To Catch a Thief - PART 2, or How I got my shoes back.

THIS POSTING IS GOING TO MAKE LITTLE SENSE TO YOU IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE PREVIOUS ONE. EVEN THEN, MAYBE YOU SHOULD GO BACK AND READ IT AGAIN JUST FOR GOOD MEASURE.

So we trudged along Bogstadveien, all five of us, three of us at least very dejected about the loss/theft of my new shoes. That would be the three of us with double x-chromosomes. My head hung low at the loss. There was a line of people standing against a building, waiting for a tram. The thing about walking with your chin almost on your chest is that you see the ground, and things sitting on the ground. My eyes happened upon some white plastic and part of a familiar-looking shoe, sitting in a large slightly gaping ZARA bag at someone's feet. I still can't believe I did this but I acted on auto-pilot without even thinking. I grabbed the bag, pulled out the shoes, and shouted, 'You stole my shoes!'. As soon as I spotted the magazine we had dumped in the bag, I knew for sure that these really were my shoes. 'You took my shoes. Do you want to see the receipt?!' Boy, was I angry. The woman with the bag got angry too, making no attempt to stop me taking them, but saying she didn't know anything about them. She was a tough one.  'They're at your feet, of course you do. Do you want me to call the police?' She continued protesting very angrily, as if I was in the wrong, then she and her companion fled to the tram which had just arrived. A very nice Norwegian lady who had been in the line called back to us as she boarded the tram, that the woman had had the shoes and had taken them. There was nothing else in the ZARA bag other than my white plastic shoe bag so I wonder where she got the empty bag from or if indeed she stole someone else's shopping and had stuffed it into another bag she was carrying. Anyway, thanks to great timing and a complete lack of my normal inhibitions, I got my shoes back. Still, I can hardly believe my good fortune. But this is the second time this has happened within a year in Oslo and both times the thief was non-Norwegian and swore blindly that they didn't take the item they clearly had taken. Both times, I got angrier than I thought possible.

So shoppers in Norway beware - never let the sales assistant pop your receipt into your shopping bag as with no receipt at least thieves can't get your money back or exchange your purchase for something they might prefer. If you're lucky enough to find your stuff again, you'll have proof that it is in fact yours. And never, never take your eye off your shopping bags or handbag. You might think Norway is safer than most places but clearly it's not. 

To Catch a Thief - PART 1

Shoes worth stealing

It’s Saturday afternoon and you are on a rare trip into Oslo city centre. You walk into a shoe shop on Bogstadveien. Your husband opts to head for the sports shop across the road with his son in a stroller. You see a pair of shoes you love – this is a rare occurrence on this side of the North Sea – so you decide to buy them. You buy the shoes despite your daughter’s best efforts to get you to opt for the red shiny pair from the bargain bin. You reason that everyone really needs a clumpy pair of black platforms with wooden heels at this time of year, that all the British celebrities 15 years your junior are wearing them and, at 800 Nok, they are a good compromise; the shoes you really, really want are around 3000 Nok in another shop down the road.
You emerge onto the street, two daughters in tow and walk along further towards the Temple of Zara. Your husband knows you well enough at this stage to have seen the desire for pilgrimage coming, and when he rejoins you on the pavement shows no sign of annoyance at your eagerness to pay homage to your false god. He does though stop short of entering the House of Fashion himself opting to take a walk instead.
You spend an hour at worship during which your younger daughter insists on minding the white plastic bag with your new shoes in them. She allows her sister to place a free magazine she has collected into the bag with the shoes. She manages to hold on to them for most of your time there. But some time, probably while she enthusiastically gets distracted by a beautiful pinafore dress you concede to buy for her, she loses sight of the bag. You notice that she no longer has it after paying the cashier. You look around but can’t find it. You find yourself scanning other people's shopping bags hoping to catch sight of your own. But your new shoes, which you have loved only briefly but fiercely, are gone.
Eventually, you emerge onto the street defeated, your elder daughter in tears saying to anyone who will listen, ‘they were such pretty shoes,’ while you grit your teeth, saying ‘yes and they were 800 Kroner’. It is 5 PM. The shop is closing but you decide to go back inside one more time without the children, who now stay with their father, to see if they have been let somewhere. You cannot accept that your shoes are gone. The staff are resistant but you are insistent. You really don’t believe that someone has taken them but really what other explanation is there?
Back outside, you are a much sadder family walking back to the car than the one that bounced along so enthusiastically full of fashion fervour before. You’re re-evaluating all the outfits you had decided would be perfected by the beautiful shoes. You have the receipt so at least the thief can’t exchange them or get money in lieu. You learned that lesson on a previous occasion. Still, you haven’t got the shoes. Worse things happen, but still. This is infuriating. You never expect to see your shoes again. It seems, however, that all that worshipping may have paid off, that the gods governing fairness and fashion may be on your side, that you may just be one of the luckiest victims of crime in Norway.

TO BE CONTINUED....

Thievery Update

Following on from my post regarding thefts in our area, which we knew about from emails from our well-connected landlord, we've had an update. The thieves struck again just up the road the other day but as the owner had installed a video camera - clearly more useful than sleeping with his laptop - the duo were caught on tape stealing his PC. Thanks to this and DNA evidence, one of the perpetrators is now in custody. I'll still be taking my laptop, phone and wallet to bed but it's nice to know that, for the moment, justice is being served.

Crime Capital

Hot on the heels of the puking incident, comes news that the quality of life in Oslo is under even greater threat than I thought.

The headline in Friday’s Dagbladet screamed, ‘OSLO less safe than NEW YORK’. Dagbladet is a tabloid, and so prone to hyperbole, but it seems the paper has the facts to back the statement up. Here are some of them:

From 2006 to 2007, the incidence of robbery in Oslo grew by 20%.
Last year, Oslo had the highest rate per person in Scandinavia in terms of reported crimes, with 90 reported crimes per 1,000.
Copenhagen had 50 crimes reported per 1,000 and Stockholm had 79.
In New York, there were 22 reported crimes per 1,000 inhabitants.
This means there were four times as many reported crimes per person in Oslo as in New York.
Car break-ins in Oslo increased by 18% last year (that’s 5200 incidents reported).
Every day last year an average of 29 people in Oslo were victims of theft.
Technically we don’t live in Oslo but in Akershus which according to the figures is a much less crime-riddled place than the city centre. In fact, the rest of Norway saw a drop in figures for theft in 2007.
The police are blaming an influx of East Europeans.

Oslo is a dozy place compared to Copenhagen and Stockholm but this is hardly the kind of excitement residents and visitors are looking for. Let's hope the 'crime capital of Scandinavia' title is one the city won't be able to defend in 2008.



Oh, and in an attempt to balance grim news with something positive, here's smiley face to cheer you up on a Monday morning.

Crime Wave- well ripple, really.

This past week, my illusions about petty crime in our area - that there is none - were shattered. On Wednesday, my husband dressed in his cycling gear to go to the office but when he went to the garage it turned out that someone else has already cycled off on his bike. Definitely a case of ‘all dressed down, with no way of going’. We were shocked, frankly, as we live at the end of a cul-de-sac and the only times the garage is unlocked is when we are at home in daylight. It’s unlikely to have been a case that a thief just happened to be passing and saw an opportunity to procure some new wheels (literally, as my husband had just spent time and money renovating the bike). Even the police were surprised that we were hit. In fact, such is my sense of security, that I often leave the car unlocked in the unlocked garage with my wallet lying on the front seat as I’ve my hands so full coming in that it takes an extra trip to bring my bag in and lock the car and garