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Excerpts from postcards sent in September and early October 1986, Dean's
World Tour I:
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Venice, Italy
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Florence, Italy
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Munich, West
Germany, 24 SEP 1986: Guten tag (Good
day)! I had half a rotisserie-roasted chicken and a 33 ounce (1 liter)
mug of beer, and life has been very, very good to me today at the Munich Oktoberfest.
Now, passing through the Austrian Alps, I'm on my way to Italy
somewhere.
The other day, I fell in love with a lady who was going another direction
... a hazard of travel. Perhaps, I have a weakness for wild Jewish girls
like my former squeeze, Cathy, or perhaps it was the storybook surroundings of Luxembourg.
Or maybe it's just that I'm fickle and horny. It's probably a little bit
of each, and the fact that she seemed my style, to boot, and a very nice young
lady. I seem to run into these situations often enough while traveling,
and since goals or directions do not coincide, nothing ever comes of them.
Thanks for your recent letter, John. It's always good to hear that your
love life is no better than mine. Actually, I've been doing quite well on
that score recently. Agnes (French girl) spent 10 days knitting me a
sweater, and her affection and enthusiasm cannot be beat. Still, I'm
trading the world for her -- a value judgment.
My mother and I enjoyed two weeks traveling together. I even showed
her some of the sleazier parts of Amsterdam
(i.e. the drug cafes and the red light district).
Auf wiedersehen (goodbye),
Col. Klink and Sgt. Schultz
Monaco,
26 SEP 1986:
Buon Giorno, or should I say, bon jour! I'm sitting having a beer and
a sandwich 30 yards away from the Palace
of Monaco in the second smallest
country in the world (after the Vatican).
The weather is typically gorgeous, just as it was yesterday in Venice
(after a brief hard shower).
Venice is about as beautiful as
any city dare be, 'lest everyone should want to move there. Its name is
synonymous with romance, and Italian tenors echo this sentiment aboard your
gondola, if you wish.
It must also be the easiest place in the world to become very lost if you
don't have a map. I spend two hours last evening doing just that. I
would like to see a diagram of the confused directions I walked. It would
look like modern art with no apparent rhyme or reason. By foot and by
boat are the only ways to get around in the whole city, and I opted for the
former, probably about 10-12 miles of it in one day.
In the evening, before catching the midnight
train, I played guitar and sang in the streets. In less than an hour, though
I wasn’t encouraging it, some people took up a hat for me and collected about
11,000 lira (which sounds like a lot until you realize that it's about $9.00) while
providing some free glasses of Italian wine. I probably could have funded
my way across Europe this summer by this method, but
doing this often would have seemed too much like work and taken some of the fun
out of it. I'd just as soon do it for free. I feel strange taking
money from people for something I enjoy anyway. It's like prostituting my
music.
Ciao,
Prince Albert of Monaco
Brindisi, Italy,
02 OCT 1986: First,
I check to see if my head's attached, and if so, I don't worry whether it's on
straight ... I just go!!! A few nights ago, on my fifth consecutive night
of train riding, while changing trains in Milan,
Italy at four in the
morning, I watched as my guitar rode away on the train from which I had just
disembarked on its way to Geneva.
In spite of my pursuit of it all the way to Geneva,
it was never to be seen nor heard of again. True, I was planning to get
rid of it shortly before going to Turkey next month, and it is somewhat of a
burden to carry around and consign at every railroad station (sour grapes
attitude), but it would have come in handy on this sunny day in a park filled
with potentially appreciative listeners. Still, continuing to kick myself
about it is futile, just as chasing after it was.
So, it's on with the show, tonight riding from Brindisi,
Italy to Patras,
Greece on the deck of a
large ferry. The park I'm sitting in, with palm trees around me, is
filled with backpackers waiting to do the same.
The weather has been nearly perfect every day since you left Europe
(mid-September). Italy has been great, but as usual, I've rushed through
it too fast, partially in a effort to have more time in Greece and Turkey
(higher priorities for me) and partially because Italy, as with much of Europe
since the dollar has fallen again, is making unreasonable demands upon my
budget. Greece
and Turkey, on
the other hand, should be quite affordable.
Arrivederchi,
Michelangelo
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