I have no idea whether we really could afford our European adventure, but I do know the profound impact it had on us kids. My older brother later spent a gap year in Europe. When it was my younger brother’s turn, I had been on my gap year for four years and I don’t think the offer was still on the table. Still, at some point in his career, he managed to land a job in Luxembourg and spent a year filming a TV-series there. My nephew was born there and in between the baby and the work they spent time traveling the continent. They’ve since lived in Europe on several occasions.
Our European holiday was one of the catalysts for all of us to seek adventure.
School was out in the summer of 1973, and having sold the business, the cars, the trailer and maybe even one or two other things, we were ready to roll. There was no internet in those days, but somehow my dad found out that we could buy a European car from a local dealership in Canada, pick it up where it came off the assembly line, drive it around so we had transport in Europe and then drop it off at the factory at the end of the holiday. It would then come over on one of their regular shipments. The only catch of course being that we would arrive home a long time before the car. More on that later, but, obviously we were heading to Norway, so the car we bought was a Volvo and we picked it up at the factory in neighbouring Sweden.
If you’re into vehicle safety, you’ll know that Volvo is a good choice. You’ll also know that back then, Volvos, especially station wagons were known for their luggage space. Finally, you might also know that an old Volvo, like most cars manufactured in the pre-SUV year of 1973, seats 5 people. With grandma coming along, that made us six. We put the roominess to great use. Five people properly seated and belted in up front, luggage for six and one of the kids, (my younger brother fit best, but I could also squeeze in) stored securely in the back with the suitcases.
Our cousins had a VW van that seated seven. It was roomier, but my aunt and uncle’s kids were bigger and I’m pretty sure no one was as good at maximising storage space in a car, or a suitcase, as my father. It was an inherited trait he got from his father and nowadays my own family is tired of hearing me offer to treat them to a lesson from Paul’s packing school. They just let me do the packing.
I can’t remember how long our European vacation lasted. My memory says six weeks, but I’m not bothered enough by the lack of certainty to ask my parents or my brothers even though they probably remember better. Suffice to say, we covered a lot of countries, saw a lot of things and, being 13 years old at the time, it was an adventure that I took completely in stride. Kids can be hard to impress, but I likely spent more time thinking about being able to tell my friends at school that I had been in Europe than I was thinking about what a privilege it was to have the opportunity.
We did have some cool experiences that stuck with me. On the west coast of Norway, we were staying in a hostel and an American woman hearing our accents thought we could save her from another meal of fish. “Fish, fish, fish” she said. “That’s all they eat! Do you know where I can get a good hamburger?” My father asked where she was from and when she replied Chicago, he suggested a little place just off Michigan Avenue. Experiences like that have probably helped teach me tolerance for other country’s customs and my own cooking!
In France, or maybe Belgium, (It was wet, windy and raining, so it was probably Belgium) we were looking for a road that could take us to Calais so we could catch the hovercraft across the channel to England. We studied, OK, the word study is probably an exaggeration, but we had French as a subject in school. Living in Western Canada though, we would have had more use for German, Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin or probably almost any other language, so none of us became proficient, but my older brother had had the most years of it at school, so when we found a group of people at a bus stop he was our designated translator. We asked if anyone spoke English and our hopes were raised when a volunteer said “Yes, I do” and then proceeded to give directions in fluent French to the joy of the wet people waiting in the rain, but to the disappointment and dismay of the six, dry people in the car. We found our way to Calais though, but somewhere deep down I did learn the lesson of language, although not soon enough to pay more attention in French class at high school.
In Wales, we went to meet the Williams and his family. Mr. Williams sang in a Welsh men’s choir and had been billeted with us when the choir visited our city. We found the town and started asking for Mr. Williams. It turned up pretty much everyone in the town was named Williams, except, apparently, for someone named Evans. My dad wasn’t worried though, because even though us kids didn’t, he knew Mr. Williams first name, because it was the same as his. That name was also shared by most of the men in town. Even Mr. Evans was probably a John. It didn’t help that our Mr. Williams sang in a choir, everyone sang in the choir. We were in Wales and he was a man. Our luck finally changed when Dad added an occupation to the mix. With only two John Williams running butcher shops it didn’t take too long before we were running around Mr. John, the Butcher, William’s backyard playing “football”, which contrary to where we came from only involved the use of feet. We played with John Williams’ young son. I think his name wasn’t John, which was perhaps a bit weird, but he became famous in our family by often interrupting the parents’ conversation and exclaiming that he had something very important to say. It usually involved informing everyone that he had scored another goal on us. Apart from being taught a few “football” lessons, that day also taught me that in many countries names and addresses may not be as straightforward as they were where we came from.
