THE INCREDIBLE MIS-ADVENTURES OF MY FIRST EUROPEAN TRIP

It has been forty years now!

It was going to be a book, but I’ll settle for a blog

The idea for a trip to Europe was born in my graduate studies.  My professors had visited most of the sites on which they lectured, and they punctuated their class lectures with personal perspectives and pictures.  My sister made a trip to Europe and the Holy Land, and then she and my mother toured Europe.  I began to wish for the opportunity.  And as I was majoring in European history, it made sense.  Then one of my professors made this comment which I never forgot: “Sometimes you just have to make things happen.”  So I began to plot for a way to make it happen for David Lawrence to go to Europe.

After receiving my master’s degree, I was able to obtain a teaching position at Wichita Collegiate School, a college preparatory school in Wichita, Kansas.  The year was 1971.  I was assigned a seventh grade class in ancient history.  As we covered Greece and Rome, I made the comment that it would be great if we could go there.  One of the students spoke up and said, “Why don’t we do it?”  I responded that I didn’t see why we couldn’t….”make it happen.”  The students suggested that we do it in two years when they would be in the ninth grade.  I agreed.  The deal was made.  Europe in the summer of 1974!

In the meantime I began to try to figure out how to organize such a trip.  One of my colleagues, Harold Kruger, head of the foreign language department, had sponsored a trip a few years earlier.  This program had lasted six weeks and been coordinated through an organization known as the Foreign Study League.  Harold described how he had done it and gave me great encouragement.  He told me he would put me in contact with a gentleman with whom he had worked, a German teacher at North High School in Wichita by the name of Dieter Daub.  Dieter was a native German, once having served in the Air Force of the Third Reich, and was now an American citizen.  Dieter came to my home to help me plan a five-week program that would include Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Austria, and England.  He took me to Chicago to meet the personnel of FSL and to undergo a training session.  It was intense planning and preparation for two years, but by the school year of 1973-74 we seemed ready to go.

For each six places I sold I would receive one free spot for a sponsor.  Actually, we had some difficulty finding enough teachers at Collegiate who were willing to go.  After all, we were all rookies, and no one knew what to expect.  Finally Diane Rauh, head of the English department and dean of girls; teachers Nell Capron and Sistie Bender, and a young man from our church, Bill Wright, formed the faculty along with me.  

When we left the Wichita airport, I could sense the apprehension both among our sponsors and the families who said goodbye.  Everyone knew that we were all totally inexperienced.  We had with us a few students who had been to Europe before on trips, but a very few.  It was going to be a learning experience for all of us, and what a learning experience it was.

Chicago

The first mis-adventure occurred in Chicago.  We flew there to meet students from all over the country who were converging to board the flight from Chicago to (eventually) Madrid.  Back then we flew charter planes.  I remember it was Capitol Airlines, and, as I found out, they made their own schedules. 

We were told that we would depart at a certain time in the afternoon.  I noticed that it was several hours before that time, and many of us had not seen Chicago.  Being a train lover, I saw a chance to ride the famous El train into town.  So off we went, believing that we had plenty of time to see the downtown area of Chicago and then return to the airport to board our flight. 

Unknown to us, the airline had clearance to depart earlier.  As this large group of several hundred high school students and their sponsors assembled to board the plane, Diane, who had stayed behind, called to the attention of the airline personnel that several of the sponsors of her group were missing.  Only with much insistence did she stall them until we returned, embarrassed and humiliated that we had delayed what could have been an earlier departure.

Bangor, Maine

The aircraft used by Capitol Airlines was unable to carry enough fuel to cross the Atlantic; thus we stopped for refueling at Bangor, Maine.  It was there that we were told that there was a problem with the gyroscope.  Mechanics labored for several hours to repair it, and finally we were told that they were unable to do so; therefore, we would need to wait for the next plane coming in from Europe and board it in order to continue our journey.  I have never figured out if it came in empty or, if not, what happened to the passengers.  Maybe they could have returned to Chicago without a gyroscope, but we were informed that we would not want to cross the ocean without an operable one.  I took their word for it, as I did not want my first Atlantic crossing to be a memorable one for the wrong reasons.

