In the late 1980s, I was setting off on a backpacking trip to Europe with a friend. They were interested in doing a master’s degree in New York, so we’d booked a two-week stay in the Big Apple on the way to London.
We arrived at the postgrad residence, a big 10-storey building on the Upper West Side called International House which had been set up by Rockefeller to house postgraduate students. We dropped our bags and went straight to the canteen, where we grabbed food, took a seat and started talking to other diners.
