Travels in Europe and Africa! Part II : Milan Airport and Spain

Because life goes on Poitiers even though I haven’t yet finished describing my two-week trip in February in Europe and Africa…I’ve decided to do a 3-part series of my travels there, as well as writing ongoing blogs about my life here. I’ve also just added pictures to Part I, since the pictures feature wasn’t available when I first published it.

After spending three days in Rome, my friends Maria and Felipe and I flew from Rome to the Milan Malpensa airport, where we were to part ways. They would fly directly to Morocco, to the city of Marrakech, whereas I would go to Madrid, Spain, to spend a couple of days with my Georgetown friend Donique before we eventually would fly to Tanger, Morocco. We had flown back to Milan because RyanAir didn’t provide any direct flights to Morocco from Rome. There were was a direct link from Rome to Madrid, but it wouldn’t have made sense for me to fly from Rome on Monday because Donique would have been classes all day long

Maria, Felipe and I arrived in Milan at noon on Monday, February 16. We spent another day sightseeing there, then, late at night, we took a 50-minute shuttle bus to the outskirts of town, where the Milan Malpensa airport was. Once we arrived at the Milan Malpensa airport around 10 pm, we were hoping to locate a help desk at the airport and ask an airport agent if they knew of any hostels nearby where we could stay. As Maria and Felipe’s flight was at 6:30 am, we didn’t want to pay for a night in a hostel in the city center, and then risk not having a means of transportation to arrive at the airport at 3:00 am.

When we got to the airport, there was not a single help kiosk open! The only airport employees who we saw were at the check-in desks, helping people transport their luggage, or the cashiers at the restaurants. We tried asking these workers, but kept getting conflicting answers. One lady selling sandwiches told us that she believed that the nearest hostel was 8 km away. The man at responsible for wrapping up people’s luggage in cellophane tape shrugged and said he didn’t know of any nearby inns.

We finally got a definitive answer from the vendor selling the tickets for the shuttle bus. She told us that the nearest hostel was 9 km away, the only form of transportation that could take us there were the (expensive) taxis idling outside the airport, and it cost 90€ a night for an individual room with one twin bed. Maria and I started laughing. We knew that there was no way that we were paying 90€ to spend 5 hours in a hotel 8 km away, after spending God knew how much money to take a cab there. So, there was only one thing to do : start looking for a comfortable spot to lay down, because we were going to be sleeping in the airport that night!

We finally decided on a row of cushiony seats not too near the sliding door entrance, so we wouldn’t feel the cold when people came in. Maria, Felipe and I took turns guarding each others stuff. One person would stay up for 3 hours while the other two slept. Maria woke me up half-way through her shift to show me something. When I arose and groggily asked her what in the world she woke me up for, she pointed into the direction behind me. When I turned, I saw a woman, in her early thirties, flirting with what looked like a man in the same situation as us – his luggage was propped up on the chair next to him, and he was smiling and laughing with the woman. When I looked closely, I saw that the woman was wearing gaudy makeup, a short jeans skirt, her blond hair slicked into pigtails. Tight, revealing clothing. No luggage, so she couldn’t be a traveler. Oh my God! I thought. I looked at Maria, who giggled and nodded. I looked back at the woman—she was a prostitute! There were prostitutes in the airport! I started laughing then stifled it. The woman seemed to have been successful with her ploying tactics, because 15 minutes later she and the man on the bench had left. A few other women—similarly dressed—were milling about the airport. I shuddered. I couldn’t believe it. But then sleep took over me again, and I found myself just being grateful that I wouldn’t be harassed because there was no such thing as male prostitutes. (Or is there?) The rest of the night passed without event, and around 5, Felipe and Maria boarded the plane to Marrakech, whereas I took caught a later flight to Madrid in the afternoon.

Madrid! What can I say about this fine city that hasn’t been said before? I went to El Prado Museum and saw Las Meninas, a painting by Velázquez that I have always admrired ; I saw the Palacio Real de Madrid, which I later learned is not actually the home of the King of Spain which explains why Donique and I didn’t see any guards there ; I went to Parque del Oeste and saw the Temple of Debod, an ancient Egyptian temple relocated to Spain. I only spent three days and two nights in Spain, before leaving for Morocco. But I did notice a lot of striking differences between the Spanish culture and the French culture while there.

When Donique and I were walking to a nightclub one night, I was amazed at the number of African prostitutes on every street corner we passed. In Poitiers, all the African female immigrants that I know of or have seen are in a family setting : they are with their husbands shopping for groceries, they’re walking their babies down the side of the road in a stroller, or they’re just students like me, going to class. But in Madrid, it was so completely different! I don’t even remember seeing an African woman during the day, but at night, there were so many out on the street, making a living through the sex industry. I was really shocked and hurt.

I found myself thinking, Did they know that their lives would be like this when they came to Spain? Didn’t they have any other way of providing for themselves? Were they ever going to get out of the situation that they were in? – And – Why didn’t they just come to France? And I think it was this last question that shocked me the most, when I thought of it. Because it got me to thinking of how much France—even though I hate with a burning passion on some days—really has become home and how much I’ve become used to the ways here. How, a little bit, I’m starting to belong.

I’m taking a class this spring semester, Géographie des migrations internationales (Geography of International Migrations), and I’m hoping it can shed some light on all these question. So far, I think that Visa requirements (states don’t accept every immigrant’s demand for entry into their state), immigrant status (some of those women may have been illegal immigrants and may not have any other way of making money), and location (Spain is closer to Africa than France) can explain some of those questions. But even though my course has given me answers to some of those questions, it opens up another box of worms : If, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution,” yet not every person can leave their countries legally because of visa restrictions of the host country or because of insufficient funds or because of lack of education of even having this right, can this right be said to even exist? If these women had to flee their countries as illegal immigrants because their right to asylum wasn’t being legally respected by Spain (i.e., they weren’t allowed visas) and when they came into Spain they realized that the only way they could support themselves was to prostitute themselves…could this right be said to truly exist if they found themselves in a state of persecution even in the host country?

But then I thought back to the women in the airport in Italy. They weren’t immigrants—they were Italian. What about their rights? Did they choose to be sex workers? Was that really what they wanted in life, to go around cheap airports wearing garish, uncomfortable clothing, soliciting customers ?