The result was we waited for many hours in an airport hangar in Bangor.  I am not sure if this was the city airport or a military installation, but I suspect the latter.  We were given clam chowder that I assume was fresh and local.  Eventually the plane from Europe arrived, and we departed, many hours off schedule.  I admit to wondering if the aircraft had been properly inspected and serviced before setting out again across the Atlantic, but I prayed and closed my mind to unpleasant possibilities and tried to focus on the exciting prospect of seeing Europe for the first time.

Madrid

It has been exactly forty years, but the view of the plane coming into Madrid and my first sight of the European continent is still quite fresh in my memory.  I recall the red color of the soil and the fields plowed in a circular pattern.  We landed and stopped on the tarmac, and we were then bused to the terminal building.  I can recall the nice hotel and the enjoyment of the sights: the royal palace, the Plaza Mayor, the Atocha railroad station, the rastro (flea market), and my first experience on a subway.  Within hours Madrid was home.  We settled in to tours, classes, and wandering about on free time.  The hotel served the meals, and we could come when we wanted within designated hours and be served.  We soon learned that Spaniards eat much later than we Americans.  I enjoyed my first experience with Sangria. The waiters were young people who played soccer with our kids.  All went well, and our students were amazingly well behaved. 

 During our week in Madrid we attended classes and took field trips, some of which we out of the city.  We visited The Valley of the Fallen, Toledo, and a bull-fighting arena called the Campera with small but live bulls.  The guide on that trip demanded that I enter the ring and do the cape thing in front of the bull.   I did so quite reluctantly, and after a few successful passes, the bull knocked me down in a most unceremonious fashion.  My dignity was hurt more than my body.

During the classes we were told about the government in Spain which was at the time still under the Fascist dictator Francesco Franco.  The teacher stressed that due to the strict enforcement of law, there was virtually no crime, and that our young students were safe in the streets even late at night.  However, she said that police were everywhere listening to everything people said, and if they heard a criticism of the government there would be someone near to “tap you on the shoulder.”

One of our eighth grade students, knowing that Fascists are particularly opposed to Communists, as was explained when we visited the Alcazar in Toledo and were told about the Spanish Civil War, decided he would test what the teacher said.  He went to the window of his room, opened it, and yelled “Hail, Castro!” at the top of his voice.  Immediately police appeared from all directions with their guns pointed toward the window of the hotel.  The student flew across the hall and under a bed for refuge.

 At the end of the week-long stay, we took some of the discretionary funds the company had assigned to me and bought some flowers for the hotel manager to express to him our gratitude for the hotel staff being such gracious hosts.  We thought everything had just been great.  The students had acted so maturely and responsibly, and the hotel was just wonderful for our introductory city of the trip.  Well, it was great until, just after we had presented the flowers, I was made aware of a fracas in the area where our students were staying.  It seems some of the students decided to have a pillow fight.  This little game involved invading rooms, chasing other students down the hall, waiting for them to come in or out of rooms and then whacking them over the head with a pillow…you know how it goes.  It was getting rather wild and loud.

The hotel maids tried to intervene and tell the students that they could not do that.  A maid then walked into a room to see what was going on, and a student was perched on a chair with his pillow, and thinking it was a student coming in the door, brought down his pillow on the head of the maid.  She grabbed the student and began to drag him down the hall as he shrieked, “You can’t arrest me; I’m an American citizen!”  What a way to end our pleasant stay in Madrid.

The Long Four-Day Bus Ride to Florence

Florence was the next campus city on our itinerary, and the company provided us transportation in the form of an endurance exercise by bus as we journeyed from Madrid to Barcelona, then to Montpelier, thence to Cannes and finally, Florence.  Barcelona was uneventful.  I remember my roommate, Bill, and I sitting on the balcony of our room sipping water and watching the activity on the esplanade below.  Bill was an excellent sponsor for his seventh grade group.  I was delighted with how responsibly he handled his assignments, given that he was only twenty at the time.  However, there were two things I came to understand about Bill during the four-day trek.  First, he fell asleep anytime he was in a moving vehicle, meaning that he got four days’ sleep on the way to Florence.  The other was that, as he did not know any foreign language, he had to try to learn the key phrases in the different languages.  But he was always one country behind.  On the four-day trip we passed from Spain through Catalan-speaking territory, through France, and into Italy.  When we arrived in France, Bill learned to say Buenos Dias and Gracias to the French.  When we were in Italy, he was saying Bonjour and Merci to the Italians.  I can’t remember if the Austrians heard Buon Giorno and Grazie or not.

