I am writing this in an airport bar in Prague, where I am having a beer before flying back to London after a weekend away. I will probably write most of the post on the flight home, but it probably will not get posted until I am back in London tomorrow( and this is indeed what has happened. MJ )
This is my second trip to Prague. I was first here in 1992. That trip also involved (amongst other places) Warsaw and Budapest. I had not been back to any of these places again until this year, when I have been back to both Warsaw and Prague. Both Poland and the Czech Republic are much easier places to visit than in 1992 in the sense that I do not need a visa to visit either country, there are lots of ATMs from which I can obtain money, there is less bureaucracy, there are western branded shops on the high street, there are Starbucks clones (although not yet Starbucks itself). In 1992 there were none of these things and travel was harder (I was also in my early 20s and a much less experienced traveller, so my perception may be distorted). However, although Poland and the Czech Republic are now both members of the European Union, the cities both lack the shining new Metro systems, motorways of poorer countries (Spain and Portugal, particularly) that have been dipping in the cohesion fund for longer. Infrastructure works in both places, but it is more spartan.
In 1992, Warsaw felt rather bleak and Prague felt to be a glorious gothic fairytale of a city that had been left behind by the world but which was perhaps catching up. (Budapest was the first city I had been to with a strong Ottoman character about it, and the dominance of the buildings on the high hills overlooking the Danube from the Buda side was and no doubt still is very striking). This year I rather liked Warsaw – it has the feel of a place where business is being done. Prague is still a glorious gothic fairytale of a city, there is lots of good music to listen to, the beer is very good and very inexpensive. The food options are much more diverse than they were 14 years ago. Since the invention of the euro gutted the Dutch money changing industry, the strip between the Charles Bridge and the Old Square in Prague seems to have taken over from that between Centraal Station and Dam Square in Amsterdam as the leading venue in Europe for dodgy money changers and slightly dubious pizza restaurants (the ‘Museum of Medieval Torture Instruments’ seems very old Amsterdam, too).
However, Prague seems to now be perhaps a little too obvious a destination for the more trendy sorts of tourist. People who are seen at the Netherlands Architecture Institute or the Oslo School of Design, and drink in bars with lots of black and chrome and 45 different kinds of vodka (and wear a fair amount of black, but probably only about the right amount to be in keeping with the chrome) tend not to be seen here. It seems more now to be a destination for Anglophone backpackers and American students from universities outside the Ivy League. It is a backpacker destination. It has not moved as far up the tourism food chain that I had hoped it might.
And, alas, I feel I am being a little unkind. I have, in truth had a bad experience today, which has to do with the way in which the tourist ecosystem in Prague has evolved to take advantage of the people who have visited.
Regular readers of this blog will know that I travel a lot. (I will eventually explain what I did in Denmark last weekend. Honest). I generally know what I am doing in a foreign city. I like to believe I am fairly defensive and steet smart, and as I am also a relatively large and scruffy male who at least thinks he does not look prosperous, I have seldom had anyone try to rob me, or otherwise hassle me.
In fact, the only time anyone previously tried to rob me was in Prague in 1992. I started the trip by myself, but by the time I was leaving Prague I found myself in the company of a girl from Brisbane in her early twenties and a slightly mad television journalist from Los Angeles. The three of us went to a railway station in the evening in order to catch the overnight train to Budapest. As we were about to get into the train, a group of loudly talking people crowded around and towards us. My wallet was foolishly in my back trousers pocket, but I was smart enough to respond by immediately putting my hand on it. I discovered that there was another hand on it, trying to pick my pocket. Once the thief realised I was on to him, he rapidly withdrew, but his friends did not. I should have yelled thief at that point, but I am shy and unassertive, so I did not. I few seconds later, I did hear a yell, as the American TV journalist realised that his bag had been unzipped and a hand was in it. He yelled loudly, and the thieves withdrew. Although they tried to rob us, looking back I am struck by what amateurs the pickpockets were in 1992. We were pretty naive too, but still they failed to rob us.
