Off-Season Travel on the Continent

THE wise man travels light and out of season. There are so many advantages that I’ve often wondered why anybody would want to travel in July and August. (I won’t wonder next year when our daughter will start going to school and my wife and I will join the regular army of parents, schoolteachers, and employees who have to take their vacations in summer.)

For the past years we’ve been traveling either before or after the season. We would go in May when room clerks were relaxed; we always got good rooms without having to use pull or bribery. Or we would go in September and October, after the hordes of tourists had left. Business was getting quiet, and hotel owners and garage proprietors were thinking of closing up their places for the November lull. They were delighted to see us and gave us their best rooms, best tables, and best service. Waiters, no longer overworked, took our orders correctly. Sommeliers didn’t carry a bottle in each hand like fumbling jugglers. The chef didn’t mind preparing a special dish which would have been unheard-of during the rush season. Sometimes he would come out of his kitchen and ask us for our wishes. When we left, they told us to come again, and the bill was considerably lower than in the summertime.

In spring and fall, airplanes are uncrowded and waiting lists are short. Transatlantic boats offer you better staterooms, and there is always a vacant berth on the Orient Express sleeping car. In the big cities, you get a taxi without waiting half an hour on the curb. And I’ve heard of a man who walked into a good hotel in Baris one day in April and got a choice room, without reservation; but the story sounds too good to be true.

Better all around

A different group of people travel in the off season. You won’t see noisy caravans of guided tourists who collect sights and souvenirs, try to “make” Italy in 72 hours, and have no time to spend an evening on the Acropolis. Absent are the forcefullooking ladies and snobs who go to see and be seen at the right places at the right time; naturally, the off season is not the “right” time. Instead there are quiet couples who have saved for their trip a long time and savor every moment of it; scholars on sabbatical leave; people who are less hurried and more dedicated. They know that in order to see more one should travel slowly. Hotel lobbies are quiet and promenades deserted. There is time for leisure and enjoyment and reflection.

Every year since the end of the war, more Americans have come to Europe and the “season” has become longer. The biggest travel year was 195.5; 600,000 Americans were in Europe. Officially, transatlantic shipping lines now have a summer season to Europe (April 13 to August 1) and from Europe (June 29 to October 17). Fares are about $30 higher than during the rest of the year, which is called “thrift season” by the pressagentry. Airlines charge less between November 1 and March 31.

Practically every self-respecting resort in Austria, Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, and Switzerland has its “high season,” featuring 30 per cent higher prices and 30 per cent worse rooms and meals. Service is bad. Mysterious extras (sojourn taxes, music supplement, Kurtaxe, etc.) appear on the bill. High seasons start at different times and are longer or shorter, depending on tradition and climate. In some places the season lasts only eight weeks during which the innkeepers, taxi drivers, and merchants have to make enough money to pay for a whole year’s overhead, mortgages, and other fixed payments, and to make a profit besides. The unfortunate guest who comes during the high season is supposed to foot the bilk

Alps and Riviera

In some Alpine resorts, the short peak season lasts from July 15 to August 25. The Suvretta House in St. Moritz usually closes around September 1. Though September can be lovely in St. Moritz, people just don’t go there any more after the first week it; that month. Don’t ask me why. In Badgastein, the famous Austrian spa, the season ends on August 18, a nostalgic leftover from the Hapsburg days when court councilors, dignitaries, and generals’ widows had to report to the Imperial Court on August 18, the birthday of Emperor Franz Josef I. Italy’s most crowded two weeks are the last two in August when practically the entire populace closes up shop and celebrates feragosto. Bonds arc crowded, people sleep in bathtubs, and spaghetti is undercooked.

The French Riviera has its own timetable. There are several “high seasons” — between Christmas and New Year s Day, from February to April, and during the summer. Dutch and Belgian channel resorts have “economy prices” in May and in September. Normandy and Brittany are much cheaper in spring and autumn, and often much nicer. The great winter sports resorts — Davos and Arosa, Lech and Ztirs (Arlberg) — are sold out completely around Christmas and again in February and March, but for some strange reason there are always free rooms in January and again in April, when there is sun as well as snow.

The finest months for off-season travel are April-May-June and Septembor-October. Spring is lovely in the valleys of South Tyrol where the orchards form oceans of blossoms; in the Dolomites, the Engadine, and the Bernese Oberland, where the green meadows with spring flowers almost touch the glaciers; near the Italian lakes (Como, Garda, Maggiore), in the Swiss Tessin (Lugano, Locarno), and in the valley of Aosta. And late autumn with its silky Indiansummer afternoons can be the perfect season in the Alps, in the valleys of France and Italy, in Scandinavia, along the Rhine and Rhone and other great rivers. The days are getting short, but they’re clear and bright and never too hot for comfort. The uninhibited traveler who doesn’t like to be told where to go when, who hates schedules and deadlines, is always certain to find a nice room and a good meal no matter where he pulls up.

The ideal month

The guidebook lists September and October as the ideal travel months for Alsace, the Côte Basque, Paris; May and June are particularly recommended for the Vosges, the Jura, the Côte d’Azur, Corsica, the Côte Vermeille, Normandy, the Auvergne, Brittany, and—Paris. October and November are wonderful in Burgundy and around Bordeaux and along the Cote-du-Rhone when harvest starts in the vineyards and the winegrowers get ready to celebrate.

Gastronomically, spring and fall are peak seasons. Spring with its varieties of fresh vegetables, young asparagus, the first strawberries, and the tenderest poulet de Bresse. Fall offers a wide choice of fish and game, of truffles and foie gras. French chefs are fond of autumn, when appetite’s are large and there is plenty of fine butter, heavy cream, and ripe fruit. Sensible eaters retreat from terraces where they’ve dined in summer; they go indoors where the sound of distant thunder comes from the kitchen, not from the skit’s.

Although summertime is now called festival time in Europe, some of the finest festivals take place early or late. (Surely the worst time to see the lovely Mozart city of Salzburg is July and August, when headwa iters and hotel cashiers make out bills by multiplication instead of addition; when room clerks, porters, and ticket scalpers start commando raids upon innocents from abroad.) April offers Barcelona’s Festival; in May there are Wiesbaden’s International Festival, the Maggio Musicale in Florence, Mai Musical in Bordeaux, the Baroque Festival in Bayreuth, the Grieg Festival in Bergen, and Copenhagen’s Music and Ballet Festival. June features the Vienna Festivochen, festivals in Glyndebourne, Helsinki, Strasbourg, Dubrovnik, Baden-Baden, Angers, Zurich, Granada, Coblenz; September includes the festivals of Montreux, Venice, and Perugia, and Festwochen in Berlin.

Next time, go early — or late.

JOSEPH WECHSHEUG