Pickpockets in Copenhagen: Gadling blogger’s victim story. Part 2. Was it Romanians?

by Jamie Rhein on

I can still see the pocket of my daypack gaping open right before I got that panicked, sinking feeling. It was a feeling that I couldn’t quite believe I was having. Up to that point, my trip to Denmark though Amsterdam had happened without a hitch, and I had yet to do the shopping I had planned.

The afternoon that had started out promising had the potential to turn out lousy. (see previous pickpocket post)

My experience of having my wallet lifted right out of a pocket of my daypack is not uncommon, as I have since found out. On Wednesday, the day after I returned to the U.S. with less money than I counted on having–thus way less shopping, my Danish friend emailed me with recent news about pickpockets in Denmark.

She heard on the television news that over the last three weeks, the police have arrested 61 Romanian pickpockets in Copenhagen. My friend wrote that the increase of pickpocketing is due to the Christmas season.

While I was looking for a link to an article on this particular news item, I found several others. While browsing these stories, I’ve discovered a couple of details to pass on to folks heading to Copenhagen. They can be also be applied to any major city such as Amsterdam where Whistling in the Dark’s photo was taken.

There are hot spots in Copenhagen where diligence could save you from becoming a victim. Copenhagen Central Station, Strøget, a pedestrian walking street, and a McDonald’s near the entrance of Tivoli Gardens were places people have been robbed. Other travel warning sites said to be on the lookout on any pedestrian street. Copenhagen has several.

I was in the Tiger store nearest Norreport Station when I noticed the wallet missing. Norreport has 90,000 people passing through each day, so you can imagine how many people from there must head to the walking street where Tiger is located. The store was quite crowded on the first floor, and I was jostled more than once. Because I was shopping, I wasn’t focused on my bag.

The fact that I didn’t notice my wallet gone until I went to pay for my merchandise is not an uncommon story. Read Virtual Tourist, and Epinions.com for details of some of the other tales of woe. There is also a warning about pickpockets in Copenhagen at Worldworx.

In my sleuthing, I also found this snippet in the Copenhagen Post from this past August. The brief blurb mentions 700 Romanian pickpockets who are currently operating in Copenhagen.

Except, if my friend is correct, subtract 61 from that number. Although, the total could have increased in the last few months, so perhaps you should add a few.. The pickpocket problem, according the article, has been exacerbated because of open borders due to the EU free movement regulations.

Reading these details does help me feel a bit better. I should have been more careful, but at least I have company.

When I traveled through Amsterdam last week at the beginning of my trip, I had pickpockets in mind. Thus, my credit card, traveler’s checks, cash, and passport were hidden away in a pouch around my neck. The pouch was under my shirt and under my jacket–a bit cumbersome but effective.

By the last day in Denmark, I had my money and my credit card back in my wallet. Stupid move. My driver’s license and passport were in another location in the main section of my day pack, along with my one remaining $20 traveler’s check.

My what could have been a lousy day was saved by the Danish police who helped me stop my VISA card with absolutely no hassle, and by my generous friend who gave me money so that the good times could continue.

United Nations report: Balkans the safest region in Europe

by Jeffrey White on


When I arrived in Montenegro three months ago, one of the things that struck me first was how safe things felt.

What was I expecting?

Well, not a lot of armed thugs or anything. But I’d traveled enough in the former communist corners of Europe — including past trips into the Balkans — to notice a slightly different atmosphere than you feel in more staid places like the Netherlands or Germany. There isn’t the sense of order you find in those places, and that absence piques your alertness. It’s not that you are in danger at all, but you are certainly a little more aware of your surroundings.

Before coming to Montenegro, I’d last been in the Balkans — specifically Croatia and Bosnia — four years before. These recent months of traveling in the region has had a decidedly different feel — Albania being a noteworthy exception.

Turns out that the United Nations is feeling pretty bullish on the Balkans as well.

The UN released a surprising report yesterday that called the Balkans perhaps Europe’s safest region, saying countries like Montenegro, Serbia and Bosnia boast lower numbers of murders, rapes and petty crime than western Europe.

