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Terrible. iPod stolen in Italy.
MontrealMonk
Explorer
Thought i'd come here to share a little story that happened to me. I just arrived back to Montreal on Saturday afternoon from a 2 week trip in Italy. Toured a lot of the country, it was beautiful.
After having been there for 7 days, i was walking in downtown Bari (south) taking a video of this building on my new iPod 5, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, i felt this hand brush against mine. Next thing i knew, my iPod was gone, and some young fool started running away. At first i thought it was a joke, but once i saw him start running, i knew this was no joke, lol
I was with my pregnant fiance, so i really had to think fast. I decided i wanted my iPod back, as i already had 7 days of pics and vids from the trip. (close to 1250 in all) - well, i started bolting after him. I am a very fast runner but this guy was LIGHTENING fast. I chased him for 4 entire streets, yelling as i was chasing him, in HOPES of there being cops at one of the intersections. But just my luck, no police to be found anywhere, and all the people who stood watch did absolutely nothing in trying to help, or stop this guy.
After 4 streets, i looked back and my pregnant fiance was nowhere to be seen, so i decided to stop chasing, and take the loss. I got screwed, plain and simple. It was what it was. Another victim. Well, who knows if this guy needed to feed his family, or needed to feed his drug addiction. Whatever it was, it sucked for me, lol - then i thought: what if i did catch him, what would have happened? I would have tackled him? We would have fought? Just a really nasty situation. It was probably all meant to be. He knew exactly when to snatch it, and he knew there would have been no cops down the street he took off on. I'm sure he does this multiple times a day, or week.
It took me 24 hrs to get over the whole situation, but since i couldn't really care for material things, i said forget it.
I went to Apple (in Italy), in hopes of buying a new one, but the iPod 5 was 329 euros - i said NO THANKS, lol. When i got back to Montreal i found a brand new in the box one for 270$ Canadian, cash through Kijiji.
Life is funny like that.
PS: a few people on the plane ride back to Canada also got robbed while in Italy.
Europe is in really bad shape. Sucks...i wonder how long it will take for all this garbage to arrive in Canada. I know the USA is pretty hard up as well, but wow. It's a sad state of affairs.
Thanks for listening
After having been there for 7 days, i was walking in downtown Bari (south) taking a video of this building on my new iPod 5, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere, i felt this hand brush against mine. Next thing i knew, my iPod was gone, and some young fool started running away. At first i thought it was a joke, but once i saw him start running, i knew this was no joke, lol
I was with my pregnant fiance, so i really had to think fast. I decided i wanted my iPod back, as i already had 7 days of pics and vids from the trip. (close to 1250 in all) - well, i started bolting after him. I am a very fast runner but this guy was LIGHTENING fast. I chased him for 4 entire streets, yelling as i was chasing him, in HOPES of there being cops at one of the intersections. But just my luck, no police to be found anywhere, and all the people who stood watch did absolutely nothing in trying to help, or stop this guy.
After 4 streets, i looked back and my pregnant fiance was nowhere to be seen, so i decided to stop chasing, and take the loss. I got screwed, plain and simple. It was what it was. Another victim. Well, who knows if this guy needed to feed his family, or needed to feed his drug addiction. Whatever it was, it sucked for me, lol - then i thought: what if i did catch him, what would have happened? I would have tackled him? We would have fought? Just a really nasty situation. It was probably all meant to be. He knew exactly when to snatch it, and he knew there would have been no cops down the street he took off on. I'm sure he does this multiple times a day, or week.
It took me 24 hrs to get over the whole situation, but since i couldn't really care for material things, i said forget it.
I went to Apple (in Italy), in hopes of buying a new one, but the iPod 5 was 329 euros - i said NO THANKS, lol. When i got back to Montreal i found a brand new in the box one for 270$ Canadian, cash through Kijiji.
Life is funny like that.
PS: a few people on the plane ride back to Canada also got robbed while in Italy.
Europe is in really bad shape. Sucks...i wonder how long it will take for all this garbage to arrive in Canada. I know the USA is pretty hard up as well, but wow. It's a sad state of affairs.
Thanks for listening
0
Comments
On the brighter side, you had the money to replace your ipod and take the trip to begin with. I hope you enjoyed the rest of your trip at least! If things economically are so bad that people have to steal to make a living, then at least we can consider ourselves thankful that we do not feel a need to live that way. I have a friend from MN who has lived in Italy for the past 15 years, and she has commented many times about how bad things have gotten. People get desperate when the means to support themselves disappear.
But I still loved it there. They were the best three years of my childhood.
Thanks for chiming in with the comments
But I agree, a beautiful country. Especially when you speak the language like i do.
