Europe by Car Can Drive Your Family to Drink

When they rent cars to Americans in Europe, they ask if you want to buy collision insurance, if you have a major credit card and if you’re carrying an international driver’s license. They don’t ask if you’re competent.

So while I was mindlessly driving through the German Alps last month, I was stopped by the German border police as I headed for a finger of Austria I never imagined was there. The police demanded our passports, but I’d brought only my own. My wife and kids were, for the moment, stateless.

“Kommen Sie hier, Frau Zwick,” the policeman said.

My wife entered his office. Three minutes later, she still was in there.

“Are they beating mommy?”my daughter asked.

Driving through Europe can bring one surprise after another if you’re unprepared. My first surprise came in Budapest, where I was supposed to pick up the car, a five-passenger Opel Omega. Eighteen angry customers were in the rental office, along with two clerks, neither of whom spoke English.

“Opel Kadett,” one of the clerks said to me.

I pointed to my reservation form specifying a larger car. “Kadett kis, “ I replied, kis being Hungarian for “small.” I had learned the word at McDonald’s the previous night.

The clerk shook his head. Family and suitcases were not his concern.

I whipped out my business card and pointed to myself, using two more words I had learned at McDonald’s. “Nagy burgonya,” I said. “Big potato.”

The clerk consulted with the other clerk, who nodded. The first clerk led me into a garage. Standing there was a polar-white BMW, freshly washed. It was mine for the price of the Opel Omega I had reserved.

Later I learned that you’re supposed to bang on the counter and say the name of the model you ordered over and over again until they deliver it.

Sometimes it pays not to know what you’re doing.

I took the BMW to Miskolc (MISH-koltz), Hungary, where my grandmother was born, and I hired an elderly native to guide me to the cemetery. I forgot to ask him whether he knew how to drive. Since he spoke no English, we agreed on a system of “links for left, “recht” for right, and “dort” for straight ahead.

It worked fine for a block. Then I found myself headed the wrong way down a one-way street, with four lanes of cars coming at me. I took a U-turn on two wheels while my guide looked on uncomprehendingly. I said “verboten” and he seemed to get the message.

The next time he said “dort,” he plunged me over a 10-inch curb.

Czechoslovakia and Hungary severely punish drivers who have had as little as a single drink. On the other hand, they routinely serve alcoholic beverages to children. So when my one for the road was coffee, my teen-agers got beer and wine.

The good side of this was that I always knew where I could find my kids. They were in the hotel bar. Thus my 13-year-old son took to making announcements such as, “Excuse me, dad, while I step out for a Scotch.”

We drove to the dusty Hungarian town of Satoraljaujhely (SHA-tor-ahl-ya-oo-ee-hay-ee), on the Czech border, for no good reason other than to find the house in which my great-grandfather lived. This was a truly remote, exotic place. We knew we weren’t in Kansas anymore.

We pulled the BMW up to the Zemplen Hotel, walked up the stairs to the dining room and ordered mineral water for the adults and beer for the kids.

Two couples with high cheekbones stared at us.

“I bet no one around here has heard English in a hundred years,” I said.

One of the women walked over to our table. Our kids, out of habit apparently, immediately shoved their drinks in front of us. Made me wonder what they had been up to back in the States.

And the woman said, “Hi! We’re the Kleins from Toronto! We’re here to trace our roots.”

We drove through the Hungarian wine country, but we didn’t stop at any wineries because the kids were slurring their words. I stopped at a red light, the only traffic signal for miles. Two girls in bikinis dashed out and began to soap my windshield. I couldn’t see a thing. I handed them a 100-forint bill and they washed off the soap.

My wife was silent for 10 minutes.

And then she said: “Dance, 10. Looks, 3.”

In Prague, I ran into an old friend and we agreed to drive to Teplice, a Czech industrial town, to see the house in which he was born.

I followed him to a filling station in Plzen, Czechoslovakia, where I was to stop for gas. But they wouldn’t sell me any. As a foreigner driving a car registered in Hungary, I needed petrol coupons, the man at the pump said.

“No problem,” an Israeli brigadier general who was gassing up at the same time volunteered. The general was second-in-command at the Israeli rescue mission at Entebbe airport in Uganda on June 3, 1976.

He led me and my friend on a chase at speeds exceeding 100 m.p.h. through narrow and winding two-lane roads, passing on roller-coaster hills and blind curves and even on the right. Then we arrived in Karlovy Vary, where petrol coupons were sold, and we slowed down.

Two policemen pounded on the doors of our three cars and made us get out and produce our passports. Though we had done nothing illegal for at least 10 minutes, the police demanded that we each pay $4. They refused to name the offense, but they did say this was a group rate.

When I finally got to a gas station, it was self-service . . . and nobody wanted my petrol coupons.

You always hear that driving through Europe gives you all kinds of opportunities to see things you would never see if you went by train or tour bus. It’s true. Some of the things I saw:

--Eastern Europe’s worst service (a real achievement). At the Hotel Slavia in Karlovy Vary, waiters place all the silverware and napkins at one end of the table and expect diners to pass it out. If you take too long to make a menu decision, they walk away, sit down and have a drink. They never admit to being out of anything, although they usually are. When they bring you something far removed from what you ordered and you ask what on earth it is, they shout: “Beefmeat!” The bread they put on your table has been torn and shredded by previous diners.

--A church where modesty is not required. At the old church in the town center of Satoraljaujhely, Hungarian teen-agers stream in and out in the briefest of clothing. For both sexes, the uniform of the day calls for shorts with a bit of cheek protruding. In this poor rural town with tiny family apartments, the church serves as the village groping center.

--A road that nobody can pronounce. One of the prettiest roads in all of Europe runs from Satoraljaujhely to Hollohaza in northeastern Hungary. It takes less time to drive it than to say it.

--The world’s slowest drag race. Have you ever seen a Lada try to overtake a Skoda? One chugs along at 14 m.p.h. and the other at 17 m.p.h. Go to Gonc (pronounced Gerntz , sort of), Hungary, on a Friday night for this great moment in sports. Either car could be outrun by your lawn mower. Now that capitalism has come to the East Bloc, all may change: “This is not your father’s Skoda.”

--In Zelezna Ruda, Czechoslovakia, teen-agers stand on street corners and attempt to sing current rap hits. It’s quite a sight to see five pale, squat Czech boys mimicking M.C. Hammer. Four of them attempt a bass “bo, bo, bo, bo” and the fifth belts out, “Cain’t touch dis!”

Everyone who has to drive under speed-limit laws yearns to drive the Autobahns , the German freeways with no speed limits. So it was no surprise that I pulled into the left lane and floored the accelerator.

In no time at all, a big Audi Turbo Quattro was bearing down on me, flashing its lights and tailing me by only a couple of feet.

“Vacation, starring Chevy Chase,” my son whispered to my daughter.

This was their not-very-secret code. It meant: “Oh, Dad, you’re such a dork!”