There may not be any honor among thieves….

There may not be any honor among thieves, but, for at least one of them, there was a certain amount of contortionist agility.

Two crooks were arrested in Spain recently for stealing goods from baggage stowed in the luggage hold of an airport transit bus in Barcelona.

The duo had an interesting M.O.

One of them placed a large bag in the cargo hold, then took his place on the bus. The large bag contained his packed in accomplice, all nicely folded up to avoid both detection and wrinkling.

Once the bus was underway, the bag-man Houdini’d himself out of the suitcase and, with the aid of a headlamp, rummaged through the stored bags to see what might be worth pinching.

When apprehended, the loot he’d managed to find on that trip was a GPS device and a laptop. This may not have been worth all that much on the secondary market, but things are tough all over. No doubt they were hoping for something a bit more lucrative – jewelry and/or currency – but you can’t be all that fussy. And maybe this was just an off day.

Whether this type of thievery was the path to riches, or just another lousy day’s pay for another lousy day’s work, it strikes me as a pretty hard way to make a buck. Or a Euro. Or a zloty.

The burglars were Polish.

I find it kind of strange that they were plying their trade in Spain, where the economy is well beyond terrible, rather than in Poland, which is faring pretty well.

Maybe they’d been working in Spain during its go-go years, and just preferred the weather there to what’s typically on offer in Poland. With all the jobs gone adios, maybe this was the only “work” they could find.

But, as I noted, this doesn’t seem like a particularly easy way to make your way in the world.

Suitcase-man has to work in the dark, in the heat, and in the diesel-smelling cargo hold, where it probably feels like you’re going about 50 mph faster than you would be if you were comfily seated about 6 feet higher up.

The other guy had most of the trip easier. He got to sit on a plush seat in an air-conditioned coach. But he also had to heave the bag containing suitcase man around. I don’t care how skinny suitcase-man is, I suspect that the bag was well above the standard 20 kilogram carried-on bag limit. Plus he had to deal with the suspense of not knowing whether suitcase-man was going to find anything good, and make the theft worthwhile.

They sure wouldn’t be thrilled to find what’s in my Tumi bag on a typical trip: two pairs of black pants, two sweaters, a half-dozen tee-shirts, a couple of scarves, undies for the week, and a pair of slightly less sensible shoes than what I wore on the plane. Throw in an eight-dollar umbrella, a couple of paperbacks, and some toiletries and, hey boys, knock yourselves out.

I suspect that the contents of my bag aren’t that much different than that of most travelers. Not to mention that if suitcase-man was going through luggage that was on its return trip, he was probably dealing with some dirty laundry. So, combine dark, heat, diesel fumes, and yucky underwear – all in hopes that someone has checked a string of real pearls, a Rolex watch, or ten-thousand Euros in small unmarked bills, not to mention having to contort yourself back into your suitcase once you were done with your snooping and looting – and methinks there are better ways to make a living.

Then again, that could just be me.

After all, the unemployment rate in Spain is well over 20%, and with that kind of joblessness, a young and rubber-jointed young man’s fancy could absolutely turn to thievery.

The unemployment rate in Poland, on the other hand, is less than 10%.

So you have to wonder why Krzysztof and Jouoastaw weren’t better off back in the mother country.

I guess they just liked the flexible working conditions on Spanish airline buses.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Source: AOL Travel News, which contains a link to a “tremendous diagram” from a Spanish newspaper that illustrates how the crime worked (or, in this case, didn’t work).