So the ad appeared as if sent by a celestial messenger: Help Wanted—Tour Leader in Europe. It was 1976, and I was out of work. I had a series of short-term jobs vaguely related to my education in broadcast journalism—a low level job at a network news video library and a writing job at an audio production house. The latter ended when my boss thought I was a thief and pulled a gun on me.
When I saw the ad I couldn’t quite believe that anyone would pay me to travel around Europe for the summer. I had traveled there several times on my own, but the idea that I could do it on another person’s dime thrilled me.
I answered the ad and went in for the interview. They asked me: Had I ever led a tour before? No. Had I ever BEEN on a tour before? No. Had I ever worked with pre-teens or teenagers before? Well, I didn’t tell them that I had been a summer camp music counselor once, and that I had failed completely. A child of the 1960s, I thought that a musical review for the campers’ parents was unfair to the kids, who should sing for joy and not for accolades for or from their parents. I told the camp director my feelings, and I was promptly fired.
I skipped that part and emphasized my own travels and my enthusiasm, and I got the job. It would only be years later that I suspected that I may have gotten the job because few people would have worked for next to nothing. Me, I only saw FREE TRAVEL. I never asked about chaperones or other support staff, I never asked about transportation. I just celebrated my success and immediately put an ad in the Village Voice for someone to sublet my studio in the Meatpacking neighborhood (with a rent deduction for taking care of my dog…trusting: that’s the way we rolled in those days). And then, filled with unearned confidence and excitement, I set out.
Of course, my memories of all of this are hazy. It’s been more than 40 years since my trip, and I can’t remember if we went to six countries. Seven? Eight? I am sure that I have blocked many moments, both good and bad (although the bad always seems to embed itself in one’s memories, especially bad travel stories). I do remember sitting in hotel rooms, exhausted, and wondering if the girls were in their rooms or not. But I also remember snatches of exhilaration, discovery, and when I thought about it, lots of laughs (like when they passed a plate to me in which were deposited 15 fish heads—loathsome, in their opinions—while in an upscale restaurant in Paris). I also remember biking on a beautiful day with the girls in the countryside outside Amsterdam, a rare innocent pleasure. Although the joys were fleeting, the challenges were constant.
I first met the group at JFK airport. There were 15 girls, ranging in age from 12 to 14 years. Several of them were wide-eyed and nervous new travelers who had never been abroad, and others were more relaxed. There were a few who seemed accustomed to holding mocktails and looking bored. Some girls in the latter group had been to Europe many times, so they told me, and were looking forward to traveling without their parents. I was aware of the way that they looked at me, kind of like I was a specimen pinned by my wings in a box.
How could I have ever agreed to this? I know: I was inexperienced (or ignorant), or I wanted to travel so much that I would have put up with (almost) anything to do so. But even then I knew that it was incredible that we had no support or private transportation in Europe. The people who hired me believed that it would be a “good experience” to travel to six countries (seven? eight?) on public transportation, and I nodded, happily.
We first landed in Madrid and took a shuttle bus to the city. The kids were thrilled to be in Europe, but several remarked that the hotel seemed very old. This would turn out to be a usual comment about many of the places we visited (along with, “It is so dirty here.”) I reminded them that Europe is old, older than the United States, and that old sometimes meant having character. Some bought this, others looked at me like the pinned insect. Well, travel is education, I thought. They soon would learn that it was unfair to compare places, foods, and attitudes to what they experienced in the U.S. Or would they?
The first day we set out for the Prado museum. I hired a tour guide there, who led us through the galleries. “De dee-a-mons on zis crown are par-tee-koo-lar-lee lof-lee,” she said. A possible speech impediment combined with difficulties with English did make it challenging to understand, for sure. But my kids made no effort to stop themselves from giggling. I apologized to our guide, paid her, and she quickly disappeared.
After that, when we toured museums I began to read from a museum guide, which amused AND bored them. I changed my tactics again. We would enter museums, and I’d say, “We’ll meet in an hour at the entrance.” They would head for the shop and snack bar. The smell of failure began to cover me like a fine film.
We traveled by train from Madrid to Barcelona, where we even had a moment of child-like and unalloyed joy: on the anniversary of the U.S. Bicentennial we locked arms and ran around the statue of Christopher Columbus at the Plaza Portal de la Pau, claimed by some to be the site where Columbus returned to Spain after his first voyage to the Americas.
After several days wandering the streets of Barcelona we took the train to Cannes, where, for once, the body-baring short shorts some of the girls wore did not shock the horses. They loved Cannes….it had a beach, it had outdoor cafes, it had attractive waiters. After a pleasant stay we headed to Rome. I remember that we left early in the morning and got to the train station on time. I looked in my bag for the tickets for all of us……and they weren’t there. Were they stolen? Did I throw them away by mistake? Was it a prank by one of the girls? No matter, as the train was approaching I needed to go to the ticket counter and get replacements, in broken Franglish.
I managed this and ran towards the train with one of the girls, clutching the tickets, only to see the train starting to pull away from the station and heading for a tunnel. She said, “What should we do?” I said, “Jump on the steps of the train.” We both did, but the doors would not open. She said, “What should we do?” and I said, “Jump off.” She did and landed on her feet. I did and landed on my knees, bleeding and watching the train headed for Italy, carrying 14 girls without tickets. I looked at my contact list. The head of the company was meeting our train when it arrived in Rome (without me).
(To be continued in The Summer from Hell: The Worst Trip I Ever Took, part 2)
Top photos: Tammy and Barb in London, 1976: tour members in Pula on Croatia’s Istrian Peninsula, 1976
Rick Steves Best of Europe: From a Pro (who would never lose your train tickets)