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In another special mini-episode of Women Who Travel, Lale gets on the phone with listener Margaret, who's retracing a trip her mother took through Europe. Using a treasure trove of recently stumbled upon Kodak slides and notebooks her mum left behind, Margaret gives us a glimpse into the romance of the past and how the discovery inspired her own travels.
Lale Arikoglu: Hello. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and welcome to another mini-episode of Women Who Travel. This month, we're taking a break from our typical episode schedule. Instead, you'll be hearing some phone calls between our listeners and me, about travels they've taken in search of something.
On our last mini-episode, we heard from listener, Jamie, about her many failed camping attempts, but why she still wants to love camping. And today, we hear from Margaret, who's retracing a trip through Europe her mother took, more than 70 years ago, using a recently discovered set of Kodak slides and a notebook her mum left behind.
Margaret: She said, "Oh, we only had one map." She always seemed to want to find that one map, but she could never find anything else, which was always a curiosity to me. And she passed away suddenly, in 2013, and I searched, and I still couldn't find anything from this trip. And, after she passed away, I went through all of our trip slides, as a family. It wasn't there. And a year later, I thought, oh, I'm gonna clean out some of the closets, and I'm sure this box holds, you know, the, the, the gargantuan hand lotions that you get from big box stores.
LA: [laughs]
Margaret: And, uh, there was a Kodak projector box under plastic shower curtain liners, and I opened it up, expecting to find hand lotion, and it was her trip slides and some notebooks that she had written in, and some letters which were completely gold, to me.
I got the letters transcribed, the notebooks transcribed, I got all of the slides digitized, and then, I took a look, and started reading. My mother talked about, "Oh, I wrote a postcard to Richard W.," who was my dad. "I wrote a postcard to Richard S.," who was not my dad.
And then, there was, we knew about this, uh, Italian doctor, Enzo, and he was from Genoa, so there were some glowing, glowing things about Enzo and the, the moon over the, the Mediterranean, and my mother was never flowery like, like that. So, I thought, wow.
LA: And you're like, different side, never seen that. Amazing. Oh, Enzo.
I was really intrigued to talk to you about this travel story you have, because my mother, when she was in her 20s, took this really formative, defining trip for her, where she and her boyfriend [at the time] rode a motorbike from London, through Europe, the Middle East-
Margaret: Wow.
LA: ... and into Asia, and went so many different places, and it's a trip that I have heard her talk about my entire life.
Margaret: Ah.
LA: Yes.
Margaret: Just like mine.
LA: And I think really, like, sparked my own fascination with travel and yearning to see the world, because, I was like, well, if she's got to do it, then I want to, too.
Margaret: Oh, yes.
LA: And also, my mum is so much cooler than me, because she rode a motorbike to do it.
Margaret: [laughs]
LA: And you know, I think something that's so interesting, is how our parents have lives before us, and we never-
Margaret: Yes.
LA: ... know who they were then.
Margaret: And they seem so different than the mother-
LA: Right.
Margaret: ... that we, we have in front of us.
LA: So, tell me a little bit about, kind of, the myth of your mother's story, and kind of how it started to live in your own imagination, and how it led you to your own travels.
Margaret: Like you, I've always heard these stories. They were like fairy tales to me, and it felt like my mother was just a legend, too. She did this six years after World War II, in 1951, on her own, with women that she went to school with. They were all science majors, too.
And what, I think they cooked this trip up, you know, working in New York City in, in the time after college. So, I grew up with reindeer antlers in our porch, because she brought back those antlers from the Norway Finland border, and she latched them onto the top of her Morris Minor, which is like a small VW Bug.
LA: Oh my god, my grandparents had a Morris Minor.
Margaret: Oh, wow. Was it chocolate brown?
LA: No, it was blue. It was blue. [laughs]
Margaret: Oh, blue, blue. [laughs] Huh, and I heard that she met Picasso. I loved art, so that-
LA: What?
