EUROPE BY BAN : Campground are well-marked, secure and found in picturesque settings i small and large cities or out in the countryside.

First, the best night: It was in Italy at the campground at Cortina d’Ampezzo. The season was closing the next day, but already the campground was empty. It was just us in our van in a 300-acre field flush against the sheer gray rock of the Dolomite Alps.

The night was cold. We layered up in sweaters and parkas, downed Chianti and spaghetti primavera and were awed by the grandeur and the silence.

Now the worst night: It was at the campground a few miles outside Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, although it could have been anywhere. I was slamming shut the sliding door of our 8-year-old Volkswagen van and it fell off.

Even after it was reinstalled, it wouldn’t shut. We tried to secure it with a rope and plugged up the open space with towels but were up the entire night killing mosquitoes.

The next day was no winner, either. There was a VW repair agency in Dubrovnik but nobody there spoke English. When the mechanic finally understood the problem, he hammered the door shut. So now the door could not be opened and we spent the next three weeks climbing over the front seat whenever we wanted to get to the back.

Adventure is inevitable when camping in Europe.

Theoretically, it’s a tremendously easy way to travel, at least if done by van. Perhaps we looked harmless, or perhaps because our van had a Netherlands license, but with the exception of Yugoslavia and East Germany where visas were required, we were always just waved through borders.

Campgrounds are everywhere, in large cities and small, out in the countryside. They’re well-marked, they’re secure, the setting is picturesque, and very often the campground will have a restaurant or bar, even a swimming pool. Camping by van, you don’t have to pack and unpack. You just drive all day and when you’re tired, pull into the nearest campground and you’re home.

Travel has a whole different perspective at a campground, rather than a hotel. Especially in places such as Cortina or Innsbruck, Austria, where the landscape is so much a part of the environment. It’s as if you’re melding into the Alps rather than just looking at them.

Plus with campgrounds from $10 to $25 a night, depending on the number in your party and whether or not you want an electrical hookup, camping may be the last way to travel at bargain rates.

Mostly, though, camping is an experience completely separate from merely touring. Anybody can sightsee, but add hitting the road in a camper van and there’s never any jumble of memories. Every day is gloriously distinct, every memory solely yours, not some post card impression shared by every other person who’s traveled in Europe.

Of course, we didn’t know that when we started out. The idea of camping was appealing, but the decision was financial. We were hardly experienced campers, maybe twice each summer in U.S. national parks. But heck, we figured, we were adventurers. We’d figure it out.

We bought our van in Utrecht in the Netherlands. There too, in a grand shopping spree, we stocked it with pots, pans, towels, sleeping bags and other camping gear.

The plan: From Utrecht, pick up the Rhine and follow it through Germany into Switzerland for stops in Basel and Geneva and somewhere in the Alps for some hiking; through the Alps to the Lake Country of Italy, on to Venice, Florence and Rome, then down to Naples and the Amalfi Coast.

Over to Bari for the ferry to Dubrovnik (that ran about $100, $25 for the van, $75 for first-class accommodations for us); up the coast of Yugoslavia and into Austria via the Dolomite Alps; a few nights in Innsbruck, then to Munich, West Germany, in time for Oktoberfest; east to Salzburg, Austria, and a week in Vienna.

Then back north through East Germany to Berlin, back into the Netherlands for a week or so in Amsterdam and, finally, back to Utrecht.

We spent a fortune on Michelin maps, plus acquiring probably the world’s largest collection of city maps.

We bought the Automobile Club’s “Guide to Camping and Caravaning in Europe,” which is available at AAA offices in Southern California. There we learned about the International Camping License, which we bought at the Automobile Club in Paris for about $20.

You can get other books on European campgrounds in good European bookstores. Like its guides to hotels and motels, the AAA guide to camping lists only approved campgrounds, and doesn’t list much in Yugoslavia where campgrounds are plentiful and generally good. Elsewhere on the road, however, it took us only three nights to realize that if a campground isn’t listed in the AAA book, there’s usually a reason.

