All Aboard!
My adventure was far from over when I left Italy. The train travel was convenient and cheap but it took forever. Today, Europe has high speed trains. That would have been so helpful back then. The route I had to take to get to Spain, took me through southern France, into Andorra. At the border with Spain, although it was the middle of the night, everyone had to get off the train, with all your belongings and transfer to another train. I remember seeing this big building near the crossover into Spanish territory. I don’t know why it stood out in my mind.
Recently, a program on TV called, Abandon Places featured that building that stuck in my mind. It seems that Franco, the dictator of Spain, although an ally of Hitler, did not trust Hitler. He had the railroad gauge changed so that German trains, could not go into Spain. After WWll, he had no reason to change it back. I arrived before any modernization occurred to the train system. I’m not sure what the building was back then, but perhaps it was some kind of hotel or official station checking on the passengers.
Finally on the Spanish train, I made my way to Madrid. I was there for a day when my boyfriend arrived. We immediately learned another thing about Spain in the 1960s. We arrived back at my hotel and got into the elevator to the room. It wasn’t even 5 minutes when a knock came at the door. I’m not sure if the guy at the door was hotel security or what, but we were told that unmarried women could not have male visitors in their rooms! What? That’s how it was then, so the first order of business was to find someplace where we both could stay. I do not remember how we found it, but I located a little place that rented rooms out. The woman who ran it, or owned it acted very prim and proper. She had two rooms available, next to each other. She made a big deal of showing me, MY room, and he his. Then she took him to the balcony and without using words, showed him that we had an adjoining balcony. Each room had a sliding door onto the balcony. It was like a comedy routine. Outside of Madrid, it didn’t to be a problem and when we traveled to Granada, we just had one room! With two beds of course! They still had rules!
Eventually, the other two girls showed up and we found a place to live for the semester through the woman who rented the rooms to boyfriend and me.
That was how I met Maria Jesus, one of my most unforgettable characters. The three of us became part of the crowd in a very large apartment near the University. It was a great location, right off a subway line that would take us anyplace in the city. Staying in that apartment there was a Canadian /Geman girl, 2 males from Portugal and another girl who was from a different area in Spain. She was a loner and wanted it that way, I barely remember her. My friends had a huge room for the two of them. My room was a very nice size and the Canadian girl had a smaller, cozy room. Maria Jesus slept in the living room, by her own choice. Every day, 3 maids arrived bright and early. They would clean the bathrooms, the kitchen and the common areas. They waited for us to get up and out and took care of the beds, and the floors. We usually all ate together the big meal of the day which was about 4 PM, Breakfast consisted of cafe con leche, pan tostado, and sometimes fruit. The big meal was huge. Usually two kinds of protein, chicken or meat or fish. There was rice, vegetables and wine, always the wine. The three of us from the States, were not used to drinking. There was no soda, so the only thing you could have with the meal was water. The water quality was iffy.
Each of us on Sunday was given a cloth napkin for the week! We each had a napkin holder and our name placed on it. About 7 PM the maids would disappear. The Canadian girl was a linguist. She could go in and out of 5 or 6 languages. Absolutely amazing. My two “friends” basically stuck to themselves and did most things together. The two Portuguese guys hardly ever interacted with us. They were there basically for the meal and to sleep. The sights, the sounds, the smells the foods, all of it was fascinating.
I became fluent in Spanish. I think it was because after I started the semester, I never went to class. As I had said in an earlier blog, the books they were reading and the history they were discussing were things I had already taken at home. I did have an assignment and a designated “student teacher” experience that had to be accounted for, but that was fun and I enjoyed it. When I returned to the States and had my evaluation, I did very well.