I don’t remember Montpelier giving us any trouble, but such was not the case in Cannes.  We stayed in a college dormitory which was large and very bright inside. I remember thinking what a beautiful facility the students had.  The young French lady who accompanied us on this part of the journey through her country did not bother to give us the name of the college.  Why do that?  It was just an overnight stay.

The students scrambled to find their rooms, and I located mine.  Then some of the students came and found me with the request that I accompany them to see the bathroom facilities.  So I went along.  They opened a door, and I saw a big room filled with numerous shower stalls.  No problem with that.  Then they took me to the next room, opened the door, and I saw a long line of wash basins.  I was beginning to understand why this tour.  As they approached the next door, one of them said, “You won’t believe this!”  They opened it to reveal a room filled with Turkish toilets.  If you are not familiar with them, they resemble shower stalls in that there is no toilet fixture.  There are two designated places to stand.  One does his business and then pulls a cord that inundates the whole stall.  If you don’t move quickly after pulling the cord, you are likely to get your feet wet.  That night one of the seventh grade students approached me and meekly reported that he needed to go and do what one normally does when he sits down, but he was unwilling to use the Turkish toilet.  I laughed and told him to just experience the cultural difference.  “No, Mr. Lawrence,” he said, “I am going to go out and look until I find a real toilet!”  I didn’t hear any more from him; so I suppose he found one.

Finally, off to bed.  Then in the middle of the night I was aroused by knocking on my door.  I got up and was greeted by some girls who said that Mrs. Scheer and one of the female students, Renee, had not returned.  It seems that they had decided to go to the beach for a swim.  It was no problem walking down the hill to the beach from our dormitory, but then the problem arose in remembering how to get back to it.  Well, obviously they had become lost.  So Bill and I went out into the deserted streets of Cannes in the wee hours of the morning.  I headed for a building marked Gendarmerie where I saw lights.  Trying to get awake enough to speak coherent French, I described to the officer on duty that two of the members of our group, one an adult and the other a student, were lost.  He kindly informed me that they were a military unit, and I would need to speak to the police, and he instructed me on how to find the station.  Bill and I went off to the police station.  I informed the police officer of the situation and he asked me if the girl had long hair, and I said she did.  And he asked me if the lady wore earrings, and I said that she did.  He told me they had come there earlier, but they didn’t know the name of the college.  He suggested she call a cab and ask the driver to take her to all the college dormitories in Cannes until she recognized ours.  She was reluctant to do that, and an American lady who happened to be in the station for some reason, had offered to take them home with her for the night.  She consented, the police officer said, and they had gone.  I thanked him, and Bill and I walked out of the station.  As we were going down the street, he came running out after us and said that they had just received a call from the American lady that Mrs. Scheer had decided to call the cab, knowing we would all be worried about them, and that they were now safely back at the school.  We thanked them, and Bill and I returned to try to salvage the night and get some sleep before resuming the bus trip the next day.

When we entered Italy, the young French courier turned us over to our assistant principal for Italy, an intelligent but quite brusque English art teacher named Kathleen Nottridge. She gave us thorough instructions on all kinds of information that we would need in Italy and prepared us well for Florence.  I remember as we came into the city, she sighed, “Ah, Florence, my spiritual home!”  She had also expressly instructed us that we should never let any of our possessions out of our sight at any time.  I recall how she chided me when I left my sword that I bought at the sword factory in Toledo in the hotel lobby for a minute.  “Dear boy,” she said, “Didn’t I expressly tell you not to leave anything unattended?”  I admit to feeling a bit humiliated.  After all, I was a teacher and head of the group; but she was Kathleen Nottridge and also about thirty years older than I. However, at this point in my life, forty years later, I would not at all be insulted if someone called me “dear boy.”

