The Abbie Hoffman "Steal This Book" Tour of Europe, circa 1985

OK, that's enough pontificating.

so when other kids were going to the new jersey shore for the summer in the 80's, i figured out that for the same price, i could go to europe for a month or so. let's see... atlantic city or paris? hmmmm, that's a toughie. uh, PARIS!!!!!

my mom had won an all-expenses-paid trip to jamaica for two and she took me with her. turned out to be the only trip we took together before she had a stroke at 53, so i can't tell you how glad i am that we got the chance. had a great time, then got home and was planning to go back to work, which i think was as an assistant manager for a video store. lots of working, making good money and no time to spend it.

i got a call from my best friend the week i got home. she wanted to know if i wanted to go to europe with her. i did a quick calculation in my head of how much i had left in the bank, and said sure. by the end of the day, if not the afternoon, after many phone calls, we had booked tickets on what turned out to be THE last flights of people's express airlines for the paltry sum of $150 USD each way from newark, nj to brussels, belgium. yes, $150! who wouldn't go?!

i have a theory, The Idiot Principle: if you have no idea how difficult or dangerous somthing is, you dive in, blissfully ignorant, and have the time of your life.

so once upon a time, when the dollar was much stronger and so was I, I took what I now fondly recall as the Abbie Hoffman Steal This book Tour. Oooh, look him up.

i gathered every cent I had in the world, which might have been about $1000, and found my way to brussels with my best friend.

What was in Belgium? I had no idea, but I knew I could get to the rest of Europe from there pretty easily, and that suited me just fine.

I had actually been on the continent before, wandering around London, Bath, Brighton, bits of Scotland and Germany with friends from home, but there were plenty of places i hadn't seen yet.

I packed one small carry-on for what turned out to be a month long tour and off we went. We got to the youth hostel in Brussels on the Chausee de Wavre.The highlights of Brussels? Well, there's a museum containing a whole wall of outfits for the famous statue, Manneken Pis. This is the statue of the little boy taking a wizz. There are many legends about why this small statue was erected, erect being the key word.

The statue has become so well known, that visiting dignitaries, and there are many, bring gifts of outfits for him when they visit, so he's amassed quite a wardrobe, and every outfit has a special hole cut out for his uh, instrument of choice. OK, that's funny right there. But my favorite one was the reproduction of one of Elvis Presley's white and gold lame jumpsuit and cape thingys from his bloated years in Vegas. That cracked me up.

Then I found out that NATO is headquartered in Brussels, and I'll be damned if I didn't see Corazon Aquino in a Ford going across the GrotMarkt one day not long after she was elected. The Grote Markt itself was pretty interesting. Imagine this ancient main square, empty, then bustling with a lovely fresh market- fruit, vegetables, etc. in booths all over the square.There's people and produce everywhere, and that can get pretty dirty pretty quickly. I was astonished to see the square immaculate no more than an hour after the market closed, like no one had ever been there.

I didn't know what else there was, but I found out some fun things about Belgians. They were always nice to Americans, as they said we saved them in the last world war and they were very grateful. In the Reagan years, that was not the case in most European countries, so it made me grateful too. I had a friend from Belgium back home, and he had clued me in as to why he had left, so it was no surprise that Brussels is not known for its many sunny, warm and dry days. Think dank. But, as a dyed in the wool chocoholic, I had no idea I had reached heaven. I'm sure many people will argue about the merits of Swiss, Dutch, French, German and other chocolates, but from that point on, the Belgians and I have always had an understanding. They reign supreme in the field of chocolate.

And then there was the bar incident. My friend and I went with some other Americans we had met on the plane into the heart of the town, which is filled with narrow stone alleys with the usual stuff in stone alleys in Europe. Next thing we know, this guy is hanging out of the doors to a bar and making "psssst" noises at us. We look at each other like the RCA Victor dog, look at him and shrug. OK, we're game.

We go into the bar. It has the usual dark wood, looks like they decorated last in 1930, and there are some people there. On the counter, there's a little suitcase phonograph and some kind of weird, vaguely French music with accordion playing. They buy us drinks, give the girls in our bunch some flowers and then everyone gets in a circle and they do this dance around the circle, which turns out to be a sort of G-rated spin the bottle game where one of us, the girl or the guy (hey, it's been a long time!), gets down on bended knee and the girls give a little kiss and someone else goes next. All very harmless. We were dazed and confused, but that could have been the free drinks too. Another thing Belgians are very good at: they make about 120 different kinds of beer and all the ones I tried were delicious.

So we had a good time and went back to the hostel. We went back a couple of days later, and it was just like the produce market at the Grote Markt- like we had never been there, no one paid for our drinks, no one remembered us. We were kind of disappointed. Years later, someone told me about a wedding in France and mentioned a traditional dance they do at weddings there and suddenly a lightbulb went on. Mars needed women! Another mystery solved.

Next, we went to Paris, which is about a six hour train ride. My French was very good after three years of high school lessons (all you poor, frustrated french teachers,take heart!) so I spent pretty much the whole ride trying to teach my dear friend, who is very bright but had more experience with Spanish, the french r.

By the end of the trip, we were laughing hysterically, or maybe we were just hysterical, but she got it. Meanwhile, I had started out with Belgian French, which is slightly different than French in France. It's actually more logical with the numbers (closer to the latin root, I believe), so you don't have to be as good at math, and belgian french is much slower than france's french , which in Paris is lightning speed, so belgians are much easier to understand.we were seated in the train next to a guy who said he was a DJ in Paris, so he was probably speaking at hyperspeed.

when we got on, i couldn't understand him. by the end of the trip, i had acclimated enough to rattle things back at him, which might or might not have made sense. i had trouble enough with that in english. some things never change...