Glass windows in the floor of the Oslo Central Train Station
What kind of perv built this place?
This is the Central Train Station in Oslo, Norway. The first time I passed through the station I was wearing a dress. The moment you come up the escalator or stairs, you’re confronted with glass windows in the floor. No warning.
Now, glass windows on the floor are a little weird to step on in any case. If you’re a woman in a dress, it’s just creepy.
Why you shouldn’t wear a dress in OsloThe view from below. Dramatic lighting helps.
When the station is busy, you can be swept across those pervert peepshows whether you like it or not.
Upskirt Oslo Central Train Station
Downstairs, under the peephole windows, are walkways, plaza like spaces, a cafe, and possibly an encampment of trolls. Yep, there’s a clear view up through the floor windows. The most expensive cup of coffee in the world comes with crotch shots. Not that Norwegian women are big on dresses—a central train station feature like this would put me off dresses, too, I can relate!—but we’re talking about the main transportation hub in a capitol city. Who designed this “feature”?
The station gets a plus for the public piano anyone can play, and another plus for the upside-down tree out front (when I was there). But these glass peepholes in the floor? Fail!
I was so distracted I searched for perverts instead of pickpockets.
Upside-down tree in front of the train station.Upside-down tree in front of the Oslo Central Train Station
The Leaning Tower of Pisa on a beautiful summer day, as seen from behind a cherry vendor.
Pickpockets in Pisa are so active we don’t even have to go looking for them. They’re right there. Are they everywhere? It seems so!
We arrived by train, stepped out of the station, and filmed the growing crowd at the bus stop across the street where the “red” bus stops before going to the Leaning Tower.
By the time the light changed and we crossed the street, the bus had arrived. Everyone heading for the Leaning Tower mobbed the bus doors. We panned our camera across the scene and inadvertently filmed a pickpocketing-in-progress.
What we got on camera took six seconds. The victim was a Japanese woman on her way to board the bus. Her husband and four children were somewhat behind her.
This is the most common scenario. The pickpocket hits during the boarding, hoping that you’ll get on the bus and he/she won’t, putting instant distance between you and him/her.
In this case, the victim felt something—she wasn’t sure what—so didn’t board.
Before the theft: three of the victim’s children are standing at left.
Pickpockets in Pisa
The pickpockets were a girl and a woman. They crowded in behind the Japanese victim, who felt something and momentarily clutched her bag. At this point, analyzing the movements of the thieves on the video we got, we can only infer that the older woman dipped into the victim’s gaping shoulder bag, took the wallet, and extracted the cash from it. The victim whipped around as the pickpockets strolled away with exaggerated nonchalance. The victim hadn’t identified who the thieves were—or if there were thieves at all.
The pickpocket, in blue t-shirt, moves in behind her victim, who is about to board the bus. You can barely see the victim in the pink dress. The victim’s son is in glasses, upper left.The pickpocket’s accomplice (and perhaps her daughter) is in pink tights and plaid shirt. She moves in behind the blue shirted pickpocket.The victim (in pink) looks around as the two thieves (at left) cooly saunter away.
“Did they steal from you?” Bob asked, still filming.
The victim was utterly baffled. The thieves had taken her wallet, extracted all the cash, and returned the wallet.
“Why would they return it,” she wondered. She repeatedly opened her wallet to inspect the contents in disbelief. The bus departed while she and her family huddled, trying to understand what had just happened.
The victim takes inventory of her wallet as her family watches.
The victim said she had just purchased bus tickets for her family, and therefore knew that she’d had about a hundred euros. She said that that was the reason she hadn’t yet zipped her bag closed.
So why would the pickpocket return the victim’s wallet with all its credit cards and ID? We’re hearing of that occurance more and more. Yet, we know that all those documents can be monetized. They could be money in the hand of the thief.
Well, if you get your wallet back, and all its contents except the cash, you’re much less likely to bother filing a police report. You know a police report will take hours out of your day and you know you’ll never get your cash back. So what’s the point?
The victim with her stolen-and-returned wallet.
Meanwhile, the pickpockets in Pisa aren’t fingered. They don’t get arrested or fined. And that’s one more incident that never makes it into statistics. The city’s happy about that, and so are the police. If the pickpocket didn’t steal more than €400, and didn’t steal your property (wallet, documents), nothing will happen to her. It’s as if it never happened. That’s why I say that pickpockets are an invisible species.
“Pickpockets are an enigmatic breed. Most are never seen or felt by their victims—or anyone else. Mystery men and women (and boys and girls) moving freely among us, they’re as good as invisible. So how can they be quantified?”
The pickpockets in discussion. Mother and daughter?
And so, pickpocketing remains the travel industry’s dirty little secret. Unreported incidents = low statistics. And pickpocketing retains the ridiculous label: “petty theft.
