Embark

By Paul C Scholz

1973 HITCHHIKING TOUR OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA AREA. JOURNALED DAILY FOR SIX MONTHS ON THE ROAD BY A 21-YEAR-OLD MIDWESTERN AMERICAN FRESH OUT OF COLLEGE. WRITING FRIEND ACCOMPANIES TRAVELER ALL THE WAY TO TURKEY. TRAVELS FROM NEW YORK TO ICELAND TO LUXEMBOURG. PARIS, LONDON, AMSTERDAM, MUNICH AND ATHENS. ROOFTOP ACCOMMODATIONS IN PARIS AND THESSALONIKI. VAN GOGH MUSEUM, LE LOUVRE, HOFBRAUHAUS, DACHAO CONCENTRATION CAMP, ORIENT EXPRESS FROM LJUBLJIANA TO THESSALONIKI. GREEK ISLANDS TO TURKEY WHERE TRAVELS WERE EXTENSIVE. ANKORA, ESKISEHIR, ISTANBUL, AKCAKOCA AND ANTALYA. ADVENTURES INCLUDE MEERSHAUM PIPE FACTORY, BLACK SEA HIGH TIDES AND JAIL TIME IN ANTALYA. COMPANION'S FAMILY BECOMES FAMILY AWAY FROM HOME WHILE STAYING WITH THEM IN ANKORA FOR SIX WEEKS.
THE REST OF THE JOURNEY IS SOLO. A FLIGHT FROM ANKORA TO ROME. THE POPE AND DAVINCI. LEANING TOWER OF PISA. EL DUOMO AND THE UFIZI IN FLORENCE. TRAINRIDE TO VENICE BRINGS HIM TOGETHER WITH A TRAVELING AUSTRALIAN WOMAN. TO THE OKTOBERFEST. A COMMITMENT TO TRAVEL TOGETHER. LOVE IN THE SWISS ALPS, EVENTFUL ENCOUNTER WITH SWISS PILOT, MARSEILLES, COSTA DEL SOL. REALIZED LOVE LIMITATIONS IN BARCELONA. MADRID TRAIN RIDE BACK TOPARIS. SORBONNE STUDENTS ARRANGE SAINT DENIS ACCOMMODATIONS WITH FRENCHMAN. BROKEN PHONE CALL TO DEPARTED AUSTRALIAN WOMAN. A LONELY PARIS IN NOVEMBER. LAST EXCUSION TO MOROCCO VIA MALAGA. HASH MAILING BACK TO PARIS FROM MOROCCO. AND BACK HOME BY CHRISTMAS. A LIFETIME TO MEASURE THE VALUE OF THE JOURNEY TAKEN AND THE IMPACT ON HIS JOURNEY AHEAD.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667835167

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Embark

© 2022 Paul C Scholz

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Print ISBN: 978-1-66783-515-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-66783-516-7

Contents

Prologue

New York

Paris

London

Amsterdam

München

The Orient Express

Greece

Turkey

Bodrum

Ankara

Akcakoca

Istanbul

FAMILY AWAY FROM HOME

Eskisehir

Antalya

Italy

Rome

Pisa

Florence

Venice

Oktoberfest

Switzerland

Barcelona

Anne West

Epilogue

Prologue

The following is a memoir of the travels of a young man starting out in life at age twenty-one. He traveled through fourteen countries in a six-month period, keeping a daily log to account for these experiences. The journey lasted six months. After a lifetime passed, the journal was picked back up and transcribed onto the computer to be completed during retirement. When a granddaughter turned two years old and wanted to travel with Grandpa, the decision was made to finish the work to share the experiences with loved ones.

New York

John had completed his required coursework and needed only a few marking periods of electives before he graduated from Michigan State University. He planned to travel the world upon graduation to expand his perspective and broaden his base. He had watched men wearing three-piece suits wiping antacids from their faces and decided early on not to become one of those guys, racing through American society to keep everyone but themselves happy. He had run the gauntlet of absorbing what others thought was important. Vietnam and Kent State turned him from pre-law to something less conforming in his early years of college. Law was too narrow a focus and was perceived as part of the problem, and John was solution driven. From now on John wanted to read what he wanted and study what he wanted. So, with his remaining coursework, he dove into preparation for his next part of life: choices for himself. He thought that adventures of the world would be fun to record and there was a two-sequence creative-writing course at the university. He also took an intense Chinese history course to reach toward a philosophy he knew very little about. Again, to expand the base of his thinking.

John met Marc through a high school friend who attended the same university to study film. John adapted one of the Canterbury Tales into a plausible screenplay for one of this friend’s film projects, and Marc was the lead actor. Marc gained acclaim when singing rock and roll at college parties. Quite talented as a performer, Marc could wail and gyrate electrically. He also had tremendous command presence. He had the knack of expressing each musical note through his facial features, keeping the beat with head and body movement or maybe even a twitching eyebrow.

