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Originally Posted by Hamlet53
One other comment on this. I do wonder if Fermor's experience would have been the same and would the idea of such a journey have been possible even back then for a working class English youth? Would the father of an old school friend been willing, or even able, in 1933 to lend Fermor 15 pounds to get him started on his journey. Would his reception throughout Europe been the same as a wandering lower-class 18-year old with the corresponding level of education?
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Probably not. I'm currently reading "Burning the Reichstag" by Benjamin Carter Hett. Marinus van der Lubbe, a wandering Dutch bricklayer, was executed for arson and high treason in connection with the fire.
Van der Lubbe was an orphan raised by his sister, and became a bricklayer because he couldn't think of anything better to do; he lost most of his sight early in his career, and lived on a small disability pension by the time he was 19. According to Hett:
"He was a young man who yearned to be something that, born in poverty in a time of limited social mobility, he could not be... He embarked on extraordinarily adventurous journeys around Europe... In September 1931 he wanted to go to China via Constantinople. From the map he thought he could walk to Constantinople in about three weeks ... and was surprised to encounter snow in Austria. He had thought that by going south he would escape the winter. By mid-October he had by any rate reached Yugoslavia, where he gave up... "