I miss handwritten letters. I miss them very much. Occasionally, I send one to a distant friend. Nothing says I am thinking of you better than that. And we can still do it. But like you say, it takes longer these days for it to arrive. No matter!
Thanks for letting me know about your letter writing! You are so good to send handwritten letters; I love that. I rarely do, in part due to the crazy postage. But it does feel really wonderful to send and receive letters. Maybe I'll try to track down some of those aerogrammes and see if that inspires me.
How brave you were!! Though I never traveled around Europe quite like that, I did use my home base in Cologne, Germany where I lived for the most miserable year of my life, to meet up with friends in Amsterdam and Spain, take the train to conferences, and one glorious time to visit my parents in Copenhagen. I look back on taking the train to and around Spain with wonder. How did I do that without Google Maps and the internet? How did I do anything without those tools.
This post reminded me of the wonderful letter writing that our friends had with each other. Long, copious messages. I still have many of the letters you sent me. I have many from my mother and postcards from my father. Those letters mean more to me than anything - not only the content to remind us of our younger selves but the care and thoughtfulness that it took to sit down and write them.
Thank you for your comments and thoughts. It is funny to think how easy it seemed to move around back then. I guess we learned to read signs and timetables, and ask for directions and then follow them. And read those tiny folded up paper maps!
Letter writing has been replaced by these wonderful notes to each other on Substack I guess! Not very intimate or personal, necessarily, but still usually kind, and observant and thought-provoking. I'm thankful for that anyway.
Oh Sabrina - you pressed so many memory-buttons for me. I loved aerogrammes, still do if only it was possible to use them and of course postcards were de rigeur.
My whole solo-trip (1971) through Europe was detailed on aerogrammes (with the odd phonecall or telegram to Mum and Dad re money. Snap!).
In an effort not to lose our handwriting ability and to continue a dying artform, a author friend in Sweden (Anna Belfrage) and I send missives. But our writing is awful and finding tissue thin paper is next to hopeless. So we buy cards and slip writing paper inside. The whole lot becomes the national debt in postage.
I didn't ever use Poste Restante. My mail mostly arrived safely at my pensiones which I'd managed to pre-book. Imagine mail arriving like that now!
I loved that we were intrepid enough to travel right through Europe (and Southeast Asia for me) without mobile phones and email.
And yes with enthusiasm to Eurail passes - brilliant! And to 'Europe on $5 a Day' - even more brilliant!
Clever you to be able to book ahead. I was terrified of having to speak on the telephone to 'foreign countries"! So youth hostels it was. Also in some places you could go to a visitors centre and they would help you find a place to stay.
And agreed, I am still a bit gobsmacked that I travelled by myself using only tiny-print train schedules, ripped out chapter pages for a few countries from Europe on $5 a Day (thanks for that reminder!) plus I think I used one other guide book that was a bit more 'alternative'. Maybe Lonely Planet or it's spiritual predecessor. The trip returning by myself from the Sinai and Negev may have been a step too far, but I survived.
It was a great time to travel wasn't it??
Good for you for continuing the letter writing. My handwriting has gotten awful too, and the postage is astronomical here as well.!! Every once in awhile I'll send a paper card to one of my kids, but they are the only ones I'll invest in postage!
Thank you for writing the Sabrina. Every sentence brought back a vivid memory of my own during my solo travels through Europe in my 20s. I am so grateful for those opportunities to learn about other cultures and seek commonality with the diverse travelers I connected with who came from different countries.🌷
I'm delighted to hear you recalled so many of your own wonderful memories of travel during those early days! It seemed like a manageable adventure then, but looking back it seems very adventurous, doesn't it? And I absolutely agree that all those wonderful inter-country connections helped us learn so much so fast. Thanks for your observation!
Oooh, I loved this Sabrina. So evocative! I felt like I was there with you in that hot Post Office, and with you on your travels. I love that scene of you and the other multilingual girls with so many languages between you but not one in common! Yet still finding a way to communicate 🥰
I have a real soft spot for those aerogrammes too. When my sister and I spent summers in the US with our grandparents, it was our only way to communicate with our parents (and later on boyfriends! 😅). I still remember looking out of the window waiting for the stubby little mail truck thing to arrive...
