The Great Road Trip of 1989 Remembered

So, to help pass the days in BOB, and now without homework to keep my brain occupied, I’ve been going through some old photos and slides I’ve had lying around for a couple decades. The thought was, that here, with little else to do, I’d find the time to scan them and put them to some useful purpose. This is that time.

One of the things I found was a kind of photo diary I made in the late ‘80s chronicling my first couple years in the Air Force and of particular interest (to me at least) was a section on a trip a friend named Frank and I took from Comiso Air Station Sicily, to RAF Bentwaters, England in late September 1989.

Now, it must be said upfront that at the time I was only 21 years old and extremely broke. Frank was about the same age and only slightly less broke. When he asked to come with me on the trip I was more than happy to have him along for two reasons - he was great company and he had beer money. Whereas I had a piece of crap 1976 BMW316 which was merely adequate until it literally started falling to bits on the drive - it was one of those ‘character’ cars I mentioned last post. I think we lost three passenger side windshield wipers before we had enough and just taped a sock to the wiper mechanism.

Any of you who know me even a little today know I am perhaps the world’s worst navigator - if we are reincarnated, I was probably the scout for the Donner Party. In 1989 as we studied the map of Europe we would use for our journey, Frank actually said these words: “hey, did you know England was an island?” It was at that point I knew we were well and truly screwed and the map would be of only trifling use to us.

Before leaving Sicily, we decided we had to take a souvenir from base so we 'liberated' a pink flamingo from my boss’ front lawn. We named her Pasha – heaven knows why. We took photos at various points on the route and wrote postcards back to her owner letting her know she was fine and being well looked after. Some postcards had photos – including this one with me in disgustingly dirty jeans (which I’ve cropped) – waving at mortified Swiss people from the highway.

Back in the day, U.S. Forces had gas coupons so we could buy gasoline at US prices (around a buck a gallon) instead of European prices (around $3-4 a gallon) Well, as you can see by a picture here, we didn’t have enough to even get us out of Italy, much less to England. But we made do by sleeping in the car, eating Spam and generally just driving as fast as possible.

Border crossings were fun before the Euro-Zone - it was cold and raining at the Austrian border and a guy straight out of the SS met us and actually said, “I need to zee your payh-pahs” with that stereotypical Teutonic accent that you’d think people really didn’t have and you have a hard time not laughing at when you realize it’s entirely accurate. In Switzerland we stopped at a restaurant called the Churchill because we figured they’d have an outside shot at English. Not so much. We did the whole, ‘point at the menu and eat what comes to the table.’ We got egg rolls. They were awful.

While in Switzerland, Frank christened his Swiss Army knife by cutting a sapling. It was a treasured moment – much like the baptism of a child but without the cake. I swear I saw a little tear form in Frank’s eye. Or perhaps he was just going through detox. It was really difficult to tell back then.



Frank - and what he called "The Cathedral of the world"

 At the West German (it was East and West back then) border, Frank thought it would be funny to play the theme to Patton. The border guard was not amused. We went through 6 international borders on that trip - getting into Germany was the longest. I can't definitively say it was the music, but I can't discount the notion either.  

Now keep in mind we didn’t have anything like an itinerary or schedule. So while driving down the autobahn, shedding windshield wipers, we saw a sign that read, “Munchen 61 km”. In one of those weird, slow-motion, Fred-turns-to-Barney-as-they-both-get-the-same-idea kind of moments, Frank and I looked at each other and after a two second pause where we both whirled through the calendar in our heads, we said, “OKTOBERFEST!”

I'm sure it was the same kind of feeling hippies must have gotten when given Grateful Dead tickets.  

Now, by way of explanation, it’s fair to point out that 12 months in Sicily had given me (and Frank) a prodigious tolerance for alcohol. The mission at Comiso Air Base was that of the Ground Launched Cruise Missile – a ‘special weapon’ variety of the Tomahawk Cruise Missile, that was rendered obsolete due to the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. To even think we were the only ones who had an increased tolerance due to our time at the base (known throughout US Air Forces in Europe at the time as “The Wild West”) would be more than a little naïve. I once witnessed one of my roommates and our first sergeant come perilously close to physical violence with each other – both being nearly paralytic at the time. My two roommates and I even turned half our living space into a bar, which they thoughtfully named in my honor. I was touched.

But I digress… 21 years ago, despite being only 135 pounds, I had a capacity for distilled spirits my slight build belied quite readily. Fortunately for me, however, upon arriving in Munich I was more than a little ill and more than a lot broke. Frank had no such issues.

Our map didn’t actually go to a scale useful for anything other than national highway systems, and as God is my witness, when we pulled off the autobahn we just kind of pointed the car to where we thought the middle of town might be. In less than 15 minutes we were parked in a multi-story car park literally across the street from the Oktoberfest grounds.

