A memoir from Irma Kurtz, the author of "The Great American Bus Ride" and internationally renowned agony aunt. In 1954 18 year-old Irma Kurtz left New Jersey to travel across Europe, intent on transforming herself and changing the world. She looked to the Old World for an alternative destiny to that mapped out by the traditional expectations at home. On her post-war grand tour she found what she believed in: art and culture, and beauty and love, and some horror as a Jewish girl encountering the seat of much of her family's destruction Two years ago, sifting through a cardboard box filled with memories at her mother's house, she rediscovered the journal of her first journey, the one that marked the beginning of a life of writing and living abroad Gripped by intense recollections of sailing across the Atlantic, and intrigued by the exuberant remarks of her adventurous younger self, she decided to leave her London home and retrace her footsteps, this time with herself as a guide. Testing her theory that older women are invisible, Kurtz's journey is peppered with acute observations of human behaviour, not to mention some sharp advice for her ghostly travel companion, a teenager who t