In any case, the Amalfi Coast just blew me away. Out of this world. If i ever go back, it will be to stay in Amalfi. Just breathtaking, to say the least.
I love it.
There would not be the music without the strife.
Barcelona is considered to be the "pickpocket capital" of Europe. My friend had her wallet, passport, camera, and tickets to the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, Spain stolen from her during a bag-snatching. So when my gf and I arrived in the city, we took all the precautions we could while walking around. We were okay... so far...
But it was in our hostel room that someone pilfered my 6-month old iPod. I even suspect it was the hostel staff - when I reported it to the front desk (not that they could do anything about it anyway), the guy at the front desk got suspiciously defensive. I didn't want to start anything anyway, being a tourist in a foreign country and all. But it was terrible - the iPod was a gift from my gf too, so the next week or so on the trip was pretty icy.
It's a shame that such experiences can mar one's impression of what are beautiful cities.
But this story, along with many other reasons, is why I don't care to travel. There's enough crime in my own neighborhood. Better the devil you know then the devil you don't. I'll just take my own private tour of Italy on the interwebz as I browse lovely pictures other brave tourists took for me to enjoy on Flickr. :nyah:
We're a good bunch really!
As a side note, this is a really common problem at my girlfriend's university in Detroit. Recently, she told me a story about how this had happened to someone... same thing... the guy took out his iphone/ipod and bam! the guy takes off running and he's left scratching his head... Long story short, the thief was probably a drug addict or just wanted to get rid of the item quickly because he ended up in a gas station, trying to sell the iphone to the clerk for a measly $20. The clerk bought it and contacted it's owner to give it back to him.
Anyway, it was my last day at that hostel, though he was still staying. We wanted to play together one more time at Hagley Park across the street. He had his didgeridoo with him but he forgot something upstairs and he left me with this massive didgeridoo there at the front door while he ran upstairs to get whatever it was he had forgotten. It was a bit of a shock, because he trusted me enough to leave it with me when I could have easily ran off with it. Anyway, he came back, we played under a sequoia tree and some Japanese students ended up taking photos with us (they were there for botanical studies). It was a lovely and unforgettable morning.
But then, NZ has honesty boxes, too. they have their burglars and theives too, but the frequency must be much less, otherwise people wouldn't do the honesty boxes anymore (there was one at the end of my street when I lived there in 2007). I felt safer in NZ than I did anywhere I've ever lived in the US. I was just talking yesterday with a fellow employee from Oz who said the same thing about living here (what is worse, where I live now is a very impoverished area with an unsurprisingly high crime rate).
As far as getting robbed goes, all you can do is take basic precautions and watch out. But as @karasti says, the world is not full of predators and it would do everyone a great deal of good to travel abroad and live abroad for at least a few months just for a basic exposure to how others live. Its a great educational experience that you can't get out of books or the internet.
Out by my grandmother's farm there is a guy who sells really awesome smoked fish. For years he would just leave his little shed open, you'd go in and grab a box from the cooler and deposit $20. Unfortunately, he did have to eventually install cameras. It's still "honesty" based in that there is no one working to take your money, but he will often have pictures posted of thieves from his security footage. It's sad.
My kiwi GF had a TV she was wanting to sell and left it under the carport. I asked her, "Don't you want to put it in the garage?" and she said "Why would I want to do that?" And I said (thinking it obvious) "Because someone might steal it!" She said not to worry about it. It sat out there for a week, untouched, until she sold it.
They were gone the next morning.
When my wallet and my battery were stolen, that was in Fargo, not here, just to keep things clear.
Naples and Sicily are the CosaNostra cities of the world.
The Mafia is often multi-national and is a global network organisation.
The CosaNostra is specific to Naples/Sicily, and is often also mis-named in the media.
As an Italian, I would suggest people take more precautions with their personal property.
If you go to built-up tourist areas, you're leaving yourself vulnerable to being targeted.
And let me tell you, many of these petty thieves are in all likelihood not Italian.
It's true.
I have many friends and relatives in Italy, and consequently, also have many British friends and relatives who visit Italy.
In all my years, not a single one of them has ever been robbed or burgled.
When I was in college I had a best friend from Germany who stayed with us when he was in highschool. So I went to visit him and we were like 20 years old into pot and drinking and rollerblading. So we went to Mallorca for 'ferein' (vacation probably misspelled). Ferein is a great thing, germans take all sorts of vacations all the time and that is a good thing to have built into the culture.
