Previously: Euro Pilgrimage ’85, Ch. 2: Crawling across the borderline into Luxembourg.
Long before leaving home, I took care to equip myself with an American Express Youth Hostel card. And why not?
A clean, dry bunk bed rarely cost more than $10, and you’d usually get a light breakfast as part of the deal. There’d be a midday “lockout” for them to clean up, which was seldom inconvenient, and the places were packed with all sorts of like-minded people from all around the world, most (though not all) of them young, and amenable to joining up in informal groupings to explore adjacent terrain.
No, that comment reeks of innocence. It is not intended to be taken lasciviously.
Youth is purely relative, and I was a mere lad of 24 upon arrival in Europe. The card cost a nominal fee, promising to “open the doors” at youth hostels overseas that maintained an affiliation with the governing body, known as the International Youth Hostel Federation (IYHF; now Hostelling International), all of which reminds me that today, as I near 65 years of age, the notion of “elder hostel” (a firm now called Road Scholar) has at last come within statutory reach.
Private hostels also abounded, especially in heavily touristed areas. The quality of private hostels was assumed to vary widely, and there were far fewer rules; my own experiences with them were positive in the main. Conversely, the IYHF hostels generally could be trusted to adhere to predictable minimum standards of organization and hygiene, albeit occasionally with an overly institutional feel (and a hall monitor’s zeal).
Actually I appreciated such structure during my formative period of travel, and the price was always right. The IYHF card easily paid for itself during my first three days on European soil while overnighting in Luxembourg City, Basel (Switzerland) and Milan (Italy). It was a frenetic travel pace – by design (for better or worse), for I was eager to get Hellenic.
My objective all along was to visit three of the four corners of Europe during the course of three months: Greece to the southeast, Ireland in the northwest, and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg; northeast), and of course, see a bit...Read more
