After gagging down as much hot and sickeningly sweet Coca Cola as we could stand, Carolyn and I set off for Nice France, one of her must-see places even though, according to the Five Dollars a Day book, it had no one star hotels. Nor did Cannes, its sister city.  Still, several movies Carolyn absolutely adored had been filmed in that vicinity so she just had to go, even if it meant sleeping on the beach.

The road through the mountains started out gently but soon we found ourselves on a series of unguarded switchbacks clinging narrowly to the side of steep slopes.  We crept along behind beat-up delivery trucks, too afraid to pass, unlike the French who swerved around us tires squealing and horns blaring.  Every time we were passed, a wave of doom swept over me.

Sure enough, about an hour into our trip, the trucks we crawled behind abruptly came to a stop. Ahead was a plume of smoke.  I can still remember the sound of sirens echoing against granite cliffs and the look of profound sadness on the face of the truck driver who’d walked forward to investigate. There was nothing anyone could do, he reported.  It was head-on crash between car and truck and the car lost.   After what seemed like forever, one lane was cleared and the police began to direct the backed up traffic in both directions around the nauseating scene.   As a result, we didn’t arrive in Grenoble until sunset.

Grenoble

The town of Grenoble sits in a deep valley in the perpetual shade of the French Alps, which, even in August, were snow-capped. We stopped, bought baguettes and cheese and looked around the laid back city center where old men played bocce ball.  Then we set out for Nice.   On the outskirts of town a young man and woman hitch-hiked in the growing darkness.  She had thick, wavy blond hair that hung practically to her butt and model good-looks.  He wore leather pants and was scruffy.  We judged them safe to pick up (or rather I did, Carolyn had her doubts).

Carolyn (standing) Elizabet and Soboric (sleeping on the bench)

Her name was Elizabet and she was Swedish.  His name was Soboric and he was Hungarian.  Neither spoke English but he spoke a little German which we used to communicate.  He claimed to be a political refugee on asylum in Sweden and I really never figured out what she did other than be beautiful of course.  They were on their way to the island of Corsica for vacation.

Too soon night fell and we found ourselves on an even more torturous mountain road, one with tight hairpin turns every hundred feet and narrow lanes whose edges dropped off into ink-splot ravines.  We could only guess how high up we were or how far we would fall if we missed a turn and plummeted off the unguarded side of the road. The wimpy headlights on the VW only provided a thin stream of light directly ahead, the stars in a moonless sky, far away. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, fog billowed up from the valleys below.  It enveloped the car often without warning, dropping visibility to around zero.  Thus we inched along and didn’t make it to Nice until five in the morning.  Exhausted, we stumbled onto a pebble beach where fishermen untangled their nets in the pink dawnlight.

Sail boats by Van Gogh

When I woke hours later, the beach was full of people in bathing suits or naked, eating lunch or just sunbathing.  Soboric had disappeared.  We walked to the car to find him bent over, head in hands on a nearby park bench.  The car had been broken into.  Carolyn’s camera was gone, as was Soboric’s satchel containing all their money and their passports.  Their trip was ruined.

And that’s when we met the real life Inspector Clouseau. He was manning the front desk at the tiny police station in Nice.  Unfortunately I’d never learned the word for thief or robbery or even stolen in Madame Burkholder’s French class so when Soboric and I walked up to Inspector C. railing on about “bandidos,” he naturally assumed we were confessing to a crime.   He summoned another constable and they put us in handcuffs, took us downstairs and locked us in a cell.  There we sat stunned until an interpreter was found and the situation cleared up. Soboric, who claimed to have been jailed by the Hungarian police for his dissident activities, became outraged.  Especially when Inspector Clouseau made it quite clear that the case was sans importance and if we did not departee immediatement  he would lock us up again.  So we drove Elizabet and Soboric to the Swedish Embassy and then sadly went on our way.

Next: Jan jokes with the Spanish border guards and it ends badly…

Ktown to Geneva

Day One: We began our  trip in K-town, and, because there was no other direct route,  felt  we had to take autobahn to the Swiss border, otherwise we’d never get out of Germany.

An autobahn is Germany’s answer to the Indy 500, a three lane highway on which there is no speed limit.  For a Volkswagen Beetle, whose top speed is 50 kph, it’s also a Death Trap.

This was my second time on the autobahn, the first inspired this section from The Graduation Present.

To be on the safe side, Carolyn and I never left the slow lane, but it didn’t matter.  Those mighty monuments to German engineering – Audis, BMWs and Porsches –  rocketed past us at speeds of up to 200 kph, blowing the poor little car off the road and onto the shoulder like so much dandelion fluff, again and again.  Caroline said not a word as horns blared for no good reason, lights flashed and red-faced drivers shook their fists in disgust.   Apparently  the German government  encourages macho nincompoops to have ego-fueled temper tantrums with impunity on autobahns (“mine’s bigger and faster than yours, etc.”)  Never again, I vowed as we reached the Swiss border. Never again would I go on an autobahn.

The scenery was so spectacular in Switzerland  that Carolyn and I spoke in nothing but Wows. At every twist and turn, every serpentine lake or Disneyesque village – wow, wow, wow.

This Swiss guy probably also thinks he’s better than all of us! Humph!

However, the men were another story. Oh, they were reasonably good looking, but not at all interested in talking to tourists which made us think that, because Switzerland did not have the same problems as the rest of Europe, they felt superior.