“The Balkans is departing from an era when demagogues, secret police and thugs profited from sanctions-busting and the smuggling of people, arms, cigarettes and drugs,” the report said.

The report surveyed nine countries: Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Albania, Moldova, Bulgaria and Romania.

The report still notes the pervasiveness of corruption and organized crime activities, however.

Of course, a fair question to ask about this report in general is: Compared to what?

After all, the UN notes — in a major nod to the obvious, it seems to me — that regular crimes, including homicides and rapes, “across the region are by far lower than they used to be, particularly in the beginning of the 1990s.” Well duh. At the beginning of the 1990s, didn’t you have widespread instability and lawlessness in places like Romania, Bulgaria and Albania as they emerged out of communism? Didn’t you have a regional war that engulfed Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro in an orgy of killing and destruction that lasted nearly five years?

To compare crime rates in some of these countries now to a time when crime was the only thing that counted doesn’t seem to say much. It would have been more useful for the UN to note how things have changed in, say, the last five years.

Death of an anachronism: Horse carts banned from Romanian roadways

by Neil Woodburn on

There is nothing more bucolic when traveling in far off lands than to share the roadway with a horse and cart. When I first came across this scene somewhere in Romania in the early 1990s, it was as though I had traveled back in time. I had no idea that people in Europe still traveled in such a style in the 20th century.

Truth be told, they still do today–but at least not in Romania anymore. A new law prohibits horses and carts from the country’s main arteries. The reason is that they are responsible for 10% of the nation’s auto accidents.

I witnessed this firsthand when I was hitchhiking through Romania in 1991. A Hungarian family that picked me up had hit a horse just a few miles earlier. They would hit another one a week later when leaving the country.

The problem with the new law, however, is that the horse and cart are still a primary form of transport for the country folk who live outside of the larger cities. In fact, for many Romanians it’s their only form of transport. That explains why there are 740,000 horse carts registered in Romania according to a recent BBC article.

While such a law will certainly decrease the amount of accidents on the road, it’s going to make life a whole lot harder for the struggling populace. And, more selfishly from a travel perspective, I will be sad to see the anachronistic horse-cart-and-Mercedes spectacle disappear from the roadways of Romania.

Related: My Bloody Romania

(Photo by cashewnuts via Flickr)

Indie travel guides – pipe dream or way of the future?

by Leif Pettersen on

With all due respect to my generous client Lonely Planet, without whom I’d still be an obscure, broke, moonshine junkie in a forlorn corner of Romania, guidebook authors wallowing below the Sushi Line are increasingly probing new “Screw the Man” applications for their hard-won expertise – namely their very own online travel guides.

There’s certainly something to be said for a trusted brand name guidebook, but equally independently produced, digital travel guides allow authors to toss in all kinds of wacky content in addition to the usual sights/eating/sleeping content, uncorrupted by editors, guidelines, house styles and meddling lawyers.

A 2,000 word, absurdly detailed walking guide to Tijuana? Why not? A sidebar entitled “Top Ten Curse Words You Should Know Before Attending an Italian Football (Soccer) Match”? Bring it on! Why [insert your least favorite German city] sucks? I’m all ears.

This developing genre was recently augmented by the completion of Robert Reid’s online guide to Vietnam. As Reid rightly points out, the advantages of an independent online travel guide are numerous:

• It’s free – Guidebooks cost $25. Why pay?
• It’s fresher. Unlike a guidebook, turn-around time is immediate.
• You can customize it. The most common complaint guidebook users have is having to tote around 400 pages they’ll never use.
• It’s more direct, personalized. With my site I can ‘tell it like it is’.
• Anyone can talk with the author. [Just] hit ‘contact’.

In addition to this excellent resource, other free sites serving the online travel community include Croatia Traveller, Kabul Caravan, Turkey Travel Planner, Broke-Ass Stewart’s Guide to Living Cheaply in San Francisco, and (cough), the Romania and Moldova Travel Guide (now with extra moonshine).

