Flight From Madrid
When universities closed, exchange students began a mad dash home
My friend Maria Caicedo dropped the news casually during a catch-up call when she was telling me about life in the pandemic in her home country of Columbia.
Caicedo and I have a special connection. Earlier this year we had both been living and studying in Madrid, exchange students from St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., with dreams of sangria on patios and swimming in the warm waters of the Mediterranean.
In early March, with the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping through Europe, we both made a mad dash for home. Now she’s in Columbia and I’m in New Brunswick.
“I actually got coronavirus,” she said. “I started to feel this huge flu coming on. Everything was hurting; my eyes were heavy, my nose was stuffy, and all totally out of the blue. I was living my best life the day before, then that day was horrible, and the next day I couldn’t get out of bed.”
She tells me she’s recovered, and I took the news as casually as she dropped it, in a way I wouldn’t have in an earlier time, back when we were living as carefree students in Spain. The change came upon us so quickly that even now we are still sorting through the memories of what happened and how it changed the course of our lives.
MONDAY
On Monday, March 9, news articles flooded our phones, telling us university classes had been cancelled for the next two weeks. The government of Madrid had been debating the intensifying situation over the weekend, when cases Covid-19 infections only continued to rise. As this unfolded, messages from Caicedo and Megan McGuigan, another St. Thomas University student, spilled into my phone. Emojis of palm trees and smiling faces lit up the screen, as they suggested vacations and celebratory drinks.
I knew that any cancellation of school threatened the future of the exchange program, but in the moment I was thinking about the opportunity for two weeks off. I saw the cancellation of school as I once saw a snow day, like a get-out-of-jail-free card.
I had been closely connected with these two students from STU since I arrived. McGuigan and I found each other in class. Caicedo had been in Madrid since September and was already well acquainted with both the city and the university.
I remember our first meeting for drinks on a rooftop patio. The European design of the city merged six streets into one intersection, which makes it easier to describe the view than the location. The bar’s entrance opened to Gran Via, glistening with lights that danced from car to car. The roof overlooked the principal buildings of Gran Via, where Spanish architecture glimmered against the setting sun. The mild summer-like weather was a welcome change to the dreary skies and slush of Canadian winters.
That day overlooking Gran Via we formed a group chat to stay connected through our stay. Our chat on the Monday when classes were cancelled ranged from excitement to confusion. The day dwindled down like any other weekday, and I went to bed feeling eerily calm.
TUESDAY
Still new to the idea of no school, my roommates and I congregated in the living room. It was a strange feeling. All we knew was that classes had been postponed for two weeks. We were paralyzed by the uncertainty of what we were facing.
McGuigan and I relied on Caicedo’s translation of Spanish news articles, as the most frequent and accurate news flowed from local Spanish news sources. This kept us in close contact as we each worked through the confluence of events.
“I feel like it was a blur, like it wasn’t real,” Caicedo recalled. Possibilities of the city shutting down started to circulate, and we began to fear the next steps. We felt the urgency to do something, but we didn’t know what.
The coronavirus was novel in every aspect. The incubation period was still to be determined, new symptoms appeared every week, and the number of cases started to grow exponentially.
“We didn’t know much because we were alone in a foreign country,” McGuigan recalled.
When I first arrived in the city, everything was daunting and new. My guard was up. Endless blog posts and expat forums left images of pickpockets swirling through my mind. I never encountered any pickpockets during my arrival, or the six weeks I spent in Madrid, though a few suspicious characters looming downtown kept me on edge.
My Spanish was put to the test in my taxi from the airport. My sparse vocabulary was only exacerbated by the slang of the city. Moreover, the speed with which Madrilenians speak was incomprehensible. I asked the cab driver if five degree weather was typical of late January in Madrid, which seemed simple enough. He thought I was asking for the time and pointed to the dashboard with a smile. Laughing to myself, I said thank you and decided to save my practice for another day.
The taxi snaked through the streets of Malasaña, where my airbnb was sandwiched between cafés, tattoo parlours and record shops, all of which attracted the student population of Madrid. In my exploration of the neighbourhood, I learned it was a hub for vintage discovery.
I began to measure distance in shop windows I passed. I made a little game; how many stores could I walk past before stopping inside. I never made it past 25.
When I wanted to venture beyond downtown, the subway system fuelled my exploration. Twelve different metro lines intertwined throughout the city, with monthly metro passes that cost only 20 Euros.
My exploration of the city began the day I arrived. As I walked, every few minutes the road would bend to reveal a plaza plentiful with patios and bookshops. The atmosphere was overflowing with young tourists and locals. As promised on travelling blogs, the hipster population congregated here. An explosion of modern expression and acceptance flowed through the streets, like electricity keeping the neighbourhood alive. Murals and mosaics lined the walls, every street telling a different story.
WEDNESDAY
Frenzy and chaos are the only words that can properly describe Wednesday, March 11. A day that began quite ordinarily soon evolved into a dramatic mess of emotions. Wednesday stood out in its ferocity and unrelenting stress, during an already mind-boggling week.
My mind was constantly racing and frantic. I was downtown renewing my phone plan when I received a text from Caicedo saying that the city officially decided to close its borders on Friday, March 13. I normally don’t pay attention to superstition, however this Friday the 13th was hard to ignore.
McGuigan, Caicedo and I were sending rapid-fire questions to one another, hoping one of us might have an answer. None of us understood what was going on, nor where to look for answers. We defaulted to our exchange coordinator, Carrie Monteith-Levesque, who was our main point of contact at STU in Canada.
