MADRID – As the number of coronavirus cases in the Spanish capital rose, police interrogated a 23-year-old American girl and her 24-year-old Norwegian boyfriend as they were walking outside together Friday in the midst of the national lockdown.

The pair were walking a small Pomeranian and holding hands when an undercover cop flashed his badge and told the lovebirds to get a room – literally.

Sorry, can I stop there?

The American girl is me, a journalism school graduate trained in reporting. To get to the heart of the story, I have to lose the technical writing and rewind.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Madrid with my friend and her dog, and the landlord doesn’t know I live there.

It began as a temporary situation after an au pair experience gone wrong left me without a place to stay, but my friend and I have lived together for eight months now. We share one set of keys and sleep in the same bed.

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This has worked partly because my friend and I are American girls who are both dating foreign men who live in different countries. She’s seeing a guy from the Netherlands and I’ve been dating a Norwegian grad student. Every few weeks, one of us flies to visit her boyfriend, and the other boyfriend flies here. One of these exchanges was planned for March 13. My boyfriend, Stian, flew from Oslo with no problems, and my friend made it safely to Eindhoven. The next day, Spain announced a nationwide lockdown.

We feel lucky that the music stopped when it did. For two weeks, Stian and I have been confined to the small, four-room apartment, leaving only to buy food or walk the dog. We can go out only individually – a policeman really did give us a stern talking-to for going outside together, which says a lot about the seriousness of Spain’s situation.

We’ve been wearing each other's clothes, taking turns doing the dishes and bickering like an old married couple. He has seen me in ratty sweatpants with no makeup but still calls me “exquisite” – a word I taught him.

He has comforted me when I’ve cried because I miss my family, which has happened about seven times.

This span of 13 days is the longest time Stian and I have lived together consecutively.

View photos Ellie Borstad, 23, and her boyfriend of seven months, Stian Koehn Berget, 24, got stuck living together when coronavirus brought a lockdown to Madrid. They're in an unauthorized apartment, and that's not even their dog. (The dog's name is Lulu.) More

It’s pretty early in a relationship to consider what it would be like to nurse each other through a deadly illness, or to overhear longing conversations with distant relatives we haven’t yet met. But the circumstances have forged us into a unit of us against the world. I have a feeling that if we survive this, we can survive anything life throws at us.

Although it has been hard living with abnormal rules, being apart from family and friends and trying not to get angry at Stian when he leaves the toilet seat up, these few weeks have also been heaven. I savor the joy of cooking for someone I love and getting to see the little quirks that come out when life’s distractions have faded away, like the way he sings along in falsetto to the "Mamma Mia!" soundtrack and always has a sugary beverage in hand.

Stian and I had flights booked to Minnesota in April. I haven’t seen my family in a year, and I was looking forward to introducing my new boyfriend to everyone. The virus halted our plans, as it has done to the weddings, birthday parties, concerts and vacations of countless others around the globe. Our plans will have to wait. For now, we will be here, eating Indian takeout and watching Season 3 of "Breaking Bad."

In the meantime, family has become my foreign boyfriend and borrowed dog, and home is this contraband apartment. Please don’t tell the landlord we’re here.





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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus confines new couple to tiny borrowed apartment in Madrid



