A LATE WINTER ADVENTURE

By Bruce Byers

On a Saturday in March 1962 as winter was drawing to a frigid close in Munich, a college buddy and I hopped an early morning ride with one of our professors who was driving to Innsbruck. He was completing a Doktorarbeit at the university there while teaching speech at the University of Maryland – Munich Campus. He took us to Innsbruck and we hitch-hiked across the Brenner Pass into Italy and then got a lift from a man traveling to the Lago di Garda. He took us to the far south of the lake where we caught a ride east to Verona.

My friend knew an Italian family there and we managed to crash for the night at a lovely upscale apartment in the center of the city, not far from the coliseum. He knew the daughter and she had a friend, and so we went out together dancing at a club. The air was warm; spring had arrived; and we felt really invigorated. The two young women added to our surprise and enjoyment. We stayed out late and returned to the apartment a little tipsy and tired from the day’s travel and the evening.

Late the following morning, we got up and had an Italian “brunch” with the two women and hoped to be able to hitch a ride north to Innsbruck. The girl’s mother dropped us at an entrance to the autostrada and we tried for a couple of hours to catch a ride north without success. Finally, my friend called his friend and her mother picked us up and took us to the railway station where we caught a late afternoon train for Innsbruck. It was a bit of a disappointment and we had certainly enjoyed the unfettered company of the two young women. All too short a visit.

We arrived in Innsbruck hoping to catch a connecting train to Munich, but we missed it by thirty minutes. There was no hope of riding with our professor since he had already left for Munich. So, we were facing the prospect of having to spend the night at the Bahnhof. The earliest train would not leave until six the next morning.

Then, by accident, we met a man waiting for another train. He worked for the Trans-Europa-Express company and a TEE train was due to arrive in minutes. We told him we were trying to return to Munich but did not have tickets. He told us to follow him onto the train when it arrived; he would put us up in a first-class compartment and we could pay when we reached the Hauptbahnhof in Munich. He assured us it would be all right to ride the train. He said it’s better to get aboard and worry about paying later than to spend a frigid night in Innsbruck. 

What a fortuitous turn of events. The express train arrived and we climbed aboard, following him down a corridor of a first-class car to an empty compartment. He told us to relax and get some sleep. He would let us know when we were approaching our destination. It must have been close to midnight when the train departed. I reckoned it would take about three hours to reach Munich.

And so it was. We arrived in a pouring rain. We paid our fares at the TEE office in the station and took a streetcar – Linie 7 if my memory serves me right – to the end station and walked back to McGraw Kaserne in the drizzle. The guard at the gate stopped us and asked for ID and we showed him our University of Maryland ID cards. He let us in and we returned to our dorm.

For returning late on a Sunday we got two nights of detention, but it was nothing compared to our twenty-four-hour adventure from Innsbruck to Verona and back again.