Americans Everywhere

By Michael Demarest

COVER STORY

They're taking off in record numbers, and Europe is the big bonanza

They are returning this summer not with bombs or bands, as they have in the past, but quietly and assuredly, like friends of the family. American tourists, who were driven from Europe by the dollar devaluations and the oil embargo of the early 1970s, are finding their way back in force. From Sicily to Skye and Positano to the Parthenon, the accents of Dixie and down East can be heard again in the pubs and bistros and trattorie, in cathedrals, castles, stately homes, museums, opera houses and a million stores.

The exodus is evident throughout the U.S. Airline and travel-agency telephones have been buzz busy since early spring. Airports are crowded not only with departing tourists but with the homecomers as well, who often face wearisome waits for Customs clearance. Even cab drivers, taking Europe-bound passengers to the airport, share details of the trips they have already made this year or plan to. Owners of French and Italian restaurants find that many of their patrons have deserted them for restaurants in France and Italy; Los Angeles Restaurateur Paul Bruggemans, eyeing his semi-deserted Le St. Germain, says, "Europe is the big bonanza." "We are seeing a tremendous bounce back of vacations in Europe," says Richard Roberts-Miller, president of Chicago-based Thomson Vacations, a big worldwide tour operator. "Those who haven't traveled for a couple of years are going on a binge, and the market is going through the roof."

The Yanks are coming with cameras and phrase books and something new: pocket calculators, which have become essential for translating the volatile currencies of Europe into dollars. The dollar, as everyone knows, has never been lustier abroad,* and Americans are in the mood to spend. To encourage them, European Travel Commission ads across the U.S. proclaim: EUROPE! THE GRANDEST HOLIDAY OF ALL. NOW MORE AFFORDABLE THAN EVER. The Paris daily Le Figaro scolds the mother country for not wooing the American dollar more actively this summer and urges with a wiggle: "The objective in 1984 is to seduce the Americans." The Americans can't seem to wait.

Some 4.2 million U.S. visitors are expected in Europe this year, and that's a record. It is not only the robust buck that propels this amicable invasion. Most goods and services in Europe come cheaper this summer because many governments have devalued their currencies. In addition, Americans appear to have increasing faith in their economy. For example, schoolteachers, who traditionally account for an important part of Arthur Frommer Holidays business, are traveling in large numbers again. Connie Sykes, Frommer's general manager, explains: "Either they've decided they will continue to be employed or they've decided to stop worrying about it."

The recession of the past few years has created what analysts describe as an enormous pent-up appetite for vacations abroad. TWA Spokesman David Venz observes, "A vacation in Europe is easily deferred. People who have been working have been salting their money away." Lines have never been so long at U.S. passport offices. Between January and May, Americans picked up 2,021,007 passports, a 26% increase over the same period a year ago. At Manhattan's 630 Fifth Avenue passport office, applicants sometimes stand in line for as long as four hours. Alitalia flights from New York to Italy have been fully booked since early May. The new cut-rate ($149) People Express transatlantic flights are sold out through mid-September (see box). Sales of American Express vacation packages, which are almost all priced below 1980 levels, are running 43% ahead of last year, and for the peak month of June were 100% ahead. TWA has already sold 175% more of its budget Supersaver tours than it did during the same period last year. Many budget packages are virtually sold out. To plan late is often to pay more this year.

The bonanza has caught many travel organizations with their telexes down. Carefree David Travels, an Atlanta-based agency that puts together charter packages for travel agents, has had to add five staffers and five telephone lines since June 1, and could use five more employees if it had time to train them. Charter Travel Corp., which specializes in scheduled charters and operates out of Chicago and Minneapolis, has added eight U.S. cities and three European destinations in 1983.

For a great many middleaged, middle-class Americans, this year's visit to Europe is a return trip. "Fewer innocents are going abroad," says Adele Klate, owner of Los Angeles' Gulliver's Travels. "They know the small hotels, the little restaurants. They're not buying the highly touted places any more." The American tourist redux is more worldly in his activities and tastes, particularly when it comes to food and wine. He does not recoil from snails, eels and sweetbreads as he once did, orders tortellini ai funghi porcini with authority, and often chooses a vintage he knows from back home.

Maurizio Manzini, manager of American Express in Rome, sees the emergence of a "new kind of American in Europe." He explains, "Today's tourists have more interests and a different cultural background from the elderly, usually wealthy client who in past years wanted everything organized down to the last, tiniest detail. They like to wander and find out things on their own."