Rome

Ms. Nottridge accompanied us on to Rome.  Having studied Roman history and teaching Roman history, I was excited beyond measure on the prospects of seeing the ancient Imperial capital.  Our first night in Rome included a visit to the Villa d’Este at Tivoli.  As we strolled through the impressive and often grotesque fountains in the gardens, I was made aware that one of our students was in distress.  It seems that Rusty, the young man who had threatened against his apprehension in Madrid by claiming that he was an American citizen, had wrenched his knee climbing around on the hills at night.  Rusty had back surgery before the trip, and he had told his surgeon that he was also having trouble with his knee, but the doctor dismissed it as less important than the back surgery and told him that knee surgery would mean that he couldn’t make the trip.  Rusty was in great pain, and Ms. Nottridge oversaw the operations of transporting him to the Ospedale de Spirito Sancto which, she explained, was a hospital for foreigners.  We weren’t quite used to the fact that we were the foreigners.

After bring in the hospital for a couple of days, the doctors in Rome determined that he could not go on with the program and would need to return to Wichita for surgery on his knee.  I left Rusty in tears as the preparations were being made for his return.  In the meantime, I had missed the field trip to Rome, so I knew it would be up to me to see this city for the first time.  Ms. Nottridge was occupied with helping arrange for Rusty’s return, so I asked some employees of the Foreign Study League if they would drop me off downtown.  I had a map of Rome, and with that I found my way to and through the Roman Forum and the streets of Rome to the Pantheon.  It was a delightful orientation to Rome and truly a discovery quite on my own, as I had no one to explain the sites to me.  I had spent enough time in my graduate classes in Wichita State University under an excellent professor of Roman history that I was able to recognize the landmarks like Trajan’s column and emporium, the Senate building, the Arch of Titus and the arches of Septimius Severus and Constantine, the Tabularium, and other landmarks.  I remember walking past the Victor Emmanuel Monument and through the Piazza Venezia on my way to the Pantheon.  After my wife began traveling with me, Rome became our favorite city.  We were able to spend several weeks there during a month long study in Italy in 1991.

Athens

Our program called for us to fly from Rome to Athens for a four-day campus there and then to return to Rome.  Athens was a magical experience and involved a field trip to Corinth, Epidauros, and Mycene and also a short cruise to the Greek islands of Hydra, Poros, and Aegina.  My same WSU professor under whom I had studied Roman history also taught me Greek history quite well, and so it all came to life in my sight.

Athens was without any hiccups, as I recall, except for what happened on the roof top of the hotel.  The facility was located downtown close to Omonia Square.  We had a few complaints about the place being dirty and the personnel rather grumpy.  But at the time Greece was under a military dictatorship, and so I imagine most people were a little on edge.  The up-side of the dictatorship was the fact that they had zero crime, so our students were safe anywhere at any time in Greece. 

We were told that we would take our breakfasts on the rooftop which I found quite fascinating.  However, Bill Wright and some of the students discovered that on the other side of the wall around the roof-top café actually was the roof of the adjoining building; however, one could not see that roof from the hotel.  Thus to have a bit of fun, Bill jumped over the wall, crouched down on the adjacent roof, and acted as if he were hanging on for dear life dangling six stories above a busy Athens street.  Diane Rauh turned white, shrieked, and came totally unglued.  Suffice it to say that she did not think Bill’s little joke was very funny.

When it came time to fly back to Rome our group was split into two parts, as it was when we flew over.  I recall that my division of the group flew on Olympic Airlines, and I think the other part of the group had a charter flight.  My half of the group left without incident, and it was only after the other group rejoined us in Rome that we heard their harrowing tale.  It seems that just after we left the war in Cyprus between the Greeks and Turks broke out, and the government ordered that the airport be closed for security purposes.    Our group’s charter flight somehow was able to leave, apparently the last flight before the airport closed.  Perhaps someone with the charter company was able to persuade the airport authorities.  I won’t speculate how.

