Trip to Europe, Part Two

For 35 days in 1967, my paternal grandparents took a business/vacation trip in seven European countries. My grandmother Vivian kept a journal, which came into my possession with a number of other bits of history of her and my great-grandmother Leta (her mother) after my grandfather Ed’s second wife Ethel’s death in 2008. Somewhat reliving the experience through Vivian’s eyes creates warm fuzzies for me. She died unexpectedly in 1976 when I was 12 years old, so every turn of phrase, delight and habit reconnects me to her. Heck, just reading her handwriting is wonderful.

While I am not sure what or how much of this information will overtly be included in the book about her mother Leta, the covert participation will come from some of the following notes that I’ve pulled. (By the way, Leta was widowed at the time and stayed with my teenaged uncle and aunt while their parents were away.)

Several of the sites my grandparents Vivian and Ed visited were of particular interest to them (and some to me). In Denmark, they went to Kronborg Castle in Elsinore (the setting for Shakespeare’s Hamlet) and the Palace Rosenborg, where she made notes about the crown jewels: “The jewel case drops in the floor every night and also if you touch the glass. It was well guarded.” At Christian Palace, “We put large felt slippers on our shoes to go in. We saw 20 rooms and there are over a thousand. A large number being used by Parliament.”

As they were Lutheran, my grandmother noted that Sweden was 96% Lutheran “but Catholicism increasing.” She also shares that they saw a 12^th century church called St. Laurens with two pillars in its basement—one with a mother and child and a second with a giant. The legend, she reports, was that they were turned to stone when they tried to tear down the church. She also noted that buildings have hooks on top to “hoist things thro window as staircases too narrow for large articles.” At a visit to a bulb grower with over 100 varieties of tulips and hyacinths in Rotterdam, Vivian sent 100 bulbs home. Many she kept for her own flower garden, but she did give a number of them to our family.

In Brussels, she was intrigued by a city legend of an elderly couple that arrived at the town hall several times a year to marry; however, the officials refuse to let them complete the ceremony, because the man was always drunk. The woman responded that it’s the only way she could get him to come. There is also the famous Mannekin Pis or peeing boy statue, which she notes has 148 different uniforms, although mostly he’s left nude. This statue so tickled them that they bought a liquor decanter of it that my grandfather kept in his bar and still may be somewhere in the family.

While I have done quite a bit of travel myself, the only places we intersected were in London and Frankfurt. In the latter, we all visited the house of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Near the end of the Frankfurt bus tour, she reports that they saw two accidents and a third with the engine on fire. “Our bus driver stopped and put it out with fire extinguisher.” Near Wilderswil, Switzerland, she noted, “Some farmers have their own power station. Farmers put their cattle in buildings in the fields in daytime as they can’t stand the heat and might jump off cliff” (What? Really?) and “Rocks on roofs because of wind.”

Having lived in Ohio all of her life, she was fascinated by meeting people from different cultures. In Amsterdam they “met man & woman from India. She had six diamond studs inside of nose.” I am sure a note like this and accompanying picture thrilled all of us back then. During their tour of Jungfraugh, they met and befriended a couple from South Africa, exchanging addresses. I strongly suspect that this was an Afrikaner—i.e. white—couple.

Other experiences and cultural interests in the next entry.