While today families fly halfway around the globe to go on beach vacations to exotic islands, after the Second World War, a trip to Italy was the ultimate experience. So you packed everything you needed for two weeks into the oh-so-small passenger car and drove south with your family.
Alexander F. Storz's book "Pack die Badehose ein" will help anyone who has long forgotten this.
On vacation by car
Driving 1000 km or more in a small car on a summer vacation was popular in the fifties and sixties. Depending on your financial means, you packed a tent in the trunk or hung a caravan on the hook and off you went.
But it wasn't that easy, as the pictures Storz has collected over the years and the stories show. Alpine passes had to be overcome, traffic jams on the highways and country roads and the wagon had to cope with the enormous load - packed to the roof.
Alexander F. Storz discusses the various approaches to summer vacations, describes the major obstacles and also explains the necessary accessories, from roof racks to car radios, with lots of detailed knowledge and loving pictures.
Childhood memories
Long-forgotten childhood memories quickly come back to the reader's mind: changing money, the challenges of filling up in faraway Italy, the cheap gelati, the heat in the stationary column, the search for the campsite or the vacation home with the 1:250,000 map in hand, and so on.
This book is a journey into the past, and if you can't remember the romantic summer vacations of yesteryear, Storz is here to help.
Other photos
But it is above all the photos that make this compact 176-page book so appealing. They are not factory photos or highly stylized advertising images, but snapshots from back then, taken with the aim of freezing a moment in time. There is something for everyone, from the Porsche fan who discovers old 356s, the Opel fan who finds a wide variety of models from Rüsselsheim on vacation, to the fan of long-disappeared brands such as Borgward or Austin.
Of course, the book focuses on Germany, showing mainly vacationers who drove south from Frankfurt, Munich or Swabia, but there are also many pictures of Dutch or British vacationers.
The pictures show landscapes and idyllic camping scenes, roadside breakdowns and pass crossings. These are exactly the kind of pictures you would find in a photo album from the fifties or sixties that your father or grandfather might have put together. And the pictures are just as yellowed and affected by color shifts as those in the old photo album.
Charmingly told
Not only in the few chapters, but also in the captions, you can learn some interesting details from the years of travel of the drivers. For example, you can read about how the salt-rich sand of the Danish coast got stuck in the cavities of the car after a fun trip to the beach, causing the bodywork to deteriorate more quickly afterwards. But the caravans and tents of the past are also described and all the accessories that were carried in those days are shown in many advertising illustrations from the past. There is talk of aluminum egg shells, for example, or the car camping table, which fitted exactly to the size of the Beetle's spare wheel.
Entertaining
Browsing through the book is fun and somehow also makes you want to go on vacation back then. However, before embarking on a nostalgia trip, you should perhaps read the book in its entirety, because of course not everything was always as simple as it seemed, not even back then.
EUR 24.95 is certainly okay for the bid and the booklet also makes a good gift.
Bibliographical details
- Title: Pack your swimming trunks - This is how we rolled into summer vacation
- Author: Alexander F. Storz
- Language: German
- Publisher: Motorbuch Verlag
- Edition: 1st edition 2017
- Format: Hardcover, 265 x 230 mm
- Scope: 176 pages, 107 black and white and 185 color illustrations
- ISBN: 978-3-613-03959-9
- Price: EUR 24.90 (D)
- Buy/order: Online at amazon.de, online at Motorbuch-Verlag or in relevant bookstores
