The Good and the Bad and the Ugly
First the good bit of being in Riga at this time - the weather !!!! -can you believe 34 degrees
and the bad news- well a member of the village was mugged in the early hours of this morning, as he was returning home. Fortunately whilst he suffered a number of cuts and bruises, he is not seriously hurt. So apart from the loss of his wallet and his apartment keys (why take them ?), and I am sure a little damage to his pride, he is OK this morning.
But let this again be a warning to us all - we do stand out as foreigners, and should we be out and about in the wee hours -Take a taxi home !
The mugging itself took place in Alunana iela, a street full of embassies and a police station - so one would have thought a relatively safe place, but to the people who commit these muggings anyplace is a good place if they think they will not be seen or caught.
As for the ugly well the one group of cretins I thought we would not see this weekend were those originating from Liverpool, but no I will be wrong, as it appears that thanks to Ryanair, a number of them flew from Liverpool to Riga for a few pennies, and from here were flying to Athens via Copenhagen to see the European Cup Final last night. So of course the return journey will be the same, and with it being a bank holiday in the UK this weekend, they will be here no doubt from this evening all the way through to Monday. Now if only those muggers could be advised of the rich pickings to be had - must check to see if they left a card !
posted by dfs at Thursday, May 24, 2007
1 Comments:
I was that mugged man. What surprised me about it was the degree of violence involved. There were three of them, two of them much bigger than me.They could have just demanded the money but instead decided they'd rather do me over. They cut me pretty badly on one hand and wrist and it was a pretty serious assault all for the sake of a wallet with ten Lats in and keys and credit cards that they won't be able to use.
As Dave said it happened in Alunana which I'd always thought was a very safe street because of the embassies, security guards and CCTVs (which the policewoman I talked to told me are directed at the buildings not at the street and anyway are in black and white which means they don't pick up things at night - which makes you wonder what the point of them are, when are crimes committed?).
Anyway I was probably pretty lucky and it was a good thing the esteemed writer of the blog lived locally. Apologies for leaving my DNA all over his doorstep.
I've always felt relatively safe walking round Riga at night but this has made me think again because it was so random and exagerrated. It could have been a lot worse but they didn't touch my face (a great relief for the ladies of Latvia)and legged it as soon as they had what they wanted rather than administering me a proper beating. I'll take a lot more taxis from now on.I'm just writing this because I'd hate a similar thing to happen to anyone I know.
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