Fodor's Travel Talk Forums - Trip Report 10 week car trip in 1967

Since a previous thread indulged in reminiscences of a time gone by, I thought I might revive this trip.

10 weeks in Europe. It might be useful to have a map to follow the itinerary.

I flew to London, met my traveling companion there, and took the train-ferry-train to Wolfsburg to pick up my car. From there we drove to Berlin, going through East German border control and change of license plate at each border crossings and cursing the fact that the screw holes in the East German plates did not correspond to the screw holes on the car and could not be attached properly. We stayed at my uncle’s a few days, saw a production of Arturo Ui by the Berliner Ensemble in East Berlin, and then left for parts south, going through the border rigmarole all over again. The drive before Salzburg is somewhat vague, but I believe that we stopped overnight in Rosenheim. We stayed in a B&B just outside Salzburg where the accommodations were in a separate chalet-style building (two efficiency apartments) from the main house right along the Salzach. Four years later we tried to stay in the same place, but it was full.

From Salzburg we took the most direct road over the mountains to Yugoslavia, going over the Radstädter Tauern-Pass (part of it was a dirt road), the Turracher Höhe, over the Loibl Pass south of Klagenfurt, using the dirt road instead of taking the tunnel and surprising the Yugoslav border guards. No visa was necessary as Yugoslavia had declared 1967 the year of tourism. In those days one would go to the tourist office and get a room in someone’s house, or be waved down by a young boy by the side of the road to convince you to stay at his parents’ house, thus by-passing the tourist office and any payment to that office or other governmental agencies. That’s what we did throughout Yugoslavia, one way or another. From Bled we went to Ljubljana and then Zagreb where we had a room with an oily man who somehow was able to hang on to a turn of the century apartment, converting the front living room into two guest bedrooms. A young woman appeared to be living in a front closet in the vestibule and was the “maid.” He kept on saying Bitte schön and Bitte sehr while rubbing his hands and worried that our brand new red VW Fastback would be vandalized. I recall a meal in a cafeteria that was pork floating in grease in a very unappetizing way.

And we drove on to Belgrade, using the “super highway”. In Belgrade we stopped at the main train station, found the tourist office and got a room...but while they wrote the address on a piece of paper in Latin characters, all the street signs were in Cyrillic. My traveling companion’s one semester of high school Russian came in handy. Our room was in a fairly modern apartment building, free standing off the main stair well and airy and plainly decorated--I recall a Chagall print on the wall. To use the bathroom, we had to go out into the public stairwell, unlock the apartment’s front door and traipse through the apartment. But someone slept in the living room, decorated in what I consider a Turkish style--Turkish rugs all over the floor and heavy draperies: very dark. Every time we went to the bathroom late at night, we would surprise the young woman sleeping in that room. All communication was with gestures.

We discovered what was called spritze wein--white wine with soda, self-mixed--which was very refreshing during those hot days. We got in contact with some Yugoslav students via a fellow graduate student, saw their parents’ apartment, with the neighbors coming in to watch the evening news. It was an excuse to socialize, because the news clearly was propaganda that everyone had seen multiple times in all its variations. We drove with them in the countryside where we had a very good but very rich lamb stew—cevapcici and raznici were our more common fare, or a picnic of bread, sausage and cheese. They loved driving around in the car, but we also were stopped by road checks, and it probably did not help that there was a mix of foreigners and locals in the car.

From Belgrade I decided to meander in the countryside of Yugoslavia. The itinerary was Belgrade, Lazarevac, Cacak, Titovo Uzice where we stayed in a student dorm and visited their W.W.II memorial (a cave that was Tito’s headquarters for a while). From there we went to Prijepolje, Plevlja and Sarajevo. There were no hotels or other accommodations between Titovo Uzice and Sarajevo, so we had a wild ride from Plevlja. All the roads were mountainous dirt roads and we were told that it would take 6 hours to get to Sarajevo. That was around 6 p.m. We got to Sarajevo at 10 p.m. From Sarajevo we drove to Mostar, staying in a home across the river from the Moslem core of the town. From Mostar we drove to Niksic, via Stolac and Trebinje. Then Titograd (any town name with Tito has since reverted to its pre-1945 name), stopping by the Monastir Ostrog where the monk opened the coffin so that we could see the saint, Cetinje, Budva and Kotor. We entered the tourist office and were greeted with a bonjour, monsieur, madame. We asked for a room, they gave us one and looked at our passports to register us, and when we left, he said au revoir, monsieur. From Kotor we drove to Dubrovnik and got a room (the hosts’ living room) overlooking the old city. We stayed in Dubrovnik a few of days, spent one day on the little island swimming and relaxing. Experienced fireworks up close (the debris was falling on our heads). From Kotor onward we were in red wine country, and also enjoyed a fair amount of seafood.

From Dubrovnik we sent to Split, via Sibenik and its nearby waterfalls, staying with friends of our hosts in Dubrovnik. From Split we drove to Zadar, which was undeveloped at the time. I recall the baptistry on empty land and what was striking about it was that pieces of Roman columns were used sideways as filler in the wall. We stopped overnight in Postojna where the young woman at the tourist office offered us a bouquet of fresh wild strawberries. From there we went to Italy (I still have the red safety triangle we had to purchase at the border), stopping in Trieste to exchange money at the American Express office. We waited in a park for the office to open when we heard the church bells strike three times. Italy was on daylight savings time and we did not know it. On the way to Venice I picked up a ticket for passing a police car in a rural intersection. We found a free parking spot on the causeway. We stayed in a garret in Venice, at least that is the only thing that explain my photo of Venetian rooftops from up close. We clearly had no access to a shower or bathtub because when we left Venice, we went to the Lago di Garda, with a stop in Verona, and jumped in the lake to get rid of the grime that sponge baths would not eliminate.

I do not recall the drive to Florence via Mantova, Modena and Bologna; we finally visited this last city much later. We met my companion’s mother in Florence. She was ending a trip around the world that had started a few months before, so I have no idea how we managed to meet up. I was unimpressed by the Uffizi that I found much too crowded: a statue in front of a painting hung over a tapestry; it's much improved or my tastes have changed. I tried to get my car's gear shift fixed in Florence and had the experience of having to follow the mechanic, who was driving a Porsche, back to the repair shop through the narrow streets of Florence. From Florence we drove to Pisa and its leaning tower, and then on to Lévanto, which I believe is the closest one gets to Cinque Terre by car. The town was not particularly noisy, but we were bothered by the trains roaring out of the tunnels during night, sound that I think was amplified by the hills that enclosed the town except for its access to the sea. We walked away from the town, found a flat rock close to the water where we could picnic and jump in the water to cool off--it was a very hot summer. We drove from Lévanto to Lake Como, by-passing Genoa, stopping for a nap in some woods between Genoa and Milan (for some reason that drive was the one time I felt so sleepy that I had to stop), driving through Milan and Monza to finally stop in Gravedona for the night. The local café had rooms that had just been renovated, and I recall a room with a bath whose French doors gave access to a small balcony with a grand view of the Alps. All this for 1800 lire. I also recall cold smoked trout for dinner. A nice end to our Italian part of the tour.

From Lake Como we drove to Lugano, Locarno, Domodossola, Brig, Martigny to Chamonix where we stopped for a couple of days.

This represents the first five weeks of our trip. To be continued …