Asian tourists have been scared away from Paris by the plague of pickpockets who target them. According to Jean-François Zhou, President of the Chinese Association of Travel Agencies in France, the perception of insecurity in France has turned them instead to Russia, which they perceive as safe.
Chinese tourists to Paris
Chinese tourists to Paris, Zhou said, “are robbed in the Palace of Versailles, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, in front of their hotel, descending buses … In high season, there is not a day without tourists being assaulted. I saw an 80-year-old man seriously injured because he was trying to resist thieves. Women pushed, fall and have their bag stolen with all their papers … This created a panic on Chinese social networks. The Chinese began to turn away from France since last year.”
Paris and Marseille are the French cities most avoided by Chinese, Japanese, and Korean travelers.
An article in Le Parisien states “The problem is that the police are not supported by justice. Often, these offenders are released within a few hours, or the sentence is not proportionate.”
Bob Arno recognizes yesterday’s pickpocket and persuades him to join us for dinner.
In October of 2014, Bob and I watched the arrest and jailing of a pickpocket. We happened to find the same man the very next morning on the loose in the subway. “The police arrest them regularly then see the same faces on the streets and in the Metro a day later. Frustrated, the police soldier on,” I wrote then.
“In 2016, there were 1.6 million Chinese tourists to Paris compared to 2.2 million in 2015!” Zhou said. “The decline is 39% of Japanese and 27% of Koreans. Our tourists have turned to Russia, which is less attractive but at least it is a safe country. For Putin, it is an economic windfall.
“I have been in France for twenty-five years, and I myself have seen the decline of France in terms of security. Before, the Chinese operators deplored the insecurity in Italy, today it is France and more particularly Paris and Marseilles which we speak of. There are many regions in France where tourism can be leisurely pursued, but Paris is ranked No. 1 in Europe in terms of the increase in delinquency.”
In January of 2017 in a Paris hotel parking lot, six thieves laid in wait for a bus to arrive returning Chinese tourists from a shopping excursion. As the shoppers descended the bus laden with purchases, the thieves assaulted them and grabbed their bags. The six thieves were all in their 20s, all had been previously jailed, and all lived in the Seine-Saint-Denis district of Paris which is commonly referred to as a no-go zone. Seine-Saint-Denis is a majority Muslim, majority immigrant district.
This mass raid on Chinese shoppers’ buses had become a new pattern, storming relaxed and burdened tourists on the threshold of their hotels—an ostensibly safe and secure place.
The thieves are not too clever. Have they not heard of overfishing? They prey on their favorite target and as a result, their favorite target stops visiting.
Pickpockets look like tourists, and it’s not by accident. Replete with water bottles, backpacks, camera, baseball caps, these “props” are intended to camouflage the pickpockets’ unscrupulous objective. If she looks much like you, a tourist, you won’t think twice when she, just another “tourist,” stands beside you. Her costume elicits trust.
She looks like an ordinary tourist, but she’s a pickpocket! Her victim caught her and grabbed back her wallet just in time.The man just witnessed this woman stealing his wife’s wallet. He grabbed and held onto the pickpocket.The victim identified this woman as the pickpocket’s partner.
We travelers make subtle, unconscious snap judgments of those around us. One person may cause no reaction, no alarm bells, while another prompts a slight step away, an extra glance, without even thinking. Why? What is it?
Pickpockets in Girona
The two women you see pictured here strolled through the German Garden in Girona, Spain, just like any other visitors. They shouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. But they turned where “BJ” and her husband turned, and they paused where BJ and her husband paused. BJ made a subliminal note of that.
Still, that apparently innocent behavior wasn’t unsettling in the least. Stopping on a lookout balcony, BJ raised her camera toward the beautiful view. It was only seconds later when her husband shouted and grabbed onto one of the women that BJ realized something was amiss. In fact, what flashed though her mind in the first instant was that her husband had saved the woman from jumping.
BJ saw her own purple/pink wallet in the thief’s hand and snatched it back. She can’t recall the woman ever being close enough to touch her, let alone having enough time to open the zipper of her purse. The nearness of these ordinary women was not a threat, not a thought, not even on her radar.
Exactly the reaction, or lack of reaction, that this sort of sneak thief depends upon.
