During the summer of 1973, while I was in the military, I had two weeks’ vacation, my brother Peter and I decided to go backpacking. Not remembering the details why we decided for Luxembourg or how we got there, we ended up in Echternach situated in the north east of Luxembourg at the German border. We found a suitable campsite and pitched our tent which actually was quite small. Peter being as tall as he was, slept with his feet outside the tent. I still don’t know why we went there, two young lads in a small town crowded by tourists, most of them from the Netherlands. With the exception of some cave exploring, we really didn’t do much more than sleeping in and visiting bars and terraces drinking local beer. Peter really like smoking his joints, something I never did like, just didn’t like the taste or smell of it.
In those days it wasn’t so much accepted and I was constantly worried we would get caught by the police, something I couldn’t afford being in military service. Soon enough we got bored and decided to go to Brussels in Belgium, after packing up the tent and our backpacks we headed for the main road and stuck our thumbs up for a ride.
After a while this bloke driving a Mercedes convertible, stopped and agreed to take us to the motorway where it would be easier to catch a lift to Brussels. He and Peter sat in the front both smoking their joints, me sitting on the back seat enjoying the ride with the wind in my hair which I still had plenty of back then.
The guy had an 8-track device installed and asked if we would like to hear some music. He inserted a cassette from the rock opera Tommy by the Who and the track I remember best is the Acid Queen, which I had not heard before. I really didn’t need a joint to enjoy the music. It was great, driving along beautiful forest lanes with the cool breeze and the sun shining on our heads with that mysterious sound of the music, it was awesome. Late afternoons we arrived in Brussels, although we had a plan that we wanted to go there, we had no plan where to sleep. After walking for quite a while we found a “sleep-Inn” for backpackers. We checked in, offloaded our backpacks in a room with I believe had ten bunkbeds and went into town. We only stayed there for two nights and then decided to travel back home because we had run out of money.
It wasn’t long until we caught a ride to Rotterdam which was great, but in Rotterdam we just couldn’t get a lift. We stood there for many hours without result so we came up with the idea to travel by train. At Rotterdam Central Station we boarded the train to Amsterdam, this after we had prepared an excuse why we didn’t have a ticket in case we were asked for one. The train left Rotterdam direction The Hague and we felt quite comfortable that all would be well. About halfway the ticket inspector came along asking for tickets, when he asked us, we replied in English saying we didn’t understand what he had said. When he made it clear to us our acting started. Peter said, Dave, you have the tickets don’t you? On which I replied, no Pete, you put them in your wallet. Did I he said? Opened his wallet but no tickets, there was a hole in the walled and he continued by saying, the tickets must have fell out! Apparently the conductor wasn’t impressed and at The Hague Central Station we were taken of the train by the railway police and taken to an office.
Pete and I were still speaking English as if we were tourist from England. After being questioned for about 20 minutes they turned away from us discussing in Dutch what to do with these “trouble makers”. In the meanwhile I had asked for a glass of water, one of the guys said to his colleague not to give me a glass as he might do something crazy with it. While drinking my water from a plastic cup, they continued discussing their options what to do with us. Because Pete and I were traveling with British passports one of them suggested, we could put them on the midnight boat from Hook of Holland to Harwich! At that moment I almost choked in the water I was drinking, the last thing I wanted is being deported while I am in the Dutch military service, I could be court marshalled.
Then they asked why we were going to Amsterdam and we informed them that we were going to visit our parents. We gave them their telephone number which they called to verify if we were family and if they expected us. Once all was clarified, dad had to hop on his moped, drive to Amsterdam Central Station to pay our tickets and fine. Once the police received information that the tickets were paid we were released to travel to Amsterdam.
The police officer passed on a message from dad informing us that we were not welcome that night, he was somewhat angry because he had worked hard all day redecorating the house. In Amsterdam we went to Peters friend for the night and I returned home the following day, on time for me to return to the barracks after the weekend! Again a vacation never to forget.