We both felt quite safe exploring the capital city of Buenos Aires on foot and by metro on our first day in Argentina. But in the subway, I was immediately approached by an employee as I walked towards the exit, still holding my change. He told me to take good care of my money and put it away. A young woman stopped us in the pedestrian zone. She said we should watch our cameras, it's dangerous to carry them openly. Finally, a policewoman even warned us - and so we decided to take the backpacks to the front and pocket the cameras.
Beware of the pickpockets
A good decision, as we found out a few days later: My friend got into a line D car in front of me on the subway in Buenos Aires, and an Argentine woman sat down next to him. I stood in front of him, a man to his left. Jörg had left my small backpack on his back. As I look in front of me, I see the standing man's jacket hanging loosely over his backrest, that is, on my backpack. That looked kind of weird. What I found even stranger was that I didn't see the man's forearm. Well, I thought, either he doesn't have one or it's under his jacket. Which in turn would mean it would be on or on my backpack. After that, my thoughts raced: knives? Slash backpack? Zipper? Big compartment? Small compartment? “My dear friend looked at me in surprise, and his eyes asked: What to do?
The guy told him "You must come here immediately, let's step aside!" My friend stood up and came to me, turned around so that I could see his back, and in fact the outside pocket was already half open. I let out a sigh of relief because there was nothing in there apart from two pens. Anything of value was stowed in the inner pockets. I closed the backpack, looked very angry at the man who had now sat down in his place, and said snappy "Gracias" to him. He smiled like a child who knows exactly that he has been caught, the other passengers looked doubtful to irritated, the train stopped, the man jumped out of the car.
After a few hours, clearly sensitized to the topic, we got back on the subway, and got back to the hotel. We stood in a corner where we were alone. A young man came up from the right, sunglasses, jacket over his arm. He was very close to to my friend. A guy of about the same age came from the left and stood super-close in front of me, his hand under the flap of his shoulder bag. The subte was fairly empty and there was no need to stand so close to us. My friend and I looked at each other confused. It was clear that we both thought the same thing. In a flash, we shot out of our corner and moved to another empty seat. One young man approached us, the other walked away immediately. He then stood in front of a woman who a short time later began to press her bag tightly to her. They both got off at the next stop.