However, they were on BJ’s husband’s radar. He’d kept half an eye on the two as they followed too quickly and stopped when he and BJ stopped. He saw the blond go into BJ’s purse.
“Hubby” held onto the thief and raised a ruckus until the women’s “thug” protector arrived, all chest-thrusting-threatening, though he was a young punk and a foot shorter than Hubby.
Pickpockets look like tourists
The photo that BJ had the presence of mind to capture is wonderful. There is shouting going on, but we don’t see it. Hubby wears an expression of shock and disbelief (I was asked to blur his face.) as he holds onto the thief and looks desperately for help. Meanwhile, the thief smiles beatifically! Her posture shows no distress, no resistance. She looks straight into the camera… relaxed! She’s in the firm grip of a shouting man whose wife she’s just stolen from, and she appears amused!
She knew how this incident would conclude. Probably, she’d been in the same position many times. “You have your stuff, so what’s the problem?” she asked. Maybe she even giggled.
But to BJ and her husband, this was a serious criminal matter. They’d caught a thief in the act, had her in a vice grip, and wanted her arrested. “We didn’t back down,” BJ said, “but what do you do with them when you’ve caught them?” There were no police around.
And there was this very aggressive thug. “Eventually there was this ‘he could have a knife’ moment so hubby let the girl go and they left,” BJ told me.
Both BJ and Hubby had taken all the appropriate safe-stowing precautions. BJ’s wallet had been zipped in and attached to her purse. The wallet contained only a little cash, her driver’s license, and one credit card that could be quickly cancelled.
Unsatisfying ending
BJ and her husband thought they could make a difference. They thought they could put this one trio of thieves out of business, at least for a while.
But the pickpockets walked away, smiling. For BJ and her husband, it was not a satisfying conclusion. They never did find a police officer in Girona, and those in Barcelona were uninterested.
In the beginning of our thiefhunting many years ago, Bob Arno and I thought, like BJ and Hubby, that we could make a difference by bringing video evidence to the police. We received the same reaction our brave travelers got: a laugh, a puff of air, a confirmation that yeah, the police know who they are, what they do, even where they live. But laws are loose and pickpockets make it their business to know the laws. All over Europe thieves tell us: more than anyplace, they like to work in Spain.
Rashmi Raman with her loaded brown shoulder bag just a few days before the bag was stolen in Barcelona.
The loss of a valuable shoulder bag stolen in Barcelona was devastating to the victim. The bag had been on the floor beside her chair in a café. The theft happened in just a moment’s lapse of attention.
My name is Rashmi Raman. I am a 32-year-old Indian woman from Delhi where I am law professor (yes, the irony of being a lawyer and getting robbed is not lost on me).
My handbag containing 2,200 euros, 800 USD and a few hundred British Pounds along with a lot of other currency souvenirs from my travels and all my bank cards and national identity cards, passports (old and current), yellow fever certificate (from my time in Africa) and my journal, a book, personal cosmetics and electronics was robbed from right next to my chair while I had a morning coffee with a colleague at No. 3, Calle Pelai in Barcelona at 10.40 AM on Friday July 22.
Bag stolen in Barcelona café
The café we were sitting inside was Subway, right across the street from our hotel. I wouldn’t normally have had all my money and papers on me for just stepping out for a coffee though I have been traveling with all this on me for years now. I don’t know how to rationalize what happened to me but I guess it’s just really really rotten luck.
I filed a police report immediately at the underground precinct at Plaça Catalunya. The next day I went back to the café to meet the owner and request to see the CCTV footage. He was kind enough to show it to me. I watched in horror as the CCTV footage clearly showed a white man, dressed in checks, calmly grab my brown leather bag, throw something white over it and walk out of the café. Ten seconds later I saw myself leaping up in panic on the video.
I don’t know how I survived it… My life has been a nightmare the past weeks since then. Getting back to India without a passport and no money was hellish. I don’t know how long it will take me to come to terms with everything I lost that day.
What inhuman madness would possess someone to steal every scrap of my worldly belongings and leave me destitute and without identity in a foreign country where I don’t speak the language? Why couldn’t he have had the courage or decency to return my passport and identity cards to the hotel? The hotel’s key card was in the bag. It is not too difficult to understand what hell you are unleashing on unsuspecting tourists by robbing them like this.