Thank you Jayne! I'm so happy to hear you remember those aerogrammes too! Love the idea that they were going to parents and then likely much more often to the boyfriends...:)
When I looked them up earlier this week I realised there are so many different designs from each country. They would be fun to collect, if I needed anything new to collect 😅.
That session with those girls speaking all those languages was a real treasure. I can't remember all the languages, but there was at least English, French and Greek (the ones I could speak a little) and I'm pretty sure German, an asian language and one other eastern European one too. Fabulous.
Oooh, I didn’t realise there were different designs! That would be fun to collect… not that I'm encouraging you, especially after reading about the storage unit last week hehehe.
I just remembered another aerogramme tale… my parents met when they were young teens, then after my dad moved to the US with his parents, my mum used to write herself love aerogrammes pretending they were from my dad! I found some a few years ago, it was sweet and moving, and a little strange 😅
Oh goodness, what a funny thing to do! I like that she specifically used aerogrammes: almost like a writing constraint to stimulate creativity! Did your dad know about the letters? Did he ever write his own? So many more questions, but I’ll stop now 😉!
😂 Your post unleashed a lot of memories. Dad definitely did not write his own hahaha. I guess he must have known about them at some point as when I found them they had been married 40+ years 😂
It would make quite a good writing prompt actually wouldn’t it ‘write yourself a love letter from your partner… or imaginary partner’!
Maybe you were lucky: When I found some letters my father had written my mother just before they were married, I could hardly read them, they were so tender and sweet. It was almost too intimate, not in any salacious way, just so vulnerable and heart-felt. I felt like I was trespassing.
I miss handwritten letters. I miss them very much. Occasionally, I send one to a distant friend. Nothing says I am thinking of you better than that. And we can still do it. But like you say, it takes longer these days for it to arrive. No matter!
Thanks for letting me know about your letter writing! You are so good to send handwritten letters; I love that. I rarely do, in part due to the crazy postage. But it does feel really wonderful to send and receive letters. Maybe I'll try to track down some of those aerogrammes and see if that inspires me.
How brave you were!! Though I never traveled around Europe quite like that, I did use my home base in Cologne, Germany where I lived for the most miserable year of my life, to meet up with friends in Amsterdam and Spain, take the train to conferences, and one glorious time to visit my parents in Copenhagen. I look back on taking the train to and around Spain with wonder. How did I do that without Google Maps and the internet? How did I do anything without those tools.
This post reminded me of the wonderful letter writing that our friends had with each other. Long, copious messages. I still have many of the letters you sent me. I have many from my mother and postcards from my father. Those letters mean more to me than anything - not only the content to remind us of our younger selves but the care and thoughtfulness that it took to sit down and write them.
Alas, those days are gone.
Thank you for your comments and thoughts. It is funny to think how easy it seemed to move around back then. I guess we learned to read signs and timetables, and ask for directions and then follow them. And read those tiny folded up paper maps!
Letter writing has been replaced by these wonderful notes to each other on Substack I guess! Not very intimate or personal, necessarily, but still usually kind, and observant and thought-provoking. I'm thankful for that anyway.
Oh Sabrina - you pressed so many memory-buttons for me. I loved aerogrammes, still do if only it was possible to use them and of course postcards were de rigeur.
My whole solo-trip (1971) through Europe was detailed on aerogrammes (with the odd phonecall or telegram to Mum and Dad re money. Snap!).
In an effort not to lose our handwriting ability and to continue a dying artform, a author friend in Sweden (Anna Belfrage) and I send missives. But our writing is awful and finding tissue thin paper is next to hopeless. So we buy cards and slip writing paper inside. The whole lot becomes the national debt in postage.
I didn't ever use Poste Restante. My mail mostly arrived safely at my pensiones which I'd managed to pre-book. Imagine mail arriving like that now!