Margaret: ... fascinated me, but it was always with some disdain, and, "Oh, he just talked about fascism. Like, she just wouldn't give him-
LA: And so this would have been-
Margaret: ... the time of day.
LA: ... 1951. Clearly, she, okay, so she went to the Norwegian border, and she-
Margaret: Yes.
LA: ... met Picasso, I imagine-
Margaret: South of France.
LA: ... in the South of France.
Margaret: Yes.
LA: So was she all over Europe?
Margaret: Yes. They started in Le Havre, that's where she got off the boat, and then worked their way down to Paris, and then Paris, south through the Pyrenees, through some of Spain. Uh, and then, south through Madrid, Jerez. In Jerez, she met Sherry Magnets, who drove them off the side of the road, and then, this is the part, as a kid, I could never figure out, then, she said, "Oh, then, we all met in the next town, and had drinks, and tasted all their sherries," and then, they met further on in Cádiz, and she went out, then, and had flamenco with them. I think she was the only, oh, they were the only women in the place, and men were dancing on the tables, and they went to Gibraltar. She talked her way in and out of Gibraltar, 'cause she didn't really have the right papers. Then, south of southern Spain, though, east coast of Spain, south of France, all over Italy, Switzerland, Germany, the Scandinavian countries, and then over to Scotland. To the north of Scotland, she went to John o' Groats, which is as far north as she went, Isle of Skye, and then United Kingdom, and finally, she took the boat home.
LA: God, what a trip, and what a time to be doing it, I mean-
Margaret: Yes.
LA: ... Europe in 1951.
Margaret: There weren't paved roads, and they, it was often dirt roads that she was on. I'm sure the map, I don't even know how they figured out where to go, because they was no cell phones, no GPS, only a paper map, and asking people where to go, and maybe some street signs, you know, here and there.
LA: I mean, your mom sounds so adventurous, and so intrepid.
Margaret: [laughs]
LA: Was that the woman that you knew, growing up?
Margaret: I can't say that I looked at her in that way, although, there was a piece of me that wondered, before she got married, that she was so intrepid to have done this, and, in fact, my dad had asked her to marry him before the trip, and she wouldn't say yes. She said to him, "Uh, well ask me again." But, I think she really wanted to go on this trip and nothing was gonna stop her. So, she seemed to be a stay at home mom, to me. She was rather conservative, but, maybe the independence and the freedom were a little bit different after she got married, and, and had, you know, societal pressures to fit into their community, and to support my dad, but maybe, she didn't, she didn't work outside the home, and maybe that was her independence, too. She could set her own date, and didn't have anyone else telling her what to do.
But, she loved travel, and we, she did encourage us to travel, and one thing I was, I think, had a big affect on me, is she bought fairy tales from around the world, so I had Scandinavian fairy tales that I loved, and a Japanese fairy tale, and I think that expanded my worldview.
LA: And so, these were books?
Margaret: Yes, and she found them in English. I don't know how, but she found them in English. And I always liked it, when I like to travel, I like to see if I can get English fairy tales from the country that I'm in, which isn't often the case, because Grimm, Grimm's fairy tales and Hans Christian Anderson, ha- seem to have the, the dibs on that. Everyone tells me that, but it's good fun.
Lale Arikoglu: I love that. Everyone has their own type of souvenir. Where have you gone, so far?
Margaret: Oh, wow. Well, I just got back from Sweden, Norway, and Finland, so I actually did find the place where those reindeer antlers were taken from.
LA: Oh, my god, it's still, w- it's still there?
