Youth in Vermont

It was a midwinter reunion, with a big log blazing on the fire. The Ski Dorm where they met this week was a Christmas present from the State of Vermont. Last summer all these boys & girls had been to Europe together -- not on vacation, but to return a favor.

A hundred of them from the American Youth Hostel, Inc. had sailed from New York in June on the Ernie Pyle. They carried plenty of food because they didn't want to be a burden. They took few clothes, because they were going over to work. They were setting out to help rebuild Europe's youth hostels, damaged by war.

Like those in the U.S., European hostels were generally plain places, where young people could sleep for about 25-c- a night. The Americans worked without pay; in fact, it cost them $600 apiece to make the trip. In Europe they teamed up with Eng lish hostelers, formed work groups, and fanned out into Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. It was the first time U.S. and European hostelers had gotten together since 1939.

When they weren't building, plastering or painting, the Americans cycled around the countryside, doing odd jobs wherever they stopped. In Paris 30 hostelers were invited to Schiaparelli's for tea, showed up unabashed in seersucker dresses and dungarees. At Scotland's Loch Lomond (they took the low road) some of them met the German founder of the Hostel movement, 73-year-old Richard Schirrmann. He had been almost blinded when the Nazis tied him to a cross and sprayed his face with tear gas for defying them.

Schoolteacher Schirrmann set up the first hostel in an old castle in Altena, Germany, in 1910. By 1930 Germany had 2,000 hostels (one aboard a ship in Hamburg's harbor). When war came, there were 5,000 hostels in 20 nations.

Monroe and Isabel Smith, two U.S. schoolteachers shepherding a student tour of Europe, brought the idea home with them in 1933 and a year later opened the first U.S. hostel at Northfield, Mass. By its twelfth birthday last week the A.Y.H. boasted 250 hostels, scattered from New England to California.

Curfew at 10. Like their European counterparts, the U.S. hostels hug secondary roads and avoid large cities, vary from deluxe cabins to converted barns. Hikers and bikers travel light, hop from one overnight spot to the next.

Each hostel has a house "mother" and "father" but the travelers do their own . cooking and cleaning up. Sleeping quarters are divided by sex, but not by color. Lights go out at 10 p.m. and no smoking or drinking is allowed.

Next year the A.Y.H., which admits anyone "between four and 94," expects to double its numbers (last count: 15,317). Nobody worries whether new members will kick up mischief. Says one A.Y.H. official: "Anyone who is willing to give up smoking and drinking, go to bed at 10, and stay outdoors all day, is bound to be a wholesome sort of person."

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