Vienna Warning or Danger Tips by TheWanderingCamel

We all know we need to be on the alert for bag snatchers and pickpockets in crowded places in cities everywhere. What is perhaps not quite so easy to assess is that you can be set up as a victim without really realising it, as we were on a vitually empty U-bahn station. It was only my middle-aged impatience with a seemingly ill-mannered and dithering young girl that saved the day.

It was a very neat little operation. Two of us on the platform, no one else close by. The train pulled in, I stepped forward, my friend a step behind. A young girl slipped in front of me and stepped into the train first, then stopped just a few steps in from the door, apparently looking at the map over the door, blocking us from moving forward. Annoyed at her lack of manners as much as anything else and impatient with her, I pushed past her after a few seconds, sat down and was joined by my friend, who then told me how three other girls had crowded her, making it difficult for her to move forward. My moving forward had cleared the way for her to move, but not before she felt something on her bag. The girls moved to seats down the train and were joined by the girl who had stepped on first. They all got off together at the next stop, no doubt hoping to set up someone else in the same way. There's no doubt in my mind that, had I not moved as I did, my friend's bag would have been snatched and the girls would have been off the train just as the doors closed, ready to play the same trick again as soon as their friend joined them.

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