Find yourself covered in slime? You're being mugged. • Hacker News Board

Re: Find yourself covered in slime? You're being mugged.

#41

Post by limedaring » Fri, Feb 25, 2011, 9:57 AM UTC

drinian wrote: post #32

alecco wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like this kind of stuff would never happen in NYC, LA, Detroit, Baltimore...

I live in Baltimore. If someone wants your money here, they'll hurt you to get it. For whatever reason, people seem less inclined to use violence outside the US.

When I was in a puddle of misery after the backpack was gone, a lot of locals clustered around us to find out why I was crying (these ones, at least, were sincere). A few of them mentioned that I was lucky not to stabbed — apparently thieves will come up behind someone, stab them with a small knife, and run off as the person collapses. So it didn't happen to us, but apparently violence is used as well.

Re: Find yourself covered in slime? You're being mugged.

#42

Post by limedaring » Fri, Feb 25, 2011, 10:02 AM UTC

andrewingram wrote: post #6

When I was in Rome, a couple of youths tried the old trap-the-target-in-the-ticket-barriers trick on a friend of mine. Luckily another guy I was with realised what was happening, shouted "watched out" and the two guys scarpered after giving us a cheeky shrug.

I wish I knew about the brown goo trick before we went abroad — I would have been a lot more wary and alert. Thanks for the tip about the ticket barrier, I'll watch out for that as well.

Re: Find yourself covered in slime? You're being mugged.

#43

Post by limedaring » Fri, Feb 25, 2011, 10:04 AM UTC

focusaurus wrote: post #38

This sucks. The part I can't stand is that these seem to be ongoing, easily trackable/predictable crimes. I wonder if travelers would contribute to a kickstarter project to post a few people at a smaller but high-risk train station and see if it's the same small group of bandits operating repeatedly and assist the police in identifying them so they can be aprehended. Do one case study first and hopefully learn some l…

Sounds great, except the impression I got from the police was that they didn't care — we were stupid tourists (well, yeah, but still). They were literally around the corner, but no police at the station (1pm on a weekday) and they gave us the paperwork to fill out for the police report but never actually looked me in the eye. I really don't think they'd care enough to actually stop the crime, unless it started targeting locals.

Re: Find yourself covered in slime? You're being mugged.

#44

Post by limedaring » Fri, Feb 25, 2011, 10:04 AM UTC

MikeMakesIt wrote: post #36

foobarbazetc wrote: post #33

Do Americans usually travel without travel insurance?

The silly ones do

Indeed. Lesson learned. :|

Re: Find yourself covered in slime? You're being mugged.

#45

Post by khafra » Fri, Feb 25, 2011, 3:55 PM UTC

Interesting corollary: If you see someone covered in slime, do not point it out, and especially do not offer to help; you might be mistaken for a thief.