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While a girl guide I discovered Youth Hostels .After my first visit I joined the association and have been a member ever since.
I have stayed in youth hostels in 13 different countries,some splendid, some primitive and they have always been a home away
from home.They gave me the opportunity to escape whenever the need arose,an inexpensive safe place to stay and meet people
from many different backgrounds and nationalities. I have spent some of the happiest daysof my life in youth hostels.When
I had saved a little money I went to Paris. I found a derelict old house at Chatenay Malabry on the outskirts of Paris and
joined the street kids who lived there. It was a great place, condemned for habitation and fairly isolated. There was quite
a little group of us, drugs were not a problem then. We busked during the day [I had learned to play the guitar] and we shared
our resources. When the weather got cold I went home.
The Olympic Games were staged in London and Fanny Blankerts-Koen,
a Dutch housewife and mother of two children, won four gold medals running. Holland received a share of Marshall Aid from
the U.S. and also during this year Israel became a state. West Berlin was isolated by the Russians resulting in an airbridge
by which the British and
Americans supplied the city with food and medicines.
When I was 17 I saw a chance
to leave home - I applied to join the Army. I was interviewed and accepted as a recruit and started a course in telecommunications
at the Barracks near The Hague.I wanted to go to Indonesia but independence put an end to that dream.
The civil
war in China was over and Mao Tse Tung proclaimed The People's Republic of China. The Dutch guilder was devalued, resulting
in a 5% wage increase for everybody. New coins were minted and Korea was at war. In the U.S.A. Senator McCarthy had started
a communist witch-hunt, and the government in South Africa implemented apartheid.
Peace on earth was still an illusion.
There was no longer a shortage of food. Deep-frozen food appeared in the shops for the first time, also the first
self-help supermarket. We all thought it was a silly idea to let people help themselves and were convinced it would never
work. The Labour Party won the elections with an overwhelming majority. The English King George VI died and
Princess
Elizabeth became Queen Elizabeth II. In Argentina, Eva Peron died of cancer. The entire population mourned the death of the
President's wife who, during her husband's reign, had collected a massive fortune for the poor, the orphans and the sick.
In America ex-General Eisenhower won the presidency.
When my contract with the Army was ended and
I was free again , I set off for Scandinavia with a girlfriend. We found semi-permanent accommodation at a hostel on the outskirts
of Stockholm, and I found a job at the S.A.S. airport in the canteen. I worked for about a month, by which time I had enough
money to explore the rest of the country.I hitchhiked North and travelled across Lapland into Norway, well inside the Arctic
Circle.
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