“You will discover a new way of life there,” a German friend said as Jeri and I prepared to set off from Heidelberg for France. As recent college graduates, we were spending the summer of 1972 hitchhiking in Europe as many people in their early twenties did in those days. Unlike the hordes who tramped through Paris, Jeri, a student of anthropology, wanted to see the cave drawings in the Basque Country. I wanted to see the landscape of the south.
Previously, I had minimal interest in France as I held a vague idea that the people harboured antipathy toward Americans, a feeling not founded in any direct experience, as I had never met a French person. Charles de Gaulle’s disdain for America, his call for independence of Quebec in 1967, his suppression of the leftist student movement of May 1968, and his stubborn refusal to allow Great Britain membership in the European Economic Community (even though it had given him refuge after the German invasion of 1940) further intensified my conviction. Had I known more about him, I would have strongly supported his granting Algerian independence, opposition to American materialism and foreign policy including involvement in the Vietnam War, desire for French autonomy, and promotion of the doctrine of dirigisme, in which the state takes a direct role over a market economy, emphasizing production and curbing financial failures with the goal of well-being of the larger society rather than a small number of wealthy capitalists.
We rode from our German friend’s house to the Autobahn with an American military employee who had lived in Germany for twenty years but had never learned the language “because I can get along without it.” He bought us ice cream at a PX and then let us off at the highway that led to Karlsruhe. We accepted a lift from a German driving a Mercedes who took us past Karlsruhe. There we stood under a bridge and sang songs while we waited for the rain to stop. An interesting German man with blue eyes and a beard, whose rear seat was piled with books, stopped for us, but he was headed for a different destination. At last, a Hessian lorry driver took us to Basel, where a Dutch lorry driver drove us a few more miles to the French border. We changed our marks for francs and walked into Alsace-Lorraine.
A French student who gave us a lift outside Basel told us he was a member of a movement for Alsatian independence, but did not explain why he believed the province should go on its own. At a fork in the road, a small sign pointed the way to Belfort, where there was a youth hostel. A line of cedar trees at the end of a field made a striking silhouette against the red and purple sunset.
Two men stopped for us and, although I had second thoughts, we accepted. After about twenty minutes, the driver suddenly turned off the highway and onto a wooded lane where he stopped the car. The two spoke Italian, which Jeri partially understood. Sensing trouble, I grabbed my pack and jumped out of the car, but the driver had hold of Jeri’s backpack. They began arguing, the driver most vehemently. Jeri persuaded me to get back into the car, as she thought the other man had convinced the driver to take us to Belfort. I did, and he drove recklessly and fast down the secluded lane. They let us out at Belfort. It was the closest we had ever come to being kidnapped.
Night had fallen by the time we reached the town, but the hostel was not far from the road. An elderly couple out walking took us there. We thanked the older folks and went inside to register. The only unoccupied beds were bunks in large tents like those at state fairs, but the strong canvas shed the rain that fell that night.
The next morning, we walked through the town and got a lift to the main road. The sun was very bright, and the dew sparkled on the grass. There were weeds high as bushes on the south side of the road and wheat fields on the north. To the east, the morning was pink and golden with a thin, low-hanging fog.
Hitch-hiking was more difficult in France than it had been in Germany and Austria, where people were generous with lifts. We had to walk several miles before a Spanish lorry driver picked us up. He spoke only Spanish, which neither of us understood, and talked the entire way while Spanish music played on the radio. We stopped at a restaurant in a small village where our driver bought us a large meal of vegetables, soup, meat, and wine. The old waitress wore a dirty apron and ate her lunch as she served us. Old men leaned on the bar, drinking wine. Two large German shepherds lay on the floor—a type first bred in Alsace when it was a German province.
From there, we travelled to St. Martin, where we parted ways with the Spaniard. There were no vacant hotels or youth hostels, but we were offered the use of a tent by two young boys. It stood in a field where cattle grazed beside a small lake. The sun rose in a clear sky the next morning.