I will never see again the familiar pages and the many beloved stamps on my passports. I cannot understand what use they are to him? He probably threw away everything except the cash. He threw away the hard-earned records of my whole life.
Don’t blame the restaurant—thieves are everywhere!
The Subway restaurant in Barcelona where Rashmi’s bag was stolen.
I felt really silly actually going to Subway for a coffee that morning—in a month of traveling in Spain that was the first and only morning I chose a chain restaurant over the dozens of much more charming local cafés… I can’t imagine what got into me to go to Subway that day.
I was staying at the Catalonia Ramblas which is across the street from the Subway on 3, Calle Pelai. The hotel staff were really amazing and helped me file the police report, translated for me, and were a huge support.
I’m using my real name in case the thief ever reads this and he has all my ID (as well as my personal journal). Perhaps nobody knows more about me than he does!
Thanks for the work you are doing documenting theft in Barcelona and giving victims like me a space to vent—it is much appreciated.
— Rashmi Raman
I feel for Rashmi. I, too, often carry a loaded shoulder bag when I travel. And that’s despite everyone’s advice—including my own—to leave it in the hotel room. Sometimes the room isn’t ready. Or you don’t feel great about the security in the room. Or you need that cash or those documents with you. Sometime, you just need to carry your stuff.
In those cases though, there’s one rule I never, ever break: keep physical contact with the bag. It’s big and heavy, but it stays on my lap. Or tight behind my back on the chair. Or maybe with my foot through the straps (very rare). Even that practice is not failsafe—bag snatchers may rip and run. I never, ever hang my bag on the back of a chair. My husband, Bob Arno, is a white-hat pickpocket. Watch him easily steal items from customers in a café.
On the way to Obidos, Portugal, where this car was opened using a keyless-entry fob signal amplifier.
Keyless car theft is possible even when a car is locked and the electronic fob is away from the car. With a small electronic gadget, thieves can open the car and steal its contents, start the car, and drive it off.
Eve D. wrote to tell me about the recent theft she experienced while traveling by car through Portugal. Eve is well aware of theft risks, and her husband, Jeff, goes so far as to Velcro his wallet. I presume by that Eve means that Jeff keeps his wallet in a pocket with a Velcro closure.
Eve wrote:
The beautiful little town of Obidos, in Portugal. You might not think of car theft in this sleepy village.
We drove from Lisbon to the tiny walled town of Obidos, Portugal.
There, just outside the city wall, our rental car was broken into and all our carry ons, with all our valuables, were stolen. Our car was an SUV so you could see that we had luggage in the car, but the car was definitely locked when we left it.
The thieves just took the carry ons, leaving the big, more obvious suitcases. They used a remote control thing that can open cars with keyless entry.
Keyless car theft
Keyless car theft is a growing crime and a threat to all (it seems) cars with touchless wireless key fobs. Wireless-entry fobs work by proximity; the doors won’t open and the car won’t start unless the fob is quite close to the car. The signals sent between the car and fob are weak, so the two must be close to one another in order to work. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work.
When you’re at home, where’s your car? In the driveway? On the street? And where’s your electronic key (and your spare electronic key)? In the house somewhere, right?, and too far from the car to work.
Car thieves are using an electronic signal booster, or amplifier, to make the car and distant key communicate with each other over a longer distance. When it works, the thieves can unlock the car, start it, and drive away.
Obidos, Portugal, where car break-ins might be furthest from one’s mind.
In Eve’s case, it’s not clear that her key and car were close enough together, since she describes her car as being parked outside the ancient (thick) city wall. However, a thief with a signal amplifier, good timing, and a lot of nerve would be able to accomplish the boost and get the car unlocked before the fob walks too far away. That is, beyond several hundred meters. Especially if he doesn’t intend to start the car.
We were moving from one town to another and decided to stop at Obidos to have lunch. We were not parked in a secluded spot; there were probably about 15 cars in the lot with us. There were workman inside the walls setting up for a medieval fair. Some of the cars were probably the workers’ so maybe there wasn’t much in-and-out activity. I tend to think the workers could have been involved.
