Barcelona, 23 January 2020
I fully intended this post to be all about our whirlwind 52 hour trip to Paris, (and I still intend to write about Paris) but our first day in Barcelona begs to be recorded first. We arrived in Spain on an uneventful flight on a rather interesting airline during a thunderstorm on Wednesday evening.
We took a taxi to our Airbnb, an apartment a few blocks from the beach in the Northeast neighborhood of Poblenou. It is a beautiful apartment and perfect for our week here in Barcelona. Steve paid our driver and we settled into our place. We left Paris before dinner and because it was late we planned to have Ubereats deliver something when we arrived. After very little debate we decided on Greek food, and of course, that would surprise no one who knows us.
And here is where our story gets interesting. After only an hour in Barcelona, Steve could not find his wallet. It took only moments to turn out every pocket and empty our backpacks (the only bags we carried onto the flight) before we realized the wallet was gone. Panic truly began to set in after I scoured the hallway and rode the pitch-black elevator down to street level. A search of the street and sidewalk turned up nothing; the entryway was empty. I stood in the cool dim ground level hallway (in Spain and France and many other places I am sure, the first floor is one floor up and what I would call the first floor is street level or ground floor), resigned to the fact that the wallet was gone. Which in and of itself would not have been so bad but when we emptied the safe in our Paris hotel we put all our debit cards to all three accounts into that wallet, Steve’s passport card (you know, so he would not have to risk carrying his passport booklet around the pickpocket capital of Europe), and several hundred Euros in cash, which was most of our cash.
By the time I got back to our apartment, hopes dashed, Steve had researched every pocket – bag, jacket, pants, and every little pile of stuff that had formerly occupied those pockets. A call to the cab driver was a logical next step and he checked the with the cab – no wallet. So we decided to check the hall and street outside together. There was a drizzle of rain as we searched the sidewalk, gutter, and street but still no wallet.
Once we were sure the wallet was gone, we were unsure for a moment of our next step, it was late we were exhausted, the only thing we were sure of was that this was bad. And now all we could do was control the damage.
Our first bit of luck came then: while it was late in Barcelona, it was early afternoon in Montana and calling our local bank was simple. I explained our situation and Steve piped in that he wasn’t ready to give up the wallet as lost. At that, the banker checked our accounts and found no additional purchases after the cab fee. She suggested we put a hold on those cards, just in case they turned up. We did the same for the other bank’s debit cards – who knew you could do that online?! Steve started to navigate the labyrinth of the embassy and consulate websites to deal with his lost passport. After what felt like hours, we went to bed frustrated.
Steve emailed the consulate the next morning, hoping to get clarification about reporting his passport lost. Could he report just the passport card missing without invalidating his passport booklet? (The answer to that question, by the way, is no.) While he did that, I discovered that the best part about staying in an Airbnb as opposed to a hotel is the ability to cook, or specifically, in this case, make coffee without leaving our room.
We set off to find a bank and a grocery store with the one and only debit card we had between us. Caffeinated, we were ready to put yesterday’s frustration behind us. We found everything we needing a few blocks from our apartment and made our way back with three bags of groceries (that includes soda). As always happens when you reconnect to the WiFi after being disconnected for any length of time, we had a few notifications when we got back. We let them sound off while we put our groceries in the fridge and pantry cupboard. Steve settled in to check his phone while I cooked us a late breakfast, and I say cooked but I mean heated up the oven to cook a frozen pizza.
“Holy crap,” Steve leapt from the sofa grinning, “HOLY CRAP!”
And then he just stood there for a breathe, with me staring at him, a paper towel wrapper in my hand hovering over the trash can.
“Somebody found my wallet.” He explained that someone had contacted the consulate to say that they had found his wallet. “We need to go and pick it up.”
The pizza timer went off just then, “I guess we can eat first but we need to hurry,” he said smiling in earnest now.
Pizza in Spain is good – even the grocery store brand – and luckily it is thin crust and cools quickly, so eating it quickly is easier than say, a Chicago deep dish.
We walked down a few blocks to a busy street to hail a taxi, I have a spotty track record with hailing taxis so I let Steve handle that. And he did it beautifully, his Spanish was flawless and he chatted with the driver as we sped down Avenida Diagonal. As the buildings zipped by, I was in awe. the architecture was stunning and the shops were interesting. I love new places and this is why – everything is different but it all works the same. People work, and play and live and they do all of those things everywhere and their homes look different but we all need clothes and shoes and bread and buildings to live in. I love how we do all of those similar things so differently around the world.
In my distraction watching the city fly by my window, I entirely missed what our driver was saying about how to get to where we needed to go to retrieve Steve’s wallet. I gathered it was across the street from where he was dropping us off but that was it. Luckily, Steve speaks Spanish, and a little Catalan by this point, so he is confident that he can get us to the office we needed to go to.
Across the street, we went and looking up to find the numbers on the building and between a coffee shop and shop selling fine men’s suits, we found the Art Deco style glass door that would lead us to our query. In an elegant wooden elevator, the kind that is open not a metal box like I’m use to, we clicked up to the fourth floor. We followed the small signs to an office and were greeted by a receptionist who knew why we had come before we even spoke.
“Ah, Steven, your wallet!” She said as she retrieved it from a desk drawer. Steve thanked her profusely as she explained that the man who found it was in court today and would not be able to speak with us. With a smile, she wished us a safe and pleasant holiday and we were off again.
We took the stairs down. They wound around the elevators, there were two elevators one for people and one for deliveries, boxing it in on three sides with a landing on the fourth. As we went Steve hesitated just a moment, he had said before we arrived that he would be satisfied if just his passport was still inside. With a bracing breath, he opened the wallet. Inside there was his passport and one, two, three credit cards and in the center, cash. It was all still there. In the end, nothing was lost and we gained a rather unusual adventure.
Much to my surprise, I found a tear pricking the corner of my eyes as were reached the bottom of the stairs. I am fond of saying kindness is free and today it seems I have a bit to add: kindness is free and it’s priceless.