Once on the highway, we got a lift from a lorry driver who took us to Lyon. We found a hotel on a back street where the rooms faced a courtyard and laundry hung on lines strung from the railings. Sunlight reflected off layers of metal roofs to the cobblestones below.
We ate lunch of yoghurt and bread in the park where old men bowled on the green, strolled around Lyon’s graceful old city blocks, visited the museum, and eluded a pair of young Italian men who pursued us. Lyon was the birthplace of the author Antoine de Saint-Exupery, whose memoir Terre des Hommes (translated as Wind, Sand and Stars) I had read the previous spring. In spite of his self-regarding aristocratic perspective, I found inspiration in his meditation on finding meaning through the active life. Anyone, he concludes, who can comprehend the miraculous in a poem, “break bread with comrades,” or appreciate the refreshing wind from the sea partakes in universal humanity.
After three days in Lyon, we started hitch-hiking again, this time to Valence, where the youth hostel was old but comfortable and looked over a park of terraced lawns, flower beds, and old shade trees beside a river. Once a stopover for pilgrims en route to Compostela, the town of about 65,000 at that time was called “the gateway to the south.” From there, we hitched to Sete, a fishing village on the Mediterranean. Strings of electric lights like Christmas decorations hung suspended over the streets, which were crowded with the promenade or passegiata, the evening stroll. At some of the restaurants, tables had been set up outdoors with cloths, china, and wine glasses that occasionally blew off in the wind and smashed on the cobblestones.
The youth hostel, situated at the top of a steep incline, had no vacancy. A group of us trekked back down the hill to a bluff looking over the sea where a World War II German bunker still stood—two young girls from the Netherlands, two boys from Hamburg, one boy from Finland, one English girl, and two guys travelling together, an Australian and a Canadian. With the Germans, we climbed some big rocks that hung over the water and watched the reflection of the full moon rippling on the surface. When we finally crawled into our sleeping bags, one of the Germans said, “We will dream of American women.” The celebrating, dining, and dancing continued in the streets until very late. Sete apparently made its living on fishing and tourism.
The next morning, we woke early and went to the market, where we bought large, sweet peaches, the most delicious I had ever tasted. We walked to the beach, where we saw a man cutting up starfish he had caught. Another rowed a boat up to the launch, showed us his early catch, and even lent us a rubber raft and paddle to go out on the Gulf of Lion.
At last, heading out of town, as we passed the wharves, we saw black fishing nets lying on the cobbled pavement. Little boats moored to the docks looked well-worn from their battles with the sea. Old and young men wore navy-blue caps with visors and held stubs of cigarettes between their third and fourth fingers, not between the second and third as Americans do, as they mended their nets. Their faces were tanned and lined, weathered as were their little boats. Boxes and baskets of fish lay on the wharves.
We hitched in the hot sun, finally accepting a lift from a dark-haired man named Pierre, an engineer employed by the government to inspect southern forests for insect damage. He took us to see the beautifully preserved castle of Carcassonne before driving us to Toulouse, which he described as “beautiful because pink.” Pierre took us to dinner in Toulouse to an Algerian restaurant where we sat at a table with an interesting-looking man, probably in his sixties, his current girlfriend, probably in her thirties or forties, and his adult daughter. The man, who we learned was a mountain-climber, wore a fisherman’s cap and khaki-colored broadcloth coat and pants; the girlfriend looked very sophisticated with her dark hair in a French twist. The daughter wore a flowered print blouse and skirt. She smoked and flirted with Pierre. Although he had chosen the restaurant, Pierre voiced his dislike of Algerians as well as Jews and Germans, who he said could not think for themselves. I wondered that the lessons of the Second World War had been forgotten so soon.
The next day, we had breakfast, and Jeri suggested that we purchase motorbikes because hitch-hiking was so difficult in France. By two that afternoon, we had purchased them and were on our way to the Basque Country.
