by Elizabeth Welt Trahan

Elizabeth Welt Trahan, born in Berlin, Germany, in 1924, lived in Czechoslovakia from 1929 to 1939 and in Vienna until her departure for the United States in 1947, a time chronicled in her memoir Walking With Ghosts: A Jewish Childhood in Wartime Vienna (1998, 2000). Her memoir Ten Dollars in My Pocket (2006) tells the story of her life from 1947 to 1957. With degrees in literature from Sarah Lawrence, Cornell, and Yale, she taught at the University of Massachusetts, the University of Pittsburgh, the Monterey Institute of International Studies, and Amherst College until 1993. Always an avid traveler, she is here sharing one of her travel diaries with those who can't or won't travel, and with those who are interested in one traveler's personal experiences in a very different country and civilization.