Short Stay in Europe: It’s Taking Off

An inert season, deflated air fares and LAX’s long, nonstop reach have allowed some Southern Californians a glorious new indulgence: long weekends in Europe.

Granted, with major carriers requiring a seven-day stay, travel is by the sparse schedules of charter flights. Second, travelers need a job that tolerates Thursday and Friday absences. It goes without saying that spending 20 hours in the air to enjoy 76 hours on the ground also requires the constitution of a mahogany gorilla.

“But at $399 round trip to London, we rival (fares to) Hawaii and Mexico,” said Rick Hubacher, vice president of operations for charter-flight specialist Dollarstretcher, California.

“Of course, weekends in Europe have long been the kind of thing done by people on the East Coast. But now we’re seeing it more on the West Coast . . . especially over the recent holiday period where people were flying to London, going shopping, doing a couple of shows and then coming home.”

Who is doing it? “A lot of singles, seasonal salespeople, government workers using up leave, career people with accrued vacation time . . . and travel agents,” said travel agent Adele Klate of Gulliver’s Travel Service of Hollywood.

Who else make up the jet laggers? Added Hubacher: “Mostly young people with tremendous stamina and looking to do something they have never done before. Yuppies will do it two or three times because a weekend in Europe is a macho thing, a rite of passage.”

So these short-term jet setters have been to London to shop January sales for the American uniform: cashmere by Harrods and raincoats by Burberry. Or to Paris for les soldes at Galeries Lafayette and new odors from Chanel.

So what that it’s been the coldest winter in several decades and that Big Ben’s bong froze to a wimpy clunk? Who cares that the better schussboomers in Central France are finding daring enough in midtown Paris--down the steps of the Sacre-Coeur basilica.

Cold, goes the rationale of the true culturist, simply deepens the glow of a London pub. Snow floes on the Seine add need to a man’s want for onion soup. So, goaded by filial devoir (barely ahead of an insatiability for musty pubs), I went to Europe for a few days.

I must report that despite President Reagan’s suggested supertax on English gin, appreciation for ideas and items American remains high.

In London, young men are wearing more sage green, orange-lined flight jackets than ever were issued to U.S. airmen. In Paris, the jackets are goatskin and blotched by patches inspired by “Top Gun.”

London pubs are selling Budweiser. Chilled, finally. People magazine is popular. American wrestling is coming to British television.

One question. From the store clerk. From the cabbie. From a Holborn-to-Hyde-Park acquaintance on the Underground. Who did I like for the Super Bowl?

Yet it is in clothing (right down to a French designer label borrowed from a California institution: UCLA) where it should be assumed that anything fashionable with Hank and Judi will soon be adopted by Pierre and Andree. Also Caroline and Jeremy.

Collegiate jackets, those blanket things with leather sleeves, are big sellers . . . although their patches and embroidered prose present America by innuendo.

Such as: “Yankee Stadium World Serie 1972. Duke D’s West Coast 75th Minor League Academy.” Or: “Humboldt Creek Hockey. Champions Conference 86-87 All State.”

Odd. Hockey in Humboldt is pretty spotty. It’s in Arizona.

Sweat shirts are huge in France . . . but most of their emblazoned Americanisms are incomprehensible. All is lost in the translation.

A green sweat at Charles de Gaulle Airport shows a golfer. The phrasing is almost in English: “When you are in doubt to take a driver . . . the best is a whole difficult shoot with a short club.”

A red sweat shirt worn by a woman at a small market. It shows a generic, bosomed Liechtenstein blonde of an American comic book. She is testing her escort’s appreciation. Is he attracted to her, or the clothing?

She asks: “Are you in passion for me or my sweat?”