Riding motorbikes on French highways was not easy. As Pierre had warned us, “Frenchmen drive like crazy.” We strapped our backpacks to the luggage racks and cruised along at about 20 or 25 mph. On the first day, my bike was nearly sucked into the back wheels of a lorry. There were at that time no big highways in southern France, only two-lane roads with cracked pavement, used by big lorries, small cars, and bicycles. Later that day, a lorry brushed so close I veered off the road and was bumping along the ground when the bike hit a rock and turned over. I sailed off, expecting to fall on the grass, but instead landed on my back in a drainage ditch. I stood up to find that the sides of the ditch were taller than I was. A man came running and pulled me out and pointed me to a petrol station where there was a restroom.
Jeri, by that time, had missed me and come riding back. I was surrounded by French people, and when I turned to show her my muddy backside, she started laughing, and so did all the people around me. I walked to the petrol station to change my clothes, tying the dirty ones into a plastic bag.
A short time later, we were on our way to the nearest youth hostel in Tarpes. It was big, new, and clean—the cleanest we had yet stayed in. Surprisingly, youth hostels were rather dirty in Germany and Austria, which had high standards of hygiene, while those in France, where regulations were not thought to be as stringent, were very clean. We bought food from a little store and were joined by a young man on holiday cycling around southern France. His name was Giles, he spoke English very well, and he was a teacher of mathematics in a lycee. Genuinely interested in Jeri, he said that the governments of Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou were concerned only with the material welfare of the people, not the spiritual or intellectual life. He had hoped that the student political unrest of May 1968 would have resulted in social revolution. Students wanted cultural change defined as liberation from rigid social norms and class structure, authoritarianism in education and government, and imperialism—the same values for which American students demonstrated in the late 1960s. The French workers, who ultimately triumphed, wanted higher wages and better working conditions. American workers had not sided with the students.
Our room at the hostel had a balcony, so we watched the purple sunset fade into velvet darkness.
The morning was golden and clear when we rolled our bikes out of the shed. The man who had pulled me out of the ditch the day before was standing on a corner, so I waved to him, and he said something in French, which I think was a question about our destination. Was it Biarritz, a famous seaside resort? I said yes, because all foreigners go there, although it was not our destination.
We were off by nine, heading toward Pau in the Basque Country, the southwestern corner of France. At that time, there were few youth hostels in that province, so we stayed in small hotels that cost less than $2.00 per night and included breakfast. Before we started on the road, we went to little shops to buy food for lunch and dinner, which was always yoghurt, bread, sardines, and chocolate. We then filled the two-litre fuel tanks with the mixture called “mélange.” Two litres lasted all day.
The landscape of southern France consisted of rolling green hills with large, old trees. Hedgerows marked off the edges of pastures. Lower hills were cultivated while the higher ones were usually forested. Aqueducts from Roman days arched over rivers and creeks. Dressed in their traditional long black dresses and white aprons, Basque women hoed in fields. At the farms, houses and outbuildings surrounded square barnyards where ducks, geese, and hens strode freely. I saw more horses here than in Germany and Austria, too large for riding but too small for ploughing, so I concluded they must have been used to pull wagons.
In small towns, men dressed in boots and overalls sat drinking wine in small cafés like characters in stories by Hemingway. Church bells rang nearly all day in villages where people drove Holstein and Brown Swiss cattle down pathways to their pastures. Everywhere there were crucifixes. We rode through towns with names like Herberre, Trois-Ville, Lebarrex, Navarrenx, and Sauvetere, coasted downhill and around a wide curve of road that hung over a landscape so perfect it looked like a painting by Poussin, whose landscapes I had always thought idealised. They were not. The landscape really looked like those pictures.
Clouds formed themselves into Baroque shapes, tall towers, round frescoes, curling ferns, and small white islands in the blue sea.
We visited the historic Isturitz cave with its stalactites, stalagmites, and the famous paintings of bison. The friendly tour leader tried to include us in his lecture, but Jeri found it difficult to follow his French.