Our First European Train Ride

We completed our campus stay in Rome without further incident, as I recall.  Ms. Nottridge did find time to give me a personal tour of Rome including the Baths of Diocletian.  I think we were there because the train station (Termini, for baths) is adjacent.  I had no idea about European train travel.  Ms. Nottridge did caution me not to let students hang out the windows because the trains pass very close at high speed.  She handed me the master ticket and told me that certain seats in our car were available for our group to occupy to Florence, and after that the seats were reserved as the train moved on toward Austria and Germany.  I went to the compartments where these reserved seats were located and instructed the students there about the situation.  I recall as I handed the master ticket to the conductor that he commented that we would be getting off at Rosenheim.  I commented to him that the ticket said Innsbruck, and that was our destination.  However, my communication skills in Italian were nil at that point, and I determined that by the next time I returned to Europe, I would have learned Italian!

Having done all I thought I should do, I retired to my compartment which I shared with Bill and was soon off to sleep.  In the middle of the night I was awakened by some banging on the door (shades of Cannes!).  I quickly dressed and went out in the corridor to witness major controversy.  It seems that the students did leave the reserved compartments, but some of our adult students and sponsors had moved into them.  Of course, the seats had by then been made out as beds, and these ladies had undressed and gone to sleep.  The people who had reserved the compartments boarded at Florence, and were quite irate that they could not get in them.  I could hear one Italian man yelling “Policia,” and that is a word I had no difficulty understanding.  The ladies refused to open the compartment doors as they were in their nightwear, and so the porter used his key to reveal them crouching in horror and pulling the covers up around them.

Eventually they moved, and we had to go through the car looking for empty areas that were indeed reserved for us.  In one compartment, two of the places were reserved for the Florence-boarding passengers and the other four spaces for our group.  I noticed that four seventh grade girls were rather startled when an Italian couple got in, and the man began to pull off his pants in front of them.  Given that his wife was with him and the girls assured me they were all right, I considered that we had just witnessed a cultural difference in habit.

But the experience was not over.  Everyone settled in for the rest of the night.  I awakened early and went down the corridor to the rest room.  The train had stopped, and as I looked out of the window, I realized that we were in Innsbruck.  I went for the conductor who was still insisting that we needed to get off at Rosenheim.  I ran back to our compartment and alerted Bill, and the two of us ran through the car yelling to the group to get out immediately.  Ms. Nottridge had warned me that stops at stations were not very long and that in case of emergency bags could be passed through the windows.  We stationed some of the boys outside the windows and had the girls pass the luggage down to them.  The man in the compartment with the girls tried to help them, and their bags tumbled down on him and his wife, causing considerable protestations on his part.   But we did manage to get everyone and all the bags off the train before it pulled out of the station.  Our resident principal for Austria told me that it was a good thing we did because Rosenheim was 100 miles from Innsbruck.

Steinach im Tyrol

Our four-day stop in Austria was designed to be a relaxing time at the mid-point of the five-week study program.  Students had been attending classes and exposed to much educational information, so for these four days they could just enjoy the cool weather and the beautiful Alps.  Some of them actually went mountain-climbing.  I am glad I didn’t witness it, given the stories I heard.

Our group was divided into six smaller units and boarded with Austrians in their homes.  This arrangement gave them an intimate experience with Austrian people and their way of life.  I think I had six boys with me, and we were assigned to an older lady named Frau Rosa.  She spoke not a word of English, and my German was now given its first work-out.  I don’t think I ever found out how Bill did; I hope he was not trying out what Italian he had learned.  But Bill, being quite outgoing, never had a problem communicating, using pointing and repetition of English or whatever language phrases he could find to use.

Frau Rosa obviously ran a tight ship.  We had been told that no one could take a bath there, but that given the cool mountain weather, it really wasn’t necessary.  I remember asking her if one of the students, Matt, could wash his hair and being told that he could not.  Drinking water and die Kloset was it.  One of the boys dropped a glass and broke it, and I was concerned that we might get reprimanded.  I reported it to Frau Rosa, and she thanked me and let the matter go.  I spent some of my free time writing my wife, and she would stop and take note of my “Liebesschrifte”.  On one occasion she asked me to have the students fill out a Zittle, a piece of paper with their names and addresses on it.  I could tell she was quite organized, and all of us were a little afraid of her.

