Europe

I managed to get a few flights to London the first six months and that was fun because I kept in touch with some of my London friends and we had some good times together. London for me was one big shopping trip with a few visits to the theatre thrown in. In Europe the American dollar was worth quite a lot. The rate of exchange at that time was two point four British pounds to one American dollar. I loved to buy soft, designer leather shoes, beautiful fabrics from  Harrods and fine quality cosmetics of the kind that were not available in the States at that time.

We weren’t allowed to bring too much into the U.S.A without incurring customs duty but  we stewardesses always stocked up on duty free alcohol and cigarettes. In our apartment back in Queens, New York, there were always plenty of European cigarettes as well as a large collection of alcohol. We had every liqueur and alcoholic drink imaginable and the four guys who lived next door, were invited to help themselves any time they wanted. These young men were very good at helping H to get her dicey, old car started so that she and I could drive to the airport. The guys, who all worked for a Manhattan insurance company, drove company cars. Most days H couldn’t get her car started and so if they were home, one of them was always willing to use his company car to push H’s car down the hill until her engine kicked in.

Soon I was able to bid for flights to Europe and this is what I really wanted. My job afforded me the chance to visit France where I shopped in trendy boutiques for short skirts and silk blouses. The airport duty free shop had the best perfumes and the prices were low. It was fun and I liked the small quaint hotel where we usually stayed. I remember sitting with a friend in an outdoor café having coffee and croissants for breakfast watching the people as they passed by. How lucky I am, I thought to be sitting here as all my dreams come true. We purchased tickets for a night tour of Paris on the top of an open air, red double decker bus. That was magical as we drove down the most beautiful avenue in the world, the Champs Elysees and glided past the Moulin Rouge in Montmartre, which was lit up like the fourth of July. Once when our usual Scribe hotel was overbooked, my crew was quartered in the Paris Hilton very near to the Eiffel tower. It was the stuff of dreams. 

Once, on a flight from New York to London I made a careless mistake. I was working the first class galley and after securing the cabinets, I sat down in the backwards facing jump seat to prepare for take-off. I had failed to secure the top hatch properly and as we took off, the hatch opened and all the precious Pan Am china started to fly out of the hatch and ricochet down the aisle. Fortunately no one was hurt and I never made that mistake again. Strangely, none of the china broke and so I was able to retrieve all of it and clean it up before the dinner service began. I was disappointed on the return flight because “The Bee-Gees” were supposed to be on board, but they missed the flight.

A few years ago I visited France while I was employed as a school chaperone. We crossed over the border to visit Ypres which is located in Flanders, a municipality of Belgium. I stood in awe at the sight of a vast stretch of white grave markers, all of them in the shape of a cross, stretching endlessly into the distance. This was the site of the most costly human suffering during World War I. My grandfather survived the war but returned home crippled with trench disease. He was one of the lucky soldiers who kept his feet, while so many others were forced to undergo amputation, but he walked on sponges that were tied around his feet for the rest of his life. There were always reminders of past horrors that kept me grounded and aware of my good fortune.

When I was eighteen years old and at the end of my second year of college, I visited Italy. A friend and I managed to get on board a charter flight full of students, at a reduced fare. The flight from Edinburgh to Milan was short and it was my first trip out of the United Kingdom and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We hitch hiked throughout Italy, from Milan to Finale Ligure near Genoa, and then down the east coast to Naples. After that we caught a ride to Brindisi and then up the east coast, across to Rome and then back to Milan. I always had adventures when I travelled. We were escorted by the guards out of Milan cathedral because we wore no head coverings (who knew?). We were arrested in Brindisi because the gendarmes thought that we were prostitutes and ordered us out of town, but we met many friendly, helpful people as well. It was in Italy that I tasted watermelon, gelato and Asti Spumante for the first time, and Italy remains one of my favorite countries to visit.

Now I was able to return to Italy but this time I returned in style. I had many flights to Rome the eternal city, where I spent many hours sightseeing, eating, drinking and dancing. Italy was the place where stewardesses purchased leather handbags and silk scarves. We had a favorite waiter in the restaurant at Leonardo Da Vinci

Venetian speedboat where we nearly lost our hats and Venetian Gondolas ready to take me wherever I wanted to go.

My biggest adventure in Italy happened in Venice. Pan Am did not have regularly scheduled flights to Venice, but this was a charter flight that appeared on my schedule. The interesting part of the flight was that the transportation from the airport to the hotel consisted of three, very small speedboats. We almost lost our hats that day but we made it to shore. Our hotel was on the waterfront and we had time to stroll around before our scheduled departure the next day on Alitalia, the Italian airline that was supposed to convey the six stewardesses to Rome. Our cockpit crew had already departed with the empty Pan Am jet, to fly to a different destination.

