The worst 24 hours ever.... (PART 2)

PART 2:

I woke up the next morning thinking that the night before had all been a bad dream, today had to be better right? I had plans to meet Katya and Charlotte to go and visit Museo de Reina Sofia and maybe pop to Sol/Gran Vía after for a little shopping. In order to get to Reina Sofia without having to change on the metro, I took a different route than I normally would have. I got on the train at Iglesia and it was probably the busiest train I've ever gotten onto (except maybe the MTR on a Friday at rush hour!) Before we reached the next stop, a bunch on guys who had got on at the same time as me started to push to the front to get off. My first though was 'well that's pretty lazy' as the metro stops (Iglesia and Bilbao) are very close. Then I felt someone pulling at the back if my bag, so naturally I shifted slightly as Madrid is known for its pickpocketing. The train stopped, the doors opened and the group of guys surrounding me began to get off. It all seemed a bit strange, so removed my hands from holding the zip on my bag (to keep it from being opened) and did my usual 'tap both front pockets of my leather jacket to make sure everything was where is was supposed to be'. It wasn't. The zip that was under my bag had been opened and emptied without me feeling a single thing. Worst thing? My iPhone had been in that pocket. As soon as I felt that empty pocket I rushed off the train - just before the doors closed - and ran after the dwindling crowd leaving the platform. Being an unfamiliar metro station to me, I lost the group before I had chance to catch up with them, and ended up circling round onto the other side of the platform by mistake. Once I realised that it was all over, I burst into tears. Again. You can't even imagine how scary it is being in a foreign country without any means of contact. So there I stood, on an empty platform hyperventilating and sobbing to myself when a lovely lady came up to me and asked me what was wrong. I somehow managed to explain what had happened, and she took me to the exit where the security office was and explained to the people there what had happened (as my Spanish was NOT working). Luckily, one of the guys there spoke fairly decent English and helped me call Vodafone to block the sim card. 

Ok, so the sim card was blocked - but then I had to figure out my next move. I'd only been in Madrid for about 3 weeks at that point and had yet to remember anyones numbers - the only numbers I know are my family's (either UK or HK numbers). The security guy was willing to let me use his phone, but I could hardly ask him to call overseas. Luckily he had Whatsapp so I could let my parents know what was going on. I was so mad at myself because one of my friends had had her phone stolen only weeks before, and I couldn't believe that it had happened to me as well - I had been as careful as I could have been, but I guess some people are just professionals (which becomes more evident when I tell you something else a bit later on!) So the next thing I had to do was go to Vodafone and get my sim card duplicated (a lot harder in Spanish - trust me!) The only problem is that my friend Alicia (who lives in Madrid) had bought the sim card for me, which meant it was under her name. Therefore I needed her to come with me to get it duplicated, and guess what? I couldn't remember her number. The worst part of this is that the night before, when my phone was dying on the bus, I'd got an eyeliner out of my bag and actually written her number on my hand - but like a good girl, I took all of my makeup off before I collapsed into bed, including the number on my hand!!!!

The choice was simple, go to buy a new phone and then go home, where I could access the internet and let everyone know what had happened, or go to Reina Sofía, and hope that I could catch up with Charlotte and Katya. I decided to get back on the metro and head to the museum, thinking that I could catch up with them. Let me tell you this, you really don't realise how much you rely on your phone until it's gone! I got off the metro and realised that I couldn't use Google Maps to figure out how to get to the Museum. Luckily my Spanish is good enough and I was able to ask for directions! Now the next part is not that interesting, but still adds to the mounting levels of frustration of the entire day, so let me just summarise it for you;

- Apparently there are two entrances to the museum - if I had gone to the other one I would have found them as they waited for me for 45 minutes, whilst I sat outside the other entrance for a good half hour. 

- I ran around Reina Sofía for and hour and a half like a mad man trying to find them, all the time getting rude looks from the employees sitting in each room as I certainly didn't stop to admire the artwork. 

- To add to it, I really didn't like the museum. I don't like modern art at the best of times, but the combination of my situation and the complexity of the museums layout really made me dislike it. 

- Then, after an hour and a half, I decided to give up, headed to Sol to buy a new phone and went home to use the internet like I had originally planned to.

Right, so I was back at home, exhausted from the day and had managed to send Katya a message on Facebook letting her know what had happened. Luckily, Alicia was also online and I managed to explain to her what had happened, and about the sim card predicament, and she said that she could meet me at Sol within the hour to help me get a new sim card. And back on the metro I went... Now you're probably all wondering, why didn't you just get a new sim card? Well, that would have been a lot easier now, wouldn't it? The reason that I wanted to duplicate my card rather than just get a new one was that I had literally topped it up with €20 the day before, and I didn't want that to go to waste... Remember this - it comes back into the story later.

So there I was, in the Vodafone shop in Sol with a new sim card. As I'd had trouble with my internet the first time I'd got a sim card here, I wanted to test it out in shop to make sure everything was okay. For some reason, even though I could text and call, we couldn't get the internet to work, so the guy in the shop helping me and Alicia went to check my balance and found out what was wrong. The €20 that I had topped up just days before gives me something like 100 minutes, 100 texts and 1.5GB data (don't quote me on this!). When the guy checked my balance, I had 100 minutes, 100 texts, and get this, 0GB data. I couldn't believe my luck, and to be honest, neither could the guy at the store. In the 10 or so minutes that it took me to block my sim card, the buggers had used 1.5GB of data. Now if you don't know much about that kind of thing, let me just tell you, using that much data in 10 minutes is almost impossible. Almost. See why I think they were professional?? So, I could have just saved Alicia the trouble and got a new sim card because here, if you run out of data, you have to top up again for the whole month, so I had to hand over another €20, on top of the €5 duplication fee, and the hundreds of € it cost to buy a new phone. Great. 

After all of that, Alicia and I headed to McDonalds, got a burger and a lovely slice of cake and ended up laughing at all of the bad luck that had come my way in the past 24 hours. I mean - how unlucky was I!? I hope this has made sense - my story telling isn't great at the best of times, and I'm trying to make this as short as possible so that you don't have to waste too much of your life reading it. So that was pretty much it. After my traumatic few days, I only left my bed for food on the Sunday as I felt like it was the safest option for me! 

My reward for making it through the 24 hours.

Please excuse if there are any spelling/grammatical mistakes - I will read over this again soon but even writing it all was exhausting, so I don't feel like reading it again just yet. Luckily in the last week my luck seems to have turned around a bit (although I did experience a mammoth nose bleed in the middle of my Russian Literature lecture on the Monday - probably all the stress!!) So this concludes the worst 24 hours ever... I hope you enjoyed reading about my many misfortunes! Hopefully my next post will be a bit more jolly

Until next time,

Isobel x