Travel to Germany in 1960's

My father, Legion Post members
and I

Although I’d travelled by train, car and bus many times, I had never been on an airplane until I was 20 years old.  Having been selected to be an exchange “student” in Memmingen, Germany, an airplane was about the only way to get there.

Since I’d never flown before, I dressed like I’d seen women dress in the ads.  Although it was August, I wore a light-weight blue flowered cotton suit, stockings, heels, white gloves with a hat that reminded me of a stewardesses hat--high crown with a small brim. I was having most of my clothes shipped in a trunk so was able to travel with just one suitcase and my carry-on.

My parents often struggled financially for me to go to college, much less for me to live in Germany for a year.  Fortunately my father’s American Legion Post, came up with a scholarship to pay for my travel, and I became their “Ambassador”.  Once settled in Memmingen, I was to be paid a small salary by the Bavarian government for teaching English in the local high schools.  Previous “exchange students” had already graduated from college, so they were eligible for Fulbright Scholarships to travel to Munich for study in addition to their duties in Memmingen.  Since I hadn’t graduated yet, I was to stay in Memmingen and had expanded teaching roles.

This exchange had been set up by the publisher of the Memmingen newspaper.  He had been to Cape Girardeau on a trip and arranged with the college there to create this exchange program.  One student from SEMO would go to Germany and one university student from Memmingen would go to Cape.  I’d been acquainted with several of the students at SEMO and one of them helped with my arrangements once I got there——Uli had several friends who would welcome me.  I would stay at the Mädchen Wohnheim, a boarding house for young women and girls on Rheineckstrasse.

But, I needed to find the least expensive way for me to get to Memmingen, Germany (my future home for a year).  Flying to New York City was fairly easy—TWA to Idlewild Airport.  But from there, I needed to get to LaGuardia for my flight overseas on Icelandic Airlines! A New York taxi got me to the right terminal.  All I really recall was sitting at a counter waiting for my flight and having a cup of coffee—relieved that I’d made it to the right terminal.  

Shortly after we were airborne on Icelandic, we were served dinner followed by my first legal alcoholic beverage—a liqueur  that burned all the way down. By myself, on an airplane, drinking something I didn’t like—not quite a celebration.   Icelandic Airlines at that time was a prop plane so we had to land in Reykjavik to refuel.  My excitement at landing in my first foreign country, was replaced by fear that we were going to crash land——Iceland has very few trees and it was hard to judge how high we were.  I closed my eyes and began praying.  After a few minutes, we landed safely.  I looked around and saw there were no trees, accounting for my mis-judgement.  I disembarked from the plane went into the airport for short time before again getting on the plane to fly to Luxembourg.

We arrived in Luxembourg in darkness. I had lost one whole day already.  There was no train connecting Luxembourg with Munich, so we had to take a bus to the train station in Germany.  Because so many of us were in our teens and early twenties, it was a riotous ride with lots of laughter and jokes and many of us trying out our limited German on each other.  One female in the back of the bus yelled up to the bus driver, “Ich bin heiss” meaning to say the temperature in the back of the bus was too hot.  The bus driver taking advantage of her limited German, pulled the bus over and started to the back of the bus with a lecherous grin on his face.  What she had communicated had more of a sexual connotation.  She should have said “Mir ist heiss.”  But that was a lesson that we all learned from!

I had met Mary Lou by this time.  With her pixie hair cut, infectious smile and tiny stature we were naturally drawn to each other.  She was from California, spoke no German, but planned on living in Heidelberg for a year.  We exchanged addresses and phone numbers when she needed to get off the train in Heidelberg.  We visited several times during our “year abroad” and she is one of many I regret losing touch with in those days before social media and cell phones.

I travelled to Munich arriving in the morning of day 3 of my adventure.  I stumbled off the train and looked for a hotel where I could catch up on some sleep.  Although I’d studied German for 5 years, I was only fluent in two expressions I’d learned in high school and a few songs.  So, my “useful German” consisted of “I don’t know what it means that I’m so sad”  (from The Loreliei)  “A girl without freckles is like the sky without stars” (my favorite proverb)  and the most useful one “Can you tell me where I can wash may hands?”