Day 4 - Scary Shit

Waking up to rain meant our plans of evening up our tans on our back were dashed so instead we enjoyed a lazy morning watching Family Guy at the hostel and prepared ourselves lunch to have on our hike along the river to the bus station. The 6 hour bus trip was a breeze but our relaxing few days came to an abrupt end when we boarded the metro after reuniting with Nico.

The train stopped at a station and we could see and hear that there was something going on on the platform and then before we knew it there were people screaming and running in every direction from some crazed young Spaniards brandishing machetes, knives and belts. Suddenly a bunch of them stormed onto our carriage in pursuit of their targets, obviously some sort of gang rivals or something similar and because we´d been standing next to the doorway of the carriage the fighting started breaking out right in front of us and we were thrown against the walls from people struggling to avoid being caught up in the brawling. One of the guys whole mouth was split open from one of the machetes and was awash with blood, some of it getting wiped across Nico´s arm at one point. During the kerfuffle on the carriage Kelly had disappeared from our sight and we both began frantically trying to locate her, not sure if she was on the platform or carriage. Eventually she called out to us from the other end of the carriage and waved us to get the hell off the train. In the mean the guys with the machetes were smashing the windows on the carriage and stabbing their weapons between carriages at people trying to get away from there. We managed to run down to another carriage away from the horrifying scene but did have a close encounter with the main machete guy as he came our way waving it about but thankfully a Spanish bystander was between us trying to calm him down. Eventually things calmed down enough for the train to be able to judge it safe to go onto the next station much to our relief. Welcome to Madrid!

No, I will say that since this incident it has become quite clear that this was an uncommon event as I have not felt uncertain about my safety around the centre of town but it was just extremely unfortunate that we had to witness such a horrible scene, something I hope I never have to see ever again.Not surprisingly after having encountered the scariest incident of our lives we weren´t up for much of a night out so we just had a few tapas at a bar and wandered the old town for a while before hitting the hay. What a day!!