European Vacations

As I look forward to a vacation in Italy this summer, I’m flooded with memories of my last trip to Europe way back in the summer of 1990. In many ways, it was a cliche: Twenty-something American travels Europe for six weeks with friends on Eurail passes. But it sure didn’t feel like a cliche at the time. I still rank it as one of the great adventures of my life.

I partied late into the night before my early morning departure. Ceremonial shots of Jägermeister were hoisted with buddies to mark the beginning of an epic journey. The next morning, with a hastily crammed backpack, a stack of traveler’s checks, a Let’s Go Europe guide, and a colossal hangover, I boarded my flight to London.

No Google Maps. No Yelp. No websites to reserve a bed in a hostel with a click. How did we manage? If memory serves, a combination of planning ahead (“I’ll meet you at the information desk at the Victoria train station at 2 p.m. on Thursday.”) and good old-fashioned improvisation. I didn’t make a single reservation in advance.

The trip’s highlight reel includes camping in the countryside of England at a muddy Glastonbury Festival to see Sinead O’Connor, De La Soul, and The Cure followed by torch-lit raves til dawn. The running of the bulls in Pamplona. Scooting around the south of France on a moped with a lovely Aussie. And witnessing Prince play a stellar outdoor show in Paris.

But my strongest memories are from when things went off the rails. When my shoes wore out in Paris, sneakers would have been the sensible replacement. But conscious of the très chic French, I set out to find chaussures that would not be dissed at sidewalk cafes. I spent hours traipsing from store to store before finding a pair of oxblood leather wingtips in a 13.

Leather wingtips, it turns out, are not ideal footwear when rucking across the Czech countryside. Later in the summer, my buddy Gavin and I found ourselves hitchhiking to Prague after he’d been put off the train at the border for not having the proper visa. Maybe it was my blister-induced limp that aroused the sympathies of a pair of truck drivers. Each had room for just one of us in his cab, so we caravanned across Czechoslovakia for hours. The only English my driver knew was “Good beer there!” which he repeated for every beer hall we passed. Eventually, the truckers dropped us off a couple of miles outside Prague. When we finally stumbled, sweaty and dehydrated, into the heart of the city, my ankles were raw meat, and my socks were wet with blood. I cursed myself for being such a fashion victim.

Later in the summer, I met up with my friend Jared in Amsterdam. We were headed to Berlin to see Roger Waters and friends perform Pink Floyd’s The Wall. This was just months after the Berlin Wall had come down, and the concert was to be staged near the Brandenburg Gate. To prepare for our overnight train, we visited the Amsterdam landmark the Pink Floyd cafe for its world-famous cake. We ate big slices on empty stomachs then hurried to the train station. The sidewalks were crowded with backpackers headed in the same direction. It looked like every student in Europe was headed to the concert. I grew anxious. This was the last train to Berlin. If we missed the train, we’d miss the show.

As soon as we got to the packed platform, the train arrived, and hordes of concertgoers rushed the doors. Jared and I just stood there, dazed and confused, at the edge of the crowd. When the train got too packed and police blocked the doors, people scrambled through the train’s opened windows.

Shaking off my stupor, I grabbed Jared and pushed him through the crowd. We ducked under a cop’s arms and jumped onto the train just as the doors closed behind us, and the train left the station. We’d made it!  But our triumph quickly fizzled as we realized we were standing packed in like commuters on the subway at peak rush hour, and a nine-hour trip lay ahead. Jared and I sat on our backpacks and stared out the windows as Deutsch teens sang German pop songs late into the night.

That night, we joined 350,000 others to see the concert. As the show progressed, white bricks the size of TVs were added to an eight-stories high version of the iconic Pink Floyd Wall, and at the end, it crumbled to delirious cheering. As we followed the massive crowd out of the Potsdamer Platz, I caught a glimpse of an intact section of the Berlin Wall that ran down a narrow alley. The wall had come down so recently that there hadn’t had time to remove all sections. I knew at that moment we were a part of history.

My trip to Italy this summer will be of a very different sort. Airbnb apartments in Rome and Florence were reserved months ago. Tours of attractions like the Colosseum are booked well in advance. But I sure hope this middle-aged man can summon the courage to bring some of that “wing it” energy that came so easily to my younger self, so this trip can be an adventure yielding at least a couple of stories worth telling years from now.

Dylan Patterson is a writer and filmmaker who teaches English at Cape Fear Community College.

Mark Weber is a Wilmington-based artist and illustrates WILMA’s monthly Direct Male essay. To view more of illustrator Mark Weber’s work, go to weberillustration.com.

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