I do a lot of different things to try to pass the time. Sometimes I read, sometimes I listen to music, sometimes I just stare and drool. Studying Spanish is easy because I can just listen in on someones conversation. The bulk of my time is spent reading, and I typically finish two or three books a week because of my second job as a professional subway rider. Though, this is not always possible when the train gets crowded at rush hour. It can be a little awkward turning the pages when some strangers ass is acting as a paperweight.
Excuse my dorkiness for a moment: there are 294 Metro stations in the city of Madrid, 284 kilometers of tracks, last year people made 649,977,853 trips (nearly 2 million each day). If your average rider is underground for only 20 minutes, a conservative estimate, about 36 million minutes of human life are spent underground... every... single... day. By comparison, a person who lives to age seventy five has lived for a little over 39 million minutes. Hundreds of lifetimes are spent underground each year. We are the mole people, the Morlocks, "terrifying monsters from a lost age!" It's a little scary to think about.
Needless to say I also waste some metro time thinking about random statistics.
The point I'm trying to make is that a lot of life goes on in the metro, which means that the people watching is prodigious. It's one of my favorite pastimes. Beggars, thieves, drunkards, women breast feeding, Peruvian flute bands, Mickey Mouse in an Uncle Sam style American Flag suit (I shit you not). They're all there. Now I know where Goya got his inspiration for his curious and often grotesque portrayal of humanity. You name it and I've seen it on the metro.
Pickpockets are definitely something to be on the lookout for, but they usually only work later at night. They're generally easy to spot. To begin with, it's a dead giveaway when someone stands right next to you on a virtually empty train. A lot of them are addicts of one form or another and you can pick them out by their thin build and hollow eyes. The other type are those that look odd in nice clothing, or a little overdressed. (although, I suppose I look a little odd and uncomfortable in nice clothing when I'm going to teach a business English lesson). The overdressed thief will often drape a jacket over his arm to conceal the movement of his wandering hand. This isn't meant as a warning against riding the metro. Unless you are in the category of drunkards, or just congenitally unaware of your surroundings, you should be safe.
Another group to watch are the elderly women. In the late spring when most people have already stashed away their winter coats, you can still observe loads of old women in fur coats and scarves riding the metro no matter how hot it is. It could be seventy or eighty degrees and I could be dripping sweat like a broken faucet but the wizened old lady next to me will be drawing her seal skin a little tighter. I also enjoy watching them shoulder check a half dozen people out of the way with enough force to lay out a pro hockey player in order to get an open seat. I understand that because of their age they get tired easily, but in Spain most people will readily give up their spot to an elderly person rendering the whole aggression thing entirely superfluous. I've never seen someone hustle like an old woman for a metro seat. Here's the best part: those same women that go through all that effort to sit down will almost always stand up and push their way to a spot in front of the door two or three stops before they have to get off. Totally pointless.
With all the time I spend on it, I've gotten pretty close to the metro and even... grown to love it. No matter where I have to go the metro is there for me, magically whisking me away in its characteristic armpit stench to another far-flung part of the city. If nothing else, at least the trip will always be stimulating.
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