a stolen purse

I knew better.

I was stupid.

I was careless.

We were sitting on a bench on the promenade at the beach, admiring the Med and staring at the beach bodies. A scruffy looking guy stopped and asked Todd a question about the Melia Hotel, then persisted in his questions, which didn’t make any sense. When he finally headed off, he went through the parking lot, not toward the hotel. We got up to leave, and my purse was gone. It was the distract-and-snatch scheme.

I swear I was sitting on my purse strap, with the purse right beside me, but it was gone. None of us even sensed anything.

It being Good Friday, our local police station was closed. I called the English line for the national police. A very nice young man kept asking me if I spoke any Spanish. I finally understood that if I spoke ANY Spanish, I was to use the regular line. Once we got that squared away, he was very thorough in making out the report. He insisted our local policia should be open all the time. I gave up arguing with him. He said we could pick up the report the next day, but the office was of course not open on Saturday. When I went to pick up the report on Monday, I was scolded for using the English line when I was a resident of Alicante. I feigned ignorance and expressed gratitude.

• Contents: credit card – both of ours cancelled, with new ones sent to us in Alicante – The theft happened on Good Friday; we had new cards on Tuesday.
• debit card – a pain, as the bank wouldn’t ship outside the U.S. The new one was sent to our U.S. address. Fortunately, we didn’t have to cancel Todd’s card. (A side note here: we chose BBVA because it’s an international bank. It doesn’t matter: The Spanish bank doesn’t “talk” to the English bank – although our money is easily accessible here, nothing is reciprocal.)
• Some cash – that’s the way it goes
• My driver’s license – this is going to be the biggest pain, as I don’t know that we can take care of it from Spain. I filled out the living-overseas-lost-or-stolen-license form, so we’ll see. I may have to deal with the DMV when we return home in November.
• My passport card (NOT the actual passport)
• My residence card – and we know how much fun it was to get the original. After much confusion over which Modelo 790 to pay, we gave up and went for the cita. They confirmed it was codego 12 (in the amount of 18.54, not the original codego 52 in the amount of 15.45), and sent us down the street to the bank. The bank ended up being quite a ways down the street. We returned to the extranjero office and got another number. No problem – a new card ready to pick up in one month.
• Apartment keys, including the key to the building. Apparently, the building key is no big deal. The landlord came and had a locksmith change the apartment lock. I wasn’t here, but apparently he scolded me in absentia for being so careless. I’d have to agree.
• Cell phone – I needed an upgrade, but we hadn’t planned on paying for that yet!

I was busy for a few weeks, but all is resolved now (except the driver’s license – we’re still waiting on a response to that) – Vale!

All