Since then, I have always put my valuables in my front pockets, and I do continue to look a little scruffy, which I have believed meant I was perhaps not an obvious target. Alas, though, this afternoon the thieves figured me out and robbed me anyway. This time they were good at it. Compare what happened in 1992 with what happened this afternoon. I got on a train of the (non-extended since 1992) Prague Metro with the (different) girl from Brisbane in her early twenties with who I was travelling. (Go figure). She was ahead of me, and she walked into the centre of the carriage and sat down, I tried to follow, but there was a large burly central European man in front of me. I attempted to get past him, but he moved slightly when I did so that he was still in front of me. We came into contact. I couldn’t get past, but he did it in such a way that it was hard to be sure that he was deliberately obstructing me. As I did so, another man came into contact with me from behind. I almost felt bad. Clearly I had stopped unexpectedly due to being unable to get past the first man and he had collided with me. There were two other large men on my sides. I felt almost embarassed, but I was trapped between them and could not join my friend further in the carriage.
Something felt wrong, but it was hard to pin down exactly what. I put my hands on my pockets. My wallet was still there. I looked carefully at my rucksack. It was still closed, and my laptop was still in it. The two really important things were still in my possession. My Blackberry and phone were still in my pockets. However, my left pocket felt oddly light. My attention was clearly on my possessions from this point. Something felt wrong, but I was left alone. The men got off at the next station. My friend and I got off at the station after. I told her that something had felt wrong on the train. She said that she had thought it odd that I had not sat down next to her. I had told her that I had been physically prevented from doing so, but I was really not sure what had happened.
I guess I was in denial about being robbed, so I could not think of anything missing. However, an hour later I tried to take out my camera to take a photograph and I realised I did not have it. So the pickpockets got my camera, presumably by managing to grab the wrist strap and pull it out (it was a Fuji Finepix Z1, a terrific little camera about the size of a cigarette packet which fits very easily into a pocket, but which is consequently also very easy to ease out of a pocket). The camera was worth about $400, and although I have travel insurance the excess is such that it is probably not worth my making a claim. None the less I went to the police and reported the crime, simply because I believe incidents like this should show up in the crime statistics. The police were sympathetic and helpful and recorded the crime as a crime. They even said they would check the CCTV in the train station, but they clearly didn’t expect to be able to do anything about it. They said that it was very unlikely that they would catch the thief, but that if they did they might conceivably ask me to return to Prague to testify. I told them that I realised that this was very unlikely, but that I would be delighted to do so if it happened.
So my clear record of having not been robbed when travelling is gone. In truth, I suspect I am a more obvious target than was once the case. I wear more expensive clothes than I used to (although I sometimes wear them badly and wear them until they wear out). And I carry a lot of electronics with me, which leads to my pockets bulging a little at times.
And in truth I do not visit this kind of tourist destination much any more. There is crime in other places I have visited recently, but it is not of the ‘professional thieves preying on tourists’ type. So perhaps I was a little careless. Only a little, but still careless. And these thieves were very good at it. They knew exactly how and why to stand in order to physically confine me to a small portion of the train carriage without my realising it, and then they managed to rob me without my realising it. Whereas the thieves in 1992 were amateurs, these ones were good at it. In the last 14 years they have been able to learn their trade.
And let us be blunt. It is the fault of the local law enforcement agencies for allowing them to learn it. If you want to catch professional theives, it can be done by placing obvious targets on the trains and seeing what happens. Regular patrols mean thieves stay away. If thieves know there is a regular plain clothes police presence on the trains, robberies become less likely. And of course, when thieves are caught (as professional ones are from time to time) they need to be locked up for a very long time. Some of these things probably are done in Prague, but not enough. In tourist cities where the rule of law is poor, civil society is weak, and consequenty tne police are bad at their jobs (eg Rome) pickpockets are rampant, but in cities where the police are better and civil society and the rule of law is strong (Zurich, say) they are much less so.
Of course, things could have been much worse. I could have lost my wallet, which would have been a disaster given all the credit cards, money, and documents in it. I could have lost my laptop, which would have been much more expensive (although I do at least have backups of the data). I could have lost my passport, which would have made getting home a pain, and I would have then had to have gone through an annoying rigmarole with the Home Office in order to get my British residency properly recorded in the new one.
As it is, I can easily afford a replacement camera. I will order one over the internet and I will have it by the end of the week. I even have most of my photographs of Prague, as I remembered my card reader this week and some of my photographs had already been uploaded to my laptop. So in terms of affecting my life, the impact is minimal. I am even convincing myself quite reasonably that I had a good weekend. Most Czechs I met were friendly, and also perfectly honest. A hotel receptionist went to some trouble to make sure that we were paid a small refund that we were owed, even though we would likely have walked out without querying the bill.
