Hitchhiking Through Switzerland

A lovely day in the Swiss countryside, photographed by Susan Berkowitz

More nostalgia---This time I'm hitchhiking through Switzerland and Germany with my friend Susan Berkowitz during my 1969 summer in Europe. She was living in Amsterdam and when I met up with her we decided to hitchhike for a few weeks. I had taken the notorious Icelandic Airline Charter from New York(?) to Luxembourg, with a short stop in Reykjavik. My flight left in June and returned to the US in August. After a bit of research I found an article about the company, founded in 1944 by three Icelandic Pilots trained in Canada. Here's the pertinent section:

"During the '60s and the '70s Loftleidir Icelandic  pioneered as a low fare service airline across the North-Atlantic flying into Luxembourg, 'the heart of Europe.' The airline became very popular among college students traveling abroad and soon became known as 'The Hippie Airline' ..."

After arriving in Luxembourg, I traveled to England, Scotland and Brussels. Then I took the train to Amsterdam to see Susan, who was renting a room in an apartment.

Susan was constantly taking photographs with a fancy Nikon, while I waited for her

Hitchhiking in Germany, with destination sign in hand

The two of us had planned on driving to Spain in Susan's Volkswagen bug, but when her car was totaled by a tram in Amsterdam the day before we were leaving, we spontaneously decided to hitchhike through Switzerland and Germany, as far as Berlin. She then returned to Amsterdam and I continued traveling by train to Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The hitchhiking experience was priceless and we had great fun. We even got a ride to East Berlin when the Berlin Wall still divided West from East Berlin. I remember waiting in long, nerve-wracking lines while entering the Communist sector.

Here's the 1969 passport I used on the three month European trip. The photo (gulp) was taken by a Milwaukee Journal photographer. My father was music critic for that venerable newspaper, so he rounded up a photographer to take my passport photo. And yes, my given name is Sara. I thought this was my first passport, but I must have had a previous document, since I traveled to Greece in 1964 and the one pictured above is clearly a renewal. Strangely, I have no memory of that 1964 passport or the photo I used. Apparently, passports expired in 5 years then.

At a certain point I decided to use "Taya" on my passports, but I never changed my name officially or encountered any red tape when I switched from Sara. How times have changed!

Using Alice's 1960s passport photo on her book's front cover is brilliant

I loved Alice Water's recent biography Coming to My Senses mostly because her early European experiences mirror my own in so many respects. And then our lives have intertwined in Berkeley since I moved here in 1971. It's strange that she fell in love with food on her first journeys abroad and I remained indifferent until about ten years later. My postcards home brim with excitement about museums, train travel and social interactions, but meals are never mentioned. I remember living on wiener schnitzel in Germany, pastries mit schlag  in Vienna, cheese fondue in Switzerland, raw herring in Amsterdam and a tasting of Scottish cheeses at the Edinburgh International Music Festival. I ate so few vegetables that my health started to suffer by the end of the summer. I can trace my travels and relive the whole European adventure  because my mother saved  the postcards and letters I sent home that summer.  Here's a postcard from Traunkirchen, Austria, where I went to visit friends. I can see she would forward my postcards to my sister in New York.