Schooool's out forev... And this is my graduation gift (I love my parents!!)

Ahhh Paris ...

And it begins;

7 hour flight from Montreal
Arrive at Charles de Gaulle
10am - head into a bar ... a couple of glasses of red wine ... ahhh Paris ...
Metro to cheap hotel near the Seine
Wander around ... more red wine, cheese, baguettes, ... really cheap ... really good!
Take the Metro to Gare du Nord (railway station)
Did I mention I have a first class Eurail Pass (I love my parents!!) and I'm about to use it for the first time ... and I'm on my way to Barcelona ...

Barcelona - Flamenco ... these are not the dancers I saw, but it's close

I declare the Eurail Pass WAY COOL! - I can jump on any train in Western Europe at any time. And did I mention it was first class??! (I love my parents!)
I'm now in Barcelona. I'm told I should visit some really good (and expensive) restaurants, visit some really exciting bull fighting, or go to an inexpensive but incredible Flamenco show (includes good food AND wine)
I went with the Flamenco choice (doh!). It really was a great show ... one of the girls asked me to get on stage with her ... ummm not so much ... she tried again after what I think was my fifth glass of wine ... mmm ok ... no idea what I did but she pronounced me Sexy Heels ...

Florence

Off to Italy
Started with Florence (spur of the moment decision - love that Eurail Pass!)
I find a little cafe in a piazza and sit down for my first authentic Italian espresso - really different ... not a lot of people are sitting for any long time, almost chugging their coffee ... but it does fill up pretty quickly ... identical (really identical) twins come up to me and say something in Italian (of course) ... my really rusty Romanian and French kicked in and with them gesturing at the chairs beside me my Sherlock Homes self deduced that they might want to join me
we actually kicked it off nicely (I think) and they decided they were going to be my guides to Florence.
They were great and I offered to buy dinner. They asked if I liked steak and I said sure (a bit disappointed as I was hoping for something more Italian). As it turned out, the Florentine Steak is actually quite famous and we ended up sharing one huge piece of beef. (If you ever order this, DO NOT SAY ANYTHING ABOUT HOW YOU LIKE IT. It's cooked only one way and you would be offending the chef!) It was great ... I highly recommend it.

Venice

Lots of water
I bought a beautiful glass swan for my mother. I didn't think I could afford to have it shipped so I kept it with me (it was really well packed) - BAD MOVE! It lasted everywhere I went (in all kinds of conditions) until it encountered The Nimrods of Air France ... I still tear up when I think about it ...

Rome

Off to Rome ... and my incredible Eurail Pass gets me into trouble.
At this point, I'm basically a scruffy kid with a backpack (although the maple leaf on my backpack got me all kinds of compliments - Pierre Trudeau was extremely popular in Europe!) sitting in first class ... along with a bishop in full regalia, some women whose shoes could probably pay for a Ferrari and with some business men in extremely expensive looking suits. The conductor looked at my Eurail Pass and then at me with a very suspicious look and asked me something. I had a pretty good idea what it was but it was the bishop who decided to translate and said he was asking me where I got it. I explained it to the bishop and the conductor walked away ... WITH MY EURAIL PASS! The bishop saw what I believed to be my panic-stricken look and he tried to calm me down telling me it was alright. And eventually I did get it back, along with an apology. Some religious people really are what they try to be ... thank goodness ...
Not surprisingly, I had some incredible pasta dishes ...
A note - I had spent some 4 years at the University of Waterloo ... where I had eventually determined that beer is good ...
By this point in my vacation, I was thirsty for beer ... I had tried it in France, Spain, and Italy ... all really good wine, beer not so much ...
Off to my first potentially good beer ...
I'm off to Austria, starting with Salzburg - yep, the land of Maria, the Von Trapps and the rest of The Sound of Music! ... oh, and a little known musician by the name of Mozart ...
and, hopefully, good beer ...