But the fact remains that being the victim of a crime really sucks. I have made a lot of visits to foreign cities in my life. Pickpockets have to my knowledge only come after me twice in all that time. And both of them happened in the same city, that I have visited only twice in my life. And that does not speak well of the city in question.
Michael, that really sucks. I’ve never been pickpocketed, but my ex-bf was when we were in Amsterdam. I was nearly murderous, and all they got was about £45 cash (I had our travellers’ cheques) and cards (which were immediately cancelled). If I ever saw the guys who took your camera, I’d kick them in the nuts for you. 😀
I had a similar experience in the corridor of a train from Berlin to Warsaw (still at the platform). One guy coming from ahead and one from behind with an overcoat over his arm. As I was trying to open the door to a compartment, I saw the foot of the guy ahead of me blocking it and I realized what was up.
Without thinking I grabbed the overcoat of the guy behind me and shook it and my wallet fell out.
They started mumbling apologies in German (it was all a misunderstanding!) I called them f*cking thieves in Polish (which they pretended to not understand but obviously did) and they disappeared very quickly.
The only time I’ve been robbed abroad was in Mexico on an intercity bus. I dozed off for a minute and when I woke up my suitcase (filled with cheesy mexican souvenirs and pulp fiction and nothing at all valuable) was gone.
I complained (in Spanish) about the sentimental value of the suitcase which made other passengers look guilty. They probably knew what was going on but didn’t feel much sympathy for a gringo tourist. That I knew Spanish made me a little more sympathetic.
Michael: That was on the infamous overnight “smuggler” service from Berlin to Warsaw? When was this? One of my better travel stories occurred on that train in 1992. The moral of that story is that if you are in the same compartment of the train as five young Polish men who are intent on smuggling something over the German/Polish border, you are actually very well protected from being robbed.
What else is new in Prague ?
Sorry to hear about your troubles in Prague. You say that it does not reflect well on the city in question. You’re right.
I live in Prague. Communism has left a nasty, nasty after taste here. There is an assumption held by too many people that foreigners are rich and stupid and deserve to be robbed.
This is partly the result of the quality of tourists. There are many, many loud-mouthed, uncouth British men. They are here for what they think is cheap beer and the cheap whores. It’s hard not to hold such drunk louts in total in contempt. They are ripped off by the bars they frequent as well as the brothel owners and strippers. They are usually too drunk to notice. Too many Czechs assume all foreigners are like that. Ever more schemes are devised to part them with their money.
As a result, Wencelas Square, often called the heart of the Czech nation, is ringed by brothels and worked by prostitutes. It should be like the Champs-Elysees. In fact, it’s like a downmarket version of Soho in London.
In addition, the most picturesque streets in Prague (Celetna, Karlova, Melantrichova, Jungmanova) have been wrecked by a shops selling tourist junk and ugly glassware. The locals hate them, and they end up hating the tourists on whom they blame the shops. They also end up believing all foreigners are stupid otherwise they wouldn’t be buying such rubbish.
Law enforcement is lackadaisical. Corruption is rife throughout the public sector from the lowliest employee to the political elite. The inability to touch any of these, plus corruption in the police force, means too many police don’t take their jobs seriously.
A few weeks ago I was speaking to someone in Munich. He said that, among his peers, Prague is famous for its thefts and its rip offs. That reputation is well deserved.
Well, well. The two places I have been successfully robbed are Amsterdam and, yes, Prague. A little bit of cash in the first case, a train ticket back to Munich in the second (I hope the bitch enjoyed her journey. Ha!) Then there was the time in New Orleans, when I thought I was pretty drunk, but evidently not so drunk so that I didn’t notice the young lady’s hand in my pocket and ask her to desist.
I used to live in Prague too, and I couldn’t agree more with Paul (above). There are Czechs who are nice and friendly people when you get to know them but in general they seem rather dazed at the onslaught of stag parties – I found that most Czechs will switch into English rather than let you try to communicate in their language, for example, more out of a sense of exclusivity than my bad accent. Communism appears to have crippled the notion of property, as anyone who has returned home to find their landlady making tea in their house (as happened to my friends) – or landlord moved into the basement (as happened to me) – will know. The Roma get the blame but nicking stuff is the national sport. Beautiful place though. Shame.
