Spanish Secrets: Hindsight
When Craig and Mel Briggs forgot to check before leaving a hotel room, leaving behind articles of clothing, they found themselves caught up in a frustrating and seemingly endless drama.
An outstanding matter from our recent trip to Madrid finally and thankfully came to an end last week.
You might recall from my story posted November 23, that we travelled to Madrid to see England play Spain at football. With Madrid being more than 500km from our home in Galicia, we'd booked an overnight stay in a hotel south of the city.
The morning of our departure we packed our small suitcase and left the room.
Stop!
If only hindsight was a mechanical device that could be simply rewound, surely life would be so much simpler?
As everyone knows, the last duty before leaving one's hotel room is to check that nothing has been left behind! The number of times I have undertaken this vitally important task, only to find that everything has been packed.
But the one time, the only time, the first time in living memory, I failed to check. We'd left some of Melanie's clothes behind, a fact which came to light on our arrival home.
The following day, Melanie e-mailed the hotel to ask if the clothes had been found. What followed may seem quite strange to most people reading this, but we then waited for two weeks without reply before telephoning them.
Spain is a nation of waiters, not restaurant waiters, but people prepared to wait. They don't queue orderly like English people, but they wait, for anything and everything.
Except when they're behind the wheel of a car, when without exception they turn into uncontrollable monsters and incredibly bad drivers.
The response to our phone call was that they would check and ring us back. Strangely enough that was also the response to our second phone call a few days later. A few days after that, on the third phone call, we were delighted to hear that the clothes had been found.
With no offer from them to forward the clothes back to us, Melanie offered to pay for the postage.
"That will be fine Mrs Briggs, simply e-mail your credit card details to us and we will debit your card when we know the cost".
Unfortunately I wasn't present when this phone call was made, as their request would have been denied. Melanie did however think that sending the credit card details by e-mail might be a bit dangerous, so sent the debit card details instead.
The following day we went straight to the bank and cancelled the debit card. Ordering a replacement cost us 15 euros.
The following day the hotel rang us, surprise surprise! They had sent the clothes on a carrier and we would have to pay the carriage upon arrival, cost, 13 euros.
If only the story ended there.
Three days after the scheduled delivery date, we returned home from a trip to the supermarket to find a message on the answer-machine. The carrier had called and no-one had been home. He had though left a telephone number.
We rang the number and the driver was still in the area, but refused to call back at the house. Instead we had to meet him in the next town on an industrial estate.
We set off immediately and arrived at the road which led into the estate. Standing at the side of the road was a large dog, the size of a small pony. As we drove past the dog charged at the car, barking loudly, quite a common event in this area of Spain.
On this occasion though, instead of simply stopping and barking, it had charged headlong into the back wing of the car, colliding with a loud thud. Melanie immediately thought I had run over the animal and started crying.
Stunned, I looked in the rear view mirror. This huge beast was simply standing tall and proud in the middle of the road. Staring at me as if saying,
"Come back here, I haven't finished with you".
Finally we found the delivery driver, paid for the clothes and returned home to survey the damage.
What article of clothing could have been worth all this? A diamond encrusted evening dress with a matching silk shawl?
Not quite!
A cotton sweatshirt and a four year old white t-shirt.
