October 2nd – Day 8 – Part 2
(I apologize for the small amount of pictures in this entry. I was a little worried my camera was going to get “jacked” which was not wasn’t an entirely paranoid fear based on the area.)
Barcelona is one of the most populous cities in the European Union, with over 1 million 500 thousand people living in and around the city. I chose to visit it partly at the suggestion of Baby Cow Productions producer Ted Dowd, partly because it was an easy natural stop through destination on my way to Italy, and partly because Freddie Mercury, Queen’s front man wrote a song for the city and Queen can do no wrong in my eyes.
I arrived at around 10:30pm at the Barcelona Sants railway station. A brief stop at a hotel near the station gave me an accurate map of the city. My Center-Ramblas youth hostel was a few kilometer walk from the station and a metro line ran pretty close to it, but I was in the mood to save money, so I hoofed it the whole way.
As I had read in several travel guides, Barcelona is the pickpocket capitol of the world. Besides my passport and digital camera, I had few valuables of note with me on the trip. My backpack was secured by several small padlocks so I wasn’t worried about a loss of property, but violent mugging stories aren’t uncommon, and I wanted to see my friends and family again so I kept my “Sheffield” brand pocket knife (given to me by my father prior to leaving the United Stated) in an easily accessible flap on my jacket.
It was late at night on a Friday, and something about the place screamed out like a caution sign. As I walked the streets toward my destination, I noticed everyone walked quickly, as if they wanted to prove to any would be bandits that they weren’t a confused, and easily taken advantage of tourist. Unfortunately, I was a confused and easily taken advantage of tourist, so my head was on a swivel, and the adrenaline was pumping.
As I approached a beautiful looking square about halfway between the train station and my hostel, I had some trouble with the directions I wrote down a few days prior. I stepped inside a Quality Burger restaurant and asked the manager for help. He didn’t speak much English until I showed him the location of my hostel on the map.
“Be careful, La Rambla is very dangerous at night and you are a stranger.” were the words he spoke with a look of deep concern on his face.
“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi in reference to Mos Eisley Spaceport in the star wars film series.
The above quote played through my head as I walked through the highest crime part of one of the highest crime towns in Spain. My hostel was located about halfway down La Rambla, and it was a long half kilometer walk. The streets were covered in peddlers selling counterfeit handbags, prostitutes, jugglers, and other street performers. I walked as quickly as I could, avoiding groups of people and keeping a heightened view of my surroundings and my person.
After a walk that felt like a marathon, I reached the hostel on hospital street, a dark alley just off the main strip. The Center Rambles has a set of locked sliding glass doors covering the entrance, and the people running the desk only unlock the door for patrons as a means to keep seedy characters out. I walked inside the hostel with a sigh of relief. After composing myself for a moment, I looked down at my jacket.
Crap.
Every zipper on my jacket was undone.
I knew the exact moment that it happened. The pickpockets move quickly, and they look for any distraction in the faces of their targets. If you stop to watch a flaming torch juggler, you probably just had your purse stolen. In my case, an oncoming container truck forced me to step further onto the sidewalk into a group of people. I thought that they were tourists, but in the few moments I was surrounded by them, they must have tried to grab anything they could.
Luckily, my pockets were only unzipped, and nobody had a chance to take anything of value, but it was a close call.
The young, but haggard looking desk workers gave me the key to my room. While they were putting me into the system I took a moment to use the lobby computers. Signs on the computers showed the high percentage of online identity theft in Barcelona, and the computers were riddled with viruses. I hesitated briefly before checking my facebook.
With my key in hand I climbed the large spiral staircase to my top floor room.
I signed up for a bed in an 8-person dorm room to save money, and the sketchy nature of the clientele I had noticed up to that point made me wish I’d splurged for a single room. At least I was a short walk from my bed.
Opening the door at the end of the hallway. The room was dimly lit, and a shirtless man with bloodshot eyes and a face covered in scars greeted me with an annoyed look. He was one of my room mates for the night, and the thought did little to ease my tension. I tried conversing with him in Spanish, but he simply shook his head, and pointed at one of the empty beds.
I examined the sheets before climbing in, and they were covered in bed bugs, small insects similar to fleas that become the bane of your existence in dirty hostels.
The entire area had a bad aura about it, but I needed a night’s sleep, so I climbed into bed, fully clothed, using my backpack and shoes as a pillow to further reduce the risk of theft. I drifted to sleep with a prayer to the heavens pleading that I’d wake with myself, and my possessions intact.
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While my first night in Barcelona was a miserable experience, there was one slight positive. The above bar on hospital street was playing Paul’s Boutique-era Beastie Boys as I walked past it to my hostel.
[...] Barcelona, Spain [...]