The trip not taken

My last couple of years of high school, a friend and I planned on doing the Europe on $5 a day thing. Iceland Air had cheap tickets, we were going to get a 3 month train pass, and then just travel around. I saved and saved, family bought me the right kind of back-pack, shoes, etc. and I read and re-read the guide book. Then, the other girl backed out and decided she was going to move to Florida instead. Because I wasn't 18 yet, my parents said I couldn't go. So, I took my money and took a vacation in Florida instead, but I was devastated that I didn't get to go tramp around Europe. Fast forward a few years, and my Reserve unit was going to go to Germany for their 2 week training. The only problem was that I was just about ready to have a baby and couldn't go. I thought for sure I was never going to get to Europe. Lo and behold, my unit came back to Germany 2 years later and I finally made it to Europe, but certainly had no idea that I would move here a few months later. So, it took me until I was 30 to make it to Europe!

The missed trip I regret the most was in college. One of my favorite Political Science professors led a trip to the Soviet Union over Spring Break each year. I was lazy, and never gathered the paperwork or saved the funds to go. I still haven't been to Russia, but it is near the top of my list. The other was a 3 week trip to France arranged by my high school French teacher. It would have been the summer after I graduated, but it was canceled because not enough people had signed up. I spent the money on a stereo, and it was twenty years before I finally got to Europe.

I had a chance to go to South Africa including a safari, visiting Johannesburg and Cape Town. I didn't go because of a work obligation. Should have gone. Pam

Mine was the typical high school two-week trip to Europe planned for summer 1986. I had remembered that there was terrorist activity in Europe that had ended up cancelling outer trip, but reading the RAND Corporation's listing of 1985-86 attacks was really sobering. I hadn't at all remembered all the incidents. Just to give a sampling: Dec 1985, terrorists attacked the airports in Rome and Vienna, killing 19 people. There were several attacks in Parisin the winter and spring of 1986 on the Champs Élysées, in the FNAC at Les Halles; a TGV outside Paris was bombed in March; a bomb was detonated in the Eiffel Tower; the West Berlin discotheque was bombed; and a Rome-Athens flight was bombed in June, killing 4 Americans. Needless to say, that trip was not made. I went in the summer to the USSR with my college Russian professor, but didn't end up seeing the "classic" grand tour sites of Europe until the summer of 1994. After finishing a year of teaching English inHungary, I went on my own grand tour as a solo traveler, heading to Paris from Budapest on a 24-hour bus. Whenever I see school groups here with their teachers, I wonder what that experience would have been like. One funny thing is that I'm quite good friends now with the teacher who would have led that trip. She's recently widowed, and I really wish I could get her here to visit me now that I live here!! I still remember the prep meetings in her living room and getting so excited about our trip.

Hi Karen, Greece/Turkey - Have you seen those street scenes lately?

Easter Island and the Galápagos. Fixing that in January since I decided it's kind of on the way back to Antarctica.

I encountered a German friend in a train station bathroom (talk about random!) in Freiburg, Germany in the late 80's. She was chaperoning a school class trip to Berlin and invited me to come along. I was enroute to meeting another friend in Paris, so I didn't go, missing a chance to see divided Berlin. I've always regretted not seeing that: I didn't make it there until this past summer. But I guess I don't regret ditching on the friend who was waiting in Paris. We didn't have cell phones in those days or any other way to get in touch, so that would have been pretty rude! (Amazingly, we managed to find each other at Notre Dame, at noon, on the designated date. Seems crazy, now.)

1. My high school trip to Paris was canceled due to concerns about terrorism after the Pam Am 103/Lockerbie bombing. It would be ten more years before I finally got to Europe. 2. Friends stationed in Cairo, Egypt, invited wife and me to visit. Then the friends were evacuated during the Arab Spring. When they were finally returned to Cairo, the offer was extended again, but we had basically committed our money and time elsewhere and couldn't afford to go anymore. 3. A friend since childhood was working in India and offered me free housing and even free use of his car and driver for guided tours if I could just swing the vacation time and airfare. I just never got my act together to accept the offer before he moved back to the States. That one stings the most.

What depressing stories.

Back in the late '60s I was mid-way through my college studies. Two of my high school classmates had toured Europe one summer. They told me great stories about hitchhiking around the Continent, sleeping under bridges next the Seine, and taking vitamins to ensure that their diets were complete. These stories were so exciting that I planned on taking a motorcycle trip for a month or so. I spent a lot of time looking at sources for used motorcycles such as British Goldstars and Nortons (are they even made these days?), and looking at sleeping options. Unfortunately, the US government intervened with these plans. The new ive Service laws required that college students needed to make regular progress towards their degree in order to keep their education deferments. If one lost the deferment it would be a quick trip to the army induction center and, most likely, an overseas posting. Rather than risk losing the deferment I attended the summer session at college. Didn't make it to Europe for another 30 years.

I did a semester-long exchange to France, which was great. But in that time, I only traveled to Paris, Brussels, London, and Berlin. When I think of all of the other places I could have visited, only have having to pay for train fare and hostels ... I ran out of money for a bit, but when I got more, I was too settled in and looking forward to seeing friends and family again. I almost went to Munich and Nice and I could have gone somewhere every weekend!!! I'm making up for it now, but with airfare and vacation time, it's not as easy!