Margaret: Well, it was a Lutheran school, for, uh, Sámi kids, that has a whole range of complexity in this day and age, and my mother had said, verbally, to me, that she remembers the kids singing to her. So they must have had a, gone to a performance of some kind. And she took a picture of the outside, which was these gorgeous, you know, mustard colored walls of the wood structure, and it had two concrete pillars, and this gorgeous grill work as a fence to get inside, and I was checking around. So, I was trying to, I, I actually emailed my, uh, hotel, "Do you know of this place?" And they said, "Oh, yes, it's a Sámi art center. I was like, "How perfect." So, I made an appointment, and went to see, uh, one of the people who, uh, eh, i- s- a director there, and we had a great time trying to figure out this old picture my mother took, and where it was, and I saw the two pillars. They were still there, the concrete pillars, and there's one section of that beautiful iron fence, to the left of one of the pillars, that is covered with foliage, but still there. And, we took a look at some of the trees that she had seen. So, it feels like it's a, a great use of the place, now, and I was very excited that it's an art center now, and that it's only Sámi art that is s- exhibited there.
LA: Where are you planning to head next? I know that you-
Margaret: Yes.
Lale Arikoglu: ... did, you started in France, um-
Margaret: Yes. Uh, in France, I've done a lot of Spain, I've done Copenhagen, some of Denmark, and I'd like to go to Italy next, and, I, I don't think I've uncovered the full Enzo story, in Genoa yet.
LA: Okay, I was gonna ask. You gonna try and track down Enzo's family?
Margaret: Well, that's a funny thing, too. Yes, I think I'm close to tracking him down, and I did actually find where he lived, because my mother had written that on a scrap of paper, and, but she didn't, she had the street name, but not the actual number. So, I'm driving, trying to find a parking space, and I just happened to park across from an apartment building. I started taking pictures, and there's a man with shopping bags, and a, h- he had a fold up chair over his shoulder, and he's try, he comes up, trying to get in, and I'm trying to speak you know, crazy Italian and French, and saying, [foreign language 00:10:56] you know, and I'm, "Me a friend of, of, of Doctor Enzo," and, uh, a- a-and, and then he looks at me in English, and he said, “Uh, he's dead.”
And I, I just start crying, 'cause I was like, "Uh, I can't believe I come all this way, and Enzo is dead," but then it's like how does this man know? And he ha- he bought Enzo's apartment.
LA: Oh, my god!
Margaret: And I was, I was not quick enough to say, "Well, can I come up and see it?" Because I was overcome with thinking my mother's dead, Enzo's dead, oh my goodness, this is just such a, a, a, a tragedy that we weren't, that I wasn't there before, and then he, he went in, and I, I don't know who he is. But, I think that Enzo's practice is taken over by his children, perhaps, so, tha- I want to figure that out a little bit more, and uh, I, and they have a great cemetery, in Genoa, and I saw, they're trying to find the bread woman, which is a famous statue in the Genoa cemetery. I ran across Enzo's family plot, or one of the same names, and that was really exciting too.
LA: Well, you're gonna have to-
Margaret: [laughs]
LA: ... let us know-
Margaret: [laughs] Oh, yes!
LA: ... what happens next.
Margaret: Yes.
LA: I am, I am gripped. There's more, there's more to come, I'm convinced of it.
Margaret: I think there is, and Lale, it's funny, um, my mother always joked that she wanted to go back to Europe and do it on a Vespa, so, not quite your mother's motorcycle, but [laughs] ...
LA: Uh, it's always that it's two wheels. You've got to do the Vespa.
Margaret: Yeah, that is two wheels. I should, I have to try a Vespa. I haven't tried that yet. [laughs]
LA: Well, this was so fun. You had me on the edge of my seat by the end, so, like I said, we're going to have to find out what happens next, so let us know.
Margaret: I know! Where, where Enzo ended up, and, and, uh, I'm sure there's, there's lots more to this story.
Lale Arikoglu: I'm Lale Arikoglu, and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineers this week are Jake Lummus, and Gabe Quiroga. The show is mixed by Amar Lal. Jude Kampfner, from Corporation for Independent Media is our producer, and special thanks to Jordan Bell for producing this episode. If you have a memorable travel story, write to us, at [email protected]. We'll be back next week, with one last listener dispatch.