People gave us gifts of fruit, flowers, or tea, including sweet yellow plums. At one shop where we stopped to buy pens, the woman gave us hers because she had none to sell. She was very concerned that we liked France. One old hotel had a room full of antique furniture and looked out over a duck yard. Downstairs, an antique grandfather clock chimed out the hours. The proprietor was very interested in Americans because, he said, he had lived in Nevada for fifteen years, although he never explained what he had done there. The landscape between St. Palais and Camon was the most beautiful country I had seen in all of France. The road was lined with trees that threw green and yellow light as from the stained-glass windows of a cathedral. We ate lunches mostly near farmyards, and the occupants never told us to leave. One woman called her dogs inside so they did not bother us. The tree-lined road outside St. Vincent was another beautiful one, with fields divided by hedgerows covering the hills. One day, as we ate lunch, two Basque dancers brought us flowers and shared their wine with us.
The nicest of the hotels was in Cambo, furnished with antique bedsteads and dressers. One night we spent at Hossagar, a holiday town for French, not international, travellers, but as there were no vacant rooms, we camped in an empty lot. Although we were above the beach, we were concerned that someone would order us to leave, as it is forbidden to camp on the sand. Finally, we fell asleep listening to the sound of waves. In the morning, the sea was grey-green and the mist gray-white. We had breakfast in a little restaurant.
That night, we camped near a village called Parentis, where the keeper told Jeri he thought we were “very brave.” The next day found us in the busy congestion of Bordeaux and an inexpensive place called the Hotel d’New York. The city is beautiful, with very old, elegant architecture. I met a German physician, Hans, and spent hours speaking German and listening to his story about being a boy in a youth camp during the war because both his parents had been physicians who cared for soldiers. He had suffered malnutrition and had large sores on his back by the end of the war. “There is no excuse for that,” he said of the Nazis, and asked why I had chosen to study German in spite of its history. I answered that I thought people had changed in the intervening decades. He was not without his prejudices, however, because when it was mentioned that I had once worked for a veterinarian, he remarked, “Crazy women and their dogs.”
We rode to Saints, where the youth hostel was clean and welcoming. From La Rochelle, we rode to Loire, a farm village. Jeri was feeling tired, so I sped into town and tried to communicate from the notes she had written. The people there summoned someone who spoke English, Marie Francoise, a plump girl who appeared to be in her teens. She explained about a house where a man rented out rooms on Saint Sauveur D’Aunis and named the price in pounds. When I said we were American and unfamiliar with the pound sterling, she turned and related the fact with great pleasure to her townspeople, whereupon everyone smiled and talked excitedly. She escorted us to her home, where her mother gave us tea, lemonade, and cookies and talked to Jeri about France. I walked with one of the farmers as he drove his cattle to the field. Later, everyone gathered outside for a large dinner and talked until 11:30 pm. One man explained to Jeri that he had known Americans in the war. Marie’s grandfather had made furniture for Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s cousin. The next morning, they gave us tea. Marie said she wanted to visit the US but that it would not be “next year.”
In the small town of St. Hermine, we sold both bikes and started hitching again. A businessman who said he had known General Patton took us to Nantes. We started from there at 8:30 am the next morning with a family (although it is very unusual to get rides with families), who drove us to Rennes; to Fougeres, we rode with a man who worked in the dairy industry. He showed us the castle at Fougeres and then took us to see the castle at Mont Saint Michel on the Normandy coast. We viewed carefully cultivated gardens with flowerbeds in the shape of butterflies. Famous for its invasion, Normandy was now peaceful farmland, but German bunkers remain. The driver did not like Germans, saying that they “follow each other around like sheep” and their language was not as nice as French. We had several short rides, one with a young woman, an older man, and finally two French coast guard sailors who took us to their ship, where they gave us wine and tea, then drove us to the youth hostel, the first dirty one I had seen in France, but friendly and full of English kids playing Simon and Garfunkel records. The next morning, we waited in line at the dock where a sign said “Angleterre” and soon boarded a car ferry named Viking I that steamed northward into the English Channel.
I went to France expecting to meet disdainful, snobbish people and found them to be truly generous and friendly, although not without their own prejudices of a different kind. I left it reluctantly, won over by them and their beautiful land.