"The American no longer has the image of a spender who throws away money," says Athens American Express General Manager George Efthyvoulidis. "He expects something in return." That lesson is apparent at least to Johannes Brenner, who owns a popular souvenir shop behind the Cathedral of Our Lady in Munich. "In former years," he confesses, "Americans were the main customers for those porcelain monsters--the huge vases and ornate groups and centerpieces, laced figurines and gilded plates. Now we sell those to the Near East. Americans know too well what Rosenthal, Meissen and Nymphenburg should look like. We still sell a good deal of kitsch, but Americans buy it now because it is amusing."

The Ugly American image is largely forgotten. For one thing, though they spend more money and time in Europe than any other non-Continental nationality, Americans today are only a part of the tourist mass. As Atlanta Travel Agent Phil Osborne puts it, "The whole planet earth is traveling." Ten times as many Germans as Americans visit Italy each year; as many vacationers on the Continent come from tight little Britain as from the entire U.S. By contrast with the early days of jet travel, when tourists from the heartland came dressed in Hawaiian shirts and Bermuda shorts or polyester pants, and asked stridently for their bills in "real money," most Americans today are well attuned to European sensibilities. A customer-service official at a Stockholm Nordiska Kompaniet department store says mildly: "We no longer see so many 85-year-old teen-agers with rhinestones on their eyeglasses."

For their part, Americans are finding summertime conditions in Europe less than idyllic. The hassle has to be viewed as part of the fun. Airports, particularly in Spain, Italy and Greece, tend to be chaotic. In Athens or Rome, it can take half a day to cash a traveler's check at a bank. Pickpockets have proliferated in most major cities, particularly in Seville, Madrid and Paris, where organized bands of small boys prey on the unwary in places like the Louvre; there local police have even enlisted American tourists to act as decoys. And travelers protest as bitterly as ever about the all too many Parisian waiters who cling to their historic tradition of rudeness, slovenliness and occasional dishonesty. (But this is a Paris phenomenon. Americans seldom complain of the service in the rest of France.)

Most museums in Italy and Greece close in midafternoon, just when Americans want to visit them. The pubs in Britain seem to be closed most of the time. All the ice cubes in Europe disappear on a hot day. Driving can occasionally resemble either a safari or a Grand Prix race, depending on whether you are in the countryside of Portugal or on the Autobahnen or autostrade of Germany or Italy. Despite such hazards, few Americans appear unhappy enough to talk of packing up and going home. They can, after all, always try another country.

Europe, of course, is not the only beneficiary of American savings accounts. Mexico, thanks to the devalued peso, is still attracting record numbers of tourists; at resorts from Cancun to Acapulco, many of the hotels are booked solidly through summer at bargain rates. One of the top tourist attractions this summer is Jamaica, stable again after several years of political turmoil. Israel, with diversified activities ranging from inner-tubing down the Hatsbani River to skindiving at Elath, expects more than 300,000 American vacationers, of whom only 50% are Jewish. India is cashing in on its recent film fame with such offbeat ventures as a 15-or 21-day trip, "In the Footsteps of the Mahatma," tracing Gandhi's life (at $85 a day), and vacations at The Lake Palace hotel in Udaipur, where parts of Octopussy were shot. Australia and New Zealand are enjoying a tourist boom, thanks to Yanks. Luxury liners expect to draw 15% more passengers than last year, and boast that 40% of the Love Boat crowd nowadays is under 35. There is an ever wider choice of far-out adventure vacations: trekking in the Himalayas, gorilla watching in Rwanda, bicycling through the People's Republic of China.

Touring in Europe these days also leaves more to individual choice. One boon for free spirits is the hotel voucher plan, available throughout Scandinavia and in Switzerland, by which travelers can choose in advance from hundreds of participating inns and hotels; a tourist is thus free to arrive with only 24 hours' prior notification. One way of escaping the formalities of hotel living is to stay at a farm or a country manor. Private agencies and government tourist commissions make such accommodations available at low prices. Many European countries offer prix fixe tourist meals that are obtainable at hundreds of restaurants for as little as $6.50.

Charter flights, which six years ago accounted for 28% of the tourist traffic, lost much of their business, but in the past two years have steadily regained force. This summer privately booked aircraft hope to take some 15% of all American tourists abroad. No longer is the charter trip uncertain and uncomfortable. Such is the buying power of travel wholesalers that packagers can almost always provide better rooms and entertainment for the price than the individual can negotiate. Says Air Florida Official Robin Cohn: "It's almost stupid not to take a charter package."