For the time being, these independent travel guides are usually not money-making ventures (and boy do they take a lot of time to put together!), thus the current scarcity. However, as print media gasps to its inevitable conclusion – one decade, mark my words – the online stage is set for authors to leverage their expertise and provide autonomous, interactive, up-to-the-minute travel information for anyone with an internet connection.

Talking Travel with Eric Nuzum, Author of The Dead Travel Fast

by Kelly Amabile on

I’ve never watched a horror movie from start to finish and I’m not a fan of haunted houses. Needless to say, I didn’t have high hopes that I would make it through Eric Nuzum’s new book about stalking vampires. But the title intrigued me enough to start it, and then, well — when a book begins with someone attempting to drink their own blood, you just can’t help but get sucked in.

For Nuzum, it all started over breakfast one day when he noticed several vampire references pop up during the course of his morning meal. His curiosity at the ubiquity of vampires eventually grew into an all-out quest to discover what makes these fanged bloodsuckers so darn popular. The results of his research are gathered in The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula, an intelligent and thoroughly entertaining look at the world’s fascination with these mysterious creatures.

Tracking the history of vampires took Eric from his home in D.C. to a handful of U.S. cities, as well Romania and England. Along the way he made friends with a countess, spent time in a coffin, almost lost his lunch on a road trip through Transylvania, conducted crucial investigative research at the Las Vegas topless revue Bite, and watched a ton of horrible vampire movies (216 out of a possible 605 films that exist.)
Nuzum is a fantastic storyteller — his chapter about the Dractour he took in Romania is a hilarious travel memoir all by itself. But the entire book (a historical hybrid of cultural insight, quirky facts and useless trivia) is worth a read, even if vampires are not your thing. After reading this book, you may discover that in fact, they are.

Earlier this week Eric took the time to answer questions about his new book and the places he visited during his vampire-hunting expeditions. Here’s what he had to say:

You explain in the book why you embarked on this vampire quest, but what about the title – How and when did you come up with it?

“The Dead Travel Fast” is a line from a Gottfried August Burger poem called “Lenore” that’s quoted in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In the opening scenes of the novel, Jonathan Harker is traveling from England to meet Count Dracula. Once he arrives in Transylvania, just about everyone he encounters tries to talk him out of going, but he doesn’t listen. One of the locals utters the phrase in response to hearing about Harker’s headstrong journey. The translation Stoker used is a bit sloppy, with most translations of the poem using the phrase “the dead ride quick” instead.

In your travels from D.C. to the “ass end of Europe” in search of vampires, did you meet other folks who actually attempted to drink their own blood?

Their own? No, I seem to be the only dummy willing to admit trying that. Now, I am sure that many of the vampire-curious have sampled their own blood before possibly graduating on to the blood of others, but no one was stupid enough to admit that publicly. Except me, of course.

(Supposed) vampires congregate in some pretty bizarre locations. Any clue why many of them seem to prefer meeting at restaurant chains like Jillian’s and Ruby Tuesdays?

Not really. I think that whether they like to admit it or not, most people (vampires and otherwise) go to lousy chain restaurants.

So what is it with all these Dracula and Goth tours that combine fact and fiction? And why do folks love them so much, regardless of whether or not they know they are being told false information?

Because often times the fictitious version of history is much more appealing than the truth. It’s hard to blame the tourists, though, they are on vacation for crying out loud. They want something exciting. When they go to Transylvania, they want to see Dracula’s castle. Now, the fact that none of Vlad Dracula’s castles still exist (other than in ruins–and all the Stoker-invented castles are fictional) doesn’t stop them. They just find existing castles along major highways and say, “Hey tourists, look here, it is ‘Dracula’s Castle.'” Seriously, that is what happens.

What is your take on the tourism component of this global vampire phenomenon and the “tourist trap” aspect of it?

