In June 1964, Peter Menting (full name “Peter Menting Yoell”) borrowed money from his mother and bought a plane ticket to London. He had only just landed at Heathrow when he immediately got on the first available flight to anywhere. It took him to Syria, from where he then crossed over to Lebanon, meeting up with a German friend who persuaded him to settle in Germany. Peter enrolled at Hamburg University so that he could learn things ze German way.

In the springtime of 1965, he bought a tent and went hitchhiking across Europe and the Mediterranean living an easy rider life for the next six months. He traveled north to Denmark where he met two US soldiers who confirmed to him the existence of the legendary naked saunas up in Sweden. However, the expensive price of booze there drove the young traveler and his friends out and back down to Belgium for some proper beer. Running out of money, the soldiers proposed that Peter stay in their barracks with them in Alsace. He dutifully cut his hair and in return got free B&B for a week. He soon tired of army food so he moseyed on back to Germany by way of Austria, and by June 1965 was in Hamburg once again.

But Peter hadn’t had enough of sleeping in hayfields and meeting random strangers. In July 1965, he went to Paris with yet another German friend and camped out in Les Bois. The timely encounter of two Australian girls in a Jeep, which neither could drive, allowed Peter to get behind the wheel and go south. His German friend followed close behind and the two vehicles sped through France, down to Spain and through Portugal. They caught a boat ride across the Straits of Gibraltar, ran out of money in Morocco, borrowed from the girls, and went back to Spain continuing up the French Riviera through Switzerland to Germany.

Back in Hamburg, Peter could not get rid of that itchy traveling bug and took off again after working for only a week. He hitchhiked down to Italy, all the way to the boot heel and got on a boat for Greece. He linked up with some more traveling youths and together they sunbathed in Rhodes and Crete before wandering over to Athens. They went on to Salonika and then boarded a train for Vienna, taking a longish shortcut through Stuttgart and ending up in Belgium.

Peter eventually ran out of money and so went back to Hamburg, packed up his things, passed through Amsterdam and then Rotterdam to grab a ferry for England. Landing at Harwich, he hitchhiked though Colchester and arrived in London end of August 1965, where flew back to the US. Bob Dylan’s “Rolling Stone” probably had more direction home than Peter did that year.

Peter finished college at GWU, passed two somnambulant years in the U.S. Army, went to GW law school, studied international law at University College, London and carried on his legal career in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Kuwait where he represented the government in its claims against Saddam Hussein for his unsuccessful attempt in 1990 to grab the Emir’s oil.

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