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Europe on Five Ideas a Day

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Europe on Five Ideas a Day Europe on Five Ideas A Day David Hawking with invaluable assistance from Kathy Griffiths, Traveling Companion, Recorded Diary Keeper, Photographer, & Editor. 2 Text copyright © David Hawking 2021. Quotations and illustrations, as per individual acknowledgments. The moral right of the author is asserted. ISBN 978-0-6451743-3-5 (PDF) – ISBN 978-0-6451743-4-2 (EPub) Typeset in 11pt Palatino using LATEX. i For Jenny & Michele, Pat & Harold, Gordon & Pam, and, most of all, Kathy & Jack In memory of Margaret & Ern. Preface In 1991, as a form of relaxation therapy, I started to write a travel book, based on our European adventures of 1979, 1982 and 1985. I had access to some marvelous word processing equipment – an Apple Macintosh Plus with a 9” black and white screen, one megabyte of RAM, two 1.44 megabyte floppy disk drives and a legal copy of Microsoft Word version 3. I thought that my sisters, my four-year-old son (when he was older), and my parents-in-law might be interested to read about our travels, and maybe one or two others. For Christmas 1991, I created final versions of the first four chapters. I printed copies in loose-leaf binders, with a beautiful photo taken by Kathy on the cover, and gave them to the intended primary readership. I promised that the rest would follow, and I did draft the remaining chapters but I became enchanted by the subject of information retrieval (search engine technology) and started publishing academic papers. This led to a PhD, to a change of career, to abandonment of travel writing, and to a sad case of chronic workaholia. In August 2020, I came across binders containing the full printed manuscript, complete with green slips of amendments and errata on the later chapters, plus scribbled editorial comments from Kathy – Like dozens of ANU PhD students, I’d been “Griffiths-ed”. I thought that, in my retirement, it might be feasible to reactivate the book project and to finally deliver on my nearly 30-year-old promise. I shied away from the idea of looking for floppy disks and trying to fire up my 35-year-old Mac Plus (which I believe is still under the stairs). Even if I managed to get it going and read the floppy, how would I export the data from the computer with no USB interface and no way of connecting to my home network? If I somehow solved that, would I be able to read a Word-3 file using a current word-processing system? Instead, I scanned the printed pages and used an OCR package to turn it into text. With a quite manageable amount of effort I was able to re-create the book, and to set about the now simple task of scanning and incorporating photos and maps. Being able to include photos has added considerable value to the book. Using a nice big screen will show them off to maximum advantage. It has been quite an experience to read the manuscript 40 years since our first overseas trip. The world has changed, people have changed, travel has changed, access to information has changed, technology has changed, I have changed, and attitudes to travel have changed. If I were to start writing about our travels now the result would be very different, but I probably wouldn’t bother starting, because an overseas holiday is now a very commonplace thing. I have read that in 2019, ten million Australians left the country. Apart from a little copy-editing, I have left the ten chapters of the manuscript untouched. The viewpoints I expressed now seem a little na¨ıve, and I now see that my love of word play in the section headings may be excessive. However, I hope you will find that the book provides an interesting snapshot of a long gone Europe, with hard borders and twenty or more currencies. In case you are interested I have provided an Afterword which lists some of the really big differences between the world of 1979 and the world of now. I hope you will also be moved by the stories of the first world war – Colonel Padieu’s “Story of the Boche” and the extracts from Kathy’s Grandad’s diary and letters. I hope you enjoy reading the book half as much as I enjoyed writing it. I also hope it doesn’t take you 29 years to finish! ii Contents Preface ii 1 In The Beginning ... 1 2 P&P for R&R 7 2.1 Should We Put Our Faith In The Stars? . 7 2.2 Novel Guide Books . 8 2.3 We Did It On Our Own, Without A Coach! . 9 2.4 Choosing The Perfect Moment . 9 2.5 Travelling In Our Own Style . 10 2.6 A Swag All On My Shoulder, Black Billy In My Hand . 11 2.7 My Family Lies Over The Ocean ... 11 3 Transports Of Delight 13 3.1 Life At The Cutting Edge . 13 3.2 Fantastic Plastic . 19 3.3 The World’s Best Train Set? . 26 3.4 Making Connections . 32 3.5 Off The Rails! . 32 3.6 On A Different Plane . 33 3.7 Cheap Air Travel . 34 3.8 Curious Customs . 35 3.9 Picking Up A Good-Looking Model . 35 3.10 Motoring Madness . 41 3.11 The World’s Largest Condom . 44 3.12 Pedalling Dopes . 45 3.13 Our Plans On Ice . 46 3.14 Shanks’s Pony . 47 4 Of Loos And Drips And Ceiling Cracks And Cabbages In Tins. 50 4.1 Finding A Pad . 50 4.2 Forcing A Laugh . 54 4.3 A Night In The Earl’s Gas Chamber . 54 4.4 Rooms With A View . 55 4.5 Rooms To Remember . 57 4.6 Of Swigs And Digs . 58 4.7 Turning Back The Clocks . 59 4.8 Coming Clean About Baths . 60 4.9 Starting With A Clean Sheet . 61 4.10 Unseasoned Travellers . 63 4.11 Shelling Out To Live Like A Tortoise . 63 4.12 Close Encounters Of The Human Kind . 65 4.13 They All Managed Somehow . 66 4.14 Eggs: The Unknown Quantity . 69 iii iv CONTENTS 4.15 Pet Hates — A Dogged Quest For Food . 69 4.16 Eating Up, Eating Out . 70 4.17 But How Good Are They Really? . 72 5 The Nature of Europe (How Green Was My Parliament) 75 5.1 Switzerland: The Setting For Many A European Summit . 75 5.2 Swiss Rivers Be Dammed . 85 5.3 Exploring The French Alps While Staying In The Savoy . 92 5.4 5-Star Views From A Toilet And A Cirque . 93 5.5 The Eagle And The Goats . 98 5.6 Getting To The Point . 102 5.7 Narrow Escapes From Molten Ice . 105 5.8 A Graceful Arc Viewed From The High Screes . 110 5.9 Ignoble Grenoble And The War In Vercors . 112 5.10 Gorgeous But Not A Wonder . 112 5.11 Rubbing Cheeks With Friendlier Alps . 114 5.12 A Ride Cameth Before The Falls . 116 5.13 Open Your Eyes But Make Sure You Block Your Nose . 120 5.14 Blind To Izzards And Watched By A Mule . 121 5.15 Brittanic Majesty . 123 5.16 Scandinavia: A Fir Coat Trimmed With Snow . 125 5.17 Scaling Down The Peaks In A Green And Pleasant Land . 132 5.18 All Mine And Moor . 132 5.19 Pottering Around Penzance . 132 5.20 The Joy Of Fowey . 133 5.21 Of Lizards And Other Serpentine Creations . 135 5.22 Ventures From A Mousehole . 135 5.23 As We Were Going To St Ives ... 139 5.24 We’ll Visit Conniston Old Man But Forsake The Old Goat . 141 5.25 Hole And Hill And Hollowed Axe . 142 5.26 Big Skye Country . 145 5.27 The Big Picture . 145 6 Of Plans And Spans 146 6.1 The Reality Of Royalty And Their Realty . 148 6.2 Ordinary People And The Terrors Of The Terrace . 160 6.3 Getting To The Heart Of Naves . 162 6.4 Pommie Granite . 163 6.5 After The Church Went Baroque ... 168 6.6 Of Academic interest . 168 6.7 Safer Than Houses.
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