Living in a van is probably a lot like living in a boat: a tight, tidy existence with everything secure in its place.

Ours was not the super-luxurious Mercedes or VW Westfalia. It was a conversion with homemade draperies, a raised fiberglass roof so we could stand and the back turned into an amazingly comfortable queen-size bed with storage underneath and above.

The battery-powered cold water faucet ran into a little sink and there was a single light above the sink and a two-burner gas stove. A bright blue cooler box served as refrigerator. A pop-up table was built against the front seats so we could sit on the bed and eat.

About those campgrounds not in the AAA book: Our first was in Equisheim at the bottom of France’s Alsace region. The site wasn’t bad--a big pasture surrounded by vineyards--but facilities were minimal. No extras and no hot water. What’s more, every 15 minutes between 7 and 10 p.m. a car with a loudspeaker would cruise through the campground announcing bargains in the town’s one-block shopping district.

Then there was Erba, on one of the many lakes in northern Italy. True, it had a games area and a lively bar, but the toilets and showers were primitive and filthy.

Finally, Florence. It has two campgrounds: the good one, Parco Communale just below the Viale Michelangelo overlooking the city, and the horrible one near Firesole, which is connected to a villa youth hostel. That was where our policy of never making reservations caught up with us. The good campground was filled up. We should have found a hotel.

Instead, we drove across the city to the other campground, which was dirty, noisy and so thoroughly depressing that we left after two nights.

Great campgrounds: Hooge Veluwe in Hooge Veluwe National Park just outside Arnheim near the eastern border of the Netherlands and five minutes away from the Kroller-Muller Museum with its 278 Van Goghs. Hooge Veluwe was instant calm. Its sites are separated by high bushes, so there’s a fine feeling of privacy. Facilities are spotless and Wiener schnitzel at the restaurant smelled wonderful.

Also Seebucht at Zurich, right on the lake, a 10-minute bus ride from city center. Besides a one-day, $4-a-load laundry service, the campground had a permanent community of ducks that waddled up to campers and quacked for food.

Then there was Camp Seven Hills just outside Rome. In a valley surrounded by two of the seven hills of Rome, this campground provided bus service to and from the Vatican. It has a swimming pool with adjacent beer bar, a disco, restaurant, coffee bar and several shops. We even had the van serviced there.

nd rabbits to feed from your hand, plus peacocks and, most wonderful, three shy llamas. Campground owner Tony Altobelli collected animals. He kept the baby lions and tigers at his house, though he would take them down to the restaurant in the evenings. The kangaroos, chickens and assorted deer lived together in a terraced zoo, but the llamas were allowed to roam free.

Also roaming free, the Australians. These people obviously love to travel. Wherever we were, there they were too. And always ready to party. They came to Seven Hills in happy, bellowing busloads and the noise was the campground’s only drawback. Unlike other campgrounds where the showers and toilets were cleaned continuously, Seven Hills’ was cleaned only once a day. No way around it, as fantastic as this campground was, for cleanliness it was a disaster.

In 2 1/2 months on the road, you see a lot of country. We drove Italy’s superhighways and Yugoslavia’s back roads, debating which country had the worst drivers.

I directed my husband down one-way streets (the wrong way), but he absent-mindedly put diesel gas in the van. I bluffed my way through a discussion of laundry techniques in Yugoslavian and Ritch conversed for 45 minutes in German with a Swiss computer specialist who wandered through our camping space outside Gstaad.

Our pantry included shampoo from Italy, a detergent named Klop from the Netherlands, cookies from Vienna, batteries from Yugoslavia, bulgur from an Arab market in France and wines from everywhere.

No way is camping a luxurious way to travel. But then there are days such as that one in Innsbruck. We’d come back from sightseeing, settled into our camp chairs with a bottle of spicy Austrian wine when, almost above us, three hang gliders, one after another, took off. Like eagles, they dipped and soared. Our own private air show. You can’t get that at even the grandest five-star hotel.

