It's been nearly twenty years since I left this country to take a short business trip with my husband to Holland and France. We were very excited to finally join the ranks of the privileged few who travel abroad and we prepared for our trip with great enthusiasm. Passports were ordered, child-care was arranged, tickets were purchased and bags were packed. It was going to be the trip of a life-time and we wanted everything to be just right. When I was a teenager, I had passed up a trip to Europe with a musical group in favor of finishing my college degree. I always wondered if I made the right choice and I secretly hoped that I might one day have another similar opportunity. So when my husband said that the company would pay for me to go with him on his business trip, it seemed that my dream had come true.
When we reached the airport and boarded the plane I was already beginning to feel that I would not be able to leave my small children for so long. Ten days seemed like an eternity and my thoughts kept taking me back to my little ones. My husband assured me that the time would go quickly and we began to talk about the details of our trip in earnest. We spent a long and restless night in the air with no view except that of black water. Early in the morning we landed on a cloud-covered Holland in the drizzling rain. We arrived at our hotel exhausted and famished.
My first thought was to get something to eat. And although it was breakfast time, all we could find to eat was a sandwich. Our jet lag made us drowsy all day and awake until at least three in the morning, but we were determined to enjoy ourselves. It rained constantly, but we managed to find some places to see and even found some of my husband's relatives to visit. There was never any variation in our diet. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner were sandwiches. Breakfast sandwiches had a boiled egg, and Dinner sandwiches had a little gravy. After a week, I was a little discouraged. The rain continued on a daily basis, with brief moments of sunlight scattered here and there.
We spent a week of rainy sight-seeing, business meetings and trying to catch up on our sleep. When it was time for us to go on to France, we decided that instead of taking a quick flight, which was part of the original itinerary, we would trade our tickets for a train ticket, cross-country. It sounded quaint and it would give us an opportunity to see some of the country-side. We ordered a sleeping car to take us half-way, with a change of train in Paris to finish the trip. At 11:00 in the evening we boarded the train bound for the French Riviera. The train was well under way when we discovered that the “Sleeping Berths” were little more than cattle cars for humans. There were eight people to a room with tiny individual bunks stacked four-high. The room was not more than five by eight feet and you had to squeeze through a narrow door to get in, rubbing noses with seven other people, only one of whom was my husband. The aisle was so narrow that my husband and I could hold hands across it while still lying in our bunks. There were no blankets, no mattresses and no privacy. After the change of train we spent our sight-seeing ride trying to catch up on the sleep we had lost the night before.
On the Riviera the weather was beautiful. There were even people on the beach when we arrived and our hotel was very near the ocena so we decided to take a walk to try and forget the train ride. However, when we reached the beach we came to the immediate conclusion that people look a whole lot better with their clothes on. After that, we decided to get something to eat. At least we tried. On the Riviera you can get a 'drink' anytime, anywhere, but food is another story. In the evening (the only time the restaurants were open) we had sea-food at a sidewalk cafe where everyone was eating in the streets at little round tables.
Many other memorable, strange and difficult things happened to us on our trip, but there is one thing that I will never forget. When our plane landed in New York City and we stepped into the airport, I had an overwhelming urge to kneel down and kiss the ground. Whatever her problems, whatever her future, whatever people my think of her, America is special. Nothing can take away the feeling I felt when my feet touched home again. May that feeling rest in the hearts and minds of every American and may they never forget it.
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