On the Road: Europe 1985

Forty years ago, I ventured across the Alps solo. Not hiking. Driving. In a BMW.

Klausenpass, Switzerland

ONE
Destination: Paris. Hoity-toity international conference on adolescent psychiatry to present my scholarly paper about the psychology of teenage diary writing. I built a three-week trip around that goal. Week 1: Munich—a homecoming to the city where I lived from ages 12 to 16. Week 3: Drive from Paris to Madrid with my cousin Nancy. But what about Week 2? I settled on a radical idea for me—anxious woman, anxious traveler, determined to discover not only new horizons but new parts of myself. I’d rent a car and drive from Munich to Paris. No phone. No GPS. No itinerary. Just me and my pile of maps.

TWO
Turns out if you rent a car in one country for a one-way trip to another country, you pay exorbitant fees because someone has to drive that car back to its home city. Once in Munich, I asked Avis whether by chance they had a French car that needed to be driven to Paris. Why yes, they did. But it wouldn’t be the putt-putt Ford Fiesta I’d booked. Would I settle for a BMW with French plates for a slightly higher fee? Why yes, I would!

On my way out of town, I scheduled lunch with my ninth-grade German boyfriend, Bernd, nicknamed “Clipper,” the drummer in my brother’s band, The Controversy. He was 35. I was 31. We’d lost touch. I found him in the phone book. He was shocked. I was nervous. While parallel parking in front of his office building, I crunched my Beemer into a Volkswagen Beetle. A small dent on the VW, nothing more. Police. Paperwork. Embarrassment. More paperwork. Then a hurried lunch at an outdoor cafe—affirming, to my shock, that our connection of 16 years earlier was real, not just a silly crush that my parents forbade. Just because he was 19 and I was 15? So unfair.

THREE
The plan: drive a few hours a day, land where I landed, and find a place to stay through each town’s Chamber of Commerce. Night 1: Stunning Sporthotel, Igls, Austria. Wondering what might have been with Clipper back then. Tears and regrets, buried longings. After a touristy Night 2 in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, on to Switzerland.

Somewhere near Murg, a choice: Take the Autobahn or the twisty mountain pass? I steered away from the superhighway and headed through Glarus and Linthal to the base of Klausenpass. I’d promised myself (and my therapist): risk over safety, adventure over caution. Barely breathing, I navigated the spectacular road—treacherous hairpin turns, no guardrails. Climbing, climbing, no turning back. At the summit, I pulled over and whooped into the fresh alpine air. No one in the world knew where I was.

FOUR
Night 3 in touristy Lucerne, then on to Murten (Morat), France, a historic medieval town. In my diary, I wrote: “Today, I tried to think of all the French words I know, starting with A—got as far as C and got bored. Went back to singing Israeli folk songs and show tunes, including ‘Climb Every Mountain’ and ‘The Sound of Music’ (natch).” Switched from my very decent German to my semi-decent French and chatted in all three languages with an elderly Swiss couple at a terrace restaurant near the lake. Night 4 at the Château de Challanges, outside Beaune, a scarily quiet old castle. I was one of only two guests. I barely slept.

$6.30 a night. Coin-op bathroom down the dark hallway.

Splurgy dinner at a three-star restaurant in town. I wrote, “Menu: crayfish mousse, noisettes d’agneau [little chunks of lamb], les pois et les haricots verts [peas and string beans], a cheese platter, then a dessert cart: chocolate quelque chose [something-or-other], framboise [raspberry] mousse, a meringue with sauce, ananas [pineapple] sorbet. For a whopping $13.50. It was nerve-racking but un peu drôle [a little funny] not to know shit about what things were or how to order them. Told myself what I’m doing takes a lot of courage and it’s understandable to feel uncomfortable in a foreign country (alone!) and eating at a fancy restaurant.”

Getty Images: Grant Faint

I also realized I was driving myself through Europe—not riding in the back seat with my brother, parents in the front, as I had on so many trips for so many years as a teenager. Now on my own. In control.

Our last road trip as a family, from Munich to Paris, Summer 1970

FIVE
Paris! Said au revoir to my BMW and bonjour to stuffy, older, mostly male psychoanalysts and their stuffy old papers. At night, dinner in the Eiffel Tower, bateau-mouche on the Seine. On the third day, my turn. I sat at a long table with three other panelists and a French moderator and hoped for the best.

I looked out at the hotel ballroom packed with eager attendees, many wearing headphones for the simultaneous translation. I cleared my throat and began: “My paper is titled ‘The Diary as a Transitional Object in Female Adolescent Development.’” Uproarious laughter. What? Why? I stopped. The moderator leaned over and said kindly, “The translator said ‘diarrhea.’” Oh. Mon. Dieu. Long pause. What could I do but laugh along and proceed?

I admire that scholarly persona, the MSW with ambition who, at 28, wrote: “The diary as a transitional object enters the sphere of object relations. The diary becomes a familiar, known extension of the emerging self and facilitates the negotiation of the adolescent passage.” She aspired to a prominent career—conferences, lectures, receptions, publications, recognition.

But after Paris, after I quit my clinical job, after a hellish year in academia, I focused on my own intensive therapy. I wrote in my diary every night, sorting out the twists and turns of my life, determined to navigate new passages toward my real, full, authentic self. No BMW necessary.

Dear Readers: Hope you’re enjoying my Substack, where I post five snippets every Friday. I’m keeping a free subscription option for the foreseeable future, but I’d be grateful if you’d lend your support by subscribing ($7/month or $70/year) and sharing. And stay tuned for updates on my search for a publisher for This Is 70: A Life in Micro-Memoirs, a linked set of 70 micro-memoirs of exactly 70 words each, written to mark my 70th birthday last year. Thanks for visiting!