Paul, Christina, Barcelona: Spain trip, July,2009

July 13-29, 2009
Christina, my wife and traveling companion, and I made a honeymoon trip to Spain. (Hereafter her name is shortened to Stina--but only I can use this nickname, I just can't type "Christ" that many times.) True, we had been married almost a year and a half, but we hadn't really gone on any extended trip yet, and this seemed like a good way to justify taking 3 weeks off to my clients, as well as spend a lot of money without feeling guilty about it.

We flew in and out of Barcelona, taking trains to southern Spain, Andalusia, where we spent most of our time. There will be a post on each city we visited.

Barcelona/Salou

The beach from the Paseo in Salou

These towns were our points for arriving and departing Spain. We had an invitation to stay a few days in Salou with our friends Pascual and Ilse, who lived between their condo there and one in Florida, USA. That seems to be what everybody else has in Salou too-it is a city of condo buildings with all roads leading to the great paseo or pedestrian walkway lined with restaurants, and beyond it, the beach. Beyond that, the Mediterranean.

Kids playing in a fountain near the Salou boardwalk.

The International Financial Crisis

I'll start from with the hard part, just to get it over with. Xstina had her wallet stolen within an hour of landing. We had to take a short train to Salou, where we were going to stay at the house of some friends, Pascual and Ilse, about an hour's ride from Barcelona.

Exhausted, jet-lagged, having just gotten off the plane, we stood on a crowded platform in the Barcelona-Sants station, keeping a close eye around us for we had heard that Spain was known for its pick-pockets. A man next to us asked Xstina if she spoke Spanish, and could she help him read the train schedule above us. Strangely, there was some small type in the "notes" section of the electric sign that traveled across the line and would have been hard to read in any language. Both of us, trying to help, peered up at it for about 30 seconds, trying to read it to him. He thanked us and we got on the train. Sitting on the train when Xstina said to me, " I can't find my wallet."


Her wallet held a debit card, credit card, id, and most of her important life items in it. Fortunately, her passport was safe. A nice young man on the train overheard us and offered to let her use his iPhone to call her banks. It was a good thing we did that because within that space of 20 minutes, as we later found out, someone had tried to change her PIN.

Here's how the thieves operated, as close as we could assume. It is all about your attention and expectations--not unlike the way a skilled magician works. Reality is all in where you put your focus. While the one man had our attention, his partner had taken the wallet. We never even noticed.


So, be warned, but let me say that Spain is not a dangerous place. There is little violent crime there, but one has to be aware of what is happening all around. You don't have to have eyes in the back of your head. Simply pay attention. Not easy when you've just gotten off a plane and it's the middle of the night where you came from. These thieves know that. Not wanting to take any risks or call attention to themselves--there are train police--they prey only on people who look vulnerable and look easy.

Our friend and host, Pascual, who had been robbed himself, explained that even if the police catch one of these pickpockets, they can usually get off with only a hand-slap if the amount stolen is under 400 euros. I did not exactly understand the rationale for that, but Pascual said something about Spanish politics since the days of the Fascists. Apparently there is no major lobby for more rules, law and order, or police rights in Spain. People would rather take care of problems in their own way, I guess, than give more power to the government. He also mentioned that there were a lot of Gypsies in Spain and that was the other part of the problem. I'd like to follow up on this subject and learn s little more details.

You Are Your PIN
The rest of the saga: We did not have international calling on our cell phones, but were able to call all of Stina,s banks within about 20 minutes with the help of a nice young man with an iPhone. Still, as we found out later, someone had already tried to change her PIN. So the pickpockets are organized.

That left me and my cards. I had gotten a hundred euros at an ATM in Frankfurt, as a test of the cash system, so I was not too worried about my ability to get cash for us. That lasted until Salou, where I tried practically every ATM in town before finding out that my credit union back home had categorically blocked Spain from all debit card use. Yes, I should have called them before leaving to inform them that I would be in Spain with my card, but I didn't get to it. Next trip that will be near the top of my list to do.

Our last resort for having cash available was my MasterCard. Alas, I didn't know my PIN–I had never used it for a cash advance. Calls and emails home did not turn up a PIN. Most likely I never had one. An easy thing to change, one would think. But the call center employees are not allowed to deal with PINs--you must change a PIN using the automatic phone prompt robot, which asks you to enter personal information to make sure you are yourself, before allowing you to change your PIN. After an hour or so of trying, without success, I was told that in Spain you could not enter numbers into a robot after dialing a call. You could dial the numbers to make a connection, but that was the end of it.

My sketches of Stina, worried, on the train

We could have taken out cash on my MasterCard without a pin at a railroad station cash exchange teller. But on top of the almost 1.5:1 exchange rate for dollars and euros, the cash advance percentage and fees from MasterCard, and then the extra fees from this exchange office--we would end up paying about double teh cost of everything we bought!
To make a long story less long, I called my parents in the USA from Grenada and they sent us some cash by Western Union. Of course I should have done that days earlier, but felt too embarrassed to ask for a bailout.

Although I still had a credit card that worked for many purchases, it is important to have cash while traveling. There are many things that you need cash for: a cup of coffee, markets, tickets to enter museums and old sites. Most pensions or hostels did not take credit cards, and at one point we had to pay a 170 euro train ticket with cash because the card did not authorize, and the ticket counter employee refused to run it a second time.

All together, we estimate that we lost about two days total time wasted dealing with our little financial crisis. Add most of our first night in Salou, where we were up til 3am calling the US, and we might say we lost about three days where we could not follow our plans. This was besides the stress and anxiety which lasted for the first half of the trip.
That's the part we could have possibly controlled–the time wasted worrying–maybe with some deep abdominal breathing and a more gypsy attitude of our own. But it's harder when traveling to control one's emotions. And when there are two of you, it's harder to tell who is picking up on whose feelings. One little bad turn and you can easily slide into panic if you are not careful.

Traveler Be Warned

The answer? Had my brain cells not been so exhausted from getting all my work done in preparation for this trip, it would be obvious. Call your bank before traveling anywhere and make sure they know where you will be traveling and that their debit card will work in those places. If not, open an account with a bank that will. In Spain, it may be necessary to carry more cash that I feel comfortable with (about $100 maximum is my normal limit).
The rest of our trip was wonderful!

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