There were no tickets waiting for us at the front desk the following morning. I phoned operations in Rome, who transferred me to operations in London who had no knowledge of the situation. They advised us to try to make our own way to Rome where they would make arrangements for us to deadhead back to New York. Alitalia had no seats available for the next few days and we were stranded. One of the stewardesses started to cry which surprised me. Do stewardesses who travel the world cry when there’s a little hiccup?

The hotel staff gave us directions to the nearest train station where we bought one way tickets to Rome and when we finally did arrive at the crew hotel in Rome, there were no rooms available. Crew schedulers had missed the boat entirely but fortunately they found rooms for us in a different hotel not far from the first. This hotel was not very clean but we were tired and glad to get a bed for the night. I shared a room with one of the other stewardesses and fortunately for me there were twin beds in that room.

I awoke in the early hours of the morning to hear my companion complaining that something was wrong, she was itching all over. When we turned on the light, I could see that she was covered in little red marks. I guessed that they were bed bug bites and with some haste she got into the shower and scrubbed herself clean. I showered, we got dressed and then we sat in the lobby for the remainder of the night.

Once I met the famous movie actress Gina Lollobrigida. We had a scheduled stop in Nice on our way back from Rome to New York. Right before take-off the Pan Am station manager in Rome rushed on board to let us know that a last minute, first class passenger was on her way. We delayed the flight a few minutes and when I asked the station manager who the passenger was, he told me that it was Gina Lollobrigida. I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. She swept on board, he presented her with a large bouquet of flowers and then we got on our way. Miss Lollobrigida slept for the duration of the flight. She did not want any refreshments, nor was she in the mood to chat but like most celebrities she was gracious and polite.

Although I never made it to Norway or Sweden, I did have a few flights to Denmark. Denmark was more fun than I thought it would be. First of all, my hotel room in Copenhagen overlooked the harbor where I had a view of  “The Little Mermaid” statue. This famous statue was smaller than I expected it to be but so also was “The Mannekin Pis” in Brussels.  I had managed a few more visits to Brussels and have a memory of standing in front of the little Mannekin Pis statue eating a large, crisp, sugar coated waffle that I had purchased from a street vendor. It was delicious and made up for the fish and chips that I had bought the previous evening only to discover that it wasn’t Fish and Chips British style. The fish was raw and slimy.

Drinking coffee in Brussels with C  One of the passengers wrote a letter to Pan Am stating that we were the best crew that he had ever flown with.

The journey from Copenhagen airport to the hotel took us right through the Red District where we waved to the colorful prostitutes all decked out in their display windows.  Denmark was a clean country where the people, although always polite, showed extraordinary reserve in their communications. It wasn’t a great place to shop because the goods in the stores were very expensive but I liked to stroll around Copenhagen just to enjoy the feeling of being there.

Sightseeing in Portugal

The best part about a trip to Portugal was the food. There was a restaurant in Lisbon that was very popular with the flight crews who frequently went there for dinner. The place was amazing. After entering into the courtyard, the patrons were greeted with the sight of chickens freely pecking around. There were chickens everywhere, in the courtyard, in the kitchen and on every table. The waiters just kept bringing huge platters of roasted chickens to the long wooden tables where everyone sat. Chicken was the meal of the evening, wine flowed freely and the roasted chickens were very tasty. There’s a big difference in the taste of a free range chicken as opposed to battery raised chickens. Free range is better. It has a gamier taste and that was what I was used to.

Once I signed up for a whole day tour around Portugal. It was an entrancing country with lots of beautiful beaches and places of interest to visit. On one trip I was especially tired so I declined an invitation to socialize that evening, because I needed to sleep. There was no need for an alarm clock because I had a two day layover. The usual happened. When I woke up feeling refreshed and ready for sightseeing, I opened the heavy wooden shutters over the windows to have a look outside. I couldn’t tell whether it was dawn or dusk. Everything was quiet in the hotel and when I phoned down to reception there was no one there who could speak English. Finally I hit on the bright idea of going to the hotel restaurant to see whether they were serving breakfast or dinner. To my relief it was breakfast and after having something to eat, I headed out to explore the city because I wanted buy a silver filigree bracelet that I had spotted in a shop window on my previous trip..