I loved that we were intrepid enough to travel right through Europe (and Southeast Asia for me) without mobile phones and email.
And yes with enthusiasm to Eurail passes - brilliant! And to 'Europe on $5 a Day' - even more brilliant!
Thank you for this.
Clever you to be able to book ahead. I was terrified of having to speak on the telephone to 'foreign countries"! So youth hostels it was. Also in some places you could go to a visitors centre and they would help you find a place to stay.
And agreed, I am still a bit gobsmacked that I travelled by myself using only tiny-print train schedules, ripped out chapter pages for a few countries from Europe on $5 a Day (thanks for that reminder!) plus I think I used one other guide book that was a bit more 'alternative'. Maybe Lonely Planet or it's spiritual predecessor. The trip returning by myself from the Sinai and Negev may have been a step too far, but I survived.
It was a great time to travel wasn't it??
Good for you for continuing the letter writing. My handwriting has gotten awful too, and the postage is astronomical here as well.!! Every once in awhile I'll send a paper card to one of my kids, but they are the only ones I'll invest in postage!
I think it was Lonely Planet back in the day. But $5 A Day was my bible!
I love cards, letters, stationery of all sorts. We mustn't let the skill die! Even if its just a few words on postcards.
Maybe we should start a postcard club with all our Substack friends...
I like that idea!
Let's.
I'll mention it in my next post. For writers and subscribers...
Thank you for writing the Sabrina. Every sentence brought back a vivid memory of my own during my solo travels through Europe in my 20s. I am so grateful for those opportunities to learn about other cultures and seek commonality with the diverse travelers I connected with who came from different countries.🌷
I'm delighted to hear you recalled so many of your own wonderful memories of travel during those early days! It seemed like a manageable adventure then, but looking back it seems very adventurous, doesn't it? And I absolutely agree that all those wonderful inter-country connections helped us learn so much so fast. Thanks for your observation!
Oooh, I loved this Sabrina. So evocative! I felt like I was there with you in that hot Post Office, and with you on your travels. I love that scene of you and the other multilingual girls with so many languages between you but not one in common! Yet still finding a way to communicate 🥰
I have a real soft spot for those aerogrammes too. When my sister and I spent summers in the US with our grandparents, it was our only way to communicate with our parents (and later on boyfriends! 😅). I still remember looking out of the window waiting for the stubby little mail truck thing to arrive...
Thank you Jayne! I'm so happy to hear you remember those aerogrammes too! Love the idea that they were going to parents and then likely much more often to the boyfriends...:)
When I looked them up earlier this week I realised there are so many different designs from each country. They would be fun to collect, if I needed anything new to collect 😅.
That session with those girls speaking all those languages was a real treasure. I can't remember all the languages, but there was at least English, French and Greek (the ones I could speak a little) and I'm pretty sure German, an asian language and one other eastern European one too. Fabulous.
Oooh, I didn’t realise there were different designs! That would be fun to collect… not that I'm encouraging you, especially after reading about the storage unit last week hehehe.
I just remembered another aerogramme tale… my parents met when they were young teens, then after my dad moved to the US with his parents, my mum used to write herself love aerogrammes pretending they were from my dad! I found some a few years ago, it was sweet and moving, and a little strange 😅
Oh goodness, what a funny thing to do! I like that she specifically used aerogrammes: almost like a writing constraint to stimulate creativity! Did your dad know about the letters? Did he ever write his own? So many more questions, but I’ll stop now 😉!
😂 Your post unleashed a lot of memories. Dad definitely did not write his own hahaha. I guess he must have known about them at some point as when I found them they had been married 40+ years 😂
It would make quite a good writing prompt actually wouldn’t it ‘write yourself a love letter from your partner… or imaginary partner’!
You are so right! That is a great prompt!
Maybe you were lucky: When I found some letters my father had written my mother just before they were married, I could hardly read them, they were so tender and sweet. It was almost too intimate, not in any salacious way, just so vulnerable and heart-felt. I felt like I was trespassing.
Oh wow, just reading about you reading them made my heart flutter!