Words

Running on Empty: Two Luxurious Weeks along Europe’s Mediterranean Coast on Less than One Dollar a Day

---Some choose to travel simply and economically.
Others have budget travel thrust upon them through drunken stupidity---

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Part I

20 July, 2001 – Oh, wonderful Barcelona! Home to Picasso, La Sagrada Familia, the Catalán culture and the world’s best thieves. These crooks are indeed a pleasure to behold. Unlike Brazilian or American street thugs, they wield no weapons. You won’t be shot cowardly at point blank by a pistol-holding maniac. And contrary to the tactics of the ruthless Moroccan hash dealers in southern Spain, they usually brandish no knives. They won’t mug you and unnecessarily stab you in the dark. Well, they might, but violence and intimidation are not their aim or gift. They work in the highly skilled, quick and composed business of petty thievery – often bag-knapping, which is usually done in broad daylight.

I was warned about these guys during my first trip to Barcelona. And they did not fail to impress. Day and night, as I meandered up and down the streets of Las Ramblas, wary of my own possessions, I witnessed no less than three separate incidents of well-executed, nonviolent criminal activity. I saw a tourist robbed of his wallet while making a midday pay phone call on the crowded boulevard. He had taken out a phone card to use at the phone and neglected to watch his billfold. The moment he took his hand off it to dial the number his wallet was snatched from the shelf by a lightning-quick assailant who disappeared into the crowd. One late night I saw a drunken American tourist who had wandered into the Gothic quarter to find his hotel and had been jumped by a couple of crooks. He was distraught and angry because they had taken everything: keys, wallet, and phone - even the shirt off his back. Half naked and scuffed up, he yelled at helpless police in English.

My set of friends had an incident as well when a guy took off with a bag owned by one of the girls in our group. She had made the mistake of leaving it on the ground while we participated in La Marcha, the outdoor socializing and drinking fest which takes place in nearly every plaza in most Spanish cities on weekend nights. I was sober and keen enough to see the quick steal out of the corner of my eye, yet buzzed enough to have an angry, proactive attitude about recovering the stolen bag. I took off into the crowd after the wormy ladron, caught up to him quickly and laid him out face first onto the concrete. I grabbed the bag back but didn’t have time to enjoy my heroism very long. He got right up and challenged me face to face for the loot. This time I tossed a stinging blast of the remaining contents of my drink (vodka and lemon Fanta) directly into his eyes. That is when I realized he wasn’t working alone. There was a whole network of these guys – and they came to his support. Even though, in my opinion, it was he who had thrown the first stone, I had to talk (or loosely translate between Spanish and Catalán) my way out of a royal beat down at the hands of a faction of Barcelona’s young, underground crime constituency. I was lucky not to have been dealt with by the experts. So what sets these crooks apart? Their complex network toils below the radar, sharing secrets of the trade. They communicate, learn quickly and constantly adjust and mutate.

Yes, they truly are kings among men. I should know; they just robbed me last week and now I sit in the busy train station in downtown Barcelona, watching a group of young men slyly walk out with an unsuspecting local’s enormous suitcase. Even the natives fall victim to the skill of these smooth criminals. It happens so fast I barely even notice. In just fractions of a second - the time it takes to pull another section from the newspaper the victim might be reading – his things have gone missing. I am aware of it but my own experiences with these professionals in the past few weeks freeze my almost automatic inclination to intervene. Besides, my judgment gets the better of me. One look at the shady character sitting to my right I know one thing for sure: if I try to get up do something about the bag snagging and cause a distraction I will sit back down on this bench and find myself without a bag as well. That would be okay, though, because my bag only contains a few recently purchased and borrowed items anyway. The rest of my possessions have already gone the way of the unlucky local’s suitcase – into the hands of these masters of thievery. According to the police, a whole group of these pros make one trip a year outside of Barcelona - to Pamplona to prey upon the teeming masses of hotel-less and drunken tourists during the festival of San Fermines.

My visit to Pamplona for the infamous “Running of the Bulls” was bound to end in a stupid, drunken mistake costing me thousands of dollars. At least that is one of the ways I rationalized my losses after I passed out in a plaza on top of my backpack, rolled over, and woke up a few hours later without it. I also blamed the incident on lack of sleep. For the days beforehand I had been homeless, for lack of a better word, on the streets of Paris. And sleep doesn’t come easy during this round-the-clock festival during which the town 180,000 swells to over 1.2 million. Bands march nonstop through the streets at all hours. Needless to stay, housing comes at a premium and is booked months, if not years, in advance. Waves of humanity are forced to tough it out in the street. But they are in it together. A certain camaraderie exists among the mostly possessionless transients who flood the streets throughout the festival. Unfortunately, the half-drunken, half-hearted spontaneous friendships created among the tourists are no match for the camaraderie of the criminal network which runs the city. Even though I had several “friends” watching my backpack, it seemed to disappear almost on its own accord.

Devastation best describes my loss of passport, camera, credit cards, plane tickets, money, and clothes. But I was quickly forced to turn my negative emotions into positives or risk losing even more, viz., my will to travel. Instead I delved deep into the historic annals of the fabled reverse psychologists and uttered compassionately, if delusionally, “Good! I am glad I lost my plane tickets! Now I have even more incentive to continue my travels. I can’t go home! I don’t even have a passport.” Or, over the next couple of days I would run through the streets of Pamplona – which were full of twerpy Spanish guys constantly bumping into tourists and swiping the contents of their pockets – wildly screaming, “Yes! pickpocket me! I have nothing left! Enjoy!” Hell, finally understanding the simplicity of possessionless living, I was beginning to believe I was better off without my stuff.

Yes, during those cathartic and neurotic days in Northern Spain I was even mental enough to run with bulls one early morning on our way out.

Back at the Barcelona train station I watch the suitcase being wheeled out the door by the duo of old pros. When they reach the door, they look slyly back to see if they have been noticed. They haven’t. They pick up the bag and slide into the crowded street. I can’t be bothered to stop these thieves. I am either too complacent or too selfish to help whoever owns the bag. I am inert but self-fortified and alert. After my experiences I see all but I do nothing. I scarcely have the resources to look out for myself. Especially here in Barcelona, the petty crime capital of my world. One thing I have learned by being bullied by the criminal underground is that nobody is looking out for me except me. Back when I cared more - back before Pamplona - perhaps I would have tried to be the hero in this situation. But this hero has lost his cape.

continue to part 2