My pick-pocket story in Nice

I’m sorry to hear you experienced this. I had my wallet picked on an RER train Paris years ago. The key thing for people to take away is to never let your guard down.

I’m sorry this happened. Thanks for sharing your experience.

The key thing for people to take away is to never let your guard down.

True, but it is impossible to keep your guard up 100 percent of the time. You are most vulnerable in crowded spots, entry/exit to trams, buses, subway cars...and doubly exposed when jet lagged and carrying your luggage, especially at the airport or when departing the airport via mass transit after arrival. Hint: take a taxi...

Best way I have found to protect valuables on your person: Neck wallet, worn under the shirt. Or an under the shirt / inside the pants waist wallet if you prefer.

Just back from Paris, and I watched people struggling with bags in the Metro, hands full, distracted, and quite vulnerable. I am in my mid 60s and am a hardy type, but I cringed seeing people older than me struggle in the Paris Metro with luggage up and down stairs. Nuts...I also saw Amercan men, middle aged, carrying their wallets in their pants hip pocket. Good grief...

Hi Jeanie, my daughter had the same thing happen to her last September on the Rome metro. Fortunately, she followed my practice of always wearing a money belt, so the woman blocking the door on the metro didn’t get anything. A local yelled at her, and she exited at the next stop.

I’m glad the rest of your trip was wonderful!

Sorry to hear that happened to you and thank you for sharing your story. The pros seem to thrive on public transit in the major tourist centers of Europe (especially in summer), working as a team.

Being alert is not enough, you have to be pickpocket proof. That means not having a wallet where it can be taken -- a pocket, a backpack or a carelessly carried purse. Glad you got the wallet and cards back; real pros would have 20K on that. card before you noticed it was missing. Mid range pros just go for the money.

Being alert is not enough, you have to be pickpocket proof.

Precisely. The "cross body bags" favored by many on this forum are not pickpocket or theft proof. They are fine for non valuables, but not for passports, credit cards, money.

I love the zipper clips on my Travelon crossbody bag.
4 years ago they slowed down the picketpocket in the Paris metro station long enough for me to notice his fingers on my bag and scare him off.

Inconvenient for you, but having zippers and pockets secured by safety pins in crowded situations would also slow down pickpockets.

Jeanie, thanks for your post. I appreciate your describing your situation, particularly the distraction part, so that others can be aware. I go with Janet's suggestion of trying to be pickpocket proof which allows me to continue with my travels in a relaxed manner. I don't have experience at home with public transit and sometimes it takes stories like this to raise my awareness so I could ID this situation for what it is if it happened to me.

I have been picked on the Paris Metro - all they got was my toiletry pouch so had to buy new nail clippers and hand cream, lol - and actually felt no one around me at any time.

My first RS guide, Trina, showed us all what she did with her cross body bag when on public transit or in a crowd and that was to put her hand around the zipper and strap. She taught me well....when I followed her advice, lol!!

I'll add that I think it's important to talk about pickpockets. I am nearly 100% sure there are no pickpockets in Coeur d'Alene Idaho. Opportunistic thieves? Yes. Pickpockets moving thru a crowd? No. I'm not paranoid. I'm not fearful. I do want to be an informed traveler.

I wanted to share my experience so that it may raise awareness for others. When in Rome 4 years ago we were at the Trevi fountain. It was nighttime and some guy was harassing me trying to give me roses. I ended up throwing them at him as another guy was repeatedly bumping into me. I had my crossbody travel purse clutched tight. I hated to be so "aggressive" but he wouldn't leave me alone. A definite distraction but they got nothing.

Years ago my traveling mate was pick pocketed in Barcelona. Lost everything, passport, credit cad and money(yes, she should not had passport with her). Reading the stories I though how thoughtful the thieves had become to leave the wallets behind! Just your money please!

Again, sorry for your bad experience.
I have traveled a lot, to 81 foreign countries and the worst pickpocket countries are Italy, France, Spain as well as some Latin American countries. In big cities in the USA the main threat is from being mugged, not pickpocketing.

Some places are very safe, for example Japan.

My ex-wife was a victim in Madrid, due to some very slick operators that distracted our group. Fortunately, I had insisted prior to leaving the hotel (our first night in Madrid), to put our passports and airline tickets (this was in 1983) in the hotel safe.

We have had traveling companions that became victims. One middle aged lady had her purse snatched from her (injuring her) while riding a motor scooter. Another, teen had her camera stolen from her zippered backpack in the subway in Rome.

I had some friends in the 80s that were traveling in Italy by train and had a first class sleeper compartment and somehow someone entered while they were sleeping and stole jewelry that was on a counter.

While traveling in some countries, I never carry my wallet in my rear pocket. Usually, I have a money belt or use a neck wallet and only keep a small amount of cash or one credit card in my front right pocket.

mango.tree, i am sort of with you.
But if I loose everything at home it results in one set of circumstances, while if I loose everything abroad it results in another set of circumstances.

Still, I am not going through life with a neck wallet. These are crimes of opportunity and if the odds of being hit are 1 in 1000 then you can change that to 1 in 10,000 other ways. Front pockets is a good start. Keeping your hand in said front pocket in crowds is another. Cross body bags, sure, but then you have to be sure it has a complicated catch keeping it closed because the cross body bag is an advertisment: here is my precious stuff. But thats fine if they cant get in it easier than the back pocket of the guy standing next to you.

