‘Everything was Richly, Gloriously Strange’

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  08.18.10 | 2:09 PM ET

Thirty years later, Guardian writer Peter Bradshaw looks back on a youthful European tour he took as winner of an essay contest. It’s a good read:

There was no listening to iPods or iPhones - even the Sony Walkman was years away from being commonplace - and no tearful texting our mums from our mobiles. We didn’t tweet and we didn’t upload loads of digital pictures to our Facebook pages. We were going abroad, cut off utterly by the Channel, taking pictures with Kodak instamatic cameras that would take a month to develop. There was no nonsense about making sure we didn’t get dehydrated, or giving us water bottles etc. We just sweated southward through Europe in those non-aircon coaches, got out, did some sightseeing and partied after-hours in our hotel-rooms—although using the word “party” as an intransitive verb was something else no one did in 1980.

Tags: Travel Writing, Why We Travel, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is co-editor of World Hum. She is a former associate editor at Up Here and Up Here Business magazines, and a contributor to Vela. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


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