Anyhow we were in Mallorca and I am a lightweight drinking and we had played a few drinking games with dice, one called 'Meyer'. So we went along a stretch of beach that was dark and these guys came up to us and the feeling from them was like so odd I haven't come accross it again. By the time we got back to the light area I had bought a 'ketta' (chain) for apparently a significant amount of money. It wasn't huge amount or the germans probably would have said something more than they did. But I felt like an idiot. I have read about how there are a group of people who speak tons of languages blended and it seemed to fit how these people made me feel when I bought the ketta. I should have not gone on that trip I didn't have the cautionary skills the other germans from a major city, Essen, had. I could have gotten myself into trouble if I had gotten lost from the german friends considering that I was also drinking.
I can't blame the business people doing that during tourist season as a way to get attention and make money. I'm not sure how effective it is, but if your country is in dire economic times, I guess you try anything to make money.
But for the random people on the street, or employees of a business that probably wouldn't get any commission, I often couldn't help but think that they were being a bit patronising, almost mocking, just from the very public way they yelled out the assortment of Asian greetings. I get that Italians can be animated (I volunteer at an Italian long term care facility), but if I and my friends were not visible minorities, it wouldn't happen.
When things were stolen from me, i was really angry, even thinking about some cruel punishments some cultures had for thieving (like chopping peoples hands off), and wondering whether it would be better if we had such laws in our country - maybe the thieves would then think twice before stealing? I was also really frustrated with the fact that the police are not all that strict around here, and it is generally easy to get away with minor offences (as the stealing of my bag would have probably classified for) with just a warning.
But i also thought about some people that i knew rather well, who would steal.
For example, i had a friend who once, when walking among some jewelry stalls, would just all of a sudden decide to steal some jewelry and knick-knacks. I was just dumbfounded. It really got me confused, i thought about how i have gotten in an argument about "wasting" money on jewelry with my parents just recently, and if i had just taken it without paying for it, i would have avoided all the mess. I never thought twice about not stealing and being honest until that point, so i was really confused when just being confronted with the other possibility - like stealing being a viable way to get things. Therefore what i did was just let my friend do her thing, but if i liked something i would still go and pay for it. I didn't report her (which maybe made me guilty in a way as well), but thinking back, i still don't think i would have the courage to do something about her stealing if it happened again. I don't know what i should have done, really. I wouldn't really go to the police in a foreign country and report my friend :zombie: I don't even trust the police in the country we were in -.-'
So when i thought about it, would i want to see my friend's hands chopped off? No, of course not. And i later got my bag back anyway, 40 euros gone, but i guess i could survive that, i thought (and i did).
I don't know anything about the thief, except for the fact that he thinks the only way to get to things i would have in my bag (i would guess 50-500eur worth for the average persons bag), is to steal them. For some of us, we know that this is an amount that we can gain by working at a job that is not even that hard, may be fulfilling in its own way, and carries no additional great risk like stealing does. Knowing that it makes me really just feel pity for the thief.
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@MontrealMonk, i think what you did was actually really good. When you thought about what would have happened when you caught him, then maybe, what if the thief thought about what would have happened if you caught him, too? Maybe it caused the thief to doubt his ways, even a little. Maybe he thought he could get away with it easily, but now knows that he was caught doing it, even though he wasn't punished for it.
I've lived in Europe for the majority of my life and have never had anything stolen from me. But I was mugged in Central America at knife point.
France, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, all in MUCH worse shape than I am in Canada. Hands down. Tourists in Montreal do NOT get robbed like tourists in Europe do, that's for sure. And it makes sense, people are resorting to what they need to do, in order to feed themselves.
That's what i meant. They are the founding cities of the world, where the Italian mafia was birthed. The ripple effect trickled to Canada (Montreal/Toronto) and USA, NYC tri state area -Anyway, this isn't a mafia thread.
Like you said, i agree, take precautions when traveling to Italy. MANY people i know have been pick pocketed or robbed while visiting there. And I'm full Italian and speak it very well. These things rarely happen in Montreal. This i know.
Re theft in Italy's aiports
Morality only really counts when it is tough.
I'd like to believe that in a situation like is happening in parts of Europe, that I still would not steal. But until I am pushed to that point, I can't know with 100% certainty that I would not, especially if it meant the different in paying for rent or food or some other necessity. I should hope that I am secure enough in my values to not steal just as revenge. But I also have never been in the economic crisis that they are in there. Desperation pushes people to places they never thought they would go otherwise.
You guys, this isn't just a problem of endemic Italian poverty. Police in Italy have investigated and discovered that there are gypsy child traffickers who bring kids in from Romania, and force them to steal in order to support adults. The money goes back to Romania, where the heads of Roma syndicates live in mansions. Saw a video about it on another forum. Some non-profit organizations have formed to reach out to the Roma communities and enroll them in programs to provide decent housing and job training, and to encourage the parents to keep the kids in school. But some kids are there without parents. The kids are forced to spend 12+ hours/day stealing.