After nearly a month with my sister in Barcelona, last Friday marked my final night as a temporary resident. To celebrate my sister and I threw together an impromptu (and very Spanish) farewell dinner. The two big-ticket items being the very high class cheese (manchego) and the ham (jamón ibérico). We picked up our dinner at the market, also grabbing some fresh bread to put everything on and a bottle of Spanish wine to complete the meal. I'm not sure exactly what makes jamón ibérico the top of the line, but (apparently) you get what you pay for. And I paid dearly: my little platter ran me 15 Euros.
And the verdict? It's extremely powerful, flavor-wise. It was so strong that I actually had to add a touch of Kelsey's cheese to help balance out the flavors. As you might expect, anything that I have to add cheese to in order to improve the taste probably isn't going to get high marks. But I managed to finish off the plate and thoroughly enjoyed my Spanish meal. I don't plan to buy it again, but it was a good to try once.
Friday night is also when all of the students and teachers in my sister's course go out together. We joined them after dinner, starting at the bar at Kelsey's school and then cruising from there. It was my last night out in Barcelona and I made sure I enjoyed it. I managed to discuss all the big topics: talked about America and politics with an English guy, discussed religion with Scottish dude and chatted about Halloween with a couple of Spanish girls.
We didn't wrap up the evening until sometime around 3:00 and were unpleasantly surprised with one more Barcelona parting gift: a torrential downpour. But, running through the streets, hopping from one awning to another, attempting (unsuccessfully) to stay at least a little dry was fun! I was running and laughing through the city, not letting Barcelona's wet parting gift ruin my evening.
So Barcelona stepped it up a notch. On our home street, just a block our so from our front door, I was robbed. Since we were both running and jumping from place to place, Kelsey and I weren't right next to each other. I was regrouping under an awning, preparing for one final push to our apartment when two guys walked up to me. They were quite jovial and looked to be drunk, dancing, yelling and causing a two man scene. You see this a lot in Barcelona, so I didn't think too much of it. They came under the awning with me to get out of the rain.
They sloppily walked over, bumping into themselves, bumping into me, dancing with themselves, dancing with me. I smiled at them, got out of their way, and turned to leave. As I took my first step I subconsciously felt for my wallet in my front pocket and... it wasn't there! I whirled around, the two men were still dancing and laughing, apparently not in a hurry to go anywhere. I told them that I wanted my wallet back, but (of course) they just stared blankly at me. I kept repeating wallet and pointing at my pocket and they eventually pulled out their wallets as if to say, "see these are our wallets."
But I continued to repeat "my wallet" and they finally pulled mine out. They calmly looked through it, pulled out my cash (40 Euros) and handed my wallet back to me. I checked to make sure nothing else was missing (they didn't take my credit cards, thankfully), gave them one final look and made a beeline home. I was brimming with emotion: shocked that I'd actually be robbed, furious that I let myself get too comfortable in Barcelona, grateful that I managed to get my wallet and credit cards back (losing 40 Euros obviously isn't the end of the world); but mostly I just felt violated.
I've never been robbed before. Granted, these two guys were very nice about the whole thing and I am grateful that I was able to catch on quickly and get my wallet back, but it's still left me a little shaken. It's certainly put me back in high alert mode, as well. Saturday I flew from Barcelona to Granada and I've been on full fledged suspicious-person watch. Anyone passing within a 5 foot circle of me has gotten a thorough visual once over.
I'm happy that I'm off traveling again, too. I've been too busy to spend (too much) time dwelling on Friday night. Which is good. There's nothing I can do about it now and in the long run it's not really a huge deal. It was just a disturbing final reminder from Barcelona that — no matter comfortable I may start to feel when I travel — I always need to keep my guard up. And my guard is currently way up. To quote George Bush: "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twi — can't get fooled again!"
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