No trip to Europe would be complete without visiting London.
(Author’s note: You’ll note that Paris is not mentioned in this story. Another story or two will cover Paris, but for all the tolerance in our family, France, French, and the Montreal Canadiens ice hockey team were exempt. Paris was not on our itinerary for the simple reason that it was inhabited by French people. I could be wrong of course, but that’s what I thought in 1973.)
Driving in a country in a car where right-hand-drive cars were the norm in a car that had the steering wheel on the left-hand side, was packed with people, and six weeks of luggage was risky. Fortunately, for all his sense of adventure, even my father wasn’t going to drive us into London. We stayed in a Bed & Breakfast (which for younger people can best be explained as a forerunner to airbnb) in Watford. The hosts were extremely hospitable and generous. At breakfast, there was Wheetabix, which was kind of like cereal but way better because it had a cool name and hadn’t been invented in Canada yet. Normally, cereal would have been it for us and we’d be fully satisfied with that, but suddenly our hostess arrived with two eggs, three rashers of bacon, three sausages and some toast on a plate for my grandmother. Being a couple of months premature at birth, my grandmother never grew too much so she was a very short, slight woman of 73 when we were in Europe. “Oh my!” she exclaimed. “I could never eat two eggs!” Our kind hostess passed the plate to my mother, and promptly brought a new plate to my grandmother with a smaller portion. One egg, three rashers of bacon, three sausages and some toast. When we asked if they could call a taxi to take us to the station so we could visit London, our host, who had been assisting with breakfast, left the room and came back wearing a coat, cap and driver’s gloves. He was also a taxi driver. Another experience, another lesson that served me well later in life. True generosity and true hospitality go hand in hand. One without the other will never come close to creating a truly memorable moment.
At 13, I was still a few years short of discovery dates and girls. (May I remind you that the internet wasn’t invented yet). Still, during what must have been a good day out in Copenhagen’s Tivoli Gardens, I suggested that it would be a great place to bring one’s wife on honeymoon. I can’t say I ever did that, but cutting through Tivoli would be a short cut to and from work would be part of my daily routine thirty years later, and my wife and I went on numerous post-work dates in the famous gardens.
There were probably many other things I learned during that trip to Europe in 1973, even though I wasn’t paying too much attention because I was busy asking how far our next destination was, staring down my younger brother, or complaining about why it was my turn to sit in the back again. For example, at the Lego driving school, the adjudicator very publicly called out my nine-year old brother for making a left turn from the right turn lane. (Obviously, the adjudicator had never driven in Belgium, where that type of manoeuvre is a commonly accepted norm, even if it is technically illegal). I could also mention that the nice, tattooed lady in the German bar didn’t mind us interrupting her beer and pickle feast (I’d never seen anyone just chomp away on an unsliced pickle before – and I really don’t know why I was allowed to go into the bar, late at night with my dad. I guess he knew I would be working in security later in life and he felt needed some close protection from an overweight thirteen year-old.) In any case, she gave us directions that helped us find our way to a place we could stay for the night. Even without paying attention, spending six weeks in Europe left an indelible impression including the memory of visiting a family in Bremen, Germany. The man had worked on a project in Canada and met my parents, so, naturally, we took his “If you’re ever in Bremen, look us up” literally. They were happy to see us, they fed us and their kids taught us even more lessons about “football” than the young Welshman named Williams had. However, at some point, probably while we were still eating desert, my mother noticed the lady of the house was carrying mattresses and bedding up the stairs. When my parents insisted that we would stay in a hotel and that it was too much for them to have five (or six if grandma was with us at this point – she went a bit back and forth between us and our cousins) extra people to spend the night, the reply from our host was: “Don’t you like us? If you like us, you will stay!” I already mentioned that generosity and hospitality go hand in hand, but another lesson learned on this trip was that no matter where you go around the world, most people like to help other people.
Our cousins probably stayed in better hotels and likely didn’t get lost as often as us, but I’m sure our trip gave all of us some good life lessons.
It was still four years away, but unconsciously, these lessons were piling up and preparing me for my gap year and maybe even preparing me to turn that year into 40.
Thanks for reading 87 Stories - Lessons from the University of Life!
I’m Paul, and I like to say that my post-high school gap year in Europe, included a 30-year, basement-to-boardroom career at a company that didn’t want to hire me.
Written with the clarity of hindsight, the accuracy of a faded memory and countless creative liberties, 87 Stories is a journal of how my gap year lasted four decades, made me an emigrant, an immigrant and a gave me a life I never dreamed of.
Stay safe, Always Care