Today I received our alumni newsletter, and it included a marvelous story about a man who attended JYM in the 1950's -- he had purchased a motorcycle for $200 and explored Europe during the two-month spring break.
As I rocked Baby V to sleep this afternoon, I realized that my best European spring break story will never appear in the JYM newsletter. It should never appear in print. I should probably NOT ever tell this story at all, but it's too ridiculous.
Julie and I were idiots.
She was studying in England, and met me down in Munich to go adventuring together during our spring breaks. We had very little money and very little by way of European sophistocation or geographical knowledge.
Our goal was to go to Cyprus, because Julie was dating a Cypriot guy up in England (where, I am told 90% of the young men of Cyprus go to become accountants), and Cyprus was a tropical, interesting destination.
We got a ride to Prague with a guy I knew from SUUSI and a buddy of his. We got ourselves safely to Prague, and let the guys buy us some dinners before we were ready to head south.
Julie and I traipsed into the Prague train station and bought two tickets to Athens. We had a vague notion of the geography involved, and that it might take a few days to get there on the train, but whatever! We were cute and young and it would all work out, right? All aboard!
We changed trains in Budapest. Julie and I lurked around the station, bought some paprika-flavored potato chips, pretzels, water and orange Fanta. My memory of those four items is perfectly crystallized.
About five hours south of Budapest, Julie headed out of our little sleeping compartment to get us some dinner from the dining car. She came back with some startling information: there was (a) no dining car, and (b) no one else but the conductor on this train.
There was no snack cart, no fellow passengers -- no one, it seemed but the train engineer and a conductor. It was just Julie, me, a bag of paprika-flavored potato chips, pretzels, water and orange Fanta.
"Maybe it's just until we get out of Hungary, and we'll hook up with the REST of the train," we told ourselves.
We fell asleep, having rationed a few potato chips and pretzels for our dinner.
At about three o'clock in the morning, the train stopped and a Yugoslavian border patrollman slammed open our compartment door. "VISAS NOW," he declared.
This was the first we realized that we were going to go through Yugoslavia. I told you we were idiots. And apparently, in order to enter the country, people need visas. Whoopsie!
"We don't have visas!" we chirped, smiling and looking as goofy and harmless as possible.
"Not good. Get off the train."
OK, what the crap? Two greater airheads had never entered this country before, and now we realized we were going to be executed. For sure.
We stared at each other in the dim compartment. What should we do? Ultimately, Julie seriously took one for the team. "I'll go."
"No, oh my god, where do they even want us to GO? It's abandoned out there."
"They aren't letting us into the country unless we go with them, but someone has to stay with our stuff. I'll go."
And like all good bimbos in horror movies, we split up.
She was gone for a very long time. It was more than an hour while I envisioned her being kidnapped or assaulted or god only knows what. I stared out the window at what looked like a shack by the rails. There was a little light coming from behind the blinds. What was going on? Was Julie in there?
I concocted a whole plan to save her life. If the train started moving without her, I was going to pull that emergency exit cord, god love me, I was going to PULL IT, and I was going to start screaming for my friend. Maybe in German?
But she finally hopped back on the train with our visas in her hand. They were in Cyrillic. Oh, Yugoslavians use Cyrillic? Cool.
The train chugged on through the night. At about five AM, our compartment filled with crazy white steam. We couldn't see our noses on our own faces, it was so thick. We debated whether it was some criminal with a hose gassing our compartment, but I braved the hallway and discovered that the whole train had filled up with soupy white steam.
"I think I got my period."
"Julie, seriously."
"No, I think I got my period right now."
That is precisely where a person would get one's period, yes? In the middle of the night on a mostly-abandoned passenger train hustling through a crumbling and defunct republic with shady visas. Oh, and the train is filled with white steam.
We woke up later to discover that all of our stuff was still in the compartment (Who would have stolen it? The engineer and/or the conductor?) and it was daylight. And Julie HAD gotten her period, for sure.
"What am I going to do with these underpants?" she asked.
"God, don't SHOW them to me, I don't know!"
"But I'm not going to pack them back in my bag!"
There was a tiny little garbage container in our compartment, already stuffed with the empty pretzel and chip bags.
"I'm going to throw them out the window," she said.
"You are not."
There were cows. There was a soft spring Adriatic sunrise out the window. There was long green grass and farmhouses at intervals as our train clunked ever southward.
And then suddenly, in a flash of red and white, Julie's underpants joined the tableau.
"I believe we've just added to this country's problems," I said.
We sipped at the Fanta and the water for the next day as the train moved haltingly toward Greece.
At the next sunrise, we arrived in the Athens train station, greeted by a friend of Julie's Cypriot boyfriend, who tried to take us on a goddamn tour of the city right away.
"Alexandros, thank you so much," I interrupted. "But we are starving to death. We are actually starving. To death. Can you please help us find food?"
Julie was so embarrassed. But we ate (I was filled up after two bites, my stomach having shrunken to the size of a walnut), we saw the Parthenon and booked flights to Nicosia for the next day.
Our visit to Cyprus was filled with its own flavors of adventure, scandal and moronic behavior (including but not limited to the purchase and display of pink striped hot pants and the acquisition of a second Cypriot boyfriend), but that is enough for one JYM newsletter.
See, there is no way they want my stories. They've got underpants in them.
8 comments:
I love hearing other people's study abroad stories and this was no exception!
The summer between high school and college, I took the $800 my parents had given me for a computer and I went to Europe by myself. My parents were used to me taking off and disappearing for days at a time, so they had no idea where I was until I called them from Heathrow. I've never heard my mother scream so loud.
I spent the next month going around Europe, staying in hostels and riding the train and putting off going home until I finally ran out of money.
Your Europe stories make me really, REALLY miss those days.
It's funny how this time in our lives -- this time in which we IN NO WAY could ride on a train without a giant Hefty bag filled with food -- feels like the right time to swap Europe tales. Tell me yours, too! Extra points for stories that include underpants.
I fell in love with my foreign exchange student and after he left tearfully told my parents I was going to Spain to be with my beloved. They smirked and said "Good Luck!". They never thought I would get it together. I asked them for a ride to the airport a couple of days before I left. Then stayed way past I said I would and when my Mom would call me and yell at me I would turn his mother and smile and my now boyfriend would tell her my mother was thrilled and said I could stay as long as I wanted. Yep. I am scaaaaaaared to have teenagers.
That is AWESOME. My children are not allowed near Spaniards. or Cypriots.
So funny! You had me scared with your disclaimer, but you're all good. However, I am not exhibitionist enough to tell my underpants stories, considering they are my personal underpants stories, not buddies with whom I am travelling, LOL! :) :)
Dear Mama! What a great story! This IS the story that should have been put into the JYM newletter! C'mon, you cannot possibly make this stuff up, it is just too good!
What an adventure! Those kinds of stories are just the best - the nievete of youth and a bag of paprika potato chips... you can't make that shit up.
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