Mugged In Barcelona!

I was mugged in the early hours of Wednesday morning in the streets of Barcelona.

Someone jumped me from behind and snatched my phone. It’s a long story so buckle up.

It’s been a very interesting week and unexpected in more than one way. Let me tell you two different versions of the week’s events.

One version focuses on the negative aspects. The second focuses on the positive aspects.

They’re very different. They’re both true. And they both start with a last minute invite to visit my cousin in Barcelona.

Versión Uno

What a disastrous trip to Barcelona. My wife came to the airport to see me off and no sooner had we sat down for a cup of tea than three burly armed police officers with enormous guns arrived at the coffee shop.

There was a lively sniffer dog and handler too, checking, as I soon learned, for explosives.

Unfortunately my hand luggage seemed to be of interest to the spaniel so Charlotte and I were immediately hauled away, our hot drinks untouched.

We were paraded before all the other customers and taken upstairs to an empty room.

We were interrogated for over an hour. My bag was searched and its contents dissected. Our hands were swabbed and checked for explosives residue.

We were asked the same multiple questions by three lots of investigators including two special branch officers.

Once our names had been run through the national database and it had been established that we weren’t criminal masterminds we were taken downstairs. Again being paraded in front of hundreds of judging faces.

Charlotte and I said our goodbyes and I was escorted further through the security because the flight time was now close.

The security check at the X-Ray section was the firmest manhandling I've ever experienced. Perhaps the guy patting my parts wanted my heavily armed escorts to see that he was doing a thorough job.

A Rush And A Push

What a terrible start. But nowhere near as bad as the end of the trip. Walking home after tapas and drinks with my cousin’s friends we were just twenty metres from his accommodation.

Out of nowhere a tall powerful figure leapt out of the dark, knocking me to the side, grabbing the mobile from my hand and sprinting away.

I immediately tried to chase the guy but, already off balance, stumbled onto the ground, grazing my knees through my jeans and bruising my forearm and elbow.

By the time I surfaced and we turned the corner he’d gone round there was no sign of him.

This was 1am in the morning and my taxi was booked for 4.45am to get me to the airport for the red eye flight home. My boarding pass, my passenger locator form were all on my phone.

My taxi booking details were on my phone. Everything but my passport was on my phone.

From the apartment we called home and my wife emailed copies of the documents we needed to my cousin.

I couldn’t log into any of my own emails or the like - stupid two factor authentication wanted to certify a new login by sending confirmation to my phone. Brilliant.

We then trudged around the city asking the reception staff at various hotels if they would print out my boarding pass and passenger locator form.

The first two refused outright - they wouldn’t rather than couldn’t. Finally, the third hotel we asked agreed to help.

To have any chance of claiming my phone on the insurance I knew I would need to report the incident.

At around 3am we dodged the dodgy characters on La Rambla offering us cans of beer, various drugs, women and boys, and located the nearest police station.

Call The Cops

The police weren’t interested. For twenty minutes they insisted I couldn’t report this theft without my passport or my phone’s IMEI number.

My passport was back at the apartment and we were short on time. As for my IMEI number there was no hope!

One officer somehow pulled an empty phone box out of the ether to show me where the phone’s IMEI could be found.

This wasn’t as useful as he maybe thought because I don’t always travel abroad or go out for dinner with my empty phone packaging.

We begged and pleaded and eventually a second officer relented. It was clear they just didn’t want to bother with the paperwork and they made it feel like they were doing me a big favour.

At 4am we headed back to the apartment and managed to stay awake until the taxi arrived. I made sure I stayed awake in the airport by constantly walking around and at 6.40am I was at flight gate W48 in line to board the plane.

They did a final check of my passport, boarding pass and then asked for my Covid Vaccination certificate. My heart sank. Of course that was on the NHS app on my phone.

They didn’t know what to do. I had no suggestions. They said I couldn’t travel without it.

A nervous twenty minutes later they accepted my Passenger Locator form that the hotel receptionist had printed out. It had already been filed online but I had it printed just in case.

It had the words Vaccine Status: Verified Full/Exempt in bold and this was enough to get me on the flight.

I didn’t sleep on the flight and was so tired on my return that I missed a long planned event on Wednesday evening.

I went to bed at 5pm and only woke at 6am on Thursday aching badly from my fall. What a disaster!

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And that's all true. But as I said there is a second version of what happened. If you're still with me I'll tell you about it . . .

Versión Dos

I got a WhatsApp message last week from my cousin who is working in Barcelona for a month.

‘Join me’ he said.

‘Why not?’ I thought.

Having talked about long term and short term planning in last week’s Top Tips this invitation made me smile.

There was a possible gap in my calendar where I could make it, giving me three nights and two full days in the Catalonian capital.

EasyJet flights for the times I wanted were £28 and £38 while everything earlier and later were into the hundreds of pounds either way.

That never happens. The stars were aligning!

Who Let The Dogs Out?

At Gatwick I had the most hilarious start to my Barcelona jaunt. My wife and I had just settled down for a cup of tea at the entrance coffee shop when a lively sniffer dog, handler and police colleagues entered the restaurant.

The dog sniffed around a few nearby tables, made a beeline for the bag beneath my chair and promptly flopped on his belly, purposefully pointing both paws and his nose directly towards my luggage.

I looked up at the crowd of interested officers and said “From where I’m sitting, that’s not a good sign is it?”

One of them looked at me, shook his head and smiled grimly. 

“Not really,” he said.

I was hoping the dog had been fooled by the trainers I'd packed but with it being a highly trained and super sensitive explosives sniffing expert, the officers felt that they wanted to check the dogs findings for themselves.

