I’m officially one of those tourists I always make fun of. Somehow, I survived years of living dangerously – decades of major wars, civil wars, peacekeeping missions and trips to some of the most dangerous places in world – without getting robbed. So, yeah, I thought I had it all figured out.
I didn’t.
Fate finally caught up with me on Christmas Day in Paris. A pickpocket or pickpockets got me on the edge of the Champs-Élysée off the Tuileries, snatching my wallet.
The truth is, I did everything I could to help them, ignoring all the advice I give friends and readers.
If I’d just kept on this jacket and vest ….
In my (weak) defense, I was coming off a day of being down with a virus, and I wasn’t 100-percent – and wasn’t ready for this pickpocket, who was very, very good. Back in the day, two Roma women tried to pickpocket me in Izmir, Turkey and their technique was brute force … Pickpocket No. 1 bumped hard into me and when I was distracted, Pickpocket No. 2 grabbed my wallet. Both were comically clumsy. I grabbed Pickpocket No. 1 and applied a modest amount of pressure to a pain point. She squawked pretty good, and Pickpocket No. 2 came back and handed me my wallet.
This time, a woman in front of me in a crowd on the corner just backed into me. She barely brushed me, then turned around, smiled and said, “Excusez-moi” and walked away. With my wallet. I have no idea how, but I’m guessing an accomplice made the lift. And I have to say, “Well done.” If you’re going to be a thief, you should at least be good at it.
Dumb on so many levels …
The funny thing is, I noticed the well-dressed, well-coiffed woman was waving at Ferrari going by, one of the 430s they have on every street corner along the Champs-Élysée offering rides to tourists. That she was waving to someone she didn’t know struck me as really weird. Yet I didn’t respond. My first mistake.
In the long run, it wasn’t the end of the world. I lost some easily blockable credit and debit cards, but I was carrying my Dutch ID. We went down to the police station and filed a report that I can show to Dutch immigration to apply for a replacement.
But the fundamental mistake I made was one of vanity.
Daughter Lale, left, and wife Cheryl did get to take a selfie in the police station.
I’d been wearing my Victorinox travel jacket and vest all week, gear designed with secure internal pockets I can zip closed. But it was colder, so I decided to switch out and wear a luxury brand down puffer jacket with open pockets Dumb. Dumb. Dumb on so many levels, including the fact that I might as well had a sign around my neck that said, “Clueless, affluent traveler. Rob me, please.”
Also, I’d gotten complacent. Years of wars and misadventure had trained me to be constantly vigilant. I prided myself on knowing exactly who was in my immediate environment and the threat level they posed based on the way they moved, acted and dressed, from their watches to their shoes. But it’s been too long since I had to rely on my wits to survive.
Here’s how you can avoid what happened to me.
• Dress for success. When you’re going to someplace such as Paris, which is Pickpocket Paradise, chose apparel with secure pockets. This sounds so simple, but we like to dress up. Take my advice … dress down. Look unremarkable. Try to blend in.
• Avoid crowds. Again, this is obvious, but a challenge in real life. The Champs-Élysées is now just a tourist trap, a string of mass-market stores, mass-market tourist restaurants and masses of people moving up and down the streets. Not really appealing these days. Unless of course you’re pickpocket. Instead, go to Passy, which has a chic sheen, but far fewer tourists. We were just walking through on our way to the area around the Arc de Triompe. We should have taken the metro.
• Avoid certain areas. The Gare du Nord is, after living in the structured Netherlands, a madhouse. Crowds of people frantically racing through an outdated station to trains and subways. If I were a pickpocket, that’s where I’d hang out. Every city in Europe has these danger zones. Would it kill you to do a little research?
• Never carry anything vital on a day out. NO passport. NO host country ID if you’re an expat. No cash. No hard-to-cancel bank cards. Almost everything they steal, from phones to IDs, pickpockets can convert to cash on the black market.
• If you lose an ID, go immediately to the police. The policewoman in the substation literally across the street from where I was robbed was helpful and efficient, and I got a document I can now give to Dutch IND officials here to get a replacement long term visa card. She also had software that could translate a complicated police report to English from French. Smart!
• Get yourself organized. My wife and co-CEO Cheryl is a lot more organized than I am. She has all the information recorded for all her bank cards. I had no clear idea which cards I was carrying, which meant we had to take out time to cancel everything.
• Don’t be vulnerable. If you’re alone, older, younger or smaller, you’re more of a target. In the day, I looked like a guy who’d hurt you, and I would. Now, I’m just another white-haired senior and I am a step slower, with slower reaction and processing times. Which, sadly, means I have to think more about what I’m doing and plan for trouble. And what I’m going to do about it when trouble comes.
On the whole, the worst part of getting robbed was the sense of violation. And it made me realize I’m not who I used to be or thought I still was. It was a painful reality check. But now I’ll go back to being more vigilant and NOT a lazy traveler.
Still, it wasn’t the worst Thursday I’d ever had, and dwelling on a mishap is not the way to spend time off. We went to the movies and forgot about what was a few minutes out of an otherwise perfect day. In the end, I got robbed. Got sick. And it was still one of the best trips to Paris ever.
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