I would guess not. The workers are gainfully employed (in a country with 11-12% unemployment), they were busy working, and they wouldn’t likely risk their jobs.
Keyless-entry car theft
We did file a police report. Thank goodness one in our group was a Brazilian who spoke Portuguese, but I don’t think filing the police report did much good. The police said they would keep a lookout for our things along the road. Obidos is a very safe city, somewhat off the beaten track. But the police said ours was the second incident reported that day.
Sounds like a booster-booster in the neighborhood. (Do I need to point out that booster is slang for thief?)
The rental cars in Europe have stickers on their windshields announcing the fact that the car belongs to tourists. So, please remind tourists not to leave anything in their cars.
Excellent advice, when possible. But how should Eve have behaved differently? It was a calculated risk, a short stop, a quiet town, a happy mood, and everything should have been okay. You have to live, right?
I’m sure that I wouldn’t have taken that chance though. I’d choose a restaurant where I could park my car in full view from a window or patio, or I’d get something to go, or leave a volunteer to stay with the car. But I’m in the steal business and more aware of the risks. I’m not much of a chance-taker. (I lived in Vegas for 20 years and never gambled.)
I think the clicker thing, remote door opener, has been around for a while. We had our whole car taken in Marseille about 10 years ago.
Eve is right. These keyless-entry signal-amplifiers have been around for some time, though they haven’t been seen much by law enforcement. Just this week, European security researchers announced that most cars built by Volkswagen since 1995 can be broken into with a wireless hack. “Our findings affect millions of vehicles worldwide and could explain unsolved insurance cases of theft from allegedly locked vehicles,” the researchers wrote. Millions of vehicles! (Eve’s rental was a Nissan.)
Earlier this month, two men were arrested for keyless car theft, suspected of stealing more than 100 cars and moving them across the border to Mexico. Rather than a signal amplifier, these men used a laptop and software intended for use by dealers and locksmiths. It’s yet another way that keyless-entry systems can be bypassed. A safety-hatch for us car-owners, it’s also a backdoor ready to be exploited by any evil-doers so motivated.
So, why did Eve’s thieves take the carry-ons and leave the large luggage? Maybe they got away on a motorcycle or in a tiny smart car. Maybe they ran out of time. Or maybe they wanted the jewelry and electronics more likely to be found in carry-on bags, and didn’t need the socks and sweaters that would be in suitcases.
So just a reminder…the rental cars in Europe have stickers on the windshield. Do not leave anything in the car, and maybe not get an SUV. Our car was parked in a small lot so maybe not public enough. Also there was a curve in the road so that someone could be looking out. There were work trucks there too.
Try a faraday cage
What else can we do to protect our cars and their contents? You can keep your fob (and spare) in a faraday cage to prevent it from transmitting radio signals. A faraday cage could be your refrigerator or some other metal box. (A refrigerator might not be good for the key fob’s battery.) Or it could be a pouch or wallet made of metal mesh especially for this purpose—many are available.
If you park in a high-crime area or you drive a highly-desirable car (to a thief), and your keyless-entry fob is typically within 100 meters or so of the parked car, it might be a good idea, unless you can secure the car in a locked area. For the rest of us, it might be a step too far. And it certainly cancels the convenience of a wireless fob.
Of course the manufacturers should fix this vulnerability—though they’ve known about it for five or more years already and haven’t. In the meantime, we drivers will lose more cars and more personal items left inside our cars, and find little or no trace of the thieves.
Did you file a police report when you were pickpocketed?
I’ll be grateful for your response to this short survey? It applies to a single incident, but go ahead and fill it out for each incident, if you like. Thank you!
The entrance of our hotel, through two glass doors.
[dropcap letter=”H”]otel lobby baggage theft is common precisely because people think it is not. We tend to feel we’ve entered a safe zone when we enter our hotel lobby.
And of course, it feels that way: compared to the city on the other side of the door, it is cool (or warm, if it’s winter), quiet, and peaceful. All the hustle and bustle of the street disappears, the crowds, the traffic, honking, sirens, beggars, hawkers, weather. The lobby may have flowers, scent, soothing music, something to drink, smiles. Compared to the outdoors, the lobby is the very nirvana the hotel advertises.
