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My First Europe Trip Was Fifty Years Ago Today


Lucky

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yes, I guess everyone just called it day sauna and night sauna. i spent a good part of a year at the day sauna during the week and just with my lover weekends. he always took me to a nice gay bar that may have been the Amstel Tavern, Mandje or even DOK upstairs. The one thing I remember vividly was that the bar had the biggest vase of arranged flowers I had ever seen in the middle of the bar every weekend. I was amazed it was safe on a bar but later I saw a lot of European gay bars that had big vases of flowers on the bar. (and , of course, played that awful Euro-pop music constantly). 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/25/2021 at 2:34 PM, Lucky said:

On this date in 1971, my younger sister and I flew to Gatwick Airport in London for our first Europe trip. The RT fare was $259. Over the next 7 weeks I spent $741, including passport, Rail Pass, food, hotels and incidentals. We had the Europe on $5 a Day book and followed it religiously. London to Scotland to Ireland. In Scotland a street sweeper asked why we were not down at Holyrood Castle. He said the Queen would be passing by as she went to Holyrood with Princess Margaret. So went down the hill and saw that pretty up close. In Ireland I kissed the Blarney Stone, thus my gift for gab.

Parisians didn't like us drinking Perrier right from the bottle, but it was so hot! We continued to Vienna and up to Denmark and The Netherlands. I hadn't yet acknowledged I was gay even to myself, but we did go see Death in Venice in Dublin, so my sister later told me that was when she began to wonder. Lots of things happened but I won't bore you.

It does seem so long ago. We surely never gave a thought to looking back 50 years later, but here we are! Yes, I have returned multiple times and would still go if COVID allowed.

I was in the army in June 1971.  It was in early June of 1971 that I was posted to Heidelberg Germany, where I spent nearly 3 years.  When we first got there, we were assigned to a replacement battalion until orders were generated for our permanent duty assignment.  The replacement battalion was located in an old German army base called Gutleut Kaserne in Frankfurt, close to the train station.   It was an incredibly bleak place, resembling a prison, that we couldn't wait to get out of.  When I went back years later, Gutleut Kaserne had been transformed into upscale condos.

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  • 7 months later...
On 6/27/2021 at 12:35 AM, Charlie said:

I'm surprised that they leased a car to you at your age in 1964.

I bought a van in Amsterdam in December 1972 for three hundred dollars. Over the next several months drove to Rotterdam, Kaiserslautern Germany, Zurich, Monaco, Nice, Valencia,  Barcelona, Madrid, Pamplona, San San Sebastian and Paris. Sold the van for two hundred dollars.

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A . mistake to do this is the Winter

B.  I went back in the late Spring in 1973, and didn't. buy a van or car.

C. Flew to Amsterdam, took trains to Nice and hiched to Monaco  every day for lunch, then back to Paris for a week.

I tried to correct the stupid mistakes I made in the Winter trip with a friend

 

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Can you share more about your traveling experience? It is very interesting to read. I also will never forget my first visit to Europe. I was in Germany seven years ago, and I started to love this country from the first moment. The county seems perfect, starting with the people, streets, and environment. Also, I liked how their public transport system worked. I have traveled by train and bought tickets from dbauskunft, and I was shocked how the trains are arriving at the train station at the right time every time.

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