Traveling Books Project

{1 of 2 posts} “I have never had so many feelings in one single day, but it happened in summer 2018. I was doing a summer school in Seville, Spain. When I just arrived in Madrid airport, I needed to take the subway to the Madrid central train station (because Seville is 2h by train from Madrid). But, when I bought the ticket at the airport subway station, after 5 min, I realized my wallet was stolen. I put all of my cash (around 200 euros), credit cards, debit card, and student ID in it.
Honestly, at that moment, I was too scared to cry. I called my parents in China (luckily I bought an extremely expensive but useful SIM card in the Madrid airport, before loosing all my money), and asked them to cancel the credit cards. Then I went to the subway station and asked the staff members to help me. However, their English is not good and the (only) thing they can say was “sorry I don’t speak English”. I almost lost all my hope, then I remembered one of the few words I new in Spanish, “policía”! I “yelled” at the staff there, they got my point and brought me to the airport police station.

When I was in the police station, the officers there told me that the only police officer who could speak English well was not there! Fortunately, she was available on the phone. I talked with her on the phone in English, the police officer at the station filed the report in Spanish, at the same time I was also talking to my mom in Mandarin!


When they finally finished the report, they just told me to bring it to the travelling insurance company, and they would close the case since there have always been lots of stealing in this airport. [At the time I was there, I saw an officer carrying a handful of lost IDs and passports in his hand…]
The police officer got me a free subway ticket, so I could leave the airport and go to the train station. My summer school teacher bought me a train ticket, so I could leave Madrid and go to Seville.”