Michael: No, it was in 1992 but an afternoon train (in late June IIRC). The rule I learned was that as soon as you set foot on the platform in Berlin, you’re back in Poland and behave accordingly.
But Polish cities then were IME ridculously safe to anyone who could even marginally blend in. Polish pickpockets have always targeted trains, especially crowds getting on trains but get a block from the train station and there seemed to be no danger whatsoever.
The only smuggling train I’ve been on was Budapest to Poland overnight. A half-dozen ladies had rented entire sleeping compartments to store stuff (mostly clothes and bedclothes) they were taking to Poland. The spent the entire time to the border (not that long actually) cramming vast amounts of merchandise to be as non-visible as possible and stood in the doors _refusing_ to let customs officers inside and yelling at them and finally making discreet payoffs. I could hear them later complaining that the Slovak border guards were greedier than the Hungarians “He took an entire set!”
They disappeared just after crossing the Polish border.
Putting your wallet in your front pocket is useless against a decent pickpocket since it may actually be easier to complete theft from the front. It happens daily on Rome’s bus #61 and will happen anywhere if you don’t use a money belt or neck hung wallet under your shirt. People who have actually been “robbed” know the difference between a robber and a pickpocket.
Be happy you only lost a camera. Yes, Prague.
In the fall of 1993, I stopped into a cafe, a nice clean one, just off Wenceslas Square. Probably when I was in the loo, someone doctored my drink. Fortunately, being tired, I only drank about half of it.
About a half block from the cafe, I began feeling strange, and reached out to steady myself on some scaffolding placed to restore an old building. Someone grabbed me and attempted to wrestle me to the ground. There were three of them. I have martial arts experience, so I managed to discourage two and inflict some satisfying damage. However, being rather old and slow, not to mention drugged, I lost track of the third. Last I remember, there was a two by four coming directly at my face.
I woke up some seven hours later in hospital, with a Doctor telling me in broken English that he intended to fix my broken nose. He said it would hurt. He was right.
Anyway, I had the broken nose, six stiches under my right eye from a knife cut, four stiches across my nose, and seven stiches along my left thumb received when taking the knife away from thug No. 2.
They got about DM 14.00 from my pocket, an inexpensive film camera, and my hotel key. Oh, yeah – my clothes were a loss. Since they were soaked in blood, the hospital staff cut them off me, and gave me some blue hospital pajamas.
The one bright spot was when I returned to the hotel. The staff was very concerned and helpful. Once they had changed the door lock, I asked the (several) staff members to leave, as I only wanted a hot shower. An assistant manager (lovely blonde woman) insisted on staying to help with my shower so I would’nt slip and fall. Drugged you know.
Yes, I always go back to that hotel.
The Police told me that drugging tourists is a popular pastime in Prague. Usually scopalamine (a veterinary drug). The week previous to my experience, an English businessman had been drugged, and died from an overdose.
Be extremely careful what you drink there.
CFM
Interesting CFM…perhaps men don’t share the female survival/self-protection instinct of never drinking a drink that has been left unattended…especially since the advent of roofies.
The money belt around the waist under the pants…that’s my thing when travelling. With cash, traveler’s checks, credit cards, passport, hotel key. Makes my belly look fatter but I’ve never had this stuff stolen.
The most humorous theft story I have was from London 2001. I was staying in a b&b owned by a middle eastern family, room to myself. I went out to dinner on the first evening, and when I came back, the window was open. (Ground level.) Nothing seemed in disarray at all, and nothing seemed to be missing, so I assumed housekeeping freshened the room (per my request, it smelled stale when I checked in).
A few days later it occurred to me that indeed something had been stolen. I had a little black velvet bag that closed with a drawstring…ostensibly a jewelry bag, but I used it to stock a few tampons and pads in case Aunt Flo came to visit. That was nicked.
(I had my diamond stud earrings and ring in a cheap plastic pillbox with some Advil. I was traveling with family and hellbent on amazingly light and efficient packing.)
So, a few days later when my family arrived, I told them what happened and we had a good laugh over a pint at the pub.
Oh, the horror! Theft of feminine hygiene products! hahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa!
Also understand totally about the scruffy strategy. When I travel in England and Europe, I leave my brightly colored clothes at home in the USA. Y’all dress so drab. It’s depressing.
I also tone down the typical American outgoing high spiritedness.
