The Royal Route from Calcutta to Canada

When Jenny Liao (Chi-Ying Liao) tells me that she used to work at a hotel in Copenhagen, I wonder if it is the same one that I worked at from 1969 to 1970. “Is it the Royal?” I ask. Her eyes open wide. “How did you know?” When I worked at the Royal Hotel in Copenhagen, it was a mini–United Nations. The hotel hired people from all over the world—Indians, Thais, Filipinos, Poles, Norwegians, Japanese, Swiss, Dutch, Danes, and Nigerians. Jenny and I discover that we were both chambermaids there. We also both met our husbands there: I married a Thai coworker, and she married a Chinese man from India. Both men had traveled overland from their homes in Asia to Denmark. If I had continued working at the Royal just a few months longer, I would have met Jenny thirty-six years ago.