@Longer Version: 1979 Trip

(August 23 to November 29)

This year there was a special deal for a flight with Icelandic Airlines from Chicago to Luxembourg, with a refueling stop in Reykjavik, Iceland, but for the life of us, we can’t remember what that special deal was. We flew to Chicago, visited with family and friends in the Midwest, then arrived at the airport in Chicago to find that for the second time, our plane for the flight to Europe was going to arrive there one day late!

Our daughter Linda was near the end of her visit with cousins in Mettlach, so met us at the Luxembourg Airport, then accompanied us to look for a camper to buy. In the PX parking lot at the US Army base in Mannheim, Germany, we saw a For Sale sign and bought a Dodge Camper Van. We dropped Linda at the Luxembourg airport for her return to the US, then drove to Bonn, Köln, and across Germany to board a ferry to visit Denmark and Copenhagen. A little later we crossed to Sweden by ferry and spent a couple of days in Stockholm. An overnight ferry brought us to Helsinki, Finland, for a stay with son Ron, Hagar, four year old Joanna, and seven month old Peter. A week later we spent the night with Hagar’s sister in Vasa, Finland, then ferried to Sundsvall, Sweden.

It seems to us that the natural scenery along the Norwegian Fjord coast is incomparable, and the view was outstanding from the dozen ferry boats. Early one morning during a snowstorm, we drove high over the mountains through scenes of grandeur, and for Emmy, an hour of terror interrupted by moments of sheer panic! One place, as we drove past a flock of sheep on a rocky hillside, we could see that a sheep was some distance away, behind a boulder. When we notified a shepherd who was near the road, we expected he would go to retrieve the sheep, but he just reached among the folds of his tattered old mantle, pulled out his walkie-talkie and notified his buddy, who was further up the hill — a mix of new and old!

The first part of the drive from Bergen to Oslo was incredible. Later we crossed the corner of Sweden, ferried from Goteborg, Sweden, to Fredrikshaven, Denmark, stopped in Hamburg and Bremen, Germany, followed by several days in the Netherlands and Belgium.

After a stay with Cousin Josef’s family in Euskirchen, Germany, we spent a week in Paris. We lunched at the Cafe de la Paix, toured the Opera Building and Notre Dame Cathedral, and looked over the city from the 58th floor of the Montparnasse Tower. From the top of the Arc de Triomphe we watched the traffic that circumnavigates Place Charles de Gaulle, the 20 lane wide traffic circle joined by twelve streets, with a total of over 50 lanes. Not one vehicle got a scratch! It's always with reluctance that we leave Paris, but we were anxious to re-visit the Palace at Versailles and looked forward to our first visit in the Cathedral at Chartres.

A day later we drove south across France, and on to Spain. The Basques in San Sebastian were unhappy with someone so we hurried through, and in Madrid we loved not only the Prado Museum, but the only Winchell’s Donut Shop we found in Europe! The old town of Toledo is exquisite and has El Greco’s home and a museum of his paintings. Most cathedrals and large churches in Europe are quite dark inside, but while we were in the Cathedral at Toledo they turned on the lights for a tour-group of school children. How serendipitous our timing, how magnificent the Cathedral.

Lisbon, Portugal, is basically a beautiful city, but we found it cluttered, with trash on the streets, graffiti on the buildings, and poverty all around. If they would just clean the streets and building fronts, it would be a big improvement. We spent an hour in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel, just to get over the culture shock! Wonder if everyone else would be as surprised as we were to find a tiny ferry boat, but no bridge, to cross from southern Portugal to southern Spain?

We arrived at Seville after dark, and when we could find no hotel parking garage large enough to protect the camper, we had to drive across town, in the dark, to find the campsite. We awoke in the morning in lovely surroundings, with the aroma of flowers and orange blossoms in the air. No hotel could match that! The City of Seville and its Cathedral are fascinating and attractive, and deserved more time than we had available, this time.

From Algeciras, Spain (where I reported a broken water pipe I saw through the window in a closed Government office, to a man in a uniform), we went by ferry across the Strait of Gibraltar to Cueta, Spain, on the coast of Africa. In the afternoon we entered Morocco and found our tour-bus just happened to stop at a place where there were large camels to ride and small ones to pet, and Emmy enjoyed doing both!

We were guided around Tetuan, walking in and out of dark dank narrow walkways, stepping aside for the donkeys with burdens of freight, watched a snake charmer charm money from tourists, and I was “told” not to take a picture of the Moslem funeral procession.

The next day we walked through the Medina (market) and the Kasbar (fortress) in Tangier, Morocco, and watched children take unbaked dough to the bakery, and baked bread home. Bakeries sell either bread or heat. In one steep narrow passageway two women had spread a small dirty rag on the pavement and displayed a few pieces of green vegetable for sale. Two donkeys, carrying buckets of redi-mix cement for a Tanger construction job, appeared. As they passed, a donkey peed and pottied, and some splashed on the food, but no one seemed to notice.

By high-speed Hydrofoil we returned halfway across the Strait of Gibraltar, and after an engine failure, by slow-speed Hydrofoil we completed the twelve mile trip to Spain! We got ahead of the crowd, then scurried to the temporary customs office, to be about the first to enter the building.

But hurrah! Who do we see in charge of the whole operation but the uniformed (Customs) officer from the leaky ceiling episode of a couple of days ago. He recognized me, smiled, saluted, shook our hands, and escorted us past the inspection stations, through the gate without even a glance at our passports or packages.

A perfect end to an up to then, less than a perfect evening.

A night was spent in southern Spain with Emmy’s friend Linda E, then we left the camper in the campsite in Barcelona and flew to Palma, Majorca (an island in the Mediterranean Sea, off the coast of Spain). After more time in Barcelona we continued to the French Riviera, visited the French cities of Nice, Cannes, and Menton, then the city of Monte Carlo, in the Principality of Monaco. We drove across the northwest part of Italy and through the tunnel below Mt. Blanc to visit Chamonix, France, on to Geneva, Bern and Basel, Switzerland, finally through Heidelberg, Germany, to Cousin Toni's in Mettlach.

We parked the camper in Toni’s neighbor’s garage, and flew from the Luxembourg airport to Reykjavik, Iceland, where we had made arrangements to visit Iceland for a couple of days. Then on to Chicago, and home to Los Angeles. An outstanding 96 day trip.