John, the eighth grade student who cried out “Hail, Castro” from the hotel window in Madrid, had permission to leave Rome and visit some of his relatives in north Italy.  He rejoined the group in Steinach, and with the help of a young lady who worked for FSL, we moved a bed into our dorm room for John.  At the end of the time, when we were getting ready for moving on to Paris, she told me that we would need to move the bed back to the sitting room where we obtained it.  In the process the bed scraped on the linoleum floor and raked up a V-shaped piece of it that resembled an accordion.  I think there must have been a sharp piece of something on one of the legs.  The young lady and I were horrified, and she commented on how angry Frau Rosa would be.   This time we did not report it to her; for one reason, the group was ready to leave.  However, I made sure I reported it to the FSL office in Steinach.  The man in charge told me he would take care of it.

However, when we arrived in Paris, we were notified that the student who damaged the floor in Austria would need to pay for it, and it was quite a tidy sum.  We explained that we had cleared it and that no student had done it, but the young lady and I as we moved the bed back to its original location.  It was an accident that occurred in the course of our doing our duties, so I thought the League should take care of it.  The incident didn’t end there, as we were confronted with it in England, and even told that we could not leave London for the USA until the matter was resolved.  Well, we did leave, so I assume that the FSL insurance or something of the sort took care of the problem and pacified Frau Rosa.

Paris

My memory tells me that we had some small incidents in Paris, enough that we gained the feeling that Paris was a laid-back city where things did not go with quite the orderliness as in the Germanic lands.  However, I do not recall a major incident…except some very loud people in the room next to Bill and me.  Bill was anything but timid, so he stood in the corridor and pounded on the door and told the occupants in no uncertain terms to shut up.  

Through the years we came to joke that if anything was going to go wrong, it would be in Paris.  Yet other than recalling that accommodations and food were not the best and the noisy night in our hotel, no other single event stands out.  I remember my fascination with the Paris Metro system and the wonder of this City of Lights.

London

Our last five-day campus was in London.  Here I remember everyone was assigned an individual room.  Our rooms throughout the trip were either in college dormitories or religious houses, and it seems to be the custom in England that students live alone.  Our students didn’t complain about the isolation, but did seem joyous that they were in a country that spoke English, even if it was slightly different than our American form of the language.

The only strange event occurred on our field trip to Stonehenge, Salisbury and Winchester Cathedrals.  It had been an enjoyable day.  We had a couple of young Englishmen accompanying us, one as the coach driver and the other as a courier for the group.  It was very late at night, and they stopped at a pub on the way back to London.  Without telling us that they would be a while, they left us to sit on the coach while, I assume, they downed a pint or did some partying.  I was aware that it was well past midnight  something…and, of course, he did.  He went into the pub and in very short order emerged with the two English guys in tow and looking very sheepish.

Back to Chicago

The last incident occurred when our charter Capitol Airlines plane landed in Chicago.  Six of us, five of the male students and I, had purchased decorative swords at the factory in Toledo, Spain, where the swords were made in Medieval times and used by the knights in shining armor.  They were our treasures, souvenirs par excellence of our trip.  When we checked our bags in London, they had us simply put the swords on the belt, so when they came off, they slid down the ramp and hit the ground, damaging the points and bending the shaft of the swords.  Students deplaning watched this process in horror, and one student to whom I shall always be grateful, grabbed my sword and carried it down in his hand.  Mine was the only one not damaged, and it as hung proudly in three homes since.  Today it adorns my upstairs office.

There is probably more that I have forgotten over the ensuing forty years.  I returned home to my wife and two boys.  I remember trying out my English accent on my younger son who was annoyed with it.  He did like the little double-deck London bus I had bought.  My wife said, “Well, I guess you have got that out of your system,” and then about three weeks later, after I had rested up, I informed her that we were planning another trip in two years.  That time she went with me and has gone ever since.  We organized other Collegiate study trips in 1976, 1978, 1982, 1983, 1985, and 1986.   Then in 1986 I obtained a position on the faculty of Lipscomb University in Nashville, and we organized programs for college students and whoever adults wanted to join us in 1988, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 2002.  Alice and I spent our month in Italy and south France alone in 1991, and we went along as sponsors and teacher on the Lipscomb in Vienna semester in 1999, 2005, 2007, and 2010, and on the Lipscomb 2-month program in London in 2001.  We have also traveled on our own many times with group tours.  So what began with a series of incredible misadventures led to forty years of European travel!  And we are very grateful for the opportunity.