The Great Move To Córdoba, and Random Things About Gypsies!

Have I mentioned all ready that if you ever need to lose weight you should just move your entire life to a foreign country and live in hotels for about a week and a half? Because you will.

(a) You'll get frustrated with having to eat out every single meal.

(b) You don't have a fridge, or a microwave, or an oven, so you can't cook or keep anything.

(c) Eventually the stress of moving your entire life in two pieces of luggage will cause you to just give up and stop eating all together.

Okay maybe give up isn't the proper term. How about "suspend optimism"? I like that better.

In any case, after a few days of me being a cranky, crotchety Bryan we move to Córdoba to another hotel where I'm pretty much hoping that I can just no longer be jet lagged. We wander around the town once we arrive to sort of get situated and ... well ...

Okay, so there's this lady standing by The Mezquita handing out little bits of olive leaves. How dangers could she possibly be? And, since she told me "It's just a gift!" she, clearly, must just be some person working with the tourist department welcoming foreigners, right? She seems friendly enough.

No. Not friendly. Not friendly at all. As soon as I take the olive branch, the lady snags my wrist with one hand, her acrylic nails digging into my skin, and starts tracing a line down my palm as if she's reading it.

Uhm. Excuse me. What.

Thankfully Kyrie, being ever vigilant, jumps in instantly, throws the lady off of me while saying "No! No, Bryan, no!" and pushing me away by the shoulders. Essentially whapping me on the nose with a newspaper.

Oh, you mean that was a bad idea. Got it. Okay.

Bryan/Kyrie: 1. Gypsies: 0.

In terms of Gypsy experiences I found it rather tame. For those of you who haven't heard, a common trick they like to pull is they take their babies and throw them at you (I'm serious) and then when you catch them, they all swoop in steal all your cash out of your pockets, so pretty much from the very beginning I was saying that I really was hoping that someone was going to throw their kid at me, so I could let it fall to the ground and see the angered look in their eyes. Maybe they'd even shake their fists at me while I got a picture of them. It'd be, in my opinion, kind of fantastic.

But no, no baby throwing, not yet.

We have, however, made it to Córdoba, and I still have my wallet, so it's a good day.

Others, however, were not so lucky.

Take, for example, the sad case of Denise and Tyler, two other people placed in Córdoba. Imagine with me, if you will.

Both of them are over 6 feet tall, and are pretty much what you would expect photoshopped starving fashion models to look like, except their not photoshopped or starving. Bright blonde hair, and on their backs as they're traveling there are, of course, backpacking backpacks with all the pockets and straps and gadgets.

Well here they are in Madrid, ready to get on a train to travel south. The train pulls up and then something very strange happens -- all of a sudden a huge group of people starts shoving them against the train as people are coming out, shoving shoving shoving until some woman behind them starts freaking out and yelling about how she's tired of being pushed and everyone better knock it off.

So Denise and Tyler and shoved on to the train, the group of people magically disperses like they weren't even there, the doors close and away they go.

This all happens in the course of about ten seconds.

Now get this -- Denise's purse had a zipper and a flap over it as well as a latch to keep the flap closed. On top of that, she was holding it under her arm and holding it close against her ribs. In all the pushing, they STILL managed to get into her bag and steal her wallet without her noticing a thing. And of course Tyler's wallet was stolen out of his pocket in no time flat.

In their very own words, "They're good."

Needless to say I'm a little careful when I'm wandering around, and I'm not keeping anything important on me when I don't need it. But don't worry, no one else had any problems, and they say that pick-pocketing is the only thing they really have problems with here, and violent crime is never an issue. Still, better safe than sorry.

Moving on.

Now here's the funny thing. We arrive on a Friday, still jet lagged and still cranky (at least me, anyway), and we need to begin hunting for an apartment. No, they don't arrange housing for us, we have to find it ourselves, and not having cell phones makes that rather hard.

But wait, just wait, because the next bit is going to be about Paco, aka Creepy Creepy Track Suit Guy.