost wore out the keyboard on my MAC computer.

The following 9 pages contain only a little of what we did on a day to day basis, but they most likely tell all that you want/need to know about our European adventures.