Germany was another country I loved to visit. When I was fourteen years old, I had a sixteen year old German pen pal. I met him when he and his friend were visiting Scotland on a bicycling tour, but my friendship with D caused a problem in our house. My father who was a cartographer in the army during World War II, did not like Germans and banned D from the house. I didn’t understand the furor but a few years later I began to put the pieces together when I watched a documentary about the Holocaust. We hadn’t learned about that in our history class at high school.

At first my focus was on enjoying the beautiful, modern city of Frankfurt. The crew members had their favorite hangouts and mine was a beer house on the banks of the river Rhine. This was one of the few places where I actually enjoyed sitting outside, watching the river traffic while drinking a beer or two. After morning beer, we walked back to the city center for lunch. Our favorite coffee shop, a place that served only tea, coffee and pastries was the place of choice. We had lunch while a live group of musicians entertained us with chamber music. The patrons selected their pastries, gave their order for tea or coffee and then sat down at the secluded tables and listened to the gentle music. The pastries were served on china plates, the tables were covered in Damask linen tablecloths and the coffee was divine. While in Frankfurt it wasn’t unusual for me to have pastries and coffee for my evening meal as well. I didn’t care for German food although I like it now, but I do remember that I used to like the roasted Bratwurst sausages sold by vendors on the street corners.

Hand I vacationed in Germany once. We flew to Hamburg, first class of course because it was free for us, where we visited her friends and family. The best and worst of that vacation centered on our visit to Berlin. We stayed with one of H’sfriends and at my urging took a guided bus tour around the city. I climbed up on to a viewing station on the west side of the Berlin Wall to view no-man’s land, otherwise known as the wall’s infamous “death strip.”  H did not want to look. She and I had plans to travel by train from West Berlin to East Berlin to see if we could find a friend whom H had lost touch with.

On the day of our journey to East Berlin we purchased out tickets and boarded the cross border train. H explained that it would be easier for me a foreigner to enter East Berlin that it would be for her a West German, and so she asked me to carry her camera for her. That was a mistake bringing a camera into East Berlin, but I managed to talk my way through it. The train was slow and it slowed down to a crawl before entering the Eastern zone. I could see East German border guards lining the tracks with their rifles pointed at the train. It reminded me of my train trip through Europe to Greece in nineteen sixty five. Before crossing over the border between Yugoslavia and Greece, the train was stopped. Yugoslavian, border guards carrying loaded rifles came on board and searched the train looking for God knows what. We were delayed at the border for two hours.

The Berlin crossing was eerily similar. When the train arrived at the station in East Berlin, H and I were separated. Both of us were taken to different interview rooms. I was politely questioned about the reason for my visit. The officials seemed to believe that I was just a tourist and when they tried to confiscate the camera, I assured them that I would not take any photographs with it so they allowed me to keep the camera. H and I had prearranged a spot where we were to meet up outside the railway station, but it took another hour before she showed up. Her interview had been lengthier than mine.

We were dressed all wrong for East Berlin.  Both H and I sported Gamin haircuts. We were dressed in short mini skirts, wore high quality, fashionable leather shoes and we were obviously from the West. The East Germans mostly just stared at us. We couldn’t find H’s friend and so we went into a large department store just to look around. The store had hardly any goods for sale, but in the men’s shoe department they did have rows and rows of plain, black leather shoes in different sizes. All of the shoes were identical. We went to a small restaurant for a meal but I was uncomfortable being stared at and the people looked unfriendly. However when the time came to pay the bill, one middle-aged customer came over and offered us some help to decipher the bill. Hthought that we had been overcharged. On the way back to the station, we passed a long line of people outside a small shop. The line snaked around the corner for quite a distance and H asked one of the people in the line what they were queuing up for. We were surprised at the answer. They were queuing up to buy toilet paper which was in  very short supply in East Berlin.

            “I wonder what they use if there’s no toilet paper,” H said to me.

            “Sawdust or newspapers,” I quickly responded.

I remembered my father telling me once that in nineteen fifty five when he was on an official five month visit to Russia (on an exchange visit as a union delegate), he was astounded to find that although he was staying at good hotels, there was no such thing as toilet paper. Instead he was provided with a bucket of sawdust. He met the first man in space on that visit, the famous Yuri Gagarin, although it wasn’t until nineteen sixty one that Yuri made his historical flight. He visited Scotland the year of his first trip to space where he met up with my parents and younger sister. The meeting is recorded on the web.

Excerpt off the web www.electricscotland.com/history/falkirk/.../grangemouth4.htm

1961
Jasmine Ure (my sister) daughter of Baillie Ure (my father) meets Yuri Gagarin, the Russian Spaceman.

My parents on an official visit to La Porte, Indiana. La Porte was the sister city of Grangemouth, Scotland and by then my father was the Provost. Provost is the equivalent of mayor.

