From Canada to Barcelona, my grandmother's story

Family story - essay

My grandmother has always been a traveler. She lived in a little village in Quebec, Canada, called Normandin, and she left it behind to go study in Montréal at the age of 18. She studied nursing, and when she finished studying she decided to leave the country when she finished studying, and travelled to Europe.

When she arrived in Europe , she first visited Italy and stayed there for some days and when she had enough she went to Switzerland to work. It was easy for her because she grew up speaking French and English, and the possibilities of finding a job there were easier. She had always considered herself a “bohemian”. Finally when she arrived to Switzerland she found a job as a ground hostess, she accompanied people to the airport. She had to learn German, and nowadays she still remembers some words. She lived that kind of life for two years or so. Then her coworkers and friends told her to go to Spain, because they considered that it was very different from all the other european countries she had been to. My grandmother had an adventurous spirit so she decided to follow the advice of her friends and took a train to Barcelona, Spain.

While on the train from Switzerland to Spain my grandmother met a young woman who told her that she had an apartment in Barcelona and she could rent it to her. She trusted this woman, so when they arrived to the city, they both went to take a cup of coffee in a very famous terrace in Passeig de Gràcia. When they had finished the woman showed where the apartment was and and left the keys to my grandmother.

The second day of being in Barcelona, my grandmother thought she was pretty bored and decided to return to the terrace she had had a tasty coffee the day before. She had a coffee while reading a newspaper. Right next to her table,she noticed a table of handsome and young men. They were a group of recent graduates in architecture, the most handsome one approached my grandmother, because as she always says “she totally looked like a foreigner”.

He tried to say some words in French to try seducing her, and I guess he did it because they married three years later and had four wonderful kids!