A spirited 1950s travelogue that takes the reader around the world during a time when two independent young women travelling alone was considered almost revolutionary. Renate Belczyk was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1932. When she was three years old her family moved to Berlin, where they settled into a small apartment building on the outskirts of the city. It was in this building that she met another adventurous girl, Sigrid, with whom she would travel around the world as young women after the Second World War. Starting in 1955 and travelling for three years to England, France, Spain, Portugal, Mexico, Canada, Japan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, Egypt, Turkey, Macedonia, and Greece, their adventures together culminated with their joint return to Germany in 1958. In 1959 Renate returned to the Canadian Rockies to work in the backcountry, and in 1960 she married mountaineer Felix Belczyk and settled in Castlegar, bC, where they raised three children. Our Trip Around the World is an endearing snapshot of the post-war era when adventure travel -- mountaineering, hiking, hitchhiking, and cycling -- was enticing those with adventurous spirits to experience the world like never before.
Renate Belczyk has spent a great deal of time adventuring in the backcountry of the Canadian Rockies and Columbian mountains, where shes worked as a ski camp cook and kindergarten teacher. During the past 50 years she has visited Peru, Pakistan, Tibet, China, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Mongolia, Bhutan, Syria, Jordan, New Zealand, Ecuador, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Russia, and all of Europe. She has paddled the Amazon River, canoed the Mackenzie from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk, and walked around Mount Kailash in Tibet. Now in her 80s, she lives in Castlegar, British Columbia.
