Eastern Michigan University has one of the most ambitious study-tour programs in the country, attracting students from across the nation. I was hired to teach two history courses for the first six weeks of the first summer tour. The students generally took one history course and one art history course. We started in Salisbury, England, then visited London, Paris, the Rhineland, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Salzburg, Munich, Venice, Florence and Rome.

It was a great program! Lectures sometimes in the youth hostel or hotel, sometimes in gardens, but more often shorter lectures on site--at Versailles, the Berlin Wall, the concentration camp at Dachau, St Mark's square in Venice, the Roman Forum, the Colosseum. We ate a lot of good food, then walked it off. We drank a lot of good beer and good wine (well, at least I drank good wine). We carried everything on our backs. Some of the loads became pretty impressive, but this rule scared off the sissies.

We did a bit of hiking at the Lorelei in the Rhineland (a lot of steps up to our youth hostel) and to Andechs monastery outside Munich. Those were always worth the effort, especially Andechs, with its many varieties of specially-brewed beers.

We were so busy that it was not easy for the students to work in the readings for two courses and the tests, but they did it. Papers and oral reports, too. I would not have left my research for six weeks if I had not expected that the academic quality would be high. I was not disappointed.

 Articles printed in the Monmouth Illinois Daily Review Atlas about this trip:

Summer Students, World Cup Madness, The Berlin Wall, Prague, Diana and Sisi, and The Pope in Vienna