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Published: November 18th 2007
Two days ago I quickly posted a blog about the world being small, and then I rushed off with Meg (who had recently flown in from India to travel with us) and MC to the Fes airport to catch a flight to Barcelona.
We flew for less than $30 on RyanAir, one of the many super-cheap airlines that is helping make the world an easier place to explore. The seats were plastic and didn’t recline and the pilot was clearly new at doing things like flying in a straight line and landing, but we made it in one piece, admiring the gorges and hills that described our evening approach to Barcelona.
Despite two attempted pickpocketing incidents in the bus station and a minor disaster involving a hostel that no-one had ever heard of, we eventually met up with MC’s friend Chris (who had joined us from London, where he is taking a gap year) and made it out for a nice first evening in Barcelona. We walked La Rambla, huddled against the cold in our inappropriately thin layers, stopping for sangria and falafel and making a cheers to the quirks of the Catalan language. “To Barthelona!”
After what would be the first of many gelato stops we retired for the evening. We reluctantly awoke the next morning (after a night of learning the snoring and sleeping patterns of our hostel-mates) and began to get ready for our first day of attempted sight seeing. In the bathroom I was brushing my teeth when I caught sight of somebody I thought I knew. She was standing two sinks over from me and was clearly American (we seem to have a look about us), but I couldn’t place how I knew her, so I stole inquisitive glances at her in the mirror while my mouth foamed with toothpaste. When she left the bathroom I announced to Meg and MC that I knew her, but they dismissed me, saying that I always think I know perfect strangers.
On Friday we went to the covered market for fruit and pastries, walked by the Palau Guell twice (before discovering that it was closed for renovations), shuffled through the Picasso museum and explored La Parc Ciutadella. Knowing that we were going to have a long night ahead of us (MC and I had been looking forward to dancing in Spain for weeks, but had heard that the DJs didn’t normally start spinning until one thirty or two), we settled into the hostel for a nap at 7.
At 9 we woke up and the girls made their way to their bathroom, where we applied mascara and tried to figure out how we were going to manage going-out outfits that wouldn’t leave us shivering. The American girl from the morning also came into the bathroom, and I was still convinced that I knew her. I asked her where she was from (New York), where she had gone to college (Pitzer), and told her that she looked incredibly familiar but that I couldn’t place her. She shrugged and said that I looked kind of familiar too, but that she didn’t know where we would know each other from. She had grown up in the same town as our cousins but didn’t know them; her best friend from high school who looked like her had gone to Brown, but neither Meg nor I had heard of her. We were close, but could come up with no real connections.
We turned to regular chat and she asked us what we were doing in Barcelona. After I explained that MC and I had been living in Morocco, Meg added that she had joined us from India, where she was working on her masters.
“Where in India?” the girl asked, in the tone of someone who has been (a tone that I know well—one that is hopeful for a chance to compare experiences and share stories).
“Mumbai,” Meg answered.
“Have you been?” I asked.
“Oh ya,” she responded almost modestly. “I studied in Jaipur and Varanasi.”
“So did we!” Meg and I exclaimed simultaneously.
Alice told us that she had studied with SIT for a semester her junior year, and when we told her that we had been with the Wisconsin program in Varanasi at the same time, she finally made the connection. “We had Thanksgiving together!”
We stood in the bathroom, throwing our heads back in surprise at this unlikely reunion. Two years ago we had hardly known each other, but had gathered with about twenty other American students from the two programs in a bare house in Banaras. We had given thanks and shared our best approximation of an Indian Thanksgiving (roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes with ghee and shakshuka—we had an Israeli friend). Now we had found each other in a small hostel tucked away on an unknown road, converged from three different countries in three different continents (India, Morocco and France, where Alice was studying in Paris). Small world, huh?
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mom
non-member comment
great story--how was the dancing?