Salzburg ...

if you close your eyes and listen really closely, you can actually hear Mary Poppins singing "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" or is that "The Hills are alive ..." ...
off the train I go to my hotel and, wonder of wonders, what do my thirsty eyes spy? Its a beer garden!!!
I dump my bag and I'm there in a flash and, yes, they're serving steins! Das Bier ist wunderbar!
And a little orchestra nearby is playing Mozart ...
Could it get any better?
Wait for it ... on to Vienna ...

Vienna and chocolate stuff!

Sacher Torte and Viennese coffee!!
Austrian or German beer and Viennese chocolate ... yes! ... I discovered they go together ...
Oh yeah, and the little guy (Mozart) followed me just about wherever I went ...
On to Germany (the West part) ...

Munich

• Ahhhh ... the beer garden of beer gardens!
• Ahhh ... the beer!
• It was absolutely packed ... the European soccer championship was about to be played (Nottingham Forest vs Malmo) ... the Brits and the Swedes were in town!
• I tried to find an empty seat and a bunch of the Brits waved me over ... asked me where I was a from ... "Ah, a colonialist, won't you join us?" ... really funny (and drunk) gang ... asked me if I wanted to go to the game ... I told them I would've thought it was sold out ... they pointed to one of their guys who seemed to be unconscious with his face in a stein, "asked" him if he was willing to give up his ticket to "Our Buddy Canuck" ... he made some noise, gave me the ticket and I gave him some money ... awesome game!

I had already decided that I had to visit a concentration camp. I took a train to Dachau. A gentleman was sitting across from me and he engaged me in some conversation, most of which involved him telling me that he was never involved with all of this but how very sorry he was ( there were a few other Germans I met who had a similar attitude ... the national guilt complex must have been incredible.) The camp was absolutely spotless clean, but that didn't prevent my imagination from running wild ... I could only sit down and cry ... at least I had a small glimpse ...

Hampburg - The Beatles!

I had to go see where they played. They started in Liverpool, and this is where they got a lot of their growth.
Don't they look incredible, so young, not yet polished ...
Their picture and music were everywhere!
On to Scandinavia!

Scandinavia!

I have an uncle in Malmo (Sweden) and I stayed with his family for a few days
My cousin had a brand new baby ... she immediately took a liking to me!
My uncle thinks we subsist on pizzas. Asks me if I like them all-dressed ... I open the box ... there's a fried egg on top of a mish-mash along with just about everything possible one can imagine.
Fortunately, I also get to taste some Swedish stuff - herring, crawfish, meatballs (yep!), Raggmunk & Lingonberries (potato pancakes with longonberries ... mmmm!)

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Copenhagen (Denmark) - a jewel of a city, lots of castles and gardens
Oslo (Norway) - I was hoping to see some vikings, but very few of them are wandering around - apparently they were off somewhere, plotting to invade Newfoundland .... The fjords are incredible.

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Off to Romania

Romania

While planning my trip, I considered taking a side trip to Romania. I went to the Romanian embassy in Ottawa, provided an official with my passport and he promptly left ... for some 3 hours. Keeping in mind that embassy grounds are officially an extension of that country, I became very nervous ... were they going to pack me in a diplomatic bag and fly me to Romania (still very much Communist and very much anti-Semitic at the time) ...

