Interrail adventure 1983 – Introduction

“Like all great travellers, I have seen more than I remember, and remember more than I have seen.” (Benjamin Disraeli)

After leaving university and settling into relatively well paid employment, for my main holiday I had travelled with friends in successive years on trips to Canada, India and the USA. However, because in those days Interrail passes were only available to those under 26, I realised that 1983, being then aged 25, could be my last opportunity to take an Interrail holiday. As all of my potential travelling companions had already passed the age eligibility threshold it would have to be a solo journey.

In May 1983, around the bank holiday weekend, to practice solo travel I journeyed by train and ferry to Ireland, visiting Dublin and Galway. With that successfully undertaken, planning started in earnest for a major expedition later in the year.

Back then, if I recall correctly, Interrail passes were only available for a period of one month. However, there was no way that I would be be able to wangle a whole month off work, so I chose a departure date of Saturday 27th August 1983 (which was just before the Bank Holiday Monday) and would travel for 22 days (21 nights) returning on Saturday 17th September, using up 14 working days of my precious annual leave allowance.

But where to go? Probably as a hangover from my childhood, I had the notion that any holiday had to involve some time sitting on a beach and having a swim in the sea. So looking at the then Interrail map of Europe, I decided my swim in the sea would be in the Black Sea and I should base the plan of my journey around travelling to and from the seaside resort of Mangalia in communist Romania.

In a series of posts over the next few weeks I aim to recollect as much as I can about this eventful trip.  The problem is that I have no contemporaneous record from the time, other than a few photographs.  I’m not sure why I took so few pictures – maybe I was trying fit them all on one roll of film.  I do still have my 1983 copy of Thomas Cook’s Continental Timetable, so I can check which trains I think I caught. I’m drawing inspiration from Patrick Leigh Fermor who undertook a journey across Europe starting in 1933, but only came to write about it in a series of books 40 years later, beginning with A Time of Gifts first published in 1977. I don’t see why I can’t try after a similar gap, but Leigh Fermor did keep a diary, so my recollections may be highly subjective.

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. The truth of this opening line to L. P. Hartley’s The Go Between has been brought home to me thinking about how I planned my trip in 1983. It was a very different world – Margaret Thatcher had just started her second term as Prime Minister in Great Britain, Ronald Reagan was campaigning to be re-elected President of the USA and Yuri Andropov was in the middle of his 15 month reign as Soviet leader. It was a time of no Internet or mobile phones, smoking in public places such as restaurants was commonplace, and railways in Britain were all run by British Rail.

With no Internet, in planning my trip I relied on two main sources. Firstly, the Thomas Cook Continental Timetable – I bought the May 1983 edition for planning, as that was the first month to have the new Summer 1983 timetables and the August 1983 edition to take with me for the latest information. Looking at these two books, which I have still have, perhaps not surprisingly the August 1983 copy is the more dog-eared. Secondly, the very first edition, just published in 1983, of Europe by Train by Katie Wood and George Macdonald. As I travelled, I relied on ‘Katie’ for advice on what do in each new city. It is only recently, that I discovered that Katie Wood is younger than me, she would have been only 23 when the book was first published.

Very little could be booked in advance – hotels bookings and train reservations were made on arrival in each new city, as well as having to change money into the local currency. The only exceptions were the Interrail pass and ferries to and from the continent, bought in advance at British Rail’s Liverpool Street station, and a Hungarian visa obtained from the Hungarian embassy.

One final anecdote, before I start to describe the actual trip in the next few weekly updates. At that time, my employer required anyone who was planning to travel to a communist country to have an interview with the organisation’s security officer before departure. The individual concerned was an ex-military type, and the interview went along the following lines:
Security officer: “This should all be fairly straightforward. I’ve only one main piece of advice and that is that under no circumstances should you leave your tour group and have any interaction with unknown individuals in these countries.”
Me: “I’m not going with a tour group; I’m travelling independently.”
Security officer: “In which case, I strongly advise you not to go.”
Me: “It’s all arranged – I am going.”
Security officer: “Oh. You’re not homosexual are you?”
Me: “No.”
Security officer: “Well, that’s something, I suppose.”

Suffice to say, the next time I went on a trip behind the Iron Curtain, I somehow forgot to arrange a security officer interview.