Monteith-Levesque had little information, leaving McGuigan, Caicedo and I to make decisions for ourselves. Similarly, officials from our university in Madrid, CEU San Pablo, had no advice on the matter.
We began facing the consequences of returning home. We feared for our course credits, and the implications this might have on transcripts and graduation dates. We all feared that should courses in Madrid remain offline, we would be forced to decide whether to return for our safety or stay and face the risks. This was the primary question we asked one another, with no one else to answer our questions.
“It was really stressful … I was really sad, just so disappointed about how things ended,” said Caicedo.
I was first to decide to return to Canada. A lengthy phone call with my family convinced me there was no point in staying to be stuck in a city entering lockdown. It was not the Madrid I had come to know and love.
By two in the afternoon, I was on the phone with my mother and sister booking flights. They were understanding of the stress and fear I felt. I found a flight the next day when my computer froze. When my computer returned to its normal state, less than 30 seconds later, the Thursday flight had been booked and was now unavailable.
I feared I may not escape the city before Friday. I felt hopeless. Then my mother and sister calmed me down and bought a plane ticket on their computer. I was booked on the same flight for Friday.
Caicedo and McGuigan soon booked their flights as well. No one wanted to leave, and we all exchanged voice notes holding back the tears, realizing that our adventure had come to an end. “I didn’t even have the time to process that I was leaving until I was already home. I was really stressed out when we were leaving,” said McGuigan.
McGuigan ventured to Spain with her boyfriend, who she lived with during her time in Madrid. The two packed all night to catch their flight the following Thursday morning. Their quaint apartment, once full of life, was now bare in the aftermath of packing.
I was making a coffee and thinking about the finality of booking my ticket home when I received an update from BBC news on my phone: “Coronavirus confirmed as Pandemic by World Health Organization.”
As I read the word pandemic, the resentment and growing frustration faded away. Despite my ongoing anxiety and stress, I knew it was the right thing to do.
I decided to leave the apartment in an attempt to forget what was going on for at least a couple hours. I walked to El Retiro Park, which I visited the first weekend with my roommates. The familiar trees and statues calmed my nerves. I was able to regain some sense of tranquility that allowed me to pack my belongings.
Caicedo was packing as well. Her arrangements were slightly different from my own. I was living independently with eight other roommates, while Caicedo lived with a few roommates, but was also provided meals and cleaning in the residence.
Caicedo enlisted the help of her roommates to pack everything from the last seven months and book a ticket home to Columbia. “When I was in Madrid, I cried so much. … Overall, not the way I wanted my exchange to end, my mental health was not good that week,” said Caicedo.
Once I finished packing, I walked around the corner and bought a bottle of white wine. When I returned, I enlisted the help of my roommates to finish the bottle.
Late in the night we retreated to our bedrooms, where a feeling of defeat overwhelmed me. It was two in the morning when I called my best-friend in Fredericton, who was still awake from the six-hour time difference. I vented and released my frustrations through the phone. I sat on my Juliette balcony that overlooked Calle Atocha and its consistently busy street. Lights bounced from window to window accompanied by a smooth, simmering buzz that let me know the city was still alive.
We talked for an hour and then retreated to bed and thought of Madrid as I fell asleep.
THURSDAY
After planning and packing for the trip home, I decided to spend one last afternoon in Madrid. I left my apartment and turned right to the nearest souvenir shop.
As I walked through the downtown, I thought of the neighbourhoods I had yet to explore, but I also thought back to the memories I was able to make. Though the abrupt end severed future opportunities, it could not revoke the memories I already made.
I thought back to day trips and afternoon excursions with friends. The city of Toledo stood out in my mind, where my friends and I wandered hill after hill until we reached the top. A picturesque town with 360-degree views of the Spanish countryside. Another memory surfaced of the History museum, where I discovered my block, Calle Atocha, was one of the oldest streets in Madrid, dating back to the 1600s.
The city is groomed for youth. At every bar people are packed in like sardines, pushing for a taste of the famous Spanish cuisine. Neighbourhoods like Sol, Malasaña, Barrio de las Letras, Casa de Campo, Lavapiés and many others each offered a unique twist to the city.
It was easy to forget the reality of the world on that afternoon in March, because no one wore a mask, and no one was socially distanced. Aside from headlines and newsstands, coronavirus was still only an idea, a vague threat that wasn’t quite tangible. Despite the imminent threat, I felt quite peaceful. Frustration and miscommunication had all been exhausted the day before, and I was left with the feeling of helplessness over the situation, which I couldn’t help but accept.
FRIDAY
I woke at seven with a pit of anxiety in my stomach. I got dressed, drank my coffee, finished packing, and took one final look over the apartment before calling the taxi.
Madrid had lived up to every expectation I had. As the taxi took me away from that Juliette balcony, I reflected on everything I learned, everyone I met, and everything I still wished to do. Winding down side streets we emerged onto the main road, where the glorious trees of El Retiro remind me of that first weekend in the city.
The taxi pushed ahead to reveal another undiscovered museum. The Spanish flags perched along the Prado waving me goodbye. One last farewell to my sojourn cut short.
Mary Gannon is a fourth-year journalism student at St. Thomas University. Originally from Toronto, she moved to Fredericton and has been in love with the Maritimes ever since. While in school, she has written for The Aquinian and the online publication Huddle. This story was written for the class, The Power of Narrative.
