1971 trip to Europe, France (again) & Switzerland
Continuing from last month’s column, it was late August and after the bull fight in Barcelona, Spain we spent another day touring Barcelona including shopping for leather goods. The Spanish Peseta (local currency before the Euro) was extremely weak compared to the dollar at that time and everything was very inexpensive compared to the rest of Europe.
We purchased several leather goods for ourselves and as gifts for our families. Our already-full back packs were now almost stuffed to the max.
After a nice dinner in Barcelona that evening, we caught a 9:30 p.m. train to San Sebastian, Spain. It was a long night and neither one of us got much sleep, although we were traveling with 3 other nuns in our couchette compartment and one of the nuns must have felt compassion for Bobbie as she stood outside our compartment for several hours allowing Bobbie to stretch out on our bench seats and get some (very little) sleep. Around 7 a.m., the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. We waited an hour and were finally told that there were problems with the engine. After waiting hours, a replacement engine arrived. It was an old coal powered steam locomotive. After it was hooked up, the train started moving again but it never went more than 5 mph, as it belched black smoke that must have increased global warming several degrees that year. This lasted several hours until another replacement engine was added. We were then finally off and running at normal speed but we still didn’t arrive in San Sebastian until several hours later.
We hopped off the train at San Sebastian and after asking around, it appeared that there were not any campgrounds nearby so we got back on the same train which was heading to the French border. At the border we had to get off the train again to go through customs. Once we were through customs, we boarded a train to Bordeaux. Along the way we went through Biarritz which a lady on the train had said was a wonderful place on the Atlantic Ocean. While we were approaching the train station at Biarritz, we spotted a campground and hopped off the train. The campground was the nicest yet – not crowded and very clean. Bobbie was so tired from the lack of sleep during our Spanish train adventure that she fell asleep on the ground as I set up the tent.
We spent two days in Biarritz, most of the time on the beach which was only a 15-minute bus ride away. It was so beautiful! The waves on the beach were larger than those at Marseille and the water was colder so we didn’t stay in the water very long. We spent most of our time soaking up the sun on the beach while I enjoyed the sight of numerous French babes nearby in skimpy bikinis sunning themselves– many of whom were topless. I asked Bobbie if she was going to join them and she just scowled at me. I could have stayed there longer but it was time to head to Switzerland as our flight home was only a week away and I think Bobbie was tired of me leering at all the topless women on the beach.
At the Biarritz train station, we weighed our backpacks. Mine weighed 49 pounds while Bobbie’s weighed 33 pounds. No wonder we both lost weight with our heavy packs and meager diets. On our way to Switzerland, our first stop was Bordeaux. We caught the first morning train which arrived in Bordeaux at noon. From there we needed to travel to Lyon and on to Geneva but discovered that the train didn’t leave until later that evening because it was a “sleeper” train. We checked our backpacks at the train station and walked around Bordeaux that afternoon.
After dinner we returned to the train station and caught the night train, sleeping in couchettes which were much better than the bench seats on the night we spent with the three nuns. After a long night during which we were able to sleep, we finally arrived in Geneva, Switzerland at noon. There we spent a few hours finding the nearest TWA office to confirm our return flights back to Chicago. Then we caught the next train to Lausanne which was only an hour away.
We arrived at Lausanne late in the afternoon and found a nearby campground. While we were setting up our tent it started raining and everything got quite wet. We ate dinner in the camp restaurant which was good and definitely convenient. Afterwards, we had hot showers and went to bed. It was definitely a nice campground. We woke up in the morning and boy was it cold outside! We found frost on the inside of the tent which wasn’t too surprising as it was the end of August and we were at altitude in Switzerland – at least it wasn’t snowing. The next day we headed to Leysin which was a nearby village in the mountains on the other side of Lake Geneva. To get there we caught a train to the village of Agile which was in the valley below Leysin. Once we arrived at Agile, we had to take a cog tram up to Leysin. The village of Leysin was very picturesque, but the real purpose of our daytrip was to hike in the mountains. At Leysin there was a chairlift which ran to the top of the mountain. It was normally used during the winter as a ski lift but it also ran during the summer every few hours to take hikers up to the top of the mountain. You just didn’t want to miss that last ride down or you’d be stuck spending the night at the top of the mountain. Remembering the night before when we had frost in our tent while we were camping at the base of the mountain, we made sure that we were not caught in the cold on top of the mountain.
The ride up the mountain was definitely worth it. It was very un-touristy and I took lots of pictures, some of which I enlarged and still have today. The Kodachrome film I used was the best and it has aged well. We spent several hours hiking in a setting that would remind you of the Sound of Music. Then we caught the last chairlift back down the mountain and returned to Agile where we caught the train back to Lausanne.
The next day, we got up early and caught a train to Lucerne where we found a camp site near the train station and had our tent set up by noon. Then we went looking for the chairlift that would take us to the top of Mt. Pilatus. We found that this excursion was very popular and we had to wait in line for an hour before boarding the chairlift for the ride up. The ride itself was quite spectacular although it gave Bobbie the heebie-jeebies because she was afraid of heights. The view from the top was worth the wait but the waiting wasn’t over as we had to wait another two hours in a line to go back down the mountain. This was the first time in our entire trip that we had to wait to see a particular attraction.
The next day was our last in Switzerland before our flight back to Chicago. Since we were flying out of Zurich which was only an hour train ride away, we took the train to Zurich to figure out the best way to get from the train station to the airport the next day. While we were there, we did some window shopping because the prices in Zurich were way beyond our budget. We also stopped at the central post office and found four letters from our families waiting for us. Then we returned to Lucerne where we did some last-minute shopping for gifts with our remaining money, holding back enough to get us back to the states the following day. We ended up finding a small clock shop off the beaten path where we purchased three small coocoo clocks, one for each of our parents and ourselves. As a testament to the Swiss clockmakers, we still have one of those clocks and it works just as well today as it did 55 years ago. Since our backpacks were completely full, we had a shopping bag to augment our backpacks. The next day we got up early and rolled out of our tent for the last time. It had been our cozy home for the past month and served us well. We never would have had enough money to last through our entire trip without the savings from this investment. It was the best return on an investment in our two-month-old marriage! We took the first train to Zurich and made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare.
Our flight home was on time and uneventful, although it wasn’t on a brand new 747 jumbo jet as our inbound flight. Instead, since Zurich was a much smaller airport with far less traffic than Heathrow, our plane home was a decades old Boing 707 jet that didn’t even have dropdown luggage bins. This lack of “luxury” was probably more appropriate for a couple of returning college students.
Next month: Church camps & the BWCA
