HOW TO TAKE A TRAMP TRIP.
BY LEE MERIWETHER.
Author of “A Tramp Trip; or, Europe on Fifty Cents a Day.”
WHEN I wrote my book I did not imagine any one would care to take a Tramp Trip except on paper, hence the brevity of the chapter on “Hints to Tramp Tourists.” The publication of each new edition, however, brings forth letters from young men in all parts of the country requesting further hints and suggestions as to the manner in which one should set about taking a pedestrian tour, not on paper, but in propria persona among the people of Europe, as I did. These letters of inquiry have become altogether too numerous to permit individual replies. I shall, therefore, try to answer them here, and give, as briefly as I can, an outline of the way to plan and carry out a pedestrian trip through Europe.
The first thing, of course, is to decide on the countries to be visited. “If I cannot see all Europe, which portion shall I see?” Undoubtedly, Italy, by reason of its history, ruins, art, scenery, and picturesque people, stands first of all. My own preference would then take me to Switzerland, next to Germany, then to France, Austria, Hungary, and so on, to the far East. England I place last on the list, because, in comparison with the other countries mentioned, it is almost like America. When I landed at Folkestone after a year on the Continent and in Asia Minor, the English faces, English language, English cities, all seemed American—they were so much more American than any of the things I had been accustomed to. To the student always, and to the traveler, if fresh from America, England is novel and interesting. But it is not half so novel or interesting to the mere sightseer as Continental Europe, hence it stands last on the list.
Assuming that the candidate for pedestrianism agrees with me as to beginning his tour in Italy, the first step should be to familiarize himself with Roman and Italian history. He who has read Tacitus and Gibbon will look with far greater profit and pleasure on the palace of Nero, the Caprian villas of Tiberius, the rugged walls of Stamboul, than will a stranger to those authors. As to language, the better the tourist’s command of Italian, the greater his profit and pleasure; but he need not be discouraged if without such command, for Italian is not difficult. A few months’, or even a few weeks’, study of the grammar, capped by a three-weeks’ voyage to Naples or Palermo in an Italian steamer, surrounded by Italians, will enable the traveler to “get along” fairly the first day he lands; and as he proceeds on his tour, being careful to avoid American consulates and tourists’ hotels where English is spoken, he will find his command of the language equal to all ordinary occasions. The dialects in the Neapolitan states, in Tuscany, Venice, etc., differ one from the other, but not so much so as to embarrass the traveler who has followed the course indicated above. He will, unless deficient in acquiring languages, find after the course I have mentioned that he knows enough to make himself fairly understood in Naples, Rome, Florence, Venice, or any other Italian city.
Many people have an idea that French is the most essential language for the traveler in Europe. It is for all except the tramp traveler. In Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia, Turkey—in short, in any part of Europe, French is spoken in your five-dollar-a-day hotels, but in workingmen’s inns it is of little use outside France and French Switzerland. The most important languages for the tramp traveler are Italian and German. German, of course, is all that is needed in Germany, Austria and German Switzerland; in addition it will often be found serviceable in Belgium, Western Russia, Sweden, and in the southeastern European States, as Hungary, Servia, Bulgaria and Roumania. Italian is of use, not only in Italy, but all along the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to the Bosporus, and even in the Black Sea ports of Russia, where Italian commerce has made the people familiar with Italian sailors for centuries past. My guide and interpreter in Constantinople was a young scamp of a Turk, who had picked up a colloquial knowledge of the language from Italian sailors.
It is far more difficult to acquire German, and unless the tramp has some previous acquaintance with that language, I fear he will fare badly in the Fatherland. I was fortunate in having some knowledge of German, acquired by long residence with a German family in America. But for this I do not think my tramp through Germany and Austria would have been half so enjoyable and profitable as it was.
As to outfit, little can be said more than is already said in the final chapter of my book. A knapsack can be bought for two dollars; into this pack a change of underclothing, a woolen shirt, a note-book, and a few etceteras, and you are ready for the trip. It is not advisable to carry fire-arms. The most serviceable weapon is a heavy club or walking-stick. The possession of a revolver may incur untold trouble in an Italian dogana, and is really of no use, since no one is in the least likely to attack so shabby a person as the tramp tourist becomes after a voyage in the steerage across the Atlantic.
