INTRODUCTION ------------ Early in 1977, arrangements had been made for me to visit the Canadian Forces Bases in Germany, namely Lahr and Baden. To this end, a passport had been applied for, and received, and contact had been made with several business connections and friends presently serving in Europe . Unfortunately, the entire project came to a halt for various reasons. Chiefly among them was the fact that a certain person in Lahr, having been turned down in the near distant past to execute such a visit, saw fit to 'get even' and, being a rather Senior Officer, he had won the day. My intention at the time was strictly to visit the two main bases with, perhaps, a small incursion into the neighbouring areas during my free time. Having gone through the trouble to set up such a trip and, needless to say, having 'psysched' myself for such an expedition, I had then felt an urge to go on with it, come what may. The reservation onboard the Service Flight had already been confirmed and it was thus hard to turn down such an opportunity. Another factor which came into play was the fact that, for the past eighteen month or so, there had been little, if any, opportunity to get away from the instructional duties at the school and, to turn down those three weeks of 'liberty' would have been tantamount to crasiness. So, on it went. Arrangements were finalized and it was then decided that, having been turned down in my request to visit the Bases , as little time as possible would be spent on the said bases. Instead, a Eurailpass was procured. After much deliberation, it soon had become evident that the Eurailpass was the only way one could afford to visit dozens of cities in Europe while remaining within a very resctricted budget. Not only would this permit me to actually cover a lot of ground but, whenever possible, it was felt that it would permit me to use the facilities to sleep while en route from one major city to the next. Advantage was taken of such an opportunity on many occasions. One must admit however that this is not the most comfortable and restful way to tour Europe but, when on a tight budget, one cannot be too choosy. It is my intent in this work to describe as much as possible, not only the actual sights I was fortunate to visit but also, to describe as much as I could recall of the trials and tribulations involved in visiting Europe in only two weeks. Getting prepared ---------------- Whenever intending to embark on such an expedition, it is most important, nay, absolutely essential that one does as much research as possible, not only as to which cities to visit but as to when and how to visit them. Months had been spent going through travelling pamphlets and gleaning all possible types of information. Whenever the occasion arose, I would 'pick the brains' of all my friends who had been stationed in Europe at one time or other, attempting to find out which were the most interesting and worthy places to visit. One area in which I was totally ignorant about was the railway system in Europe. I was to become very familiar with that system before the trip was over. I had, at one time, considered hitchiking through Europe but it soon had become evident that, while this may have been a cheap and efficient mode of travel for the 'flower' generation, it would not have been my cup of tea. Everyone I had talked to had seemed to insist that the only way to see Europe was through the Eurailpass system and they turned out to be right. Much more will be said in these pages about the Eurailpass way of touring the Continent. TRENTON-GATWICK --------------- THE FLIGHT ---------- The flight from Trenton to Lahr (via Gatwick, England) was very pleasant and instructive. As I was at the time teaching the inertial and Omega navigation systems, it was a cinch for me to get permission to 'ride' in the cockpit. As the seats of our Armed Forces Boing 707 have a rather crimpy pitch, making it very uncomfortable and near-impossible to really 'rest' during the flight, I had opted to do the entire flight with the flight crew. I was given a seat usually occupied by the 'Check Pilot' during evaluation flights, right behind the aircraft captain (who was Major Parsons, a good friend) and the navigator (Capt Bourgeois). To be truthful, it was not only an 'excuse' because the trip turned out to be most educational for me. Not only was I given the chance to observe, first hand, how these systems actually operated in flight but it gave me the opportunity to observe a flight crew 'at work' during a long, overseas flight. For example, the use of the autopilot was quite a sight to see. It is one thing to teach the system, which I did at the Aerospace School, but, to see it 'in action' is an eye opener. When the pilot first entered the cockpit, in Trenton, he inserted all the information contained in his flight plan into the Inertial Navigation System ( a Litton of Canada LN-3). This included the various 'waypoints' at which the aircraft would be ordered to veer to