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There was never any question; we wanted to drive through Europe.

The options: rent a car. Fine, if it’s a week or two or three. (Even then, watch out. A tax of 33% is automatically added to your rental agreement in France, and other countries, while not as bad, still get you coming and going.) However, we were thinking 2 1/2 months.

So another nifty idea: Buy a car and ship it home. Maybe a Porsche, which would be great for zipping along the Yugoslavian coastline. Alas, what with the current exchange rate, there are no bargains in Porsches these days. For that matter, not even Volkswagens.

Third possibility: Buy a used car. How about a van? Not only room for us, our luggage and the inevitable purchases, but also an alternative to money-sucking hotel rooms. A Volkswagen van, call it home.

The place to go: the Netherlands. Converting secondhand vans for camping seems to be a cottage industry there. And no ugly taxes, either.

We found Donna and Gerry Willard, co-proprietors of Alias Smith & Willard in Utrecht, through a newspaper travel section ad.

The Willards deal in used custom vans and offer a guaranteed buyback of 50% to 60% of the purchase price. (Of course, if you wanted to sell the van to someone else or keep it and send it home, that’s fine, too. Caution, however: The cost of converting a European model to United States and California regulations can make you think twice.)

Mimeographed Sheet

We called the Willards a month ahead and promptly received a mimeographed information sheet. From that we made our selection. So another call to Utrecht. You need to give them as much notice as possible, especially if you want an automatic transmission.

We wanted a relatively new van, not automatic, but otherwise loaded. No problem, Donna said. The cost would run $4,000 for a 1979 van converted to include a raised roof, rear ventilation window, interior lights, stove, sink and extra storage. (We could have saved money by choosing fewer options or an older model. But for that amount of time on the road, we were glad we didn’t scrimp.)

A deposit of $100, or 10% of the purchase price, payable in an International Money Order, was requested.

Just 30 minutes by train from Amsterdam, Utrecht is a charming university town crisscrossed with canals and loaded with history. The Willards picked us up at the station early in the morning.

The Willards don’t operate from a spiffy van showroom. You go to a parts and memorabilia-cluttered garage under their apartment. Nor is this business American-style. No one is in a hurry. Buy a van from the Willards and you’ve got to meet the family. In fact, you become part of the family. Paper work is done at the kitchen table surrounded by coffee cups, books and their collection of frogs.

Plan on a day. First, there’s coffee and conversation, followed by the test drive that Gerry ties in with a tour of Greater Utrecht, then back home for a bit of lunch family-style with dogs, mechanics and anyone else in the neighborhood.

Our van looked just fine, bright blue with turquoise draperies inside and brand-new white linoleum on the floor.

First stop, the bank, where our American traveler’s checks were converted to guilders. Then to the post office where title was transferred. Finally, to an insurance agency where coverage was arranged. Basic cost: $75 for the first month and $50 a month thereafter.

Stocked With Provisions

By late afternoon the van was ours, but the Willards weren’t done with us yet. In the downstairs storeroom, Donna stocked us with flea market and hand-me-down silverware, a frying pan, heater and other provisions for the road, at bargain prices. Then upstairs for a few last-minute suggestions before we finally started.

Maintenance was our responsibility and we had our share. Basics such as tuneups and oil changes were easy to arrange at stations on the autoroutes.

Gasoline prices were shocking. Count on $2.80 or more a gallon. Also count on some surprises. During the trip our 1979 vehicle needed a new muffler, minor ignition repairs and a hinge for the sliding door that fell off in Yugoslavia.

Two and a half months later we were back in Utrecht with Gerry and Donna. The trade-in went as promised: $2,000. Jerry cashed us out in guilders, and Donna gave us a lift to the train station.

Alias Smith & Willard, Krugerstratt 6, 3531 AP, Utrecht, Netherlands.