The Summer from Hell: Worst Trip I Ever Took, part 2

My brain hurts from trying to unearth memories of my truncated career as a tour guide for preteens and teenagers in Europe nearly 45 years ago. I believe that the experience (both the disasters and my inability to evade them) made me decide not to have children of my own. My daughter was born 15 years later, so it seems that Time does heal some wounds.

Synopsis:

It was 1976 and I had sublet my tiny New York City apartment (and my dog) to take what I had convinced myself was a free trip to Europe. I lost all of our train tickets as we were boarding the train for Rome and was rushing back from the ticket office when I saw it pulling out of the station with all but one of the girls on board. I tried to board and then jumped off when the train headed for a tunnel. Bleeding (see part 1) and panic-stricken, I watched my tour group depart without tickets and without their tour guide, me. 

On to the Next Debacles

I sat with my remaining kid on the train. Since we had both hopped off the train, she stuck close to me. I think that she wanted to help figure out what to do but feared that I would again invite our collective demise. I was understandably distressed that the girls were on a train to Rome with no knowledge of Italian and probably no cash to pay their tickets. Perhaps I was as upset that the tour company director was waiting for all of us at the hotel in Rome.

We arrived in Rome about six hours after the others did, and we jumped in a cab to the hotel. There we found the girls happily relaxing after successfully evading the train conductor (mostly, they told me, by playing dumb about what he was asking, although I am thinking he most likely did know some English, like “Tickets? Where?) For the first time on the trip I was grateful that some of the girls were amazingly self confident, had little fear of adults, and enjoyed cheating the system. I almost felt admiration for them.

Besides facing the director, who must have wanted to see me gone but could not say it because she had no one else available who would pick up the slack and work for almost nothing, I had other challenges in Rome. One of the challenges was keeping men away from the girls, several of whom wore the shortest of shorts and skimpy tops in the streets of Rome. I quickly wrapped them in scarves when we entered churches. Several enjoyed the attention, especially from Italian waiters who often ended up hanging around outside our hotel.

Roma di Notte

Finally, our big night in Rome: we attended a performance of Tosca with the Rome Opera at the Baths of Caracalla. I knew that we would probably never make it through the three-plus-hour event—most had never seen an opera before—but I told them that if they left they would miss the very dramatic ending. They correctly guessed that the heroine died, but I wouldn’t tell them how; they had to sit through it to watch her leap from the parapet. A few of them ended up liking it and wanted to talk about it, so it wasn’t until we were nearing our hotel that I realized that someone was missing. I made sure that the girls were in the hotel and then grabbed a cab and rushed back to the Baths. I ran through the complex, yelling the missing girl’s name. Miraculously, I found her at a bus stop outside the grounds. I was beginning to think that my girls were tougher than I had thought.

Meetup with my Doppelganger

No one fell into a canal in Venice, thankfully. I have few memories of our time there because there were no disasters. We did meet another tour from the same company, and it was revelatory seeing how the girls responded to their leader—WHO HAD AN ASSISTANT—and who controlled the group with strict and fair guidelines. I told myself that if I were ever a tour guide again, I would be just like her. The possibilities of either of those things happening—being a tour guide again or being just like her—were so far-fetched that I immediately deleted them from my brain.

Some Intermittent Pleasures

The kids loved Venice, but they REALLY loved Istria and the Adriatic resort town of Pula on the southern tip of a peninsula in the former Yugoslavia, now Croatia. They finally got to wear their bathing suits, tan themselves on the rocks overlooking the sea, and just relax. I didn’t really blame them; we were all running around too much every day, with a list of places I had to check off in each city.

I took them by train through the Swiss Alps (they all leaned out the doors and windows in the dark and cool evening as the train headed to Paris). What I remember of Paris largely remains losing the girls in the Louvre, although we did manage to meet up after I set them free. A few were even skipping the snack bar and shop to check out the art. They began to read their own guidebooks and find their way to the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. Jokes about armless females were scarce. What hadn’t changed were the complaints by some about the age and cleanliness of the buildings and streets and the very existence of heads on fish (see Part 1).

Before we headed for London, we stopped in Amsterdam. One of my clearest memories of the entire trip was the day we rented bikes and rode through the Dutch countryside. I remember hearing the peals of laughter, even from the most cynical, as we biked paths lined with tulips, past windmills. It was a day of unalloyed and childlike enthusiasm.

We danced in the streets in London and then took a quick trip to Stratford-upon-Avon (one of the girls had never heard of Shakespeare because they “didn’t study him in school.”) I have to say that cynical eye rolls don’t work when there are no adults with whom to share them.

Dog Food for Sale

My mail finally caught up to me in London. I opened my first letter, which was sent to me by a joker who lived in my building in New York City. “Strangest thing: I saw this young woman standing in front of our building, selling dog food.” Judging from my Summer from Hell, it could have been true. 

Journey’s End, Unless I Lost Someone at JFK

Finally the day came for my release. We landed at JFK, and I spent an hour trying to track down several girls who had wandered off. Then I returned to my apartment and my dog, who looked fine and did not seem to have missed any dog food. I sat in my small studio for several days before venturing out into the world of adults. Perhaps I stayed so long with no human contact because I was really waiting to hear if any of the girls was pregnant. I never got that call, nor did I ever hear from any of the girls again.

On Not Sharing the Misery

Writing this story made me wonder why people (including me, of course) don’t take pictures of miserable travel experiences. I, for one, would love to see some unhappy faces in travel photos. That way I could relate to someone’s travels more (we all go through tough times/bad choices/irritating travel) and, of course, schadenfreude. Now, almost 45 years later I yearn for a photo of the train headed towards the tunnel in Cannes, with my leaderless girls on it. Today it would be a meme; then it was merely a symbol of the collision of the inexperienced and the inept.

Top photos: Laurence in Holland, 1976: Adrienne, Laura, and Tammy in Venice, 1976

Rick Steves Best of Europe: From a Pro (who would never lose your train tickets)