Sigh.
Another family examines a wallet at the bus stop. Were they also victims? We didn’t ask them.Pisa train station
Two Mumbai pickpockets handcuffed together and roped to a cop.
All these Mumbai stories of trains, crowds, swamis, the slum called Dharavi, and promises of more stories… What you’re really wondering is: did the Thiefhunters find any pickpockets in Mumbai?
The Thiefhunters did, and lets not even count the two boys found handcuffed together at Kurla train station, roped to an undercover policeman. We rode the train with them where they had to sit on the floor, like dogs on a leash.
Bob and I spent days on trains so crowded we couldn’t move, and joined pushing-shoving boarding mobs that were a pickpocket heaven. With opportunities like those, we thought we’d find plenty of thieves.
The pickpocket shows his method, which is classic: he uses one hand to raise the wallet from outside the pocket.
We road buses all over the city, which turned out to be a fascinating way to see Mumbai off the tourist track. At stops along the way, we hopped off and onto buses that barely paused for passengers. Where large groups waited to board, the rush was sudden and desperate—perfect for pickpockets. They should be able to do their work without boarding at all, putting instant miles between themselves and their victims. At a bus stop on the edge of a large slum, we spotted a pair that did board. The ticket-taker noticed them too, and pushed them off at the next stop.
Interestingly, every bus we rode carried a human ticket man who checked and sold tickets. Whereas on trains, we saw no controls whatsoever.
At end-of-the-line bus stations, huge orderly crowds lined up in a metal cattle mill for each route. Buses came at short intervals, again barely stopping. Passengers surged on while a uniformed people-manager tried to keep order. These men too watched for pickpockets, and told us that most thieves stalked bus passengers on the two monthly paydays. Those are only the pickpockets who get caught, I say.
He’s got the wallet. Look at those thumbnails—polished by the inside of many pockets?
From the excellent, new, non-fiction book I just read, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, I gather that beating is a common enterprise in Mumbai. Among the book’s stressed-out, almost-zero-income community members, everyone partakes: parents beat children, brothers beat sisters, and kids beat each other up regularly. In the book, police are notoriously brutal. When we interviewed Mumbai pickpocket Rahul some years ago, he’d been beaten to a pulp by train passengers who’d caught him in the act. This, we are told over and over, is the way it works in Mumbai. A deterrent, possibly.
And when our friend Paul McFarland was mugged for his wallet, the wallet, his ID, and credit cards were all returned some 15 minutes later, with only the cash missing. Why? Karma.
The pickpocket we spoke with this visit was from Andhra Pradesh, an Indian state southeast of Maharashtra (where Mumbai is). He specializes in highway robberies, getting a driver to pull over whereupon he steals their stuff. But the smooth pickpocket moves he showed us betrayed his real job skills.
We promised not to photograph his face, but I will say this: although he was of average height, weight, and appearance, he was the type who would stand out in a crowd as suspicious. Perhaps it was his demeanor.
The pickpocket raises his leg and presses his knee into his victim’s leg.
Our translator spoke English and Marathi. Our barefoot pickpocket spoke something else, so our conversation was rough. The routine problem and frustration with impromptu interviews with thieves—not everyone is willing to get involved with criminals.
The thief described himself as a married Muslim with a wife and five children living in the next-door state. In the time-honored tradition, he learned pickpocketing from his father. When he demonstrated his technique, he couldn’t help using a specific move with his leg, in which he raised it to press his knee into the back of his victim’s leg. One indicator common to career pickpockets that we notice over and over is that their particular style is engrained and they can’t change it, even for a demonstration. His fluid motions and the confidence with which he showed them telegraphed that he was very practiced. We couldn’t figure out whether he currently practices both pickpocketing and highway robbery, or if he’d shifted from one to the other.
Bob and I have spent a lot of time thiefhunting in Mumbai, and our conclusion remains: although pickpocketing is not unheard of, a visitor is not very likely to be a victim. That doesn’t mean one shouldn’t practice safe-stowing and down-dressing—but I assume that readers of this blog already know that.
We bought second-class train tickets (for our thiefhunting) and rode the most crowded Mumbai trains ever. No—you can’t imagine how crowded. Speeding into the stations, people jump off before the trains even slow down. But more amazingly, they leap on, right through the mobs waiting at the doors, before the trains stop.
I panicked the first time I experienced this, standing among the masses at the open door ready to get off. Like salmon swimming upstream, men lept on—like iron filings attracted to a magnet, against gravity. And once the train stopped, it was too late. Everyone else had hopped off and I was buffeted and spun in the doorway by men desperate to board. Only uncharacteristic aggression got me off before the train pulled out again.