Hotel lobby baggage theft
Bob and I went to Rome recently for a film shoot with a German production company. We arrived two days before the film crew, but we happened to be in the lobby when they arrived. All ten of them entered with their luggage and crowded around the reception desk. Several tossed their backpacks into a corner while they checked in and introduced themselves to Bob and me. Eyeing those unguarded bags, I decided not to be a worrywart, a killjoy, and a hysteric. I thought I’d do my best to keep my eye on the bags.
View from the inside: the crew’s backpacks were piled inside the second glass door on the right. Seemingly safe, with ten of us in the small lobby.
The lobby was mildly chaotic with check-ins, greetings, and the driver back and forth with luggage. Next thing I knew, one of the crew lunged toward the luggage and grabbed the hand of a crouching thief.
It happened so fast it almost didn’t happen. The thief ran out the door empty-handed. Bob and I took off after him.
Bob ran faster and further than I did, and eventually caught a man who claimed to be a friend of the thief’s. We had not gotten a good look at the thief in the lobby—not that this guy knew that. Strangely, he didn’t object to my openly filming him. He also gave us his mobile phone number. Marco, a member of the crew who’d caught up with us, called the number right away to see if the number was correct. The friend-of-the-thief’s phone rang. None of us could identify the thief, so after talking for a while, we said goodbye.
Meanwhile, a police car had parked in front of our hotel. In the back seat was a newly-arrested pickpocket and outside of the car a victim was identifying the pickpocket to a policeman. That incident was totally unrelated to our attempted baggage theft. One of our crew used the opportunity to tell the officer about our almost-theft. We didn’t speak with the handcuffed pickpocket or the victim, but we wished we could have since we’d come to Rome to shoot a special on pickpocketing. What a coincidence!
The moral of the story is that baggage can’t be safely ignored in a hotel lobby. Not even through two glass doors, not even with a crowd of pals around, not with the receptionist facing the door, not even for a minute. But this story gets weirder. Much weirder!
At midnight, a thief calls
Midnight in Piazza Barberini. The Norddeich TV production team with Bob Arno and Bambi Vincent.
At midnight, Marco’s phone rings. We’d had a good day of filming, a good dinner together, and we’re all standing in Piazza Barberini enjoying the night air and the energy from our successful shoot.
Marco doesn’t recognize the Italian phone number calling him but he answers his phone. His face darkens.
“I saw you and I know where you’re staying,” a man threatens in English. “I’m the guy who was in the back of the police car. In front of your hotel.”
What? None of us had ever spoken with that perp. We hadn’t given any of our phone numbers to anyone.
The thief continues: he knows who we are. We better not put any footage on Youtube. And he hangs up.
Marco is shaken. The rest of us are confused. Who was the man on the phone? He was certainly not the one who tried (and failed) to steal a crew member’s backpack in our hotel lobby. Neither was he the friend-of-the-thief. This guy was handcuffed in the back of a squad car during all that action.
Bob and I come up with a theory. A small band of marauding thieves had been prowling the area. As one attempted hotel lobby baggage theft, another pickpocketed a man on the street. A multidisciplinary criminal outfit on a self-enrichment offensive. Unspecialized opportunists on a hit-and-miss venture.
Bob phones the mystery thief. “Bob Arno, I know you,” the pickpocket says. “I’ve watched your film. I’m sitting here in a cafe with about 30 other pickpockets and we’ve all seen it.” No longer threatening; he’s positively jovial. He had heard the police officers talk about our tv shoot while he was being booked at the police station. He was let go (of course), and later reunited with his friends. The one whose phone Marco had called, and the one who had tried to steal a backpack.
Knowing Bob Arno from the National Geographic film Pickpocket King, the three paranoid thieves thought Bob had filmed the attempted baggage theft and did not want the footage put online.
Bob phoned the pickpocket once more:
The next day I call him, via Skype. We bond, and have a good conversation. And he spills some secrets: the size of their network, how they work and where, and how long they stay in one country. About thirty of them, all Moroccans, make up the gang. He is friendly and quite educated. This surprises me. This is nearly always how we start out: digging and drilling down for information. Gentle, easy question at first, slowly building some sort of rapport. Eventually we can map their entire operation, including girlfriends, snitches, fences, and on and on. Some of these efforts can take years, and they are not all successful.
