In Which Stuff Just Sucks

Okay...so I can't believe it's only five thirty here. SO MUCH has happened today, and almost all of it has been really bad.

Our train to Madrid was supposed to leave at nine thirty this morning, so we got to the train station at around 9:00 and Ash needed some coffee. So we went and sat in the chairs by the shops, and she went and got coffee, and we sat there for a couple of minutes while she sipped it. Our backpacks and plastic bags were on the floor in front of us, and my purse was next to me on the right. I was watching it the whole time.

Then suddenly we feel these insistent taps on our shoulders and we turn to our left, where the taps were coming from. This woman says something totally incomprehensible, and I thought she needed help, so I said Como? and she repeated whatever, and finally I said, lo siento, no lo entiendo, because I had no idea what she was saying and figured it was Catalan.

She gave this like really small smile and scuttled away kind of abruptly, and we're like, okay, that was weird, why did she ask us, out of the entire crowded station? A minute later, I reach for my purse on my right, and it is of course gone. This team was working together--the woman would distract, and someone would slip by completely silently and inconspicuously and take your purse.

Obviously this was probably the worst thing I could imagine, apart from physical injury. My passport, camera, all my identification, voice recorder, state ID, UW ID, Hostelling International card, money, credit and debit cards, everything was in there. My floss was in there! By some amazing luck I had just taken out my plane tickets and Eurail pass to look at them, so I still had that. We looked everywhere in the area, and I asked people if they had seen anything, and of course they hadn't.

So then I went to the police station in the train station and it took two hours just to file the report, because it turned out they had hit at least six other people before me! Some spaniards, some british, some canadian, some american. It was terrible. Luckily, I am pretty much fluent in Spanish, because none of the police officers at that station spoke english. It took the other people who couldn't speak the language twice as long to file the report.

Ashley helpfully contacted my parents for me and asked to cancel my cards, and is lending me money for the rest of the trip. But the fun didn't end there! Obviously, I had to get a new passport, so we called the Embassy and got the address, and it turns out it closes at 1 pm on Fridays and you have to prove it is an emergency. Luckily, I had my plane tickets, showing that we needed to fly home in three days. Also luckily, I had a copy of my passport from when I tried to get an MIT Federal Credit Union card from England (thank you Mahalia!!). So we went all the way to the consulate, which involved a metro and a train, and then I had to fill out all these forms. I had found a passport photo machine in the train station adn gotten photos taken, so it took about an hour plus a bit to get the new passport. Fortunately, that went reasonably smoothly.

We got back to the station around 2 pm, and tried to get our train tix to Madrid. Naturally, though, there was a strike today, and the windows for tickets for trains leaving today were closed until 4:30. Also, there was a HUGE mass of people all clotted up in front of the cordoned off line zone, waiting for 4:30 to come. So, we join this clot and wait for 4:30.

But then it seemed like EVERYONE was going to Madrid, and all the trains kept getting full, or they would only have first class available, which we couldn't do because our Eurail passes were second class only, and more and more people appeared until there were like three huge lines extending in every direction, and there kept being all these false alarms, and some Spanish people got REALLY angry and started intensely yelling at the train station workers (and I mean INTENSELY, this one woman was going so crazy they called in two policemen...in the US she would've been thrown out or sedated, but naturally here she got what she wanted), and every time they'd open the cordoned area a little bit, this GIANT swarm of people would push forward, including us by this time, and only like ten people would get through before it got closed again... this lasted for about three hours. The rest of the station was nicely air-conditioned but it was like eighty some degrees where we were just from all the bodies. It also smelled pretty bad.

FINALLY we got into line in front of an actual ticket window. By this point I had gone to a zillion service areas and explained my situation in detail in Spanish, and begged them to let us on a train because we had a ticket for this morning, and it wasn't our fault at all that we didn't get to use it, to no avail. So we were really worried there wouldn't be space. The people in front of us took forever, too, and then, three people before us, they closed our window and made us shift to the right, which meant of course that people tried to cut like crazy. FINALLY we got to an actual ticket person, and I made the reservations and everything, and he said the earliest train they had available for second class was nine pm (it was a bit before five pm at that time), so we were like, well, okay, and then he said 20.70 euro please, and Ash handed him her card (of course I have no money anymore), and naturally he says, "Oh, only cash accepted."

Thankfully he let us stand off to the side while she dashed to an ATM, because there were throngs of murderous people behind us and if we had had to go to the back of the line I would NOT have been pleased. Oh, I forgot to mention, at one point while we were waiting in the giant mass, someone jostled and a HUGE HARD suitcase crashed into the back of my head. I literally saw stars. There's a bump now. It probably killed all the brain cells I need for MIT, which maybe explains why I accidentally wrote that the issue date of my stolen passport was October 2008 at first. Ooops.

So now we're at an internet cafe, trying to facebook the pain away. I knew my year had been too good to be true! Barcelona had been so much fun as well--we had the most amazing tapas at a place called El Reloj yesterday. It was reasonably priced and delicious, I really recommend it. But I warn you, Barcelona has REALLY bad crime problems. About ten people had also had their passports stolen just today, and they were all at the consulate. I'm sure there were more, but those were the ones I met. One woman actually physically struggled with the thief. I heard about another woman who was dragged across the floor before her purse strap snapped. These thieves are professional and do NOT give up. The police are pretty useless, too.

So, I liked Barcelona a lot until today. Today was absolutely horrible. The only redeeming part was that Ashley got me a Snickers as a consolation present. Both of us are just sweaty and gross and exhausted, and I am also broke and lost a lot of great memories (pictures, passport stamps), not to mention money.

Oh well. I guess I've got unique souvenirs--no one else I know has a genuine Barcelona police report!

We leave for Madrid in about three hours...fly to Frankfurt tomorrow, and fly home on Monday. That will be sooo nice.

Boo thieves!

Hasta luego
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