To accommodate the sophisticated, independent-minded traveler, Thomas Cook Inc.--which originated the package tour in the 19th century--trains all its counselors to interview customers about their special hobbies and interests. Says Rod Fensom, Cook's Chicago-based field marketing manager: "Americans are more involved with self-enrichment travel tailored to their own individual tastes. There is a resurgence of charter travel this year to single destinations. Gone are the days of the 'If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium' tourist."

There are bird-watching tours, famous-garden tours and even trips arranged by half a dozen organizations in England that allow a privileged few tourists a chance to stay in stately homes with their titled occupants. For $90 a night, the venerable Lady Heald of Chilworth Manor, a converted 11th century monastery, will entertain and dine with a couple. Car buffs can arrange visits to the Mercedes, Lamborghini, Ferrari and BMW factories and the antique-car museums of Europe. The cost for that is about $2,900 for two weeks (airfare included), but the participant can save $4,000 by buying a Mercedes overseas and bringing it back to the U.S. The demand for deluxe travel is as lusty as ever. Says Atlanta Travel Agent Phil Osborne: "People are buying the Orient Express from London to Venice like popcorn. That's $550 for 24 hours on an old, refurbished train, not including meals. Yet we can't get enough seats."

Major religious celebrations this year include the Vatican's Holy Year of Redemption, which extends through next Easter, and Martin Luther's 500th birth day. Lufthansa and several travel agents and religious organizations have planned a series of tours tracing Luther's life. One of the most recondite cultural vacations available is a 27-day Plantagenet tour of medieval England and France, a $3,945 trip arranged and led by Peter Gravgaard, a Danish citizen who has taught literature in the U.S. and Europe.

Music tours are among this year's biggest attractions. Dailey Thorp Travel, a Manhattan agency that handles only musical vacations, has had a 30% increase in bookings over the past year; virtually all of its nine European tours are sold out, even though they are all first class at premium prices. A popular novelty this year is what Dailey Thorp calls the Cultural Blitz Tour, a three-day weekend of cultural events in Europe. These tours, the agency's Don Fannon explains, "appeal to a lot of professional people who can afford to take one or two days off from work, but not a whole week." More Americans than ever are attracted to train travel: an American Express rail tour of Europe is sold out; at least 10% more vacationers have bought Eurailpass.

Earthwatch, a nonprofit scientific research organization based in Belmont, Mass., will send 625 vacationers on expeditions that include a probe of 90-gun H.M.S. Coronation, which sank off Plymouth in 1697, and a dig for Bronze Age artifacts along the Esk River on the Scottish border. Virtually every European country offers at least two or three music festivals, and almost everywhere, every week, there are rumbustious folk festivals, with such attractions as jousting knights, wrestling Tyroleans, strawberry-eating contests, battling bargemen and tootling bands. A country-by-country summary of seasonal highlights:

BRITAIN. As in the past, this will be Americans' favorite country: a record 2 million visitors are expected, even more than came in 1978; already in April, the numbers were up almost 30% over the same month a year ago. This despite the fact that most prices, particularly in London, are the highest in Europe. According to the British Tourist Authority, Americans these days generally know their way around: they have "done" the obligatory sights and scenes like the Changing of the Guard and Westminster Abbey. The biggest draw remains the theater, where a good seat for a current hit like Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing costs around $15.

A new attraction at the venerable Victoria and Albert Museum is a dress collection featuring an exhibition of classic fashions of the 1950s and '60s. Another novelty on Yank itineraries: Castle Howard, which gave television's Brideshead Revisited its essential touch of aristocratic languor; the castle is 60 miles from the great cathedral city of York, worth a visit in itself.

Britain is an island festival all summer and into October. A delightfully offbeat itinerary for the visitor to Britain is offered by Boston's Esplanade Tours: intimate excursions (limit: 15) through Wales and England's West Country highlighted by a sing-along with Welsh miners and tea with the Bishop of Exeter ($2,390, not including airfare). This year is the Festival of Castles in Wales, which has more battlements per fiefdom than any other part of Europe and has scheduled special events ranging from ox roasts to sound-and-light shows.

There are vintage-car rallies in Humberside; a steam engine and organ rally in Yorkshire; a Teddy-bear picnic in Cumbria; a historic-car race in the east Midlands; a medieval jousting tournament in Leicestershire; flower festivals, sheepdog trials and aerial circuses.

