I got robbed

12.02.2016

When I woke up there were two men sleeping in my dorm room. OK, it's co-ed I guess, interesting that no one told me.

I went to have breakfast and the only person to try to speak English to me was Andreas, a young mechanical engineer from Bogota. He was studying here for two weeks. After breakfast we decided to go to the main art gallery in the south of the city. It resembled the Guggenheim, but again, there was not too much inside.

We took the bus back downtown and had a famous hot dog with parmesan cheese and peas inside. It was a big mess but the pigeons loved it.

We went back to the central market and some guy ran past me and I thought he grabbed at my silver barrette that I sometimes attach to my bra strap. I was confused for a few minutes until I realized this man had ripped my grandmother's necklace right off of my neck.

It was understandably upsetting, but there was nothing I could do anymore. He was long gone already. I was just sad because I kind of thought I'd have my grandma there with me close to my heart forever. It also made me upset because I had thought about packing the necklace away until I left Brazil. At the time, I had decided not to because it wasn't an ostentatious piece of jewelry at all, only a small heart (with small diamonds yes) but not "blinged out", so I kept it on.

Anyway, I can't change my decision now. All I can do is hope this guy can buy some good cocaine with it and whatever pain he has that caused him to act like that is temporarily dulled for one more day.

Andreas spoke Spanish, not Portuguese, but he managed to help me make a report to the police. They didn't even take my contact information, we just did it for the statistics I guess.

I was really shaken up after that. We went to another art gallery in a beautiful old building and saw some other sights around town, until Andreas got tired (he had flown in on a red eye the night before).

Back at the hostel, I called my mom and cried about the whole ordeal, but in the end, it doesn't matter anyway, it's just some metal. Other people heard me talking and came in to tell me their robbery stories. One woman, Carla, had her cell phone stolen nine times in Rio, where she lives. Once, she was threatened at gun point to give her phone up. She said she was tired of filing police reports, and just wished something would be done about it. Even if you have "track my phone" activated and you do find it, chances are, it's in a favela and you can't go in there to get it anyway.

The hostel manager also told me that in the last six months he's been getting more reports from his guests, at least once a month. He thinks it's getting worse, maybe from the economic downturn, maybe not.

Andreas and I went out for some microbrew at Quentin's, a bar with the theme of every Tarantino movie ever. It was really loud and really busy. I enjoyed it after a terrible last 24 hours of my trip.

My bus left for Ponta Grossa at 12:30 a.m., so I dropped Andreas off at the hostel and took a cab to the station, wary of walking around by myself in Porto Alegre after all that happened.

Fundacao Ibere Camargo