Going Home!

My plans are on course for my journey home, I have sent some of my luggage ahead of me so that I will be travelling as light as possible. Whilst sitting in the Café Seeger a tall, blond young man stopped by to say hello to the friends I was sitting with, he acknowledged me with a nod of his head and off he went. The next time I was in there, he came in again but stopped to introduce himself to me this time, his English wasn’t bad at all so we were able to converse quite well. He said his name was Tom and on close quarters I thought what a handsome fellow he was. He was one of the pupils who went to the same private school where Roman and Kaspar boarded, but he informed me that he had a flat in the Heights of Rotmonten. (where Mrs. B lives!) We met a few times after that and I found myself very attracted to this admittedly young (19) but very attractive and intelligent young man. He offered to show me his flat and said he’d cook me lunch (!!) He picked me up in a rather snazzy red open topped sports car, and when I discovered that he actually owned the flat - I began to realise that this was not your average school boy lol! Me, having been brought up on a Council Estate, and this young man, who went to a posh private school, ran around in the sort of car most 19 year olds can only dream about and owning property - well, it was obvious that we were eons apart, and not to mention the 4 years difference in our ages lol!

But no matter - I would soon be leaving Switzerland and it would be a permanent goodbye to all my young school buddies! Roman had given me his address in Germany and was keen to keep in touch, he said to look him up when I went on my travels. I was touched at the sadness in the goodbyes of both Roman and Kaspar - but some friendships are best left as just happy memories.........

I will keep in touch with Rosemary and Annie, they have been such good friends and I am genuinely sorry to be saying goodbye to them - but we have exchanged addresses - so we may yet meet up again...........

I am anxious to meet up again with Janet, her letters have hinted at things which she is finding hard to put into words and says she will ‘tell me all about it’ when we meet up.......

Friday November 13th 1964

My last day in Switzerland - for now anyway - but I will be back! It has been a mad round of last goodbyes and exchanging addresses. Hans Uli gave me an extra 200fr and said that for an English girl - I wasn’t too bad at all - is that what they call a back-handed compliment??? Frau Geiger actually had a tear in her eye and Olgi was full of praise for me - bless her. On reflection - I think that both Switzerland and I found each other a bit of a culture shock but we somehow got by. I certainly learned some hard lessons, but I’m not sure that I did enough to change the minds of the Swiss that the English are a ‘filthy, lazy lot ‘ :-(

It was a cold rainy November day but the train journey through Switzerland was quite beautiful. At the French border, the rather formidable looking Border Guards got on the train to check our passports - and I never did get over the sense of un-ease - memories of espionage films lol!

The train was late getting in and I had to race to get my connection to Paris - it was only then that I realised I still had too much luggage. I could see that the train was about to pull out, but thankfully a guard saw me rushing and delayed it enough for me to jump on with the help of a passenger who helped me on with my luggage. He turned out to be an Italian who worked in the German part of Switzerland, so we managed to converse in a bizarre mix of German and Italian lol!

Janet met me at the station and as soon as I’d dumped my luggage in her tiny garret room, we went off for coffee and crepes at one of the many wonderful Parisian café’s ( memories of the film ‘Charade’!)

Later that night we went to one of the many jazz cellars where we met up with a bunch of Germans lads, we had lots of fun except for the rain. We walked back to Janet’s garret with the boys who were in a singing mood lol, we got soaked to the skin but we didn’t mind at all. ;-)

Sunday morning we got up somewhere around 9.0am and went off to the same café for more coffee and crepes with tia maria poured over it - an interesting sort of breakfast.......Then to the Eiffel Tower - it was very wet and windy but we managed to take some photographs without being blown off the top. Then to the truly beautiful Basilica, and on to Montmarte. I really loved the wonderful arty atmosphere and was happy to pose whilst I had my portrait ‘drawn’ on gold foil.

We walked the length of The Champs Elysees with all it’s wonderful boutiques, unfortunately it is not a place where two young girls could walk without being accosted every five minutes grrrr!

We stopped at The American Drug Store for something to eat, then round the famous stamp market where ‘Charade’ was filmed. We met up with Janet’s boyfriend Aurelio who also used to work for Grand Met in London, and we all went off to see the Beatle’s film ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ - most enjoyable - it was nice to hear English spoken again - if you can call ‘scouse’ English ;-)

Janet and I spent most of the night chatting. She told me about the difficult time she was having with the family for whom she was working as a Nanny. She liked them all very much and was extremely fond of the children, but there were ‘sparks’ between herself and the handsome husband which she was having difficulty keeping under control. As Janet didn’t want to leave the family, she was doing her best to keep out of the way of the husband, but she had the distinct feeling that he wanted things to happen.........