  OHMYGOD. Murphy´s Law. If it can it will, and as my first day, when it rains it pours. I don´t know where to start.
My friend Emma is great. Okay so I got up early yesterday, left the dumb umbrella in hope that doing so would encourage the sky to hold it in. But don´t worry I wore dark colors just in case. We played tourist first went to the royal palace saw the left over setup from the prince´s wedding last saturday. Yeah, walked halfway around Madrid and met our buddy Patrick from the Hostel at street level of the Antón Martín metro stop.
He was late but no biggie we just sat and people watched. He showed and we wandered until we found a pretty darned nice looking, but rock bottom cheap restaurant, the place even had a closed door and was full, a clear hit with the locals, and it had cheap paella for my buddies. I had Gazpacho, and croquetas de pollo, yummy and we shared a bottle of vino tinto de mesa which was a wopping 2.25 €.
Highrollers, ha ha. We loved to waiter the people, etc. My eyes were still bloody painful and red as a crayon so I was wearing sunglasses all day, but back to the subject at hand. We were eating and seated against the wall near the rear of the restaurant. Three at a table for four so the open chair we all piled our stuff in. STUPID..STUPID..STUPID. You all who have known me for awhile remember I have been robbed before in Spain. So two guys come in and looked distinctly Morrocan or at least somewhere in N. Africa. They sat at the newly vacated table next to us, the guy sitting next to the wall pretended to take off his sweater with one arm and with the other slid it under the sweater and snatched my purse, hiding it under his sweater.
He was watching me as he did it. I saw the whole damned thing happen and decided I would fare best if everyone else knew what had just occurred too. I called him a ladrón and told him to dame la bolsa, gilipollas, which is incidentally the worst possible bad word in Spain, its roughly the equivalent of every single bad word in English in a package deal.
He claimed, obviously shocked the stupid american spoke spanish that it fell, three feet away in his hand clutchly tightly, under his sweater. I´ve never seen anything fall three feet sideways myself. Anyway, his story was ridiculous as I grabbed my bag from his theiving hands. I said I was going to call the police as I got up and walked to the back now all eyes were on me, The assholes followed me to the back saying they were going to call the police for me, other male guests of the restaurant got involved telling me to tell the jefe, The asshole grabbed to only phone holding it off the hook and saying , now yelling that I am a liar and that he was going to call the police I said fine I´ll pay, but he never moved to dial to pay the phone.
He obviously just wanted to have control so I wouldn´t occupy the phone with my call to the US embassy and the Muni police.
I told him I was going to call and he screamed and called me all kinds of damned american-isms, and hit me, no not hard, but all the waiters were male and jumped in between to pull the guy off. It also took the assistance of male guests to finally get the violent two out. I kept telling them que ¡que te vayas!, ¡Ladrón!, ¡él ha tratado de robarme!, etc. I was scared they would be outside waiting for me with knives afterward. Then we walked to El Retiro I was still quite literally shaking, rather uncontrollably, really quite embarassing it probably looked like I was having a seizure.
My buds were trying to get me relaxed again and so we went to the café right in the middle of the walkway in front of the big pond and I got a massive beer. Then I had to use the ladies room as naturally follows large quantities of beer. But the ladies was out of order so Emma and I had to use the boys.
What I wasn´t told is that you can get locked in, and the doors are these big meat locker style steel doors. Anyway, long story short I got locked in a tiny scary boys bathroom 20 minutes after a botched robbery. After El Retiro we had been discussing how bad stuff happens in threes. I was like God please step in and don´t let a third thing happen I couldn´t take it.
So we went the grocery store on the way back to get food to prepare for dinner at the Hostel, and our favorite grocary meat man helped us, so starving and loaded down with ham and manchego and bread and water and paté of york ham we went back and started making sandwiches. These scary pierced Swedes were in the kitchen I mean the fat one had rings stretching his earlobes, yes think national geographic, that could have been worn by me as bracelets and he had steel spike implants all over including in a row on his forehead. Scary. So they were asking where we were from etc., Emma said Australia, I said the US, they said what part I said Texas, and there was palpable disgust that arose in the room.
Noxious fumes must be put out by Texans because the whole f%$#ing room apparently had their stomachs turn in disgust. I told them I was nice and I don´t really like Bush, and there are nice people in Texas. They asked me what the population of Texas was and after giving them a rough estimate they proclaimed if I really was nice, then I was the only one in the state that was.
I found myself so threatened by that, after the crappiest few days ever that I was offering them all my paté and bread and everything else I could think of. So last night we went Salsa dancing, or at least tried and met some nice folks, but I found myself just getting more irritable. I wanted to see A. after a day like that. They even played my fav song Fruta Fresca, and any other day I would have gotten really excited. But at least apparently Spanish dudes dig Australian girls, I was happy Emma got to learn to Salsa dance, the guys were all excited over her.
I think only middle aged, married, ugly scary drunk men hit on me, which is cool because I have somebody at home who I want to go back and see. I´m not all about España right now. 