We went upstairs out of the public's eye and after a rummage through my holdall and a few checks on the system we were all done.

It was a bit annoying that we had to leave our tea but they were apologetic about their job and up for a bit of banter. A couple of them happily posed for a photo.

Because of the delay they escorted me through the VIP entrance (normally £6!) and made sure I got through the normal checks a bit quicker.

I’ve never had an official police escort before, nor been given an official police fist bump to send me off on holiday. This was a first.

And Let's Pretend We're Dancing In The Street

Barcelona itself was fantastic. Honestly, what a city!

My cousin was working the first morning so I took myself off to the Nou Camp, Barcelona FC’s iconic football stadium.

It has Europe’s largest capacity and is where Ole Gunnar Solskjaer famously snatched victory for Man Utd in the dying seconds of the 1999 Champions League final.

Reunited with my cousin in the afternoon, together we sampled the foodie delights of La Boqueria Market before heading to Barcelonetta beach in the sunshine. We enjoyed a beer and a burger before a barefoot stroll on the sands.

In the evening we continued the culinary theme, sampling the delights of El Born’s excellent tapas restaurants and sampling their fruity red wines.

The second day was all about Gaudi. We plotted a route around the gridded streets, taking in as many of the architectural maestro’s creations as we feasibly could.

We stared up at Casa Vicens, Casa Calvet, Casa Batlo and Casa Mila before reaching his masterpiece La Sagrada Familia.

We spent a couple of hours here marvelling at the dreamlike ambition and the many intricacies inside and out before ending our tour with a relaxed wander through the Unesco listed Park Guell, the location Gaudi chose for his own home.

Barcelona is such a great place for just wandering and soaking up the atmosphere. I clocked up over twelve miles of walking on each of the two days but it didn't feel like it at all.

My Only Weakness Is A Listed Crime

Annoyingly, at the very end of the trip some jerk snatched my phone, which caused a few last minute problems. Fortunately I had my amazing cousin with me and superstar wife at the other end of the phone to help.

Pretty lucky that I wasn’t on my own and instead had support and access to a laptop.

My wife was able to send over all the documents I needed and then a helpful hotel receptionist printed my documents out for me and directed us to the local police station.

There I was able to register the theft which would help a lot with the insurance claim.

I arrived home a little bleary eyed and in need of a revitalising morning nap before Zooming with clients that afternoon.

Then an early night and the longest sleep ever seemed to do the trick as I rose early and refreshed on Thursday morning.

It's so surreal that just a few days earlier this wasn’t in the diary at all. What a fantastic, eventful and totally unexpected trip!

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If You Have Five Seconds To Spare

Which version do you prefer?

Like I said, both are true but it’s clear that each have been heavily edited and carefully selected to present a particular narrative of my trip.

I started this Top Tips with the negative version and also mentioned the mugging in the subject line on purpose.

I chose this one first because on the whole we’re more drawn to negative events. We notice them more and pay attention to them.

We have this evolutionary hangover called the Negativity Bias that makes us hyper aware of impending danger. (Although mine was clearly malfunctioning while walking Carrera de Torres i Amat!)

I told you the negative version first because it’s more likely to attract your attention and take advantage of your negativity bias.

If I’d started off with “Hey, I had a nice time in Barcelona . . .” you might have thought I was just going to show you my holiday snaps and turned off. It’s a long read after all.

So, I started with the negative version but I’m of the opinion that it’s a lot more useful to focus on the more positive aspects of the trip. As the second version makes clear, there were plenty of awesome things about the the trip.

And today’s top tip is really to make the point that we get to choose what we focus on. So we should choose carefully.

This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours

If someone says to me “How was your trip to Barcelona?” what should I tell them? Where should my focus go? That is entirely up to me. I get to choose.

Both versions of the trip are true and accurate. Yet there are many other versions that could also be told.

I didn’t describe the apartment.

I didn’t describe the area we stayed.

I didn’t describe how incredibly refreshing that crisp, chilled glass of Estrella was, after two hours of walking to and from the Camp Nou.

So there really are many versions of our lives that we get to consider as the truth and I really feel that which one we decide on matters. A lot.

Which version of my Barcelona trip would be the most beneficial for me to focus on? The easiest thing to do is to give in to my innate negativity bias and focus on the event with the highest emotional impact - getting robbed.

But other than being a valuable lesson about checking twice before pulling out my phone while in a busy city, I don’t think it will be helpful to dwell on it.

We get to curate our own memories for the most part and so I’d like to think it would be more beneficial to focus on the positive memories, of which there were many.

To actively and purposefully do this and push the negative memories away I’ll probably do something like create a mental and visual timeline of the trip. One that takes me from start to finish but only selecting the fun stuff.

Is that being dishonest or somehow tricking myself? Well, yes I guess, but we do it all the time anyway, just without having any conscious say so over what we remember from our lives.

We all leave swathes of actual scenes from our lives on the cutting room floor as we unthinkingly create our personal highlights reel. So I might as well choose a version of the truth that I'll enjoy more, right?

I’m going to take particular effort to recall the names of each of Gaudi’s houses I walked past and photographed. I’ll commit to memory just one or two of the details I learned from each to help me flesh out the memories.

This should help make them even easier to recall and ensure they are the first thing that springs to mind when I think of Barcelona.

Those negative memories will still be there if I want to recall them though. It’s just that they’re being crowded out and made harder to find. Let’s put them on page seven of a Google search!

Which version of yourself and of the events of your life do you present to the world? Or to yourself?

What would happen if you were more consciously biased and carefully selected a different version?