Lynda and I spent the night with Ray and Carolyn in Denton, then they drove us to Dallas where we began our dream adventure.
At some point in the spring of 1966, Lynda received a letter from Anneliese. In the letter Anneliese mentioned that she had recently returned to her home in Aachen from a trip to Great Britian. And she proceeded to compare some of the typical traits of the British, Germans, and Americans. Lynda and Anneliese had become friends in college. Anneliese, who is German, was working on her master's degree in English and Lynda was completing her Bachelor's degree in elementary education. They had completed their college work in 1959 and after a year or so in New York Anneliese had returned to Germany and a teaching position and Lynda had secured a position teaching in Odessa, Texas. Lynda and I met and married during her first year of teaching. Anneliese and Lynda kept in touch with semiannual letters, a few cards, and Christmas gifts.
The usual situation was for Lynda to get around to answering Anneliese's letter a few months after she received it. But, in 1966 Lynda was taking a year off from her teaching career so she answered the letter fairly promptly. It seemed just a few days later that I came home to find that Lynda had received another letter from Anneliese. In her letter to Anneliese, Lynda had made some statement to the effect that she would have to reserve comparisons of British, Germsns, and Americans until we came to Europe. Well, Anneliese took that to mean that we were planning a trip and she had excitedly answered the letter asking when were we coming. When Lynda read the letter to me, we looked at each other and said "Why not go."
Lynda wrote to Anneliese and told her that we were planning to come and asked for suggestions as to dates, and the whole nine yards. This was a totally new experience for us. Annaliese advised that she would be able to travel with us if we were there during her vacation. We decided that the least expensive way for us to get to Europe would be to fly from Dallas to New York and take Icelandic Air to Luxembourg via Iceland. We also liked the idea of having a car to travel around in, so we bought a WV Beetle through our dealer in Odessa. We would pick up the VW in Cologne, Germany and leave it at Frankfurt to be shipped back to the US.
We submitted applications for a joint passport and checked with a travel agent about airline tickets to New York and Europe, then Lynda began going to the Ector County Library to do research on where to go and what to see.
After corresponding with Anneliese, we decided that we would not try to make advanced reservations. Our plan would take us to Luxembourg via Iceland. Anneliese would take a day off and meet us at the airport in Luxembourg. We would stay the night in Aachen, then pick up the WV the next day. Then after another night in Aachen, Lynda and I would take off for the Netherlands, Belgium, and France.
We drove to Denton and spent the night with Ray and Carolyn who were in graduate school at North Texas State University. They took us to Love Field in Dallas were we took an American Airline flight to New York.
This was my first time to fly and I was a bit apprehensive about getting airsickness.
Because of the airline strike (American Airline was about the only major U.S. airline not on strike) we missed our flight to Europe and had to spend 24 hours in New York for the next flight.
