Just as Friday the 13th is unlucky in North America, it turns out Tuesday the 13th is unlucky in Spain.

I have this on good authority from a Spanish friend of mine here in Germany.

Until we moved to Italy a few years ago, I had no idea that there was such variation in the dates considered to be lucky or unlucky.  Back in Italy, I blogged about how Friday the 17th is unlucky there – the 13th wasn’t a problem.

And in France last summer, my lucky day turned out to be Friday the 13th, following an unfortunate event on the evening on Thursday the 12th.

Today, which is of course Tuesday the 13th, I fortunately had a rather unremarkable day. I even had a bit of luck when my customer loyalty card at a local shop turned out to be set to expire this week, which meant that had I gone later in the week, I wouldn’t have gotten the discount that the card entitled me to. But, since I went today, I still got the discount and bonus gifts today. Lucky.

However, for my Spanish friend, being in Germany didn’t prevent her from having a string of bad luck today:  the bus she took to the train station took a different, longer route than the one she normally takes, so she missed the train she was trying to catch. And then, when she finally caught a later train, she almost didn’t make it off the train in time when it arrived at her destination.

Yup, definitely not her lucky day.