A pickpocketing experience

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Beware, Rome is not a safe place for a non-observant person. Pickpocketers are smart, but one always has to outsmart them by paying attention all around him all the time, and HIDE YOUR WALLET somewhere other than a normal place that unregistered people couldn't reach for it!

Today was a nice Sunday, and I decided to check out the famous Roman Flea Market suggested by my Italian book, at the Porta Portese. This flea market is the biggest in Rome, and only happening every Sundays. Porta Portese is located across the Tiber from via Marmorata in Testaccio.

I was such in a good mood, hoping to find some goodies at the market. As a pack rat that wouldn't pass an opportunity to check out neat stuff (especially in Rome! Who knows what would you get?), I decided to go by myself, since the rest of the gang was not interested in a crowded common place for finding things that one would consider as junk.


Porta Portese flea market: that damn little girl has my wallet!

Porta Portese was a very crowded place, consisted of locals selling stuff and tourists walking around, and as the rest of Italy, such thing as "personal bubble" didn't exist. The flea market was interesting, I wanted to get some vintage Italian t-shirts, which were sold in clothing piles all over the place, among stacks of antiques, leather goods, shoes, pottery, and many others. I was busy scavenging many piles of clothing, going from one seller to the other, while many people walking by all around, doing the same thing as I was.

After my professor Pia's incident with her bag snatcher before our field trip last month and Jeff had lost his wallet on a bus two weeks prior today, I especially paid more attention on my surrounding, having my sixth sense lit up that ended up saving me today. Trying to protect myself from pickpocketers, I put my wallet on my right pocket of my short, and my digital camera on my left side, thinking that I was going to check my wallet so often, and the digital camera on my left is so bulky and heavier, and I would notice it right away if someone tried to steal it.

Trying to squeeze through the crowd and making my way to the rest of the market, all of the sudden someone grabbed my right wrist and lifted it up. I took it by surprise and turned around, just to find out that a little girl, about eight years old, looking innocently at my hand. She looked like a gypsy, and as soon as I said "Scusi!" and pulled my hand, she let my wrist go and turned around. Sensing something wrong with her action, I automatically tap my right pocket to check my wallet, and it was gone!!!. Panic started to rush in, and I was running after that little girl, now started to run away. Fortunately I am a runner and with many people around, I managed to catch her, grabbed her hand, and saw that she had my wallet in her hand! I was shaking from head to toe, I was so mad that I could feel blood to rush in my head, my heart beated so fast. I was grabbing her wrist and all I could think and say was "You bitch!!! Fuck!!!". No more Italian language and no more a gentleman manner, I was thinking I should punch her square in the nose, find a police and hand this little prat who stole my wallet over. Before I even do any of those, I realized that by now, many gypsy men started to surround me and the little girl, and my instinct was to let her go before they attacked me.

So I let her go, and turned around and walked fast with my wallet. It was the most important thing at the moment, consists of my credit card, debit card, US driver's license, some Euros and US dollars, and a Metro pass. Just like that, the mood of scavenging the place was over, and I decided to back home, still extremely mad and shaking.

For the rest of my time today, I was clunching my wallet and never let it go. I guess I learned my lesson today.

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