FRANCE. For the first time in memory, a vacation in France is affordable: the dollar buys almost twice as many francs as it did four years ago. Americans--some 1.4 million this year--are lining up to cash in. Bargains cover the spectrum from a signed silk scarf at Hermes at $65 to bicycle rental at a country train station (about $4 a day). Despite an annual 12% average increase in domestic prices, hotel rates over the past three years have taken a dive when measured against the dollar. At Paris' four-star deluxe Bristol, a single room that cost $180 in 1981 now goes for $124. A first-rate dinner in Paris is still high, but no longer astronomical. At Maxim's, the meal costs roughly $70 a person, not including wine or service; the restaurant's prices have risen only 15% since 1981. The capital's taxis charge less than $2 for a ride of a bit more than a mile; car rental for a long weekend can be as low as $41, with no mileage charge.

As in other countries, more and more Americans are heading for the provinces, where the life can be rich and full and cut-rate. One of the best bargains this year is a stay at some of France's 5,000 chateaux, a few of which are members of chains like the Relais and Chateaux grouping. The 16th century Chateau L'Esclimont, less than an hour's drive west of Paris, is set among undulating hills inside a walled 150-acre wild park. A balconied apartment, with terry-cloth bathrobes, curtained beds and a bowl of cherries awaiting the guests' arrival, can be had for a bit more than $100. The 43-room castle has an excellent restaurant where a seven-course meal costs $33 a person, wine and tips not included.

In France this year, marking the 200th anniversary of the Montgolfiers' first balloon ascent, hot-air balloons are hot indeed; the original flight will be recreated Sept. 19 at Versailles. Meanwhile the Grand Palais is holding an aviation exhibition, with machines on loan from Washington and Moscow, through August. Hot-air flight is also the specialty of the 18th century Chateau Cezy, located 90 miles southwest of Paris. Its owner, Englishman Donald Porter, offers fearless vacationers ballooning in Burgundy, a four-day, three-night aerial adventure. Meals and wines are lavish, with matching prices: $1,700 a person for three nights. Guests who prefer water to air can join the chateau's six-person "gourmet barge," which costs $6,000 a week to charter, all meals and wines included. Professional travel notes: airline tickets, hotels, tours and so forth are cheaper if paid for in francs in France. The exchange rate for traveler's checks is always better at banks than hotels.

ITALY. Its fashions, food and wines already captivate the U.S. consumer, and Italy may draw more Americans this year than any other country save Britain. Despite increases of 10% or more for air and train fares, hotel, meals, gasoline and other tourist essentials, Americans, taking advantage of the favorable exchange rate, are spending more time and money in Italy than ever before. For returning visitors bent on escaping the usual roster of sun, sea, pasta and churches, cultural organizations like Alcatraz (no connection with the San Francisco penitentiary) offer courses in such offbeat subjects as ceramics and theater furniture making. Cooking courses abound, notably New York-based Marcella Kazan's in Bologna.

Cashing in on the new ascendancy of Italian wines in the U.S., a number of tour operators are offering a variety of wine tours, with immense success. One extravaganza, a twelve-day Bacchanalian Trip organized by Compagnia Italiana Turismo (CIT), meets guests at the Rome airport and deposits them, twelve vinous days later, at the Turin airport. The $698 immersion includes hotels, unlimited wine bibbing, visits to vineyards and cellars in the major winegrowing areas, and espresso and sympathy the mornings after.

At Rome's deluxe Excelsior Hotel, with a 50% American clientele, a single room costs from $92 to $118. However, a centrally located double room with bath in a comfortable but nonswank hotel can cost as little as $37. A medium-size rental sedan, say a Fiat 131, goes for $559 a week with unlimited mileage.

WEST GERMANY. Some prices have gone up this year, especially on restaurant meals and hotel rooms in the luxury class. However, the 30% rise in the value of the dollar since 1980 more than offsets such increases. A pleasant middle-class hotel like Munich's Bundesbahn Hotel charges about $55 for a double. Says Josef Dureck of the German Tourist Board: "Far from being hard to afford as it was three years ago, for the American tourist Germany now appears to have turned into the bargain it was a decade ago." Indeed, Americans (the second biggest national contingent after the Dutch) are Germany's biggest-spending visitors, laying out some $930 million a year.

