Further (mis) adventures.

It's day five (four and a half, really) of our stay in Madrid. We've settled down a bit. After writing the last post, we went out and met our Madrileño friend, who took us out, introduced us to some people, and partied with us until 5 am or so. That was a tad exhausting, but I got to practice a lot of Spanish. People said I spoke well for only having studied for a year when I was twelve, but a lot of conversacion is still incomprehensible to me. The Castilian lisp still sounds very strange, too.
We also went out Saturday and Sunday nights. Saturday we went to various tapas places and had excellent "naturbiër" at a bar of the same name. Then we went to a hostal called Cat's Hostel. The bar/lounge area is nicely decorated, clean, and hip. If we were interested in shared dorm-style hostels, I would stay there. The real reason we went there was for the beer that's 2.5 euros for a liter. That's right. A liter. It's apparently 3.5 when there's a show going on. The beer was "Estrella Damm," which is ok, but there are much better beers around. The crowd was really young there and most people were absorbed in a soccer game, but we did meet a few somewhat lame weirdos from the Midwest.
After that, we checked out a place called "Sesamos," which translates to "sesame" as in "Open sesame!" This is because it's underground in this semi-cavelike bomb shelter/wine cellar sort of thing. The waiters have red suits and bowties and serve excellent sangria to you at your table. We had to wait a while to get in, but it was fun. Not a place to meet people, but good to go and have a drink and chat with friends. We also got to embarrass ourselves with our attempts at Spanish while in line.
We went to a few hopping clubs on Sunday, though not intentionally. There are guys wandering the streets that offer you free drinks. They take you to a club, you get in for free, get a free drink, and usually a card for discounted drinks. You could definitely get trashed by wandering around getting free drinks. All this on a Sunday night. New York really has nothing on Madrid in terms of partying.
After we were good and drunk from free drinks, we went to get some food at this little place near us that had various pizza-ish things. On the way in, some guys were coming out who started talking to us, one of whom looked obviously drunk. Unbeknownst to us at the time, this was our first encounter with Spanish pickpockets. We really should have seen it coming, as they kept touching us and getting too close and holding our hands. But we were drunk, it was a Sunday night, and they just seemed like overly friendly drunk guys. And we were basically in the doorway of this food place. They must have been fantastic pickpockets, because they managed to get Max's wallet out of his front pocket, get the cash, and put it back without him noticing. They also got my digital camera from the outer pocket of my coat, which they must have seen when I took a picture of a hostel's sign down the street that said "Speak Englisch" as we were walking up the street. We didn't even realize that they'd done anything until we were inside the food place and this homeless guy who'd been bugging us for change came in and told us they had my camera. After we deciphered his Spanish, of course. He tried to rip us off for 10 euros by saying he knew where they lived, but he was just jerking us around as we found out when we made him call the police for us and he gave different names for the pickpockets several times. Even then, we didn't realize they had Max's money until we went back to the place to buy food and saw Max's empty wallet. They even managed to get his cigarettes out of his other front pocket.
We kicked ourselves for a while after that and wandered the streets looking for an ATM and some food. I was really frustrated, annoyed, and disappointed for a while. Max did his best to cheer me up and it helped me keep from getting disheartened. In the end, nothing important got stolen. Our passports were in our room and they didn't take any credit cards. Max only had about 70-100 Euros in his wallet, so it's not the end of the world, though I unfortunately won't be able to share any of the pictures I took.
I woke up today and pretty much felt fine, though I've kicked myself a few more times for letting it get stolen. We even managed to survive El Rastro, which is a huge flea market and legendary pickpocket hangout, without getting anything stolen, but some drunk guys managed to fleece us. I hope I've learned my lesson.
Not to end on a down note, though. Today was a decent day. We walked around and saw a lot of sights. We also went to all the major phone companies and got information about their plans. We went back to an English used bookstore that we had been to on Saturday or Sunday night and met the manager, who is American. That makes two Americans we've met so far. Most people seem to think we're British or something. Americans apparently aren't that common in Madrid. Anyway, the bookstore, which is J&J's Books and Coffee, is a cool place, with reasonably priced drinks, and apparently a good selection of English books, though we haven't wandered into that section yet, being too distracted by the conversation at the bar. The best thing about it, though, is the events that they have. They have intercambio (language exchange) nights, all you can drink nights, etc. It's a cool place that we will definitely hang out in more.
We also tried another bookstore, FNAC, which was part of a big store that also sold music and electronics. There was a classical quintet outside playing various pieces from Mozart and Verdi. They sounded very good to my untrained ear. FNAC had a pretty good selection of English books and a huge collection of art books, including a six-volume series on the history of men's magazines (i.e. porn). Popular paperbacks in English are around 10 euros, which is criminal, but trade paperbacks are between 12 and 15, which really isn't so bad. They also inexplicably had "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" for 2.61. It was some Penguin thrift edition, though. By contrast, the prices at J&J's seem reasonably cheap. I saw a guy buy two or three paperbacks, a Dover edition of King Lear, a copy of The Teachings of Don Juan, and maybe one other trade paperback for 13.5 euros.
On the way back from all these shenanigans, we were walking along Gran Via, which is the most touristy, over-priced street in Madrid, when I saw this older white guy talking to a young black woman at the corner of a shop. He was obviously trying to convince her of something. The whole thing looked sketchy. I said that she was probably a prostitute, when we passed two more black girls that were standing at the corner of another store. They were made up and semi-obviously looking for attention. I said something else about prostitutes when we passed a fourth girl who must have heard us talking about prostitutes in English, because she said, "Excuse me, señors," and then said something about whether or not we wanted a "blowsjob." I couldn't exactly hear her. We just laughed and said no thanks and told her to have a good night.
I don't want to sound prejudiced or anything. They were very attractive young women. And they seemed like very nice prostitutes. But they were, y'know, obviously prostitutes.
My theories on minorities and monoculturalism in Madrid will have to wait until later because I need to sleep. I've got a big day of police reports and apartment hunting tomorrow.
Adios.