Quarto measuring 8.5" x 11.5". Quarter tan cloth with brown paper flexible boards. 42pp. Approximately 11,000 type-written words. Lightly bumped corners and spine ends, rubbed along the spine, near fine with one very good black and white photograph with light creases. A journal kept by a woman's family who retained the letters she wrote to them while traveling in Europe between June 1949 and September 1949. The vacation is labeled, "Hostel Trip" as the woman stayed in hostels, with other European families, and police stations, avoiding hotels completely. The journey begins with her traveling up to Canada from Highland, New Jersey briefly seeing the country side of Quebec and Montreal, "We saw the weirdest sight. High hills rose out of a low cloud and in places the tops were hidden and the effect was both eerie and beautiful." She joined a group of young, "Hostelers," and decided to travel with them for the duration of the trip visiting England, the Netherlands, Berlin, France, and Switzerland. The first part of the letters details her time on the Scythia and Aquitania steamers to Europe. She spent most of her nights dancing and singing with the crew members as well as her small group of friends, "it is going to be a marvelous summer and I am having the time of my life." Upon landing in London, the group traveled mostly by biking sometimes up to 80 miles in one day. Descriptions of London after the war are included with details about the condition of buildings and harbors completely obliterated after the Blitzkrieg. The group travels to the Netherlands, trying different European dishes and shopping to which the woman often talks about the food she's eaten for the day with chocolate milk and any form of cheese being her favorite items. Once in Holland, she worked with the group as part of a community project to deconstruct German Camps for a place to stay and food. While she complains about the physical labor she also writes of "feeling accomplished" for her work and writes a song, "I've been working on the project, now for twenty-one days. We've been having such a gay time we wish that we could stay!" When in Germany, the woman writes about how desolate everything is after war. During this part of the trip, she goes to the hospital, "Your little 22 year old daughter has just lost her appendix." While in the hospital for 30 days she writes about the nightly serenades given by the nurses and missing her boat back home. Eventually, after four weeks, she is let out from the hospital and taken by her doctor around the country to explore what she had missed with her group of friends, "I am being royally entertained here." While seeing the country she remarks on its beauty, "It is hard to believe there was ever a war, except for the emptiness." She traveled to Paris briefly to visit the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe, and the Sacred Coeur Church. During her trip home she writes, "It has been a more perfect summer than I ever dreamed possible." A wonderful collection of a woman's European travel letters from 1949.