I booked an airplane ticket with a bunch of Swedes who were off to some tourist destination in Romania.
The plane landed (in Bucharest) and was promptly surrounded by a bunch of very armed soldiers ... the Romanians were doing a very good job of playing with my nerves!
The Swedes going on to some watery place, I'm the only one to de-board ... and, of course, I'm immediately approached by two men in white coats who want to have a look at my belongings ... fortunately, I'd been tipped off that this type of "official process" 'might' go faster if cigarettes were involved and I had purchased a few packs ... sure enough as soon as they saw these, they made some pretty obvious gestures and I gave them a pack ... what apparently would have taken some 2 hours, ended within ½ hour ... one of them, eyeing my maple leaf pin, offered to drive me to a hotel ... he got me there without anything suspicious (surprisingly), I gave him the pin and I was still in one piece and in the hotel ...
Next day, I found my relatives (my father's cousin, her two daughters, and some friends) and they welcomed me with open arms ... two of them offered to show me around and were extremely friendly ... one of her daughters then told me she wanted out of Romania and the best way to do that would be to marry a citizen of the destination country and, of course, she wanted to go to Canada.
Actually, I was tempted and I went so far as to visit the Canadian embassy (after having to get past two armed Romanian soldiers) and it was explained to me that this was valid ... but did warn that there could be illegal schemes involved and that I should be very careful and ensure that I do check it out.
After some sight seeing with me finding some of the sights a lot more familiar than I had expected and my extremely shaky Romanian starting to catch on, I was safely off (with, of course, more cigarette bartering - I was a pro by that point!) back to Sweden.

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Amsterdam next!

Amsterdam

It's not as if the smell was foreign to me (after 4 years in University ...), but as soon as I got off the train, I was totally overwhelmed ... and as I started walking towards my hotel, I must have been approached some 10 times with offers of "really cheap but really good" stuff ... I'm not sure if I needed to buy any ... all I had to do was breathe ...

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Off to Paris and then HOME!

My last destination!

My flight the following day of my Amsterdam stay. I took the overnight train (my beloved Eurail Pass still functioning like a charm ... I love my parents ...), took the Metro to the airport ... aaannnddd French bureaucracy hit ...

as my flight to Europe originated in Toronto with a stopover in Montreal, my return flight had me going back to Toronto.
I was already well aware of this and Air France had told me (and I had it in writing) that there would be no problem with disembarking in Montreal.
At the airport I was told that off course I could get off, but my suitcases could not (suitcase bigotry!) ... no amount of attempted common sense discussion would move them
The best that I could get was a flight the next day ...
An extra night in Paris? Not necessarily anything I could much complain about ... I had enough money left to check into a cheap hotel ... and then do the wine, cheese and baguette shtick yet again ...

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Going Home!

Home!

I arrive at the airport the next morning aaannddd "what are you talking about??!"
AARGHH! ... They had no record of me on a flight to Montreal ... I wanna cry ... One of the people who had been on the discussion the previous day, saw me (and my tears?) and came over (Note - she was pregnant ... I'm guessing her motherly instincts kicked in ...) and practically shoved aside the one person who seemed to be in charge and grabbed the keyboard and started furiously typing, printed the ticket, handed it to me - "Je suis vraiment désolé pour ces problèmes. S'il vous plaît avoir un bon vol!"
I cannot possibly elaborate just how grateful I was at that very moment ... I thanked her profusely and I asked for her name so that I could write to Air France about her ... she just gave me a nice smile and told me to get on the plane ...
Phew ... I get on and sit back hoping to have a few relaxing hours (I'm never really good at sleeping on a plane.).
Two gents (French) sitting beside me, in full conversation the whole time. I'm doing my best to ignore them, but then I hear "Vive le Quebec libre!"
I couldn't let that go, so I asked them what they meant by that. Their response was something to the effect - English Canada has been subjugating the French for hundreds of years and Charles De Gaulle came to Canada to liberate the French!. OyGevalt! I asked how familiar they were with Canadian history. And then said something to the effect that when DeGaulle said it, it was because he heard someone whisper it and that he actually had no idea what he was saying ... also, it's a "known fact" that DeGaulle was extremely feeble in the mind at that point in his life (no idea if that was true, but it certainly seemed plausible to me ...)
For some reason, they seemed insulted by that and chose not to speak with me any further ... I was NOT insulted by that ...
Montreal! - I disembark ... I go through customs with possibly the friendliest customs officer I've ever run across ... she ended her questions with a big Welcome Home! ... all I could say to her was that I had been on a great vacation but the best part was coming home and her welcome ... and I took her name and wrote the best complimentary letter l could come up with!