Aged 17 I made a cross-country through Germany in an RF-5 and stopped at Hildesheim to visit the Bottlang “factory” (since acquired by Jeppesen, they made a ring-bound airfield manual for VFR fliers - looking back you could amazingly just walk up the front door and get shown around the place). Got invited by a pilot hanging out at the airport to sleep at his house and when I left the next day, he had called up a local newspaper reporter who interviewed me as a curiosity tramping around in an airplane rather than by train.