a new course, all automatically, of course. The aircraft contained a triple-redundant system, consisting of two inertial nav systems (LN-3) and an Omega nav system (built by Marconi of Montreal, a plant I had the occasion to visit several times during my tenure in Borden). As an extra safety precaution, the routing data (the waypoints) were inserted separately into the Inertial Nav and Omega systems, once by the pilot (the captain of the aircraft) and once by the First Officer, or Second Pilot. Thus, should one system have gone down during flight, any of the other two would have had its own data entered into it and would have taken over automatically (after having informed the pilot of that fact!) As it actually turned out, one of the system, the Omega, did go down during flight (over the mmid-Atlantic) and the system automatically switched to the second, standby, inertial navigation system. Another eye opener was to witness first-hand the 'small talk' going on between the flight crew during the crossing! It is not surprising, considering that while the aircraft is under autopilot control, it leaves little to the pilot and second officer to do. A LITTLE INCIDENT ----------------- A little incident occured during the flight which is worth jotting down in this article. As soon as we had cleared the canadian coast, approximately two hundred miles from the coast, the pilot asked the navigator our position. The exchange went something like this: "Say Pete, what's our position now?" "Give me a sec! As a matter of fact, give me more than a Sec because I haven't got the foggiest idea!" Said the Navigator "Just what the hell do you mean you don't have the foggiest idea?" asked the pilot. "Well," said the nav, "I didn't want to worry you but this thing has been acting funny ever since we flew over St. John" "Jesus, why in hell didn't you tell me, we could have turned back?" "I told you Pete" cut in the Copilot, "we shouldn't have taken that green nav aboard. Sorry nav, you're a good kid but my God, we've got 155 passengers behind and that's no time to try out a new nav fresh out of Nav School!!!" Needless to say that by this time, I was getting a little worried! I was one of those 155 passengers the copilot had talked about and, as disturbing, was the fact that I had always thought that our flight crews were the best there was around and I was quite perturbed to find out that there I was, travelling with what appeared to be a bunch of ' I don't care what happens to us' guys. I expressed my 'slight' concern to the Captain but was told, in no uncertain term, that he had enough problems on his hands and that if I wanted to fly the trip in the cockpit, I had better keep quiet and 'let him think'. Not reassuring but, as I wanted to see how this thing would end up, I did keep mum and listened in on the rest of the conversation. "Well," said the pilot, "I'll give you half an hour to find your way. You better get back to the instruction book on how to operate that thing!" "I don't think it's going to help any" replied the nav, who appeared, by then, to be getting quite nervous. "O.K. Relax " said the Captain, noticing that his new Nav was getting a little too nervous and consequently, if he was to over-panic, he would become even more useless! "Tell you what I'll do said the pilot. "As we're due for an automatic change of course in about ten minutes, we'll wait and see where the autopilot is taking us. If you didn't get to learn that system by then, we'll turn back" The poor kid, all this time, was shuffling through his 'operation' books, trying to find what was going on. More distressing, from my point of view, was to notice how unperturbed the Captain and the Co-pilot seemed to have become. There we were, 'maybe' some three or four hundred miles over the ocean, and not a clue as to exactly where we were. The copilot was casually catching up with his reading of a copy of the latest Newsweek magazine and, as for the pilot, he lit up a cigar and just gave the impression that everything was absolutely tic-a-poo, nothing to worry about. No siree! Approximately twenty minutes later, and just as the pilot had suggested, the autopilot gave us the indication that in two minutes, we would reach Waypoint No 2 and, unless instructed to do otherwise by the pilot, it would veer to the new bearing entered into the computer for that waypoint. As the Nav was still fumbling through his 'instruction' book, the pilot let the autopilot actuate the change in bearing and, sure enough, two minutes later, the aircraft banked and assumed its new heading. "Well Captain," cut in the copilot, "our Nav might be lost but it looks like the autopilot system knows the way. Thank God" "I'm not too sure about that," replied the captain. "Are you sure you entered that information the right way in the nav systems" he asked the Nav. "I think so!" Came the re-assuring reply. "I did it exactly the way they taught us to at the school,... I think!" "Well, I'll be damned" cut in the