Mumbai trains are mind-blowing
The behavior of Mumbai train commuters is a consequence of the efficient trains which stop very briefly at the stations; huge, huge mobs pack the platforms, and the men hope to get a seat for their long commutes. The benches in second class hold three men each, but four squeeze onto each. They alternate leaning back. Two more commuters stand between facing benches among the many knees. Everyone seems to permit and accept the squeezing. There is no “personal space.”
I’ve spoken only of men because most women and children ride in the ladies’ cars. In fact, I didn’t see a single other woman in the many second-class cars I rode all week. I was told though that the women are also aggressive about boarding during peak commute times. They can’t match the men, I’m sure.
Dadar Station is one of Mumbai’s busiest, but as it’s totally off the tourist track, you will likely never experience the huge madhouse that it is. Crossing over the rickety pedestrian “flyway” over the tracks and platform, we happened to see the awful scrum of getting-on-versus-getting-off from directly above. We were awestruck, and stayed to film the next train. Have a look:
We meandered through the enormous flower market in the streets and underpasses around Dadar Station. It was evening commute time when we were ready to go back to our hotel in Colaba. Bob and I stood on the platform in the middle of the pushing-fighting-desperate-madness. Bob filmed the scene while being knocked around like a punching bag. In the relative calm between two Mumbai trains a man next to us found the shoes he’d been pushed out of. “I can’t do this,” I said as we let a couple more trains come and go. Bob said “come on,” and grabbed my hand. Then we were in the middle, trying to board through a flood of debarking passengers, then pushed from behind with nowhere to go in front and the train about to move whether people were on, half on, hanging on, or whatever.
The ticket machines confuse a steady stream of travelers.
Rome, Italy—Termini Station serves up buses, trains, and the subway. Four long rows of ticket machines busily dispense tickets and confound travelers. Traffic is brisk. Meanwhile, thieves and con artists loiter, watching. Bob and I loitered, too.
An unkempt man pushed in close to a family trying to figure out the machine. The man kept offering advice, though he clearly hadn’t a clue about the machine. The family repeatedly waved him away. After a while he moved to another group at a machine halfway down the row, where he was equally unwelcome.
A pair of cops sauntered past and Bob had a conversation with them. Berlusconi’s drastic anti-immigrant program has not made a dent in crime, these and other cops told us. Bob strolled with the patrolling police while I took up a position next to the new plexiglass wall that protects ticket-buyers at agent windows from pickpockets and bag thieves. No longer do mobs press against passengers who must set down bags and fumble with wallets while buying tickets.
A new glass enclosure keeps the crowds away from travelers as they buy their tickets. Still, station police get about 50 reports of theft per day.
Unattended luggage caught my eye. A large suitcase topped with a sleeping bag stood several yards away from the ticket machines. Who could have turned his back on his belongings in such a place?
Bob returned with the police, who removed the troublesome wastrel from the midst of the ticket machine crowd. I could be wrong, but it appeared they photographed him first with a mobile phone camera.
Bob and I scrutinized the messy line of machine-users, trying to guess who the unwatched bag belonged to. Few by few, people left the machines and the bag remained. Eventually, only one young couple remained, the rest of the crowd being freshly arrived and unattached to the lonely luggage. But this couple never glanced toward the baggage at all. Either it wasn’t theirs, or they were part of a sting, as demonstratively ignoring their stuff as I had years before in a casino coin-pail operation.
The suitcase at left was unattended for at least 15 minutes.
As the minutes went by, Bob’s and my amazement grew. We discussed the possibilities: police baiting bag thieves; a daring drug deal in which the suitcase contained cash or contraband; a frazzled traveler who’d shortly return for the forgotten thing, panting and train long gone. We kept our eyes on the bag.
A man came up to us and began a long tale in Italian. He was 60 or so, and looked like a grizzled businessman dressed in city-casual: a button-down shirt tucked into belted gabardines. He might have worn a sport coat, I’m not sure. We glanced at him and let him ramble as we kept watch on the suitcase, wondering what his scam was. His tone was moderate, a little confidential, a little urgent. He asked a question and from his baggy pants pocket pulled out an enormous wad of euros, bound by a thick rubber band. He switched to mostly unintelligible English, something about a bank, and persevered.
The suitcase was gone.
How? We’d been determined to see its resolution and barely looked at the interloper who’d accosted us. Had he come just to distract us? He’d certainly succeeded by flashing his money roll. We left him and rushed to the ticket machines, not twenty feet away, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bag, but it was gone without a trace.
Porcini, at right, make my day.
We were angry and disappointed in ourselves. But not to despair: this was a good excuse for a consolation dinner. By accident, we found Ristorante Pizzeria da Francesco, and they had fresh porcini! Porcini will always perk me up, and Francesco served them the ultimate way: on thin, crisp pizza with a bit of mozzarella. No wonder the place was jammed with locals—well, anyway, the waiters didn’t kiss me.