As an aside: I would like to think the people who laughingly refer to me as “Magellan” for my total lack of navigational skills, would overlook years of map-reading inadequacy for the one blinding flash of inspiration that allowed us to make quick and easy landfall at the biggest booze-up on the planet. You may leave your apologies in the comments section.

We settled in at the Haufbrau House (the HB) tent. Calling this thing a tent is like calling the Sistine Chapel a painting. It was enormous and there were probably about 2000 people in it - or at least it seemed that way. We settled in with some Kiwis, Aussies and Brits and started in on the traditional “ordering of the beers.” If you’ve never been to Oktoberfest in Munich, beer is delivered by the liter in (or used to anyway) thick-glass steins. And the beauty of this was that they only cost about 7 Marks (about 4 bucks) each. Feeling fragile my notes say I only made my way through about three of these and sat out the next 7 hours or so eating and revelling in a generally sober manner. Frank I believe, again according to my notes, made it through no fewer than 8 – a couple of which he left unceremoniously in the corner directly before we led him away.

Drinking songs, Ein Zwei, Drei, Vier (one, two, three, four – the extent of our German) amidst the English speaking peoples of the Commonwealth ended up in glasses being slammed together. Interestingly, there is a direct correlation between the quantity of beer drunk, and the force at which glasses meet during these songs. Eventually there were pieces of big, thick, glass steins everywhere. And of course there was the obligatory table-top dancing – and polka music - which is almost tolerable once you get sauced up a bit.

Somehow (again a seminal act of navigational inspiration), we made it back to the car. Not being in any way inebriated (many hours, few beers, lots of food – mostly chicken, whole, with no utensils, and very greasy – incredibly fun to rip apart with your hands, eat, and generally wave around like an over-accessorized Monty Python skit.) we made it back to the highway where we slept at a rest area.

The next morning, early, was very, very cold. It was at this point we discovered my car, sock on windshield wiper, did not actually have what amounted to a fan or heat distribution system of any kind. This sucked as we had no ice scraper but plenty of frost/ice. The solution was quite simply to drive like a dog. By putting my head out the window and driving fast, the engine eventually produced enough heat to defrost the windshield – I think it took 15-20 minutes. And despite not really having heat, it felt really good to bring my head in again – although it was then I discovered my window no longer went all the way up. This car would continue to plague me well into 1991 when I just took it out and had it shot.

Finally we ended up at an Air Force base in Germany where Frank knew some folks and we got to take showers – the first in four or five days. Then Frank’s friend took us to Frankfurt where he said we would do something they called “Walking the Steps” whatever the hell that meant.

I find it necessary to point out at this juncture, that all we did was “Walk” – there was no stopping or anything else involved. It is also hopefully unnecessary to remind you that we were, after all, very tired and very broke – even, by this point, Frank.

“Walking the steps” is what it was called to go to the red light district. These were apartment buildings – several stories tall, with steps which you would simply walk up and around the floor and carry on up the next flight of steps. The idea, I suppose, is that it’s like window shopping. I bring this up only because aside from eat, sleep and shower, we didn’t really do anything else in Frankfurt. We had long stopped taking photos.

After Frankfurt, it was on to England. We arrived at Zeebrugge Belgium late at night and just made the last ferry for Felixstowe, England. Frank had some Monty Python lined up for our arrival but alas, the radio died as we reached English shores…it just stopped working, which really summed up the trip quite nicely. We were spent – monetarily and enthusiastically and any other way you want to describe two very tired young men.

The entire trip took just about a week – maybe a little less and was done on a budget, after gas, of probably less than $200 cash, and a couple extra socks. If I had it to do all over again, I’d like to say I would have made a better plan, had a better car, and had more money. But I’m not sure I would.

In the end, I did it with a friend and I honestly don’t think a better car or plan would have made it a better trip. In fact, I think the car being such an utter piece of shit actually makes the memory better if not the actual drive. The lack of a coherent plan – or a coherent understanding of the geography of modern nation-states – was also a bonus – freeing us to just do what we wanted to do.

I’m not sure a trip like that would be a wise (or necessarily possible) thing to do in 2010 and that's kind of sad. Still, I am sure that somewhere, there are a couple of 21-year-old broke guys doing or planning something fairly stupid that in 2031, they’ll look back on and think, ‘those were pretty good times.’

If you’re still with me here, thanks for slogging your way through this. I like to think it’s a pretty good story (but I have the book version and you have the movie-trailer version). In the end, any story that’s pretty good to at least a few people deserves to get out and breathe every now and then rather than just sit unused in someone’s head. So thanks.

 For your trouble, here's a little more of Switzerland/Austria...