I learn that I’ve become an easy target

Buondì.

I would hate to put anyone off coming to Italy, even at this time of the year, when it’s cold and grey.

The shops are pretty, too, so Roomie and I paused on the way back from her daycare to look in the windows in Bologna’s Via Farini. One shop had a huge, blue Christmas tree, entirely build of lego bricks, the children’s construction toy. Another had life-like polar bears, posing in a snowy display, perhaps a papà bear and his cub, like us. We were entranced at the lights, the displays, and the people everywhere.

After Via Farini, we wandered through the ‘French market’. I lifted her up to see where the wonderful smells were coming from. I was feeling so festive, it crossed my mind to stop for a glass of mulled wine. Roomie doesn’t drink wine, so I could have had hers, too.

But instead we headed for the maze of old streets where the fishmongers and cheeseshops draw crowds, and stopped to buy a kilo of cheap beef for a ragù I was thinking of making for dinner.

Finally to the bus stop, in Via Rizzoli, which was packed. Clearly there hadn’t been any buses along for a while, as the crowd was dense and heaving, not fun to navigate with a stroller.

And then four or five buses arrived all together! Ours was the third, so we had to run, weaving between the people. But the bus was already so full that there was no way we’d have got on, so we ran again to the fifth bus in the line, which luckily was also going our way.

I’m a foreigner, wearing a thick, down-filled, winter coat, with a hood that reduces my spatial awareness even when it’s only hanging behind my head.

I’m trying to lift a pushchair, containing fifteen restless kilos, up on to a bus, through a crowd of people who are searching for something to hold on to when the bus moves off, and into the niche reserved for mums and their charges.

It’s not easy, and needs both hands, so for that few seconds I leave my phone in one coat pocket, and the wallet I’ll need to pay for my ticket in the other.

Someone is trying to push pass me, quite rudely, and then does manage to get past, into the space reserved for hapless parents. In an instance, he changes his mind, pushes past me again, and is off, out of the door of the bus, and away down the street. Odd, I thought.

I’m totally unaware I’ve been robbed, until other passengers start asking “Did he get your phone?” They’d all seen it happening, though it wasn’t the phone (thank goodness) but my wallet, containing a hundred euros, three bank cards, and all the usual documents: identify card, driving licence, health insurance card, and so on. All the things that make daily life possible.

Having checked my pocket, for a moment I considered jumping off the bus, which hadn’t yet started to move. I took a couple of steps towards the exit, then looked back at the stroller and its occupant. Giving chase wasn’t a realistic option.

So, this morning I was at the local caserma (office/barracks of the Carabinieri, the military police) when they opened for business at 08.30. The starting point is to do the denuncia, so report the crime, and get a copy of that vital document.

Then to the doctor’s surgery to find out how I could get my prescription meds with no health insurance card (very easily it turns out – I just needed a number, which they gave me.)

Then to the pharmacia to collect the meds. Then to the local comune office, which hosts the anagrafe (register of residents), where they told me that I’d need some photos, and that my residency expired eighteen years ago, but not to worry, as they could fix that easily, except they couldn’t because the system appeared not to be working.

Then to the supermarket to get change for the photo machine, all my bank cards having been stolen, then to get the photos taken in the booth, and finally back to the anagrafe, to have my fingerprints recorded for the new, electronic carta d’identità, which will apparently be posted to me from Rome and is due to arrive in six days.

I still have to go back to the caserma to ask for a document to allow me to drive, and get instructions on how to replace the licence itself, which seems to be a secret which will only be revealed at the right moment. And to replace the health insurance card, of course.

But enough bureaucracy for one day! I have a ragù to cook, and an ‘opera easy reader’ to proof-read, for publication on Monday.

As I was saying, then, don’t let my tale put you off visiting Bologna. Do, though, be aware that gangs of professional thieves work the crowds and are inevitably going to hone in on anyone who looks confused or distracted, so me when I’m wrangling Roomie, and likely you, too, if you look foreign and are speaking English.

It’ll likely not be the badly-behaved drunk or the suspicious-looking foreigner who gives you trouble on public transport (everyone uses public transport here, it’s not just for the poor), but neutrally-dressed young men who work in teams to pick the low-hanging fruit.

In the end, losing a couple of hundred euros, and the time wasted replacing documents, doesn’t matter much.

But it is depressing to be reminded that there are people out there who target the weak…

A venerdì.

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