PICKPOCKETS!

Well, I had my first experience with pickpockets coming into Madrid from the airport. First, you have to realize how disconcerting it is to have all your luggage on a crowded metro. I think because in LA we always drive to the airport, just being there with everything you´re bringing is really disconcerting. Anyway, I had to change metro lines twice, which I knew was going to be a challenge. In the second change, in Principe de Vergara station, I saw a bunch of guys look at me, and I was pretty sure I knew what was going to happen. As I was going up the escalator, one of the guys moved right in front of me. Then when we got to the top, he bent over like he was going to tie his shoes. Since I knew what was happening, I basically pushed him along, and he looked at me like, you asshole, but I just stared right back, and didn´t say anything. The guys behind me had opened up one of bags, but there was nothing in there worth taking, so nothing was taken.

It was really upsetting, but in a weird way because I couldn´t really show that I was upset otherwise I would have seemed more of a target. I stopped, and let them move on, and then I checked my bags. I think they tried to open the bigger bag as well, but it had a pretty tight zipper. THEN, when I went to the next train, there they were! They saw me, I saw them. And I just walked by to go to other car, and one of them pinched my butt a little to see if my wallet was there!

The whole thing put me in a really bad state of mind about Madrid, although interestingly writing this blog is helping a lot. It´s hard being alone in a strange city at night (as I write it´s 8:30 p.m.), particularly in a city that is so alive at night. Ernest Hemingway has this great quote, which I´ll have to give exactly at a later post, in The Sun Also Rises when he says something like it´s one thing to be a tough stoic man during the day, and another at night. And it´s true. The sense of vulnerability at night is much more extreme. It´s one of the things I really don´t like about traveling alone.

Plus, my guidebook and the LeonardoWorld onsite coordinator in Barcelona, Carolina, tell me that my hotel is in the red light district and that there are lots of prostitutes. I have the absolutely most awful ability to pick hotels, by the way. The best hotels I´ve ever stayed in were picked by other people. I should say, however, that the hotel is quite nice, and I haven´t seen a prostitute yet, and it´s actually a pretty busy street. But it´s kind of like staying in Times Square.

But I´m here for the day activities more anyway. The museums, the sites, etc. So if I can just get through the metros without being pickpocketed, I´ll be happy.

By the way, the only time I´ve ever been a victim of a crime was in Europe, in Amsterdam. The U.S. is supposed to be so dangerous, but I never have problems there.