I know my bright clothes and sparkling personality mark me as a tourist and a pickpocket target.
As a recent American college graduate, I look forward to the day I can afford to travel abroad, but stories like this trouble me. I’m a white guy, and I have just recently married a wonderful young black woman. I’d like to visit Russia and Eastern Europe, but I’m afraid of standing out when walking around with my wife and possibly sending up a red flag for any potential pickpockets, robbers, or hooligans. I’m on my way to fluency in the Russian language, which I assume would help.
I had my train tickets lifted at the Holosivice station last March. It dampened an otherwise nice visit to Prague. One thing that struck me is that in the souvenir joints in the Stare Mesto, I heard more Russian than Czech.
This is partly the result of the quality of tourists. There are many, many loud-mouthed, uncouth British men.
Yes, it is. I was less forward about this in the original post than I might of been, because I felt what I wrote initially sounded like snobbery (and it probably will now), but I was in truth struck by the downmarket quality of the tourists myself. There was the type of English tourists you mentioned, and there were Australians, and there were Americans, but they were relatively downmarket and not very interesting Americans. The diverse mix of Americans you get in Scandinavia or Italy or France were not there. I was also struck by the lack of tourists from other places, and in particularly that there were far fewer Germans than I had expected. (And I saw seemingly no Scandinavians at all). Most signs in tourist areas were in Czech and English, once again with no Germans. It seemed that the attitude you described in Munich is keeping most of the Germans away, at least in November.
Many of the visitors to Prague are perfectly pleasant people, but they are not high value, sophisticated tourists.
When I came to Prague in 1992, I thought that it was as beautiful as Paris, and there was no reason why in a few years it could not become nearly as major a destination. Wencelas Square should indeed be like the Champs-Elysees of Central Europe. But it hasn’t happened. The streets around Celetna, Karlova etc have indeed been disfigured by stores selling ugly crap, the locals don’t like it, and more upmarket tourists don’t like it either. The infrastructure for more upmarket tourists is lacking in this area too. (I spent some time trying to find a nice cafe for my morning coffee. I didn’t really succeed. I found a nice neighbourhood on the other side of the river full of nice cafes and the like later, which was more for local professionals and foreign residents than tourists I think). So you have a vicious circle. This kind of thing (along with risks of thievery and such) keep the more upmarket tourists away, but it is the presence of more upmarket tourists that is most likely to force the vendors of cheap crap out and make the streets more tasteful and attractive again.
I stand by what I wrote in the post. There is nothing that would help break this sort of circle better than honest and effective law enforcement. Although in a culture of corruption, that is much easier said than done.
Despite all I have said, I still enjoyed myself in lots of ways in Prague. The city is full of many beautiful things, has nice neighbourhoods, and many lovely pubs. Sitting in a nice quiet pub near the castle having a quiet beer as I watched the lady serving at the bar play chess with one of her customers between serving customers is the sort of nice experience one has in that part of the world.
Kentuckyliz: I’ve been a lot better about watching my drinks.
Your story brings to mind one about an elderly lady in Los Angeles who had taken her Great Dane for a walk in the neighborhood. After putting the dog inside her house. she walked outside to empty her canvas carryall in the trash. A young thug knocked her down and took her bag. It contained, of course, only a plastic bag full of large-dog droppings. Serves him right.
CFM
Intersting comments about the lack of Germans. A collegue from work visited Prague a couple of years ago and said the Germans she ran into insisted on speaking English – seems there is still a little “hangover” from the war.
I was in Prague in March and thought the metro system was excellent – very cheap, very efficient and very clean. The buses were terrible, but the metro was the best I’ve seen outside of Barcelona. The only annoying thing was how early it closed at night – and the same goes for the pubs.
Wasn’t mugged, but not only am I a relatively large and scruffy male, I was accompanied by four or five of the same.
Of course. Not your responsibility, to be alert or to take precautions. The Government should have taken care of you.
To defeat pickpockets try this— it also affords you the opportunity to give the bastard a good kicking.
Put wallet in an inside coat pocket, which preferably has a zip or a button fastner. Insert fourfive strong safety pins across the pocket zip. The pocket is then very secure.
Any attempt at picking your pocket will be felt, and retribution can be extracted from the offender. The bastard who tried it on me in Smichov will have thought twice before doing it again, writhing in the gutter after having his leg on the kerb.