By the time we reached Geneva we decided the country deserved an A+ for scenery but only a D- for men.  I know that seems cruel but there’s no bigger turn off than condescension.

After checking into our one star hotel we decided to give Swiss men another chance to raise their grade.  I mean, a D- is kind of insulting.  It didn’t take long before we ran into these three gents.

Michel, Paul et Roger avec Maman Deux (their van)

They were very friendly, particularly Michel who kindly put up with my massacre of the French language.  They were so friendly that we were about to upgrade Swiss men to an A when Michel told us they were from Brittany, thus they were French, not Swiss.  Too bad Switzerland.  They invited us to dine with them that night in the Maman Deux – an old delivery van that they’d repurposed to serve as a home away from home during their travels. Carolyn wasn’t too keen on the idea of dining with three men she couldn’t communicate with at all, especially after she ran into and chatted up a well-dressed middle-aged man in the lobby of our hotel who spoke English.  He was her “type,” she said (a man who acted as if he had money).  Then she tried to get me to cancel dinner in the Maman Deux to be part of a foursome which would include the middle-aged man’s much older traveling companion.  I dug my heels in, of course.  Then I pissed her off by asking why a man who invited us to dinner at one of Geneva’s supposedly better restaurants was staying at a flea-bag hotel.  She took my point.  We kept our date with the Maman Deux.

Jan, Paul et Roger

Our dinner consisted of scrambled eggs cooked over a butane stove, a bottle of red wine and a baquette.  I can still remember watching Michel crack the eggs and then scramble them in a pan of sizzling butter. Gotta love a man who cooks – even if it’s just oeufs in a van.  But in the morning we were heading off to Nice and they, returning home to jobs, girlfriends, etc.  Geneva was the end of their adventure and it was the beginning of ours.  Au revoir, Michel!

That night the phone rang and Carolyn answered.  The hotel staff spoke little English and Carolyn, of course, no French.  I don’t know why she didn’t hand the phone over to me. Perhaps she was still peeved at missing a date with a man who might provide more than oeufs in a van.  I don’t know.

This is how the conversation went.

“Hello,” said Carolyn.  Then after a few minutes, “Hot cocoa.” Then a second later with irritation.”I said Hot cocoa.”

I asked who it was and she said it was the front desk wanting to know what we wanted in the morning for breakfast.  I pointed out that chocolat chaud was the French phrase for hot chocolate, not cocoa.

“Well, they understand what I said,” she huffed.

Yes, readers, she was still pissed.

Sure enough, the next morning there was a knock at the door.  We opened it and there stood a young man with two bottles of steaming hot Coca Cola, each wrapped in a towel.  He had a very funny look on his face.  Embarrassed we took a sip of the hot coca-cola in front of him as though it was a new fad in America: hot coca cola for breakfast.

On Day Two we meet the inspiration for Inspector Clouseau in the rocking suspense thriller: Nice is not nice….

Passport circa 1970: Good gravy! Could I look any dorkier

I first experienced Europe at the invitation of my Uncle Bob who I hadn’t seen for quite some time and didn’t know very well.  The invitation (a belated graduation present) had come out-of-the-blue and, being an out-of-the-blue kind of gal, I jumped at the chance. Indeed I left so suddenly that I arrived in Germany sans plans of any sort, much to the chagrin of my uncle. He soon remedied the situation by setting me up with a nurse from Santa Monica California.

Carolyn

She was six years older than me, single and visiting her married sister on the base at Kaiserlautern (known to Americans as K-Town).  I had no money but access to my uncle’s car and an endless supply of Esso gas coupons.  I also spoke some French and German.  She spoke no language other than English but had money and a copy of Europe on Five Dollars a Day. Thus we were the perfect traveling companions, save for one thing: our taste in men (which, as you’ll see if you follow these posts, can be a problem).

Hawaiian Night at the Officers’ Club.

Germany at that time was occupied by the Allies meaning that military bases were scattered throughout the country – British, French, Canadian, American and sometimes even Australians.  The Russians had already claimed the eastern edge as theirs, igniting the so-called Cold War.  The civilians who worked for the armed forces (like my uncle) generally lived in housing near a base or in one of the surrounding small towns.  They were given ration cards not only for gas but also to buy food and other items from the on-base commissary.  The Officers Club (which included my uncle’s favorite hangout – the bar) served as a gathering place for the families of both the officers and the civilians, offering cheap booze at Happy Hour, hamburgers and fries for the homesick, and activities for children such as Girl Scouts, Indian Princesses, etc. To enter the Officers Club was to return stateside except that the servers and bartenders were young Germans hoping to learn English more fluently.

The VW  Caroline and I traveled in had seen much better days.  The seats had fossilized, the heater didn’t work, and, if we forgot to add water to the battery (located underneath the backseat)  every now and then, the windshield wipers and lights would stop working.  This generally happened during a rainstorm at night.

For our first trip we decided to drive down to the Costa Brava in Spain, a route that would take us through Switzerland, along the French Alps, down the Riviera and over the Pyrenees mountains.   Unfortunately it was August.  Vacation time for half of Europe and guess where they all decided to go?

Geneva Switzerland – August 1970

Next time:  Roger, Michel and Paul – the boys of Maman Deux.