EUROPE'S MAN OF THE YEAR
Graebner, C. L.
Europe's Man of the Year By C. L. GRAEBNER Geneva THE MAN of the Year, as far as most Europeans are concerned, is the American tourist. It is he they are counting on to bring prosperity to their...
...In fact, Italy—at least the northern part—is experiencing almost another Renaissance, with Milan taking over the role of Florence...
...So Europe now is busily putting on its freshest face and waiting hopefully for summer to bring it a record influx of free-spending Americans...
...Europeans are turning more and more to soft drinks...
...Only Italy, for all its Chianti interests, seems to have thrown in the sponge entirely...
...Now, we are told, there are still a good many among the workers, but none in the offices...
...A Canadian now living in England, Mrs...
...Hotels and restaurants have hiked their rates as much as 50% over last year, and everything else has gone up proportionately...
...It is he they are counting on to bring prosperity to their shops and hotels and to set their economic house in order...
...Perhaps one way will be to make Europe still more of a Mecca for American tourists...
...This year's tourist will have plenty of reason to think that Europe is no longer on the road to recovery, but has recovered...
...No wonder tourism is Europe's leading dollar-earning industry, responsible in large measure for that continent's new surface prosperity...
...If the budget-conscious visitor succeeds in locating an inexpensive hotel, he will find his estimates have gone awry when his bill is presented...
...the streets are gay with bright new paint and fresh window boxes...
...Their most recent trip, late this spring, carried them through most of the countries of Western Europe...
...Fresh fruits, vegetables, and salads are in ample supply...
...just outside Milan was practically run by Communists a while ago...
...Recovered she may be, but the past participle of the verb still rests firmly on Marshall Aid...
...Communism in Italy is on the decline, and even the owners of great firms are now able to consider that part of the political situation with something approaching equanimity...
...Every product was exhibited with the greatest imagination and artistic verve...
...In Belgium, the miles of jolting, cobble-stoned roads are giving place to smooth, newly paved highways...
...This is especially true of the young, who are showing an increasing awareness of the advantages of physical fitness...
...The head of Olivetti's, the business-machine company, told us that a year or so ago almost all his workmen were either Communists or Communist-tinged, but now there are hardly any...
...No people could be more friendly and helpful, more cheerful under difficulties, or more exasperating...
...Apparently wine consumption in Europe has been steadily decreasing over the last few years...
...Not long ago a friend of ours complained that she didn't know how she was ever going to get through her weekly allocation of four dozen eggs...
...In France towns that were razed during the war are mushrooming into new life, with blocks and blocks of shiny new apartment houses and stores...
...There has been no trade fair on the Continent like it, either for elegance of design or impressive-ness of products...
...A few days ago it took us an hour to find a certain street in Milan, thanks to the kindly help of scores of Milanese, who not only consulted all their friends but produced countless guide books before sending us in the wrong direction...
...Somehow or other, we must find a way to avoid that...
...The huge Fiat plant C. L. GRAEBNER, formerly an associate editor of Time Magazine, was head of its London news desk for two years...
...the parks and the sedate little squares have been replanted, and hedged against the inroads of dogs and children...
...You can hardly get your morning coffee and bun for less than 60 cents, or a good dinner for less than $2...
...The Coca Cola Co., therefore, is on to a good thing and is likely to prosper exceedingly in spite of the campaign currently being waged against it by an unholy alliance of Communists and wine-makers...
...Most thoughtful Europeans acknowledge this fact, and are far from complacent about the future...
...Particularly striking, especially by comparison with previous years, is the vast amount of building going on everywhere...
...Dollar-conscious Europeans are determined to charge all the traffic will bear...
...They are so easy-going, indeed, that they are at once the joy and despair of the American visitor...
...So is Switzerland, which has a thriving wine business of its own to care for...
...It didn't occur to her that she didn't have to buy them...
...What with all the extras attached, the 12-15% service charge (one must still tip on top of that), the taxes, the special charge for heat, the 20 cents or so one pays for every bath, the bill for writing paper and matches, his moderately-priced hotel will always come a lot higher than he had expected...
...You can go nowhere, to the remotest Swiss mountain hamlet, to the most medieval-looking Italian village, to the most out-of-the-way towns of France or Belgium, without seeing that familiar red and yellow plea: "Buvez Coca Cola," "Trinken Sie Coca Cola," "Bevete Coca Cola France, as everyone knows, is up in arms at the barbarous invasion...
...Milk has been set free, and eggs, though still rationed, are allocated in such large quantities that one can buy more than enough of them...
...Shops are beginning to look opulent again, and food rationing, except for meat and butter, is almost a thing of the past...
...There is, indeed, such an abundance that the long-restricted British housewife sometimes doesn't quite know how to cope with it...
...II Traveling through Europe these days you get an extraordinary, but of course distorted, impression of the various political conflicts from reading the wealth of chalked scrawls on the walls of houses, on fences, on every possible facing...
...It is already, even for the most demanding vacationist, a pretty fascinating spot...
...On the Continent it is the same story...
...Even Italy, that congenitally lethargic country, is resounding to the blows of hammers and the din of derricks and excavators...
...Even austere England is blossoming forth into an almost prewar luxuriance...
...Ill But though she is thriving and gay again, there is yet a specter haunting Europe—the specter of 1952...
...London has had its face lifted: most blitzed houses have been restored or rebuilt, at least in the West End...
...Wherever one stops, a horde of smiling Italians converge to volunteer all kinds of information, most of it inaccurate...
...Another business man pointed out that Italians are far too easy-going to accept for long the rigorous discipline of militant Communism...
...In Switzerland housing projects are going up all over, most of them rows and rows of neat little brown-and-white chalets...
...Europe is a bustling, thriving place...
...The city has become Europe's art capital as well as its industrial center, and this spring's Milan Fair was a happy combination of the two functions...
...God knows what will happen to us when Marshall Aid ends," one intelligent Italian said to us recently...
...We think we are doing so well now, but the disillusionment that will come in 1952 is likely to force us into extremes again, toward Communism or Fascism...
...It was a far cry from the crowded, heterogeneous jumble of goods at most international trade fairs and a symbol of Italy's resurgence...
...Even with devaluation this year's tourist will find that Europe is no longer the inexpensive holiday resort it used to be...
...There is another bit of propaganda in Europe that outdoes even wall writing in ubiquity...
...Graebner is the wife of Walter Graebner, European manager of Time and Life, with whom she frequently travels the continent...
Vol. 14 • June 1950 • No. 6