Writing had always been a passion beyond John’s reach, a less-tangible path in a world tugging everyone toward conformity. Writing what others wanted was easy but putting his own emotions onto paper was different. Nowhere to hide if success isn’t reached. Marc turned out to be in the same writing course as John and was a true fiction writer. They read each other’s stories before turning them in and reading Marc’s work made John aware of what writing could be. Marc could write. Fluid. Colorful. Magical. John was embarrassed to have Marc read his struggling attempts. One night over beers John described his travel plans to Marc and had to step back when Marc exploded into excited youthful travel tales and adventure stories about his high school years in Turkey. His parents still lived in Ankara, Turkey, where Marc attended school at an American school on a nearby U.S. Air Force base. Marc’s dad was a collegiate professor of education at Michigan State and in charge of screening young Turks for admission for study in the United States. Turkey was reasonably close to where John was heading, so they decided to team up for the trip.

John’s home was a mere fifty miles from the Michigan State, so he hadn’t gotten away much, further fueling his desire to travel. Many of John’s hometown buds still hailed him as the learned one, as he was the college boy with a future they seldom considered. John knew this was only by their own comparison. He remained connected with this group during his four years in college, trading drugs with the homies for profits from the college clientele. Another hometown family had positioned themselves in Venice Beach, California, an exploding hallucinogen factory, and the Flint group stayed in touch with this connection. College students in the 1970s loved to mess with psychedelics and John was willing to accommodate as a go between.

Frankie, the elder friend of the group, used to joke that John would be the lawyer for all the fellas when trouble eventually arose from their under-the-table activities. Frankie was a few years older than the rest, but had married Jan, a girl closer to John’s age. They had a young daughter, Kelly, who kept the couple together. Frankie’s above-board job was as a bump shop owner in the auto business. Jan’s brother, Louie, was close with John, too. Louie and another friend, Brad, were good friends, and John hung with them when home from college for holidays. Frankie understood the world’s scope better than the rest of the group and saw John as the one friend he could relate to on issues of life.

Overconsumption became a danger in the business, and John understood this early. And so did Brad. Brad lived in a boy’s home within John’s school district. Brad was the youngest of five or six and their mother died tragically by drowning when Brad was only three years old. In many ways the group substituted as his family during the teenage years.

Brad’s realization of the dangers of overconsumption came during a trip with Frankie and Louie to pick up some Californian psilocybin at the airport in Detroit. They met the Venice connection and divided up the pills in a hotel room near the airport. Venice re-boarded the airplane back to California, while Frankie, Louie, and Brad drove back to Flint, securing the transaction. They slid the dust left from the division of the psilocybin into an orange juice quart jar and drank it on the way home. Passing it from front seat to back seat until all was gone. Brad sat in the back seat and just kept passing the juice back up front, pretending to take his drink of the concoction. Back at Frankie’s home, someone accidentally dropped a hundred pills on the kitchen linoleum floor. Frankie’s daughter was only three at the time. And the hits of psilocybin looked inviting like sweet tarts or some other type of child luring candy. The little girl ended up fine, but Brad’s eyes were opened. He found it too tough to say no to the homies, so after graduation he moved to Colorado for insulation from such antics and safety for himself. John joined him when his international travels were over. He had always dreamed of skiing the Rockies and the two stayed in touch the rest of their lives

John had been scared off the entire trade during his last Christmas before college was finished. When over at Jan and Frankie’s house Frankie led him to a bedroom where five handguns and a trio of long guns were waiting for him to choose one of each. A necessity in our business now, Frankie declared. Business was booming and so was the competition. John’s father, a committed woodsman, had taught his son early about the dangers of firearms. The fun of trafficking drugs faded quickly.

Frankie knew life was brief, so when the chance for an adventure came, he orchestrated a huge send off for the two travelers. Frankie admired and perhaps even envied John’s future and he saw this as an opportunity for hailing his friend. Also making certain to the fellas he could encourage life’s explorations by making the most of an exciting opportunity.

Another friend and player in the drug business, Phillip, had an uncle in New York City. The uncle was quite successful and had an open invitation for his nephew in hopes of luring him away from what he saw as midwestern mediocrity. Frankie showed no hesitation in inviting the whole group for the send-off from Phillip’s uncle’s Manhattan apartment. Anxious to please, Phillip thought it an awesome idea and ended up clearing the sendoff with his uncle Jeff.

Phillip’s father’s brother had made his mark in the advertising field years earlier and was set up comfortably in upper Manhattan. The apartment was on 72nd and Lexington, but the uncle worked downtown in what, at the time, was the fourth-largest advertising agency in the world. Uncle Jeff was president and one-third owner, and his high-rise corner office looked down upon the copper turned green roof of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, religious home base for the Kennedys. Besides the high-rise apartment on 72nd there was the cottage up in Connecticut he shared with his young and gorgeous stenographer, and a million-dollar spread in New Canaan for his ex and their two children. John and Phillip had visited the uncle the previous summer and stayed in the same apartment. The two entertained the young niece and her friends at the country club pool in New Canaan. And Uncle Jeff took the two boys to a Yankee game via subway. The train surfaced from its underground tunnel toward the light and stopped with a magnificent view of the stadium from right field. John and Phillip played baseball on the same high school team, and this was Uncle Jeff’s way to woo his misguided nephew into a more promising path through life. John envied the opportunity the uncle was providing Phillip. John