Your entry is actually a sub-set of our travels. I regret that I was unable to leave upon graduation but President Johnson and the draft intervened. We were too old and too settled to the do the back-pack thing for our first trip.. Out first trip was intended to attend the wedding of a soon-to-be-jilted friend who sold everything and moved to England only to discover that the new girl friend had moved in.

So rather than cancel we took off and she joined us in London. We flew standby on British Air from Seattle because it was the cheapest way. From there we 3 traveled to Amsterdam, used train passes to travel around Holland, took the train to Cologne and eventually ended up in Munich to pickup my new BWM320i. Not exactly backpacker transport, but our hotel budget was not to exceed $10/night which did not get busted until we stayed in one of the nicer Mykonos hotels booked on arrival at the dock. It was $25 with a great view, but one still had to throw the TP into the basket not the toilet.

We decided on Greece as a destination because it sounded like a good idea. Eventually we drove 14000 miles around Europe visiting all of the then West plus a long drive through Yugoslavia (yes, we have been in Pristina), East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. The hardest part of the trip was identifying the name for "hotel" in each new country. "Zimmer Frei", wow a free room. 3 1/2 months later we shipped the car to Port Newark and flew standby from Luxembourg via Iceland to JFK on Icelandair. I seem to recall the ticket with stop-over for 3 nights on a cramped DC-8 was about $200 OW all stand-by. We also on a whim parked our new car on a dock in Southern Spain and took the hydrofoil to Tangiers.

BTW: That was when I discovered Auto Europe. They used to sell BMWs for factory delivery through travel agencies. It was a big leap of faith to hand the check to our then agent (we stopped using agents soon after) to be forwarded to some company in Portland, ME. Of course eventually BMW made it easier by implementing their European Delivery Program.

Once the car arrived at Port Newark we put on the Oregon license plates and proceeded to take the long way home via the Maine coast to the Trans-Canada Highway in New Brunswick with a slight detour into North Dakota to pick-up friends for the final portion of the Journey via Vancouver. I was scared that the car would be stolen while in front of my mother's house in a dodgy area of Brooklyn so we left quickly. We also were detained for a few hours when seeking breakfast we followed the sign to McDonalds and ended up at the U.S. Customs port of entry.

So we have done your subset just without the back pack. Arrival home required the removal of 5 suitcases and the laundry basket purchased in the Tangier's souk.

Since then we have been back to various parts of Europe many times. About six years ago, I got on a plane and flew to Asia to visit 6 countries in 21 days. Because of uncertainty about hotel availability and a concern that they might not be identifiable all hotels were pre-booked. That behavior for the most part continues despite over 20 arrivals into Singapore and Bangkok in the intervening years.

So we share your reminiscences about the way it was.