The tramp tourist, not having and not requiring much money, need not be bothered with letters of credit or bills of exchange. Bank of England notes can be bought in New York for from $4.84 to $4.90 the pound, according to the rate of exchange. Buy about a hundred Italian lire ($20.00) for immediate use, and put the rest of your funds in English bank notes, which, for safe keeping, should be buttoned or sewed in some well-secured inner pocket. These notes can readily be exchanged anywhere in Europe for the money of the country in which you happen to be, and as several hundred dollars value can be carried without even making a lump in the pocket, they form a convenient and reasonably safe way of carrying one’s funds.
Having arrived at Naples, Palermo, or some other Italian city, the reader of my “Tramp Trip” will, nine chances to one, say something not suited to polite society, and not flattering to my veracity. For, notwithstanding my repeated expositions of Italian trickery, the tramp fresh from America will overlook some loophole, and the first days of his arrival, before he is taught by his own experience as well as by mine, will in all probability be charged, or rather overcharged, as much as though he were going first-class, with glasses slung over his shoulder and a red guidebook in his hand. I recall one of my first experiences in Naples. At a restaurant, before taking a seat, a certain sum was stipulated upon for a dinner. When it came to settling, the Italian charged just double the amount agreed on—perche? “Because,” and the rogue shrugged his shoulders as he said it—“because, signore, you took two pieces of meat instead of one.”
Of course it was a mere cheat, but what can you do? At first you pay, as I did; later, when you see such things are going to occur, not once but twenty or a hundred times a day, you lay down the right sum and walk off.
The tomb of Virgil is a few yards without one of the gates of Naples. Within the walls cab drivers are limited in their charges by a tariff—without, they charge what they like, or what they can get. I knew this, and so when I started for the poet’s grave, I bade the Jehu stop just inside the gate, where I meant to get out and walk the few yards to the tomb. But when we reached the gate Jehu drove on through, despite my remonstrance, saying he wished to let his horse stand outside in the shade of the wall. On this slight ground he built an outrageous charge, four times as much as the tariff rate to the gate. When he had driven me back to the city and I offered him the correct fare, he fumed like a Turk, swore he would have me arrested, that he had taken me into the country, into the campagna, and that he didn’t mean to let himself be cheated by a base foreigner. And all the while he danced and jumped about me, shaking his fist like a madman. When my curiosity was satisfied, I threw the right fare, one lira, on the ground, and walked off. Instantly there was a transformation that would have done credit to a veteran comedian. The cabman, seeing I did not mean to be cheated, ceased his fierce antics, stooped and picked up the silver, and waved me an “addio” with a smile as pleasant and as fresh as a May morn.
In Vienna I stepped into a money-changer’s to buy Turkish money. “Wait a few minutes,” said the manager, “I must send to the Börse to see what the exchange is to-day.” I took a seat. In ten minutes the money-changer came to me with the Turkish gold, and I rose to go. But in passing out the door a man stopped me and demanded a gulden. “For what?” “I went to the Börse to find out the exchange.” His going to the Börse was none of my affair; I refused to pay him forty cents for running the money-changer’s errand. Then followed a curious scene. The man threatened to invoke the power of the entire Empire unless he received his gulden. I told him to invoke. An excited crowd began to gather and block the narrow street.
“Young man, you are wrong,” shouted one in the crowd. “He went to the Börse; you must pay him.”
“The law is on his side; you will have to go to jail,” shouted another. Whereupon I sprang on a box that stood in front of the money-changer’s window, and harangued the crowd in the best German I could command. I told them I was traveling to see strange sights; that nothing would interest me more than an experience in a Vienna jail. “That,” I said, “will be something to tell my countrymen and make them stare. Come, I am ready; take me to jail.”
The man who wanted a gulden looked puzzled, but finally made up his mind to brave it out. Summoning a gendarme, he made his complaint, and I was placed under arrest. Away we went, followed by a hooting, jeering crowd, some of whom tried to shake my determination by shouting out the horrors of an Austrian dungeon. But the gulden not being forthcoming, there was no change in the line of march, and at length we brought up at the police station. Here the accuser spoke to me in a low tone, and said if I would pay half a gulden he would withdraw his charge. No. Well, ten kreutzers, five—anything, and finally nothing! For, unwilling or unable to deposit the necessary security for the costs of the case should he fail to prove his charge, he at length strode away sullen and furious because he had failed either to frighten or to cheat me.
