The Trip to Sweden

I decided that I wanted to study in Europe, to get a “classical education”. (I thought I knew what that phrase meant – classical education – but I had no clue.) I went to the library for a serious session with a book there that described European universities. I read about Heidelberg, Göttingen, Cambridge, and Oxford and while the German universities fascinated me, one of the entrance requirements was a passing grade on a German language test, and this I knew was beyond me for the foreseeable future.

Then, just as I was closing the book, towards the back I found Uppsala University in Sweden. There I read that the university had been founded in 13xx and built over the ruins of a temple to Odin, and I was hooked! I had to study there. (As history unfolds, you shall see, I ended up at the University of Göteborg on the west coast of Sweden, rather than Uppsala.)

I worked as a warehouseman in La Habra for a few months to pay for a one-way ticket to Amsterdam. I got a ticket with KLM for $136, from New York to Amsterdam with a stop for refueling in Shannon, Ireland. They were still flying propeller driven passenger planes across the Atlantic in 1962.

This required me to get from Southern California to New York. Aside from my airplane ticket, my personal fortune of just over $200 was stashed in my pocket. I hitch-hiked to New York and arrived there the night before my flight left on July 2, 1962.

Shannon, Ireland was a very appropriate place for the mid-flight pause, like Icarus and Daedelus – the symbolism would have been more imposing only if we had landed in Dublin, instead. Stephen Daedelus was the alter ego of my favorite Irish author, and Stephen Dean (for that very reason, combined with the fact that I have always admired the American film actor James Dean) has been my own alter ego, and was very concretely my pseudonym on a wild adventure in New York City the night before I left.

The young man who sat next to me on the flight was on his way to Ireland to study Joyce’s Dublin.

I arrived at Amsterdam’s Shiphol Airport. My high school friend Joy Hartman was there to meet me. Someone told me that Joy was in Holland, and I had visited her mother in Whittier to find out about that. Mrs. Hartman wrote to Joy that I was arriving, and even sent her the date and flight number. I stayed in Zan Daam with Joy and her Dutch family for two or three days before hitch-hiking on to Sweden. Zan Daam is a little harbor town outside of Amsterdam, and the day I started hitch-hiking to Sweden, there were about ten ships docked there. One was a huge Russian ship which dwarfed all the rest of the harbor. I was unable to get work with any of them, so walked out to the highway and stuck my thumb in the air.

(In the United States, hitch-hikers almost universally use an underhanded delivery of the thumbed request for a ride, whereas in Europe it almost invariably delivered over the shoulder. The wrong choice makes you look odd in what is one of the worst places and times to look odd -- while hitch-hiking, it is best to ooze normality.)

My first ride was with a horse-drawn carriage of hay. The driver laughed at me as he stopped and offered me a ride. I was overjoyed, and accepted. I was in no hurry. I was off to the new Old World.

The European countryside, seen away from the big cities for the first time, was strewn with flags and pennants everywhere. We see flags in California, but they are usually the Stars and Stripes, or the California Bear Republic flag, whereas in Holland in 1962 (and this seemed true of Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, as well) flags of all nations hung everywhere. I realize now that I was seeing the hopeful signs of entrepreneurship here – campsite owners hoping to reassure Greeks and Swedes alike that they were welcome. It was not a sign of a grass-roots movement towards even a United Europe, let alone a peaceful world national and ethnic harmony. Even in my naiveté, I was not lured into that belief. I saw a few United Europe bumper stickers, but not a great manifestation of fervor for the idea. It was probably bigger in Berkeley that summer than in Hamburg.

I spent my first night alone in Europe in one of these campsites, in northern Germany. I paid five deutschmarks for the right to roll my sleeping bag out in the midst of tents and pennants and pop music (“I Don’t Wanna Say Good-bye, For The Summer”, and prophetically enough as it would turn out for me, the Italian song “Ay, ay, ay, Katarina” was everywhere that evening.) Then, in the morning, incredibly, I was awakened by a campground boom box playing the Brandenburg Concerti. And the smell and sound of frying eggs.

The campground was just outside Hamburg. I was in Hamburg before noon, where I met three English soldiers. They were from the North Umberland Fusiliers and I could understand most of what two of them said to me, in a language that bore a strong kinship to English, and not a single word that the third one said -- not a word, not all day, not ever. After my detour with them into a pub in the Reeperbahn, an area whose name meant nothing to me that sunny day in early July, I broke loose into the German countryside, leaving the Anglo-American world behind, at last.

I continued north along the autobahn towards Denmark. I was invited to stay the night at the home of a young German farmer who saw me hitch-hiking on the road as the day progressed towards evening. The next night I actually reached the Danish border, although I walked the last few miles on foot. No-one was picking me up, even though I was now using the normal, overhanded thumb gesture. As I neared Denmark, the woods grew thicker and darker, and I heard ferocious dogs barking in the not so distant distance. I waited until I reached a clearing to spread out my sleeping bag, but by then I was in Denmark, and the dogs had stopped barking.

The friendly Danes gave me rides almost immediately, almost every time I stopped. In Copenhagen, I got on a ferry bound for Malmö. It was a sunny day, and I stood at the railing, facing east, watching Sweden grow larger and larger.