It happened. We knew it would happen, but we didn’t know when, in a few days or weeks perhaps. We knew that it would happen, but we did not know how.
We had a great time in Thinland, we learnt a lot, about the Trafalgar Zone, about teaching in Spanish to Spanish-speaking children and so on. We had a lot of help from the ministry and from the schools. We had planned to stay for two months, we stayed four.
It was not a good idea, not at all, we knew nothing about the land, it wasn’t in the Trafalgar Zone, it was awful. 99.99% of the population was dirt poor, dirty and ignorant. The town, the so-called capital city, was dirty and shabby, just awful. There were some schools, but they were dirty and shabby, just as awful.
We visited the Ministry of Education; an official informed us that we could do what we liked, but we shouldn’t expect any help from the ministry. Also, the foreigners like us were frequently attacked on the street and beaten up.
Not very helpful.
Not so! Together with our experiences so far we decided to leave the country at the first opportunity. Then we discovered the awful it, that sometime in the near future the president of the country would be terminated. Friday said one word treacle.
Not a nice way to go, but possibly and probably better than what would happen to us as the newest foreigners in town. No, we couldn’t and shouldn’t wait.
After two miserable days in that awful town we walked to the border at two in the morning. The border post was manned, but we had a map. We walked to the next unmanned border crossing and crossed into a better land. We walked to a railway station and took a train to somewhere else in some other land. We had to get lost – Trains and Boats and Planes – Flying Down to Rio.
It happened, we knew it would, the president of that awful country was terminated. But no problem as we were halfway across the Atlantic on our way to Europe, time to do something different. But who or what was Jänner? And what had happened to Rudy?