I mention these incidents that the reader may understand what fifty-cents-a-day traveling means. The majority of tourists would have paid that gulden, and other similar guldens, and thus run their expenses up to five or ten dollars a day. Perhaps they would rather it should be twenty dollars than go through such scenes. It all depends upon one’s “point of view,” as Henry James says. For my part, I refused to pay that cheating messenger not so much to save my gulden, as for the sake of the scene. That surly, disappointed churl, the mob, the scene at the station before the stern gendarmes afforded me more enjoyment than I could have bought with twenty guldens. I would advise none to take a tramp trip who cannot, if necessary, enter such scrimmages with a feeling of positive delight. If you have not that disposition—if you cannot enjoy this close contact with and study of the lower classes—stay at home, else will your trip be one not of delight, but of petty humiliations and counting pennies.
One of the most frequent questions put to me by my inquisitive correspondents is: “How is it possible to find cheap lodging-places the first night in strange cities? and if you don’t find them, if you must go, even temporarily, to a first-class hotel, how is the per diem to be kept within fifty cents?”
The reason this question is so often asked is because the writers have never been to Europe, and have never traveled as tramps. They are thinking of their occasional trips to New York or Philadelphia, when, with a heavy valise in their hands, they are compelled to go straightway to an hotel. Different is it with the tramp tourist abroad. He has nothing but a cane in his hand; his knapsack now fits like another garment, and is unnoted. So accoutred, he arrives in town, walks about, sees the sights, and when he sees also the legend “casa locanda” over a door, he stops to investigate. If prices do not suit, off he goes again, looking until he finds one that does suit. When that is done he will do well, in stipulating a price, to say over and over again, “Tutti compresso”—everything included—else will he be obliged to pay not, indeed, more than the five soldi agreed on for the room, but twenty, thirty, one knows not how many soldi more for the candle, or the furniture, or the soap, or the water and towels, or something that was not agreed on. In Verona, home of Juliet, I had a pitched battle (of words) with a landlord who wanted to charge two lire (forty cents) extra for the candle, when I had bargained for the room “tutti compresso” for una mezza lira (ten cents). But for that magic phrase he might possibly have succeeded in his demands—possibly only, for I had then been in Italy some months, and was not so easily “squeezed” as the day when first I stepped on her historic soil at Genoa.
A question sometimes asked is, whether one could work one’s way should funds give out. I think not. In the first place, labor is so poorly paid; in the second place, a foreigner could scarcely get work at any price. I met a Philadelphia cigarmaker in Italy. He had tried in vain to secure work at his trade—in vain, because he was not a member of the necessary guilds, or unions. At home he could travel to his heart’s content, finding work in New York as well as in San Francisco, in St. Paul as well as in New Orleans. But in Europe he could not get a chance to make even the forty cents a day that European cigarmakers are able on the average to earn. It is the same with other trades. I advise the pedestrian, therefore, not to depend in the least degree on making ends meet by work anywhere in Europe.
In Eastern Europe pedestrianism is not advisable; the roads are poor, the villages often few and far between. West of Vienna there are few districts where the traveler will fail to find excellent roads and villages every few miles. Indeed, except in places like the Black Forest in Germany, the Higher Alps in Switzerland, the Pontine Marshes in Italy, you no sooner leave one village behind you than another appears in sight before you, so there need be no anxiety about being overtaken at night “in the woods.”
Baedeker’s Guide-Books are, in my opinion, the best. Besides much historical information, they contain minute maps and directions as to finding one’s way about a country. So minute and accurate were the directions in the Handbook for Switzerland, I was able to find my way over the most solitary mountain paths without other aid. Meier’s Guide-Books are cheaper than Baedeker’s, and almost if not quite as good, but they are printed only in German. Baedeker should be bought in New York, and carefully studied on the voyage across the Atlantic. It will prepare the traveler for many necessary details which would otherwise be learned only by troublesome experience. Be sure to cover the Baedeker with a quiet-colored cloth or paper, else will its flaming red binding betray that you are a tourist, and involve you in all of a tourist’s troubles.
These few hints will, I hope, suffice to start the traveler on his way; and in concluding I can make him no better wish than that he may derive as much enjoyment from his journey as I did from my “Tramp Trip.”
