Previously:40 Years in Beer, Part Twenty-Three: Beery Copenhagen days and Oktoberfest nights in Munich.
As a general rule, and for a great many years, beer has been very good to me.
In fact I’ve found it to be a beverage that pairs perfectly with travel, especially in European locales where alternative modes of transportation have always provided the means to allow someone else to do the driving.
But every rule has its exception, and one of my most fabled of missteps occurred in Europe in early November, 1989. While beer was being consumed at the time, it was only peripherally involved, and yet the story is worth retelling because it reinforces the truth that positive lessons can result from the most cringe-worthy of screw-ups.
At least I hope I learned something from this episode.
With our departure from Copenhagen in September, the Euro ’89 crusade entered a new phase. Amy and I activated our Eurailpasses and embarked upon a whirlwind tour of West Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Italy, France and Ireland—places I’d been but she had not; I was perfectly content to serve as the concierge.
When she flew home from cold and damp Dublin in late October (coffee actually tasted better than Guinness), I immediately set off for points south, arriving in sunny Madrid following a textbook 40-hour budget traveler’s grueling journey via Atlantic Ocean ferry and a succession of French and Spanish trains.
These were the classic sort of Eurail-inspired transport connections that I wouldn’t consider attempting in my slightly more prosperous dotage, and even if such a long haul became necessary nowadays, it’d be a simpler matter of using one’s iPhone to book a $100 budget airline ticket and be done with the transfer in a single morning. But at the time, the accepted habit was to squeeze every last free mile from the rail pass.
I did it, and so be it.
Once arrived in Madrid, the vastly improved weather was tonic for a growing malaise, even if the palliative was only temporary. In retrospect, I could accurately diagnose this melancholy patch for what it really revealed in me, namely a bone-deep, pervasive exhaustion borne of five solid months on the road, with the...Read more