Avoiding any group of people in which one of the people in the group is a young lady in a long ethnic skirt helps too, as does staying sober. I have been hit once out of 700 or 800 days in Europe (unsucsessfully) and that was in France (imagine that). I have only known one person who was a victim and that was on a tram in Vienna. The young woman in the long ethnic skirt again. He got it back. Oh, and I sat on a bench by the Eiffel Tower once, with two French police officers standing next to me and together we watched the young ladies in the long ethnic skirts picking pockets. One walked past us, taking cash out of a wallet before tossing the wallet in the bushes next to us. The police just smiled. Vive la France!

I know one lady that has a bad habbit of leaving her purse in bars all over Europe (back to staying sober). So far, always gotten it back. I have a bad habit of leaving my cell phone on the bar. Got approached and warned by a "working lady" in Bucharest that it probably wasnt a good idea there; then she walked away .... changed my habit on that trip (again, staying sober helped).

I may have been the victim of a pickpocket in 1979 in D.C. Not sure (that was before I learned "stay sober").

Not having any bags with "clip locks," I found the Travelon ones to see what that looks like. It appears to be a simple lobster claw device that's easily opened. If there really is a lock of some kind, please correct me. I own no bags with any kind of lobster claw clips. I've even them "fixed" on some bags so that the straps are sewn on. To me, if a pickpocket can open a zipper without you feeling it, they can easily open a lobster claw. My point is that even if yours were shut, a talented pickpocket might have been able to get inside your bags.

This is probably overkill for some people, but I use split key rings of different sizes to lock my zippers on my bags. They are much more difficult to open for anyone, including me. You can get them in lots of different types and sizes. This is just one example.

Somewhat easier to open than split key rings but harder to open than lobster claws are small carabiners. You have to unscrew them. I have some similar to these.

I try to consistently use one or both of these devices on my trips. In Stockholm I discovered evidence of one pickpocket attempt on a zippered pocket without them. I guess they didn’t want my lip balm or tissues. In Italy I discovered a pickpocket attempt on a main bag zipper where I hadn't secured the one I did have there. That was a close call and my fault for paying too much attention to the pizza take away I was choosing and not enough to the hinky young woman behind me.

To me another operative word in this story is "wallet." I don't even use a wallet at home, much less in Europe. I think if people went through their wallets before they left home, they'd realize that they don't need many of the cards that they normally carry at home for their journey, thereby not needing a wallet at all.

The main lesson I learned on my 1st trip to Europe in 1977-78 was to not put all my traveler's checks in one place. To me putting all the important stuff in a wallet makes a person more vulnerable to significant loss than spreading things around.

One thing I duplicate and spread around is my emergency information. It includes my name, my mobile number, my husband's mobile number and the mobile numbers of 3 other emergency contacts. It has a list of my medical conditions, doctors and medications. And it has a list of all my abnormal results from my latest bloodwork.

I created it several years ago and update it as needed. It's about 3"x7" so I can get more than one on an 8.5x11 page. I print enough that I can cut them out, fold them and carry them in a variety of places. Those places when I'm traveling include a zipped pants pocket, my cross-body purse, my money belt, my personal item and my 2-wheeled carry-on. I put copies of the emergency info from my travel insurance in those same locations.

Why all the redundency? Because I travel solo and am alone most of the time. If something renders me unconscious, I hope anyone who helps will be able to find that emergency info on or with me somewhere.

Lo:
I do the same as you with all my emergency and contact info.
I’m usually solo.
Some people think it’s overkill…I just think it makes me a smarter traveler.

Thanks SJ.

I didn’t mention that I also put that emergency info in my phone case and do something similar at home. I've always done something like this, even when I was younger and had no health issues.

It's all my parents' fault. As soon as I could talk, they had me memorize their names, our address and our phone number in case something happened. That was before something did happen.

I don't remember much about it, but one time I left the house and headed to the grocery store. My excuse was that I wanted to "get candy for the kids." I knew the way because my mother and I walked the same route almost every day to the two closest grocery stores which were 2-3 blocks away. This was in the late 1940's and both were owned and operated by Chinese people, somewhat unusual for the west side of San Antonio.

I think I was a bit of a wanderer almost as soon as I could walk well. I had to cross a vacant lot and my folks caught up with me there. I don’t remember ever having to use the info my parents made me memorize, but at least I was prepared. The wisdom of that apparently stuck.

One thing I duplicate and spread around is my emergency information.
It includes my name, my mobile number, my husband's mobile number and
the mobile numbers of 3 other emergency contacts. It has a list of my
medical conditions, doctors and medications. And it has a list of all
my abnormal results from my latest bloodwork.

I do the same thing and I put it all in a folder in the cloud and I have a dog tag with a VR code on it that links to that folder. Loose my phone, I just need to find any phone to read the VR code and open the file. Also convenient if they find my body on a sidewalk someplace.

Thank you Jeanie for sharing your experience. Good topic and I learned a few different tactics to add to my travel toolbox.

@ Lo. Thank you for many tips that you've suggested and will add them to our travel repertoire. I've resisted carrying a purse, no matter what kind. So far have been fortunate (knock on wood). I preach this to my husband and sometimes he listens. Occasionally I'll use a backpack just to carry replaceable items, e.g., jacket and minor things.

I only take what Euro cash I feel I need I need for the day and keep it in my front pocket. I tried the RS style waist belt on a couple trips but just never really took to it. It seemed like such a production to take it out of my pants and then take whatever cards or cash I needed out of it, often trying to do it in a secretive alcove along the street or behind a tree in a park. I still use a daypack for non-document/money items. I appreciate what Mango Tree said about making the world seem too sinister.

it is impossible to keep your guard up 100 percent of the time.

I strongly disagree. Being aware of your surroundings is the number one safeguard and doesn't mean having to be paranoid, using hidden wallets underneath you clothing, or other silly methods. It is only anecdotal, but I never do these things, and have never been pick-pocketed or scammed while traveling.