Germany's music attractions are among the most prestigious in Europe. Apart from the Munich and the Bayreuth Wagner festivals, which have long since been sold put, there are Jugendfestspiele at Bayreuth in August, Ansbach's legendary Bach week also early in August, and open-air opera at Augsburg and Heidelberg, followed in September by the Berlin Festival centering on Herbert von Karajan. West Berlin has become as racy as it was in the '30s, drawing Americans by the hundreds with dozens of cafes offering every variety of decadence.

A big event for many Americans visiting Germany is the tricentennial of the first German immigration to the colonies; there are more than 52 million U.S. citizens of German descent. Lufthansa has arranged a series of German Heritage Tours to various areas.

AUSTRIA. A low inflation rate (about 4%) and ambitious plans to earn tourist income seem to be paying off. In May, 17% more Americans visited Austria than in the same month last year, while 30% more registered in Vienna alone. Hotel and restaurant prices have been firmly kept down. A good dinner with wine or beer in a pleasant restaurant can cost around $10; a first-class double room in Vienna with bath and breakfast costs about $100, but is not even half as much in the provinces. The Austrians have developed a variety of "hobby vacations," ranging from a course in engine driving on a narrow-gauge railroad to auto racing with formula Fords. Village festivals include Tyrolean wrestling matches, boatmen's jousting on the Salzach River, and the special day when the cattle are driven down for the winter from the high Alpine pastures. The festivities are invariably accompanied by the oompah of local brass bands in native costume; the Austrian Tourist Board claims that there are more such bands than there are villages in their country.

SWITZERLAND. Despite the country's expensive image, more and more Americans are heading for the Matterhorn. In 1982 there was a more than 15% leap in the number of nights spent by U.S. guests in Swiss hotels; a 10% jump is expected this year. Thanks to an inflation rate that has averaged 4.5% over the past five years, some hotels have not raised prices since 1980. In addition, notes John Geissler of the Swiss National Tourist Office, "you can eat in ordinary restaurants with reasonable prices and have a very good meal. You do not have to go to the luxury restaurants." Nonetheless, grande cuisine can be savored in Switzerland, notably at Girardet, near Lausanne, which ranks as one of the finest "French" restaurants in Europe.

Tourists can settle down in a comfortable three-bedroom chalet in a mountain village for about $240 a week, and are encouraged to live like the natives. Venturesome vacationers can rent gypsy wagons in the bucolic canton of Jura, on the French border, and clop-clop from one village pub to another. For the stalwart, there are donkey safaris in the Alps; one partner rides and the other pulls. International cultural attractions include Lucerne's music festival saluting Brahms and Wagner in August and September, the Locarno film festival in August and performances of William Tell in Interlaken through September.

SPAIN, which has been one of the leading vacation bargains of Europe for more than three decades, is still a country where a dollar goes a long way. Though Low prices make it one of Europe's most popular with backpackers, the government has tried hard to attract older, better-heeled visitors from the U.S. One magnet is the national chain of paradores, handsome, comfortable country inns, many of them in old castles or monasteries like the Parador Nacional de San Francisco in Granada, where the atmosphere is Moorish and rooms are priced at less than $50 for two. Granada is also the site of an international music and dance festival during July with world-class chamber music and ballet. Tourists are discovering Galicia, on the northwest coast, a mild, fertile country with magnificent fjordlike inlets or rias. Galicia is also famed for its oysters, which rival French Belons or English Colchesters. The Basque country is attracting tourists who are not deterred by terrorist incidents. The Basques are Spain's unchallenged gourmets, renowned for such dishes as marmitako (fish soup), shangurro (stuffed king crab) and porrusalda (leek and potato soup with cod). At the Arzak restaurant in San Sebastian, a topnotch Basque meal, traditional or nueva cocina vasca (Basque nouvelle cuisine), costs less than $30, including wine. A fairly new attraction is touring the wine country, whose products are increasingly familiar in the U.S.

PORTUGAL, which for cognoscenti has long been a charming backwater, may be Europe's best bargain as a result of a 45% devaluation of the escudo in one year. Though hotels have raised prices 15%, rooms are still cheaper than they were last year: $55 to $70 for a double with breakfast at a five-star hotel; the fanciest suite at Lisbon's luxury Ritz is priced at $115. A Pan Am package includes airfare and seven nights in a first-class hotel for $479. Portugal's celebrated pousadas, a state-run network of 27 four-star inns, many in castles and palaces throughout the country, charge from $24 to $40 a night for a double with bath and breakfast. Restaurants, which still serve mostly superlative native dishes like chanfana de cabrito (kid stewed in red wine) and leitao assado `a Bairrada (roast suckling pig), provide an excellent meal with vinho verde for as little as $13 a person. Portuguese food is changing. With the mass return of citizens from the country's former colonies, the cuisine has become one of Europe's most exotic, with dishes from Angola, Goa, Cape Verde and Timor.

