I suppose. One knockout blond steward double-took when one of us asked. him for a date. Seven hours in the air. Little to see outside except clouds. But with frequent meals and drinks, much joking (generally, on the trip, our group behavior was perfectly respectable) and little sleep, we'd broken one another's ice. Finally, we broke through the ground-hugging clouds, and taxied onto the green and moist Zurich airport grounds.

On leaving New York, I'd collected everyone's baggage baggage checks, and promptly lost them, creating a minor but embarrassing delay on disembarking. Chuck met us, bussed us to the small hotel downtown, and gave us the first of his astonishingly frank briefings on desirable behavior for American tourists, exchange rates, the habits of European hustlers, the best local souvenir buys and locations of choice bars and baths.

Rudi Burkhardt, English editor of DER KREIS, the venerable Swiss magazine and club, was there to supplement Chuck's briefing. Rudi had visited us in Los Angeles in Spring, 1958, and given three lectures at ONE Institute. While the others rested up or made their first shopping forays, Rudi and I set off in the rain for a tour of a gay coffeehouse, the Goethe residence, the Grossmunster, Zwingli's church, with its magnificent carved doors, Rudi's own charming apartment and the DER KREIS office-the only such office I saw in Europe. A large main room in a handsome middle class apartment house, with a complex of well organized work-tables and desks, an impressive collection of homophile books and magazines, mostly catalogued and wrapped for eventual binding. We discussed accounting methods (I was then thinking about starting my own magazine, PURSUIT) and I met, briefly, the courtly actor who remains the moving spirit of DER KREIS (The Circle). Though preoccupied at the time, Rolf is known

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as an effusively charming host, and American friends can usually count on a warm reception from DER KREIS and the other European groups (but some identification is required.)

It rained during most of our Swiss stay, but I had come to see, so I trudged happily all over the neat and bustling city, window shopping mostly, returning periodically to the hotel for dry clothes.

So much happened the next three weeks, I'd best forget sequence and give random impressions of the six countries and cities we visited.

Having done a lot of driving recently, I'd looked forward to not touching a steering wheel awhile. But the second day, with three small Hertz cars, I got to pilot a Peugeot (strange shift, strange driving conditions) to Lucerne and Basel and back. But though I led our entourage into every wrong way street in northern Switzerland, the roads were excellent, the traffic tame, the scenery splendid (clouds kept lifting just enough to allow a view) the road signs graphic, and Rudi a knowledgeable guide. Tea in an old inn at Schwyz, the village which gave the country its name, a quick look at a lovely Dominican monastery at Arau (the most striking Churches I saw were in Munich, where I also attended my first mass), and a more leisurely stop at the Roman ruins (fairly complete theatre, foundations of a hilltop temple, and an almost intact villa, with much statuary, recently excavated) at Augst, outside Basel, lunch at Lucerne, and dinner on our own, beer-hall style, in Basel, with entertainment afterward at the Isola Club. This handsome, cave-like bar, members only, was until recently the Basel branch of DER KREIS. While our group watched a lively chorus line of very young club members, the head of the club described their relations (satisfactory) with the press and police. He felt that younger homophiles no longer feel persecuted, and want a