copilot, not taking his eyes off his magazine, "he's not even sure that he entered the co-ordinates right!" "Easy go", said the Captain. "We still have six hours before we reach Gatwick and, I'm sure Pete will learn the system by then! Right Pete?" He asked. "I hope so," came the half muted reply. Things went back to normal in the cockpit. The pilot smoking his cigar and chatting with the copilot while I was trying to kill all those flies I had in my stomach. During all that time, the flight engineer, an old Warrant Officer who decideldly had seen worse in his flying career, just kept watching his instruments and otherwise kept mum about the whole situation. When once asked by the Captain how his instruments were doing, he had replied "Fine, Sir.... I think". Very re-assuring indeed. We flew on for another hour or so, at which time the autopilot executed another change in bearing, getting us closer and closer to Gatwick England, or wherever! Since I had first heard of the 'problem', I had been drinking coffee as if it was going to be rationed starting tomorrow. Everytime the stewardess (called a 'Flight Attendant in the Air Force) had come in the cockpit, which was often, I had accepted the offer of a coffee. I was getting more cafeinated than Mr Nescafe himself! At least there was a comforting thought in realizing that we were flying in a general easterly direction. But then, what with the strong air current at 42000 feet, we could now be over Bermuda somewhere! The Captain kept looking at me and all of a sudden, all hell broke loose. After asking me how I was doing and getting a rather feeble "I'm doing fine.... I think" answer, he, and the copilot, assisted by the Nav just burst out laughing their heads off. As it turned out, it had all been a joke. I had been the victim of what is known in the Flight crew circle as the 'let's introduce our special guest to some re-a-a-a-al flying'. At this point, I had no choice but laugh it out with them. I had,in my time, played the odd practical joke on the un-initiated, and I figured that my turn had long been overdue! To tell the truth, it had been a good joke. When later on, while sipping another coffee in the crew lounge at Gatwick, I had asked the Flight Engineer why he had not joined the chorus in laughing at the joke, he had replied, "Well sir, I figured that I might be working for you one of these days. So... I took the safe route." When I told him that he had made a wise choice, he couldn't help it and belted out "Yeah, but I've got to admit," laughing as he said it, "I went to the washrooms afterwards and laughed my head off too". So, there goes. I bought him another coffee. No hard feeling, right? And, besides, I still had to fly to Lahr, Germany with them and, there was no telling what they could do if they set their mind to it. As I found out later, the same crew had played that same joke on a General, not long afterward and the General, as Queen Victoria used to say, had not been amused. I wonder if this is why the Captain is still a Major, some years later, and the copilot is still a Captain! GATWICK ------- After flying over the open Atlantic waters for some six hours, the sight of green fields appearing below us is always the most welcome. As seen from the air, England is indeed beautiful, unless of course, it happens to be fogged in as is often the case. But that morning, it presented us a beautiful sight indeed. Other than the fact that the Omega navigation system had packed up during the flight, it had been an uneventful flight if one forgets the joke the crew had played on me. The autopilot performed flawlessly and took us right into the holding pattern over the Gatwick Center. True to form, the airport was socked in fog and we had to wait our turn for nearly forty minutes before being allowed to land. The landing itself was smooth and efficient. Of course, it was also under 'automatic' control. We arrived in Gatwick in the middle of a typical baggage attendants strike but this did not bother us too much in that we were only stopping over for refueling. As is the custom in the Air Fore, all passengers had to disembark during the refuelling operation. The rain had started coming down quite heavily and we had to walk nearly half a mile (or at least it appeard to be that far) to the terminal. I went over for a quick tour of the terminal then settled in for more coffee at the lunch bar where I had my small conversation with the Flight Engineer. As I had had less rest than I had suspected in Trenton, I felt quite tired and settled comfortably on a bench in the waiting room area and proceeded to fall deeply asleep. Would it not have been for a friend who woke me up when the announcement came to re-board our flight, I might very likely would have missed the connection and, for all I know, I might still be there! There was one fellow I owed one to! I managed to pay my debt to him some days later at the bar in Lahr. The stopover was approximately an hour and a half and, what with