Traipsing around Europe at 22

Writing Life: 26

(Warning: The photos that follow were taken with a Kodak Instamatic camera—you know, with real film—back in the spring and summer of 1982. Most are blurry and hazy, like some of my memories from that special time.)

I came of age—assuming I have, by now, come of age—in an era when young people hitchhiked around Europe, often in an effort to “find themselves.” I’ve always thought that such bohemian European odysseys might be important, even life-changing, for those who may have felt a little “lost.” I don’t believe I was “lost” when I traipsed around Europe with a backpack and a guitar back in 1982, so while the two months or so abroad were wonderful, I wouldn’t describe them as life-changing. Then again, perhaps they were, and I just didn’t really notice at the time. Now, in hindsight, I think the journey did leave its mark on the young, skinny guy who more than two decades later, would turn to writing novels.

(l) On a train headed towards the French Riviera. (r) After reaching the Côte d’Azur and following the signs to our campsite.

Rob Thériault—a dear high school friend who’d taught me to play guitar a few years earlier—and I backpacked our way around Europe in the spring and summer of 1982. Over the course of two months, we traveled to and through more than a dozen countries including England, Scotland, Belgium, France, Spain, Morocco, Italy, Greece, West Germany and East Germany—not yet united back then—Austria, Switzerland, and the Netherlands. I think that’s all of them, but it was a very long time ago.

Sometimes we hitchhiked. Sometimes we took trains. Sometimes we took ferries. We usually stayed in youth hostels but occasionally camped. We carried everything we needed in our backpacks and we shouldered a guitar as well. At the time, neither of us could have given up playing guitar, singing and songwriting for two months. So we brought one with us. There was nothing like breaking out the six-string late at night and singing some crowd favourites to bring together a group of young travellers from many different countries all assembled in the common room of some seedy youth hostel. Many of the kids we met in our travels spoke no English, but they somehow knew the words to James Taylor’s Fire and Rain, or Don McLean’s American Pie, or John Denver’s Leaving on a Jet Plane, or Michael Murphy’s Wildfire.

I’m the one with the guitar. We’re probably at a youth hostel, perhaps in Spain. This photo is even hazier than the others, but I guess that’s appropriate. We were all in a bit of a haze that night, as I recall, and much of the next day, too.

We had plenty of adventures. When you’re staying in youth hostels and taking trains, adventures were hard to avoid. Travelling through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin was a sobering experience, particularly our conversations with the young East Germans we met. At the time, they conceded sadly that they’d likely never be able to visit Canada. Little did they know that the Berlin Wall would fall seven years later.

(l) Pensive at an East Berlin restaurant. (r) Showing off a few souvenirs of our visit to Communist Germany. I don’t remember any of these fellow travellers. We’d met them at Checkpoint Charlie and hung out together in East Berlin.

East German border guards boarded our train to accost us when they thought they’d seen me taking photos out the train window—I had been. They demanded my camera but let us go with just a tongue lashing when I declined to hand it over (ahhh, the folly of youth). I still have those pictures. We were strip-searched in Morocco when our tupperware container of peanut butter aroused suspicion. We skied in our shorts in Innsbruck. We ate in a Chinese restaurant at the foot of Scotland’s—and the UK’s—tallest mountain, Ben Nevis. We raced mopeds around Corfu. We walked through the casino in Monte Carlo and toured the UN in Geneva. We even climbed the Tower of Pisa. And we met some fascinating people, most of them our age, along the way.

(l) I think this is in Tétouan, Morocco, post-strip-search. (r) On the overnight ferry to Corfu, Greece.

Late in the trip—hence the longer hair—on the very top of the leaning Tower of Pisa after climbing the circular staircase with no railing(!) all the way up.

And, I made my first of many future visits to Paris, long before I ever thought I’d be a writer, or become fascinated by the expat writers in 1920s Paris.

Competing with climbing the leaning Tower of Pisa for the most touristy shot of our entire adventure.

So what. I backpacked through Europe. Big Deal.

Agreed. Many—perhaps most—of my friends in their early twenties back then slung a pack on their back adorned with a Canadian flag, and hit the road, just as Rob and I had. My own two sons made separate pilgrimages to Europe when they were that age. So why have I exhumed these memories and hazy photos here on Substack? I’m not entirely sure. But I’ve come to believe that my two months in Europe nearly 41 years ago, may have helped lay the groundwork for my future writing life. Who knows for sure? But I do remember the trip opening my eyes to the world beyond my own little life in Canada.

Arriving in a new country—which as I’ve mentioned above, happened more than a dozen times on that trip—just made me want to learn all I could about where we were and where we were headed next. I pored over my weatherbeaten copy of Let’s Go Europe. We picked up English language tourist brochures and other information about where we happened to be at that moment. We toured museums and art galleries. We spoke to people and asked questions. We weren’t only tourists. We were trying to figure out where we were in the world and how we fit in.

That entire tripped seemed to supercharge my interest in international affairs. The Falklands War was fought almost entirely during our trip and was a principal topic of conversation wherever we went. Every Monday, regardless of location, I would find a newsstand that carried Time and Newsweek and I would read them, page-by-page, cover to cover. I’m convinced that two-month adventure ripped the blinders off my eyes and made me at least feel like a fledgling citizen of the world. It fuelled an interest in politics and geopolitics that is still with me today.

(l) Time for May 17, 1982. (r) Newsweek for June 28, 1982. I remember reading both of these issues while backpacking in Europe.

I’ve written in this space before about the critical role I believe curiosity plays in a writer’s life—or at least in my writerly life. In hindsight, I think my two months kicking around Europe nurtured, and then seemed to entrench, my own sense of curiosity. Without that curiosity—boosted and anchored back then by my European adventure—it’s possible I’d never have written my first novel, let alone the ones that followed. So this, in a way, is a gratitude post for that overseas adventure all those years ago and for the seeds of my writing life it may well have sown. The harvest didn’t begin until a couple decades later, but better late than never.

Unfocused in Edinburgh, 1982.

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