Transcription
C O P Y No. 14 Paris, 4-21-51
Dear Family:
The last week of our trip – and oh! what a wonderful trip it has been! If I followed the general practice of our previous letters, I would write about the first half of the week and Judy about the last half. But I would like to make some general comments about our whole trip, so I will leave it to Judy to tell you about our last week.
As our trip comes to a close, we have been looking back and making comparisons. These have made us realize what a great privilege it is to travel in a foreign land. To be sure, it is a privilege to travel in your own country – we’ll never forget the wonderful tour of the Rockies we made the summer before last. But travelling in a foreign land is much more of an education. The Old World is so rich in history, and the life of the people so different from our way of life, that each day presents opportunities far more significant than one finds when travelling in the U.S.A.
We have had the privilege of travelling in four countries – each of them quite different. Spain impressed us as being impoverished and having no future. Greece is worse off than Spain from the standpoint of inflation – her money is practically worthless – but we had the feeling that the Greeks had more backbone than the Spaniards, and that they would make a future for their country somehow. Italy and France are busy rebuilding the destruction of the war. Food is plentiful and the people seem to have the time and the wherewithal to enjoy entertainment and recreation. If anything, Italy seems to be better off than France – at least the Communists are not as strong in Italy as they seem to be in France.
Speaking of inflation, in Athens we wanted to take an all-day excursion to Delphi. When we found it would cost over one million drachma we decided not to go. Actually it was only about $60.00, but to a Greek who was a millionaire back in the good old days, it meant that it would take his entire fortune to make a one-day trip. The inflation in France is mild compared to that of Greece, but a haircut here costs 300 francs (less than a dollar to us) but to a Frenchman who paid for it out of a savings account accumulated when the franc was worth 20 cents, it means the haircut costs him the equivalent of $60.00. When I was a boy a haircut cost twenty-five cents. If we don’t get the Democrats out, and stop this deficit financing and playing Santa Claus to the world, it won’t be long before we are paying $5.00 and then $10.00, and maybe, like in France, $60.00 for a haircut. Our job is to get a Republican party in control that will balance the budget and bring an end to the “Welfare State”.
It has been particularly interesting to see the difference in the people in the four countries we have visited. In Spain they were cold and indifferent. They seemed to have little interest in welcoming us as tourists. In the bank at Avila they were very suspicious of our American Express checks – did not seem to know what they were. It looked to us as though the entire personnel of the bank had to have a huddle before they decided it was OK to accept our check. In Greece we were welcomed but held up for all they could get out of us. When we left Greece we found we could not convert our drachma into lire, so I have several thousand drachma that I can give away as interesting souvenirs. The Italians we found to be the most friendly – more so than the French. I think Judy told of how a group of singing Italians invited us to have lunch with them at Palermo, got us to join in with their songs and even wanted us to dance with them. Italian cyclists always sing when they go through a tunnel – I suppose because they like to hear the echo of their voices in the tunnel – and then they often sing as they cycle along an open road.
In Italy the traffic officers are particularly polite and helpful. They seem to have gone through a training school, as they all have the same style of directing traffic. They wave their arms in a graceful swing as though they were on the stage in a ballet performance. In France the traffic cops are more matter-of-fact. They don’t attempt any fancy motions with their arms. In fact, until you are used to their short motions with their “billy clubs”, it is a bit difficult to know just what they want you to do. When I say that Paris traffic is pandemonium to a U.S. driver, you can’t appreciate what a nightmare it is unless you have tried to drive a car here. But the French drivers don’t seem to mind it – it is sort of a free-for-all, catch-as-catch-can affair, with no holds barred.
We have had an interesting comparison between the Italian and French language. The Italians sputter along so fast they give the impression that they are very excited. But when you stop to analyze how many more syllables they have to pronounce than we do, you can understand why they have to talk fast to get anything said. For instance, if every word in our language ended in a vowel, “wea wouldo haveo toa talka likeo thisa. Thena ino steada ofo sayinga somethinga iso thea besta, wea wouldo saya ito iso thea bestissimo”. Wouldn’t you try to talk fast if you had to say all those vowels? In France I have enjoyed listening to our French guides. I can’t understand anything they say, but they speak with such precision and with such effective pauses and inflections of voice, and they use their lips and tongues as though they prided themselves on enunciating each word correctly, that you get the impression that it is an art to speak the French language.
One thing that is common to all four of the countries we visited is the way the women work. Everywhere you see women doing heavy, muscular work that we would expect only the men would do. They push heavy carts, carry large bundles on their heads, and work in the fields, plowing and driving oxen as though they were as strong as men. At one hotel a maid came out to serve as the porter. When I objected to her carrying our heavy bags, she bent her arm up to show her muscle. John and I insisted on carrying the bags, but once inside, while we were registering, she toted them up to our rooms. We decided maybe the women in America should do more work.
I’d like to do justice to all the geography we have learned on this trip, and all the history, but that would take several more pages. Let it suffice to say that our trip has been a real education, along with being full of recreation and thrills.
Now I am anxious to get back home again. This has been the greatest vacation I have ever had, but I’m getting the “itch” to get back to work, and for the first few weeks I expect to be working as hard as the women work over here.
Lots of love,
WillardTranscriber
Cindi RokeLanguage
English