the sleeping and all, I had no occasion to buy any souvenir or whatever in the terminal. Besides, when I attempted to change some dollars for english pounds, the line-up at the change counter was so long that I had decided to return later. But, of course, by then I was sleeping deeply! Vienna ------ Vienna is located in the eastern portion of the country, close to the Czechoslovakian border. In fact, it is but 25 miles west of the city of Bratislava. The city lies on both banks of the Danube River and the Donaukanal, a canalized arm of the Danube. The Ringstrasse, a boulevard two miles long and 150 feet wide, which is lined with trees and impressive monuments and buildings circles the old Inner City. Odly enough, Vienna is considered a 'modern' city yet, one will find buildings dating back to the 13th century. One such building is the Cathedral of St. Stephen, a gothic structure dating from 1300 (to 1500), and possessing a tower 450 feet high. One will also find the Hofburg, a collection of buildings from the 13th century to modern times. It formerly was the imperial palace and it now contains the National Library, in which are more than 1,800,000 volumes, manuscripts, maps etc. (1977). I would have liked dearly to spend some time in Vienna but, as narrated elsewhere, it was not to be! Congress of Vienna ------------------ One cannot wander through Europe without being totally immmersed in the past, in all respects, and Vienna is one of those old cities enmeshed in the past to such a great extent that it makes one wish to explore to a greater depth what one had learned in the books. The Congress of Vienna is one such topic which takes on an entirely different perspetive when studied from the actual ambiance of where it actually took place, that is, in Vienna. The Congress was actually a conference which took place in Vienna, from September 1814 to June of 1815. It was held to discuss the European situation upon the downfall of Napoleon I. All the European powers had then assembled at the Congress (except Turkey). The Congress was one of the most brilliant assemblage of crowned heads and prominent diplomats and statesmen that had ever gathered in the history of Europe until then. Among this august assemblage, Czar Alexander I was the most conspicuous. It may now appear unbeleivable but, Czar Alexander was then one of the few liberal-minded men at the Congress. Indeed, he had interested himself in the 'democratic' development of Swiss institutions. While the Congress had several shortcomings and, some of its decisions were certain not to remain permanent by a long shot, it did achieve much important work. It re-established a real balance of power among the states of Europe which lasted practically undisturbed for forty years. Paris ----- Bridges ------- The Seine is crossed by 32 bridges in Paris, the oldest and most famous being the Pont Notre-Dame, dating from 1500. Other well-known bridges include Pont Neuf (which of course is not new at all by our standards, dating back from ....., Pont de la Concorde, Pont d'Austerlitz, Pont du Caroussel and Pont Mirabeau. More details on these bridges will appear later. Squares ------- There are over 130 squares containing statues and other memorials, including the Place de la Concorde, connecting the Gardens of the Tuileries with the Champs Elysees; Place du Caroussel with Napoleon's Arc de Triomphe; Place de l'Opera; Place de l'Hotel de Ville; Place de l'Etoile; and, Place Vendome, to name but the most important ones. Churches -------- Among the large number of churches, the grandest and most interesting, from a historic point of view is, of course, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame which stands on a site on the Ile de la Cite. Dating almost as far back as Notre Dame is Saint Pierre de Montmartre, Saint Etienne du Mont; Sainte Chapelle, built by Saint Louis in 1245; and, Saint Sulpice. Interlaken ---------- We returned, late in the afternoon, from a walk which, judging from the 'sore' condition of our feet, must have been over a hundred miles and agreed that a good cool beer was in order. As it turned out, we were but a few feet from the Hotel Splendid's English Pub and within seconds, we had entered the hallowed ground! The place was crowded with tourists and there was a wait at the bar. Behind the bar was this sign: To our patrons: --------------- We have tried to create for you in Interlaken the authentic English pub. The bar, the seating, the antique beams, all these things are English. No English pub however would be complete without the English service. This is very simple when you know how it works: 1. Walk to the bar counter 2. Order your drink from the barman. 3. The barman will pour your drink. 4. You pay for your drink to the barman. 5. Take your drink to wjerever you want to sit 6. When you are thirsty again, repeat from no 1 Note. This means you can leave whenever you wish. Et voila! Simple.... Non?


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