The Hunted American

I recently traveled to Berlin, Germany for five days. The hostel we stayed at was the biggest and cleanest one we'd ever been to. It operated with swipe cards (like a hotel card) and had lockers in the rooms. The staff was amazing and instantly my roommate and I were in love. Berlin was the last place we planned to visit before heading back to the United States. Everyone says 'go big or go home' so it only made sense that when we arrived at this particular hostel it grander than any we'd stayed at in any country in Europe. We felt we deserved it, especially after some of the not-so-nice ones we'd stayed at previously.

Everything was great about Berlin. Our first night, we went out and had a great dinner at a little Italian place down the road from our hostel. A delicious salad was much in order and tasted more scrumptious than I could have imagined. I can't described to you how much I have been missing cucumbers and grilled chicken.

Maybe the best chicken salad I've ever had. Thank you Germany. My taste
buds love you.

After this lovely dinner we went back to the hostel and went to bed. We were the only ones in our six bed room and slept wonderfully. We got up the next morning and went sightseeing and shopping. After seeing some of the beautiful sights of Berlin and shopping for a few hours we were exhausted and hungry so we chose to go back to the hostel. This is where some strange things happened.

Like I said previously, we needed swipe cards to get to different places in the hostel. One of those places is the main stairwell and elevator that takes you to all of the bedrooms from the ground floor. When we got to the door, I had to get out my card to open it. As I was going through my purse to get it out, a Hispanic man came up behind us, waiting to get into the stairwell also. He was alone and very giggly, which was strange. I just figured he was drunk (our hostel had a bar on the ground floor) or high. He followed us through the door and to the elevator.

I pushed #2 which was where our room was. He didn't push anything. This wasn't strange to me, I've gotten on lots of elevators before and had the other people on it going to the same floor. Once the three of us were in the elevator he started to giggle uncontrollably in a really high pitch, unnatural way. He asked us where we were from. We told him we're from the USA. He looked at my roommate and told her she was a 'sex pot' while continuing to laugh uncontrollably. This was starting to get not only odd but also uncomfortable.

For those of you who don't know what a 'sex pot' is, here is the
definition from straight from Urban Dictionary.

We quickly got off the elevator and went to our room, which we also needed the key card to get into. When we opened the door, the hyena-laughing-Hispanic man followed us into our room. There were two other people in our room already, so we figured he was staying in the room also. We unpacked our purchases from the day. While we did this, the hyena man walked around the room looking at different things before pulling up a chair. From this chair he sat, giggling, watching me repack my suitcase. This made me very uncomfortable. While shopping earlier, I bought letters that spelled my fiance's last name and was arranging them on the floor to take a picture to send him. As I was doing this, he said the last name to himself and asked me if it was my name while giggling. By this time, I was very ready to leave the room and go down stairs.

The letters I got my fiance for our apartment. 

I locked my suitcase and put it in my locker along with my purse and camera. I then locked the locker with a large padlock. This guy gave me the creeps. After leaving the room, my roommate and I both made comments about how uncomfortable he made us. We hoped his bed wasn't one of the bunks above either of our beds and that he would be out late partying and passed out when we had to get ready in the morning. After a half hour downstairs, I was cold and asked my roommate to come back upstairs with me to get my sweatshirt. 

When we got to our room, it was empty but when I went over to my locker, something wasn't right. The top of it was bent outwards. I quickly unlocked my padlock to find my purple wallet unzipped and laying open on top of my purse. My heart dropped. I quickly grabbed my wallet and looked through it. All my money was gone! My next thought was oh shit, my camera. I grabbed my purse and my camera was amazingly still there. Thank God. My camera, a Canon, which cost me over $1,200 would have ruined my year if it had been missing. I then thought about my credit cards, all three of them, and my bank card, which I'd just used an hour earlier to take out the money from an ATM which was now stolen. All of my plastic was still there. I didn't understand, why would someone only take money, especially not the camera?

After composing myself, my roommate and I went downstairs to ask how many people were staying in our room. The desk worker checked and said only two. A man and a woman. Instantly we knew it was the couple who'd been in there earlier. We told him what had happened and he said he would call the police. About an hour later, two German police officers came to the hostel, went through all of the details with us and came up to the room to photograph the bent locker door. 

The police report that I can't read.

This was all very unsettling for me but it only got worse. The next morning the hostel owner came in to review the security cameras with us. He wanted to make sure we could identify the man who had broken into my locker. After viewing the tapes, I have never felt so stalked or violated in my life. What the security cameras showed us was the Hispanic man sitting off screen. At one point, after the desk worker walked away from the desk, the Hispanic man got up, looked around, looked over the desk to see if there was anything he could steal and then went back and sat down. He was sitting off screen until my roommate and I got back to the hostel. As soon as we came through the main doors, he got up and followed us to the stairwell door and into the elevator. 

How creepy is that?! I wondered how long he'd been sitting there? How many people came and went that he didn't think were good enough targets? He wasn't even a guest at the hostel! I've never felt so invaded in my life. Even after all of the predator shows I have watched in my lifetime I never accurately imagined what it would feel like to be watched and targeted until it actually happened to me. And for all of you who are reading this, I hope it never happens to you. It feels awful and gives you a whole new dislike for the human race.

Lucky for me, the hostel has theft insurance. The owner said the insurance company usually doesn't bat an eye at anything stolen under 100 euros and will compensate the victim. I hope this is the case for me as well. 

If you're traveling abroad anytime soon and want to protect yourself, read my other blog post: Helpful Hostel & Travel Tips to protect yourself while packing, unpacking, traveling and getting around in your destination.