I loved listening to retired Toledo teachers Chuck and Sally Caley talk about their trip bicycling 1,100 miles through Europe and seeing their slides.
I realized they saw an entirely different back-road Europe than my mother and I did in June 1993, when we hit all the tourist spots we could pack into a month of travel.
The itinerary for our once-in-a-lifetime trip covered nine typed pages. When I showed it to my father, he said, “You’re going to kill her!”
We wound up visiting France, Monaco, Italy, Austria, Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, and London and spent more than a week in Ireland, home of our ancestors.
As I’ve listened to the news lately, especially the terror attacks in Paris and the threats in Belgium, I’ve thought back to that trip with fondness and nostalgia. I laugh about how paranoid my mother and I were as we traveled on our own through Europe, but in reality it was so much safer for Americans than it is today.
What’s happened during the past 22 years? Why is it so much more violent? Or does it only seem more violent?
We often approached strangers seeking directions, since we spent much of our trip lost. For example, after we landed in Paris, we followed others outside and purchased tickets as they had. We asked a woman where we needed to go, and she showed us where the buses depart and where to catch the train. We thanked her and started to walk away, but then turned back.
Showing the woman her ticket, Mom asked, “For a bus or a train?”
Boy, were we in trouble!
When we arrived in Florence, we visited the Uffizi Gallery, but couldn’t find many of the paintings discussed in our guidebook. As we left, we saw cranes and workers repairing damage to the building. It was then I remembered that a month earlier, on May 27, a car bomb had exploded outside the gallery, killing six, wounding 26, and damaging dozens of priceless paintings.
Needless to say, returning to our hotel, I skirted around parked cars, fearing explosions.
Walking through the alleys of Venice, I carried pepper mace in my pocket and shot myself in the leg when a guy accidentally stepped on my foot.
When we arrived in Brussels, Mom and I walked to our hotel, where the clerk required us to leave a passport. We worried about anti-American sentiment after President Bill Clinton had ordered U.S. cruise missiles to attack Iraq only a week earlier, on June 26, in retaliation for an attempted assassination of President George H.W. Bush. Mom, who had dual Irish and U.S. citizenship, left her Irish passport.
Returning to the station to catch a train to Bruges, we needed to pass through a group of four dozen men and women in Middle Eastern clothing. Because of the U.S. attack on Iraq, I doubted Americans were looked upon favorably by most in the Middle East.
I whispered to my mother, “Try to act like we’re French.”
As we passed through the crowd, I whispered “Pardon” in my best fake French, but then heard Mom say simply, “Excuse me” in an unmistakably American accent.
In London Mom took my photo standing next to a Metropolitan Police sign that read: “Bombs … be alert.” It described what to look for and listed a number to call.
While terrorism seems to be increasing, we also experienced it two decades ago. What we can’t do is let the terrorists win, allowing fear to curtail our normal activities. But it never hurts to be a little paranoid.
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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com.
