It was Monday November 19 1973, and I boarded the train headed from Rome up to Florence. I saw others of my ilk, easily spotted by their backpacks and ‘freak flag’ hair boarding as well amongst a crush of people at every coach door. Some of them I recognized, but I presumed most of them had been staying at our hostel, or perhaps another one across town, and were now headed for guess where, probably Florence.
The train did not originate here in Rome, so there were apparently plenty of people already on it as all of us boarded. I started to move up the corridor of the coach, looking for a compartment with a seat for me, finding each one chocked full of people, a big family perhaps or just six, or even seven individuals filling the seats and space. It was indeed a full train, and now I was encountering people going the other way down the narrow corridor, where we could barely squeeze around each other, me with my big pack on my back making it particularly hard, our bodies touching each other as they sidled past. It was interesting that the Italians among the train riders I encountered in those narrow hallways seemed much more comfortable putting a gentle hand on my shoulder to ease by than the WASPier Northern Europeans who tried their best not to touch me at all.
Our train left the Madrid central train station a little after 10:30pm on Wednesday November 7 1973, headed north to the French border. From there my travel partner Steve and I planned to hitchhike back to Paris, where we had met each other three weeks ago. After spending a couple more days in the French capital together, we would finally go our separate ways having traveled together through Spain for the past three weeks. He to Switzerland to look for work to extend his stay before returning to the States. Me on to Italy to continue seeing the sites.
It was Wednesday October 31 when we left behind our hotel in Granada and Steve’s sexual proposition to me, to hopefully move on. I was still of course pondering it in my thoughts, how I had perhaps come close to actually agreeing, and if I had done so, how different the world would be today and going forward. 
Monday October 29, some 20 hours after we boarded the overcrowded train in Benicarlo it finally arrived in Granada. We had spent the last couple hours sharing a compartment with two of our backpacker cohort, American guys like us headed for this beautiful old city nestled in the hills of the south of the country. When we got to our destination they headed off in their own direction, it was just Steve and I. 
Thursday October 25 was our last morning in Barcelona. The sun pushed its way through the narrow window of our room in the little pension, inspiring us to get up early and enjoy getting out in its bounty of heat and illumination one last time in our beautiful old Gothic Quarter neighborhood of bricks and stone. Our plan was to try to hitchhike south to Granada. If I had been traveling on my own I would have used my rail pass to take the train, but Steve did not have one, and he wanted to avoid the expense of the train if at all possible given his limited funds. I certainly appreciated that, having very limited funds myself, beyond that key asset of the pass. To have a continuing travel partner, at least for now, I was happy to go with the flow, whatever the universe presented as the way forward.
It was mid afternoon on Monday October 22 when Zo and Randall’s beat up old VW van, having survived the thorough going over by Spanish customs, finally entered the eastern port city of Barcelona, my travel partner Steve’s and my destination. Our hosts for the journey had picked us up about 100 kilometers south of Paris and given us the longest single ride I had had to date hitchhiking. With lots of hugs and emotion, our two fellow traveler hippieesque Canadians parted company with us there, with their plan to continue down the coast to the south of Spain for an intended crossing over to Morocco in North Africa.