Alice Steinbach - Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

Steinbachs prose is polished and professional. Her deft descriptions of random acquaintances turn them into living, breathing people.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

Anyone who looks longingly at travel brochures or who feels Merchant-Ivoryinspired pangs of wanderlust will find deep enjoymentand perhaps inspirationin Steinbachs grand tour.

Book-of-the-Month Club

Steinbachs book is much more than just an engaging travelogue. She reflects thoughtfully on her life as she wanders through Europe, revealing her concerns about being a woman alone and about growing older.

Austin American-Statesman

A LICE S TEINBACH , whose work at the Baltimore Sun was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 1985, has been a freelance writer since 1999. She is also the author of Educating Alice. She was appointed the 199899 McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton University and is currently a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Copyright 2000 by Alice Steinbach
Readers guide copyright 2002 by Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House Limited, Toronto.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Music Sales Corporation: Excerpt from Well Meet Again by Ross Parker and Hugh Charles.
Copyright 1939 and renewed for all countries by Irwin Dash Music Co., Ltd.
All rights for the Western Hemisphere controlled by Music Sales Corp. Reprinted by permission.

Warner Bros. Music Publishing and Williamson Music: Lyric excerpt from My Funny Valentine by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Copyright 1937 (renewed) by Chappell & Co. Rights for the extended renewal term in the United States controlled by the Estate of Lorenz Hart (administered by W.B. Music Corp) and the Family Trust u/w Richard Rodgers and the Family Trust u/w Dorothy F. Rodgers (administered by Williamson Music). All rights outside of the United States controlled by Chappell & Co. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014 and Williamson Music.

The author encountered many people during the course of her travels. Their names and in some cases identifying details have been changed in order to protect the privacy of those individuals.

R ANDOM H OUSE T RADE P APERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This work was originally published in hardcover by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, in 2000.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Steinbach, Alice.
Without reservations : the travels of an independent woman / Alice Steinbach.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-76982-4
1. Steinbach, AliceJourneysEurope. 2. EuropeDescription and travel. 3. Women journalistsBiography. 4. Women travelersBiography. 5. WomenTravelEurope. I. Title.
PN4874.S682A3 2000
818.5403dc21

[B] 99-32959

Random House website address: www.atrandom.com

v3.1

This book is for Shelby
and Patricia Carter

There are years that ask questions
and years that answer.

Z ORA N EALE H URSTON

For making this book possible, the author wishes to thank Gail Ross, who, from the first, stood behind its publication every step of the way. I am also deeply grateful to Kate Medina for her elegant eye and insightful editing. For their invaluable contributions, I thank Jean-Isabel McNutt, Robin Pinnel, and Meaghan Rady.

I am also indebted to the Baltimore Sun, where, over the years, many of my writing thoughts took shape.

I write this sitting in my cozy kitchen on a wintry morning, my old cat dozing beside me on the warm, hissing radiator. An ice storm passed through Baltimore last night, and I can hear the evergreen trees outside my window creaking under the weight of their glazed branches. Six years ago, on a winters day not unlike this one, I sat at the same table and made a decision that, for me, was quite daring: I decided to take a chance and temporarily jump ship, so to speak, from the life Id fashioned for myself.

This morning I got out a box containing some reminders of where that decision took me. Although Ive been searching for a particular item, its fun seeing whatever turns up.

Here, for instance, is the bill for the ten-dollar cappuccino I drank one morning in Venice at the caff Florian. And heres a program from a student production in Oxford of Much Ado About Nothing. Next comes a ticket to the Museum of Garden History in London, and the receipt for a pair of black silk pumps with four-inch heels, bought in Milan and worn once. The menu from a dinner enjoyed in the Umbrian town of Perugia follows, reminding me of how delicious the Veal Escalope with Red Chicory was that night.

Finally, in a smaller box labeled PARIS, I find what Im looking for: a postcard with a view of the citys loveliest bridge, Pont Alexandre III. Dated 9 May 1993, and sent from me to me, the postcard signals the beginning of an adventure:

Dear Alice,

It is my first morning in Paris and I have walked from my hotel on the Left Bank to the Seine. The river is silver; above it, an early morning sun the color of dull nickel burns through a gray sky, its light glancing off the ancient buildings that line the quai Voltaire. It is the Paris I have come to know from the photographs of Atget and Cartier-Bresson: a city of subtle tonalities, of platinum and silver and gray; a city of incomparable beauty. Now, from this perfect place, I begin a journey.

The postcard is signed: Love, Alice.

It is the first of many such postcards that I would write and send home to myself as I traveled over the next several months. Or, as I affectionately came to call that interlude in my life, The Year of Living Dangerously.

Most of us, I suppose, have had at one time or another the impulse to leave behind our daily routines and responsibilities and seek out, temporarily, a new life. Certainly, it was a fantasy that more than once had taken hold of me. At such times I daydreamed about having the freedom to travel wherever chance or fancy took me, unencumbered by schedules and obligations and too many preplanned destinations.

But the daydream always retreated in the face of reality. I was, after all, a working, single mother and my life was shaped in large measure by responsibilities toward my two sons and my work as a newspaper reporter at the Baltimore Sun.

By 1993, however, I was entering a new phase of my life, one that caused me to rethink its direction. My sons had graduated from college and were entering new adult lives of their own; one as a translator in Japan, the other as a graduate physics student in Colorado. I was happy for them, and proud too. After all, watching a child march successfully into the larger world is one of the greatest satisfactions parenthood has to offer. Still, letting go of my sons left me feeling vulnerable in a way I didnt understand. The powerful bonds between us remained; but physically the boys I had raised were gone.