A Story From the Life of Ramona B.
Ghostwritten By: Diego L.
New Surroundings
It was the winter of 1965 in my small hometown of Escañuela, Spain. I was around twenty years old and I was planning to move to Germany for a little while to look for work. Me and five other friends had all decided to work in a factory in Germany that produced sewing machines under a one year contract. We were all very nervous and afraid of how it would be in Germany because none of us spoke German. Since there was no modern transportation, we had to take an old locomotive train that ran on coal and produced a terrible smell. We were told that we would have to bring our own drinking water for the two day long train ride since water would not be provided on the train. My friends and I ended up having to carry an enormous jug full of water. Each of us had about five liters in each jug which was extremely heavy to carry to the train station. The trip took only two days but it felt like an eternity. We were also not able to lay down to sleep since the train car was packed full of people so the nights were fairly uncomfortable. Additionally, the seats that we sat on during the train were wooden benches which made the two day ride significantly more uncomfortable.
When we arrived at the train station, there was a man who represented the company who was shouting, “Is there anybody from Spain?” in Spanish. Because the man spoke Spanish we felt a little bit comfortable knowing we had somebody to translate for us. We began to work the day after we arrived. We worked eight hours a day from five in the morning to three in the afternoon five days a week which meant we had weekends to relax. The factories were very crowded and loud. Things were even harder since I couldn’t speak German. It was a very hard time for me every time I wanted to try to communicate with someone who only could spoke German. At work we had a translator if we needed to speak with the boss or someone else. The translator was not always around. One of the biggest differences from my small town in Spain and the city in Germany was the weather. Even in the winter in my small town we would never have snow. In fact we rarely got temperatures below 10 degrees celsius. Plus every weekday I would have to walk fifteen minutes to the factory in snow that went up to my ankles. When it first snowed at all looked very new to me, I had never seen so much snow in one place before. The snow covered the sidewalks and made it look like the sidewalks were covered in a thick white blanket.
My job in the factory was to box dial-in telephones. My friends jobs were to put all the parts of the dial-in telephone together. There were many people in the factory and there was a lot of noise. I would easily be distracted because I missed my family very much. I would cry a lot thinking about the family that I left behind in Spain. I spent about three months at the factory. Eventually the work was too much for me and constantly thinking about my family back in Spain didn’t help matters either. After three months I decided to try to go work at another factory in Germany that made fabrics hoping that a change would help me feel better. But I quickly realized that changing factories was a mistake. Not only was the factory as loud as the sewing machine factory, but also the factory was notably dirtier. I was at the fabrics factory for another month when I finally realized that I wasn’t happy in Germany because all the work and the environment in the factories was just too much for me to handle. But what really made me decide to return to Spain was how much I missed my family. Looking back at the countless nights that I cried thinking about my family made me grasp the fact that money wasn’t important to me, it was being with my family. I decided to return back to Spain and pursue my other interest. I eventually ended up moving to France for a while to live with a relative.
The time I spent in Germany in the winter of 1965 was definitely one of my memories that stood out to me the most because of the changes that I experienced in Germany and how different the world can be.
