8 1960s

At the start of the nineteen-sixties, I decided I was getting older - I was almost thirty - and was beginning to experience the first pangs of home thoughts from abroad.   Living in Amsterdam was lovely, but where was it getting me?  Into the most comfortable of musical ruts, it seemed.  Yet the more I thought about it, the less I did to change it.  Philips was a congenial organisation to work for. I wrote freelance articles for a variety of publications. Prudently, however, I set aside a month in which to return to Britain and discuss my future. But instead of doing so,  I set off in the other direction to travel by train through Germany, Austria,and Switzerland and see what I saw. It was a delightfully painless journey, a solitary tour of places most of which were  new to someone who had been primarily a francophile.

So I offered to write about it for The Scotsman, and my idea was accepted. I’d already taken one previous peep at Germany, which was still rebuilding itself after the war. I’d visited Cologne but thought the cathedral  less impressive than Schumann had done. I’d boated up the Rhine, stopping at Koblenz in a thunderstorm, but finding it a disappointingly drab place to hold such a key position on three major rivers.

While the rain continued to pour, I made a spur-of-the-moment change of direction.  Jumping on the first train out of Koblenz, I headed up the River  Mosel and got off at the first place it came to.  It was the small riverside village of Cochem. The rain was still pouring. The night was dark.  I found a hotel, the Germania, on the riverside, and booked in. Dinner  was being served and a rustic dinner dance was in progress. I was given a window table with a view of the rain. But thus began my affection for good German wines which, until then, I had known nothing about. With growing  feelings of contentment, I ate a trout and watched the dancing.

Next morning, when I drew back my curtains, the sun was shining on the river and I continued my journey as far as the ancient town of Trier on the Luxemburg border before returning gradually to Amsterdam. My next trip, I vowed, would be more comprehensive, which was how I came to spend a month en route between Wiesbaden,  Heidelberg, Munich, Salzburg, Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, and Zurich, when I should have been job-hunting (as per my original plan) in London.

Britain, by then, was a different country from the one I had left. It was the time of mods, rockers, Carnaby Street and winkle-picker shoes, which were nowhere to be seen in Amsterdam.  To me it looked trivial. Could I bear to go back to it? Against the odds, I found what I hoped would be no more than a temporary London  job as a sub-editor on The Star, rival of the Evening Standard, but before I could leave Holland the paper abruptly announced its closure. “God be doomed,”  thundered Wim Zalsman, my boss, adding that it was a blessing I could stay on in Holland a little longer, because a replacement for me had not yet been chosen.

13 July 2014