My best trip ever was to Istanbul, Turkey although I had no idea that I was heading for Istanbul when I departed on my regularly scheduled flight from New York to London. I checked into the London hotel, went to Oxford circus to do some shopping and met up with a friend. Quite often, even after a seven hour flight across the Atlantic Ocean, I preferred to just miss out on a night’s sleep. London was five hours ahead of New York time, therefore it was morning when we touched down at Heathrow airport. I spent the whole day with a friend and then checked into my hotel for a good night’s sleep. I had a two day layover and wanted to visit a different friend the following day. Early the next morning the phone rang in my room. I was informed by a flight scheduler that my schedule had been changed and to please get ready for a flight to Istanbul. It was a special assignment.

I was impressed. A chauffeured driven car was waiting downstairs to transport me to the airport. Two security guards were waiting to escort me to a special briefing room where the special assignment was explained to me. At the last moment a high ranking Turkish diplomat and his wife had made the decision to send their nine month old baby son back to Istanbul where the baby would be cared for by its grandmother. I had been chosen to take the baby boy to Istanbul. The reason I had been chosen was because of the excellent report that the training school had placed in my employee folder. My teacher certification had been authenticated and like all stewardesses I was certified in CPR. At my college in Scotland, nursing and first aid classes were mandatory for all would be teachers, and I had provided copies of these certificates along with my employment application to Pan Am. The Turkish embassy was paying for my ticket from London to Istanbul and the embassy had run a background check to ensure that I was fit for the job.

I was introduced to the parents, and then the Pan Am station manager together with another Pan Am employee escorted the child and me on board. I had very little experience in caring for a baby and I was surprised when the child refused to eat his own food and gobbled up the meal that was served on board. It was a little worrying because I had no idea if I was cutting up the food into small enough bites or even if his digestive system could handle it. The head purser on the flight to Istanbul was extremely unpleasant to me. She approached me as soon as we had taken off and this is what came out of her mouth.

            “You do understand that as head purser, I am within my authority to require you to work this flight,” she said with an ominous tone.

            “No, I didn’t know that,” I responded. “The parents paid for my ticket and who is going to take care of the baby if I have to work the flight?”

She turned and walked away and I can only surmise that she was angry at the fact that such a junior stewardess had been given this cushy job. There were no Pan Am layovers in Istanbul. The flights only stopped there to unload and pick up passengers before flying on to Beirut. On my arrival in Istanbul, I delivered the child to his grandparents who were waiting at the gate, to receive their precious cargo. The old grandmother gave me a huge bottle of fragrant, lemon scented perfume but it was so large that I had to leave it behind in my hotel room. It was too heavy and fragile to pack. I was transported via taxicab to the Hilton hotel in Istanbul with orders from the airport manager.

            “You are not allowed to leave the hotel,” he said. “It is not safe for you to be alone in Istanbul. A taxi will be waiting for you tomorrow morning to bring you back here to catch your flight back to London.”

I was very disappointed because I wanted to explore Istanbul. That evening I tried to sneak downstairs and out the front door of the hotel, but the doormen had been told to keep an eye out for me and make sure that I did not leave the hotel. The doorman stopped me in my tracks and sent me back upstairs to my room. They posted a guard in the hallway after that, but I was allowed out to eat dinner alone in the hotel restaurant. I spent a boring evening in my hotel room reading a book.

The next morning, dressed in civilian clothes I returned to Istanbul airport to hear the glad news that the incoming flight had been delayed because of engine problems. All passengers for the flight from Istanbul to London were due for a special treat. We boarded a luxury tour bus that transported us to an exclusive resort on the coast, where we spent the whole day. On the journey from the airport to the resort, I was able to see the Turkish countryside while riding in style. My lamb kebabs from the evening before were good, but the food in the seaside resort was delicious. The resort staff was attentive and gracious and they reminded me of my visit to the island of Rhodes in the Eastern Aegean Sea.

One day I wandered into the medieval old part of Rhodes just to have a look. E didn’t want to go because she thought it might be dangerous and so I went alone. It was like being in an old Turkish city in medieval times. The people there were attentive and gracious whenever I stopped to look at something interesting. They served me sweet, black Turkish coffee and a honey and sesame seed pastry in the little open air store where I sat down to wait for a shoemaker to make me a pair of sandals. Sounds of sultry Eastern music permeated the narrow stone streets and I was never afraid. It was a very good experience. Turkey was also a very good experience.