The major cultural event this year is a dazzling exhibition of art, science and culture, the theme of which is Portuguese discoveries and Renaissance Europe. The works displayed range from the 15th to the 17th century, and the show has taken years to assemble from around the world. It is divided among five historical monuments in Lisbon. The Algarve, a longtime tourist favorite on the Atlantic coast with some of Europe's best beaches, boasts three Vegas-style casinos.

EASTERN EUROPE. The most popular cities this year are Budapest and Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia's Adriatic resort. The Hungarian capital is easy to reach by hydrofoil on the Danube from Vienna and has a reputation for being more hospitable to Americans than other Communist-bloc cities. A room at the Budapest Hyatt or Hilton starts at $50; an elegant meal at Gundel, the city's romantic garden restaurant, costs around $30 a person. Westerners get a kick out of tours of the Puszta region, where they feel at home on the range watching Hungarian cowboys rounding up cattle. With $20 billion owed Western banks, Yugoslavia is desperate to woo foreign vacationers. The government is even spending $6 million to import Western newspapers for tourists' consumption during the summer. Westerners can get a 10% discount on all goods and services. When it comes to such amenities as air conditioning, ice cubes and even a cup of coffee, Yugoslavia still has a long way to go. One measure of the country's need for hard currency is an almost philanthropic scheme by which U.S. servicemen stationed in Europe are invited to vacation at any of six Yugoslav army resorts; they have first-class accommodations, swimming pools, saunas and good restaurants, all for $12 a day.

The first wave of 1983 travelers is already home, and they are mostly delighted by the hospitality, the bargains and the rare attractions they were offered. Ronald and Sandra Karp of Belmont, Mass., who spent their June vacation in Florence, Rome and Venice, were deeply impressed by "unbelievable" low-priced meals. After all the warnings they heard about purse snatchers, says Ronald, "we were paranoid by the time we got there. But the Italian people were warm and friendly, and nobody cheated us." Many returning tourists babble of the bargains to be had in European stores; on goods ranging from Armani coats to Zandra Rhodes fashions, prices are at least 50% lower than they are in the U.S. (Moreover, this year tourists may bring home $400 worth of purchases duty free.)

More than ever, the returning voyagers speak glowingly of life in Europe's countryside, of good meals and friendly people in pubs, auberges, wine gardens and pousadas. Take Chicagoans Alvin and Susan Schonfeld, who are, respectively, a physician and an IBM telecommunications specialist. "We book into a major city," says Susan, "then try to get out into the countryside and talk to the people." After ten trips abroad, the only complaints they have are about "some terrible red tape in China."

But travel in foreign countries is more than the sum of its parts. It is a matter of cumulative exposure to the unknown and the unpredictable. To be successful, a trip abroad takes work, adaptability and patience, all very American characteristics. Americans may in fact be the world's most successful travelers, seldom--in the 1980s at least--evincing the faults of isolation, but showing an openness to experience at all levels. Consciously or not, knowledge is what they bring back along with the Koda-chromes and fishermen's sweaters: knowledge and the overriding memories of good times. As one Rome-based American allows, "It's a great year to be in Europe, to be thin and to have dollars." And stamina. Never in peacetime have so many Yanks deployed themselves across the map of Europe in search of entertainment, uplift and, dammit, a good time. It may all prove a little too much for some. But England, as usual, has the answer. Its name is Ragdale Hall. A gracious old country manor in the midst of the rolling Leicestershire hunt country, it exists to restore and rehabilitate vacationers who are suffering from too much dammit. Rooms start at $61 a day, and guests are offered psychocalisthenics, saunas, massage, beauty treatments, tennis, swimming, diet meals, no children, no tour guides and no alcohol. There is absolutely nothing to do at all. It's marvelous.

--By Michael Demarest.

Reported by Adam Cohen/New York and Mary Cronin/ London, with other bureaus

* One dollar last week bought .65 British pounds 7.7 French francs, 1,525 Italian lire, 119 Portuguese escudos, 148 Spanish pesetas, 2.1 Swiss francs, 2.6 deutsche marks.

With reporting by ADAM COHEN, Mary Cronin, other bureaus This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.