The people who are the most perplexed by the vampire tourism industry are the residents of Romania (Dracula’s Transylvania is now part of modern-day Romania). They know Dracula as Vlad Dracula, the 15th century tyrant who maintained control by impaling just about anyone who crossed his path. The notion that he was a vampire, or that the name Dracula would be associated with vampirism, was a completely unknown concept to Romanians until Communism ended there in 1989. The novel Dracula wasn’t even translated into Romanian until a few years ago. While stories of vampires are very common to Romanians, Dracula is simply something that is used to sell trinkets to tourists.

You describe both the Borgo Pass in Romania (shown at left) and the town of Whitby, England as idyllic places, although neither sounds that easy to reach. Should non-vampire enthusiasts make the trek for the scenery and landscape? Or are these strictly must-see spots for gothic travelers?

Hmmm. Whitby, definitely. Borgo Pass, maybe. While their descriptions in Dracula would lead you to think that they were both dark, foreboding places, in reality they are both quite the opposite. Whitby has a substantial tourist industry on its own, its (relatively) easy to go there, and there’s a lot to do. The Borgo Pass, however, is pretty remote. Outside of a Dracula-themed trip, there isn’t a whole lot to draw you there. Therefore, I’d hesitate to call it “must see.”

Some travelers draw inspiration from Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Open Road” in Leaves of Grass. Should we be creeped out that Bram Stoker drew similar inspiration from Whitman for his classic Dracula tale?

Many are shocked to learn of the Stoker/Whitman connection. Stoker was acquainted with many famous literary figures of his day: Oscar Wilde (who was Stoker’s rival suitor for his wife’s hand), Mark Twain, Arthur Conan Doyle, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the widow of Charles Dickens. It wasn’t because Stoker was considered a great writer, but Stoker’s boss–the famous actor Henry Irving–was quite popular and attracted these people as friends.

Whitman was special, though. Stoker was obsessed
with Whitman going back to his days at Trinity College. Through his Irving connections, Stoker met with Whitman twice. You see lots of Whitman-esque ideas throughout Dracula, especially when a group of men band together in order to battle against their common enemy. Even weirder, if you look at Stoker’s description of Count Dracula, he looks like a hybrid of Henry Irving and Walt Whitman. Stoker imagined Count Dracula as the perfect man. When he was looking for models in his own life for that perfection, he thought of those two guys.

(Note: There’s plenty more about Whitman, Irving, Stoker and Count Dracula in Nuzum’s book.)


In the book, you refer to an American boy in vampire getup who “…could have performed his routine in front of people in Rome, Stockholm, Kinshasa, Moscow or Tokyo.” What are your thoughts on the universality of the vampire persona?

Just that. You can show a picture of a character wearing fangs, slicked back hair, and a large cape to just about anyone, anywhere, and they’ll know it is a vampire. Very few fictional characters have achieved that kind of cultural ubiquity.

Your vampire travels end with a visit to The Darkwing Manor in Oregon (shown below). Would you recommend it as a destination for die-hard Halloween lovers? And did you visit any other spectacular home haunts or freakish places during your travels?


Darkwing Manor is amazing. It is a couple I met on my tour of Romania who turn their home and property into a vampire-themed haunted house. It is bigger and better than most commercial haunted houses! Plus, you get a chance to explore the Rogue Valley area of Oregon, which is reason itself to travel to the area. Outside of when I am writing books, I general try to avoid freakish places. I don’t want to become a victim of whatever makes them freakish.

How many of the 216 vampire movies that you watched were viewed while traveling to and from your research-related trips?

Traveling to so many spots for research (Romania, Oregon, Los Angeles, New York, London), I spent a lot of time on planes. Therefore, I’d try to watch vampires movies for “research” during the flights. It didn’t work out so well. The problem was that after the first dozen or two movies they become very repetitive and boring. As a result, I ended up falling asleep on plane rides.

Beyond Europe and America, where else would you have gone in your search for truth about vampires?

You can find vampires anywhere–from darkened parks to foreign countries to chain restaurants to someone crossing their fingers to keep someone away. All you have to do is look.

All photos courtesy of Eric Nuzum. Check out additional vampire photos from Eric’s travels, read an excerpt from the book and learn more at The Dead Travel Fast. Eric will be appearing at Politics and Prose in DC this evening.