All this resulting from a hotel lobby baggage theft that didn’t even happen. Read about Marianne, an actual victim of hotel lobby baggage theft.
The undetectable impostor infiltrating hotel lobbies
Think you’d notice a bag thief prowling around your hotel lobby? You haven’t met “Pedro,” a very different practitioner of hotel lobby baggage theft. Pedro, a multi-talented thief working in Paris, told us:
If you want to make money, you have to go to the big hotels, the five-stars. You use psychology, so you’re not suspected. You must be well-dressed. If you look like a good man, the person working the doors doesn’t keep you out. You are a good man! You have to feel like a good man to avoid security.
“Pedro” spoke to us freely in a restaurant in Paris. He eventually even told us his real name. Paris police know him by his two crooked little fingers.
Look and feel like a good man. By that Pedro means appearing respectable, unimpeachable. Unlike our bag-thief-wannabe in Rome, Pedro doesn’t snatch and dash. He stands right beside you—orders coffee beside you in the lobby bar. He’s a good actor—you don’t suspect him. You don’t raise your antennas because he’s near. In fact, your guard is down. You’re in the hotel lobby!
A crab scuttles around the gate area in Papeete airport.
Slogging through endless airports, hoping for a nice lounge, or at least a seat near a power outlet.
Occasionally, delightful surprises are discovered. For example, the sign I saw at Cagliari airport (Sardinia) over the baggage conveyor belt:
ATTENZIONE AL SEGNALE ACUSTICO LUMINOSO DI PREAVOISO MOVIMENTO MASTRO. PAY ATTENTION TO THE ACOUSTIC AND LUMINOUS SIGNAL FOREWARNING TAPE MOVEMENT.
Confiscated items at Lima airport security. This is just one of many large bins.Suddenly tango in LAX departure hall.Calming green wall in Naples, Italy, airport.Duplicates at Stockholm’s Arlanda, 5:00 a.m.: women, faces covered, resting on men with phones.
Regular readers of Thiefhunters in Paradise know that I recommend hard-sided luggage and avoid zippered bags as checked luggage. I’ve seen way too many exploded zippers on the baggage carousel with their guts strewn around, some most likely lost for good.
We all know that baggage handlers are tough on luggage, but airport baggage-bowels are much worse. Have you heard of airport baggage kickers? They route bags through the labyrinth of conveyer belts with a swift kick to the side, the corner, the zipper—wherever the blind mechanism happens to strike. They give checked bags more of a beating than I imagined. No wonder my aluminum suitcases emerge more scratched and dented after every flight.
Airport baggage kickers
David Cameron, a reader who pointed me to the top two brutal videos below, has assembled a nice compilation of hard-sided luggage. He describes many brands and models on his site, SafeSuitcases.com.
If you travel with checked luggage, you have to see the videos below!
And an actual rollercoaster for luggage, Mr. Baggage’s Endless Ride:
Look hard. Sumela monastery is right in the center of the photo. Yes, that tiny beige spot on the side of the mountain, just visible when the clouds lift.
I OFTEN COMPLAIN about too much travel. 250 days a year on the road, more or less, for 23 years non-stop. At the same time though, I appreciate my great fortune to see the world. As our work bounces us around the globe, I’ve been able to visit the most wondrous and remote sites. Petra in Jordan is one of those. Luxor in Egypt, Nan Madol in Pohnpei, Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, and Kilauea on Hawaii are others.
While in Trabzon in the northeast of Turkey recently, I had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to visit Sumela Monastery, about 30 miles on up the Silk Road. The orthodox monastery is ancient, miraculously built and carved into a barely-accessible mountainside, and covered with frescoes. The journey to reach it was arduous, as it is to most of the truly awesome sites I’ve experienced. Long, challenging travel is a prerequisite for rarely-seen beautiful or historic spots. It is why they’re rarely seen and still (relatively) unruined.
The trail through the forest is steep and slippery with extraordinary views.Ankle-twisting tree roots and enormous boulders help prevent sliding on the steep path.Getting closer, the cliff-hanging monastery appears grand and isolated.First glimpse upon entering the monastery.Brilliant frescoes badly damaged.Ceiling of a fully painted cave.A woman admires the painted cave.Structure surfaces are covered in brilliant frescoes inside and out.This interior space was very dark despite the light flooding into these small windows.A visitor takes a selfie.One of several salmon farms along the lower mountain road.After the monastery, Turkish pide, a hot, luscious bread and cheese dish, usually including meat.And of course a cup of strong Turkish tea.A word about security: at this restaurant in Trabzon, people hung their purses and backpacks outside the door, unguarded.
We took a bus most of the way, up the mountain, along rushing streams and waterfalls, past mosques and cement-pond salmon farms. When the road became too steep for the bus we stopped near a large rustic restaurant set back in the forest.
There we transferred to a small van able to carry eight people. The driver scrutinized his passengers and pointed to three, gesturing that they must get out because the vehicle was too heavy. Slowly then, the van wound up the steep and narrow road, we remaining passengers eyeing one another nervously as the engine strained. Pulling our sweaters and scarves over our shoulders, we climbed up through the darkening cloud forest until this vehicle too, couldn’t go any higher. There it stopped and we were expelled on the side of the road.
Sumela Monastery
It was a good photo op. The monastery appeared distant and unreachably remote, clinging to the steep side of a dark, forested mountain, deep, misty valley straight below. A strenuous hike followed, up crude stone stairs, clambering over giant tree roots and slippery dirt trails deeper into the cloud forest, where it rains 280 days per year. We were lucky! No rain. The path was tricky and difficult, and would be a muddy mess in rain.
It was not unlike the Cinque Terre trails, actually, minus the sea views.
It had been 86 degrees in Trabzon, below; now it was 65 degrees at the monastery, at an altitude of almost 4,000 feet. The structures, first begun in 386 AD, include natural caves in the side of the mountain, niches hacked into the cliff walls, and additional stone buildings erected in the following centuries. There’s a rock church, a small chapel, kitchens, a library, various living spaces, a courtyard, and lookout points. Nearly all surfaces are covered by brilliant 18th-century frescoes. The monastery has been repeatedly destroyed, restored, enlarged, ruined, abandoned, and defaced.
I loved bending low through four-foot high archways and entering the cool painted caves where it was both dark and blinding from the harsh natural light that pierced tiny windows. It was heartbreaking to see the frescoes so badly damaged; it was wonderful to see how much remained of the frescoes. The remoteness of the site limits visitors (and despoilers), but there is almost no control or security. Even now, visitors may wander where they will.
I’m lucky to have visited when I did. Lucky to have visited at all! It was one of those experiences that truly defines the word amazing, and leaves me feeling so fortunate to see the remote corners of the world.
Hopefully, by the time Sumela Monastery reopens, Turkey will be peaceful and travel warnings will be lifted.
A pickpocket gang who amassed more than 5 million pounds by stealing mobile phones on the Tube has been jailed for more than 30 years. Pictured is ringleader Nawid Moshfiq. Photo courtesy swns.com
Pickpockets Stole Mobile Phones
Who says pickpocketing is a petty crime?
A gang of 11 thieves was just sentenced in London. These pickpockets stole mobile phones on the London Tube and supposedly made about $15,000 a day. Police recovered £143,000 but credit the gang with making more than five million pounds through stealing phones. Let me do the math for you: that’s more than seven million dollars. Is that petty?
These thieves belong to a criminal network and systematically steal mobile phones from Tube passengers. It’s not a one-off crime. The British Transport Police Chief Superintendent Paul Brogden calls this an “industrial-scale criminal operation.” Can it possibly be considered petty?
More than a thousand mobile phones were seized with a large quantity of cash.
You can tell that term really irks me. The entire premise that pickpocketing is a petty crime irks me. How much evidence do we need?
You’d think I’d be used to this kind of report, after 22 years of pickpocket research.
These characters were all sentenced to two to three years; head thief Nawid Moshfiq got a little more time. What will they serve, half? Less? Then what? Will they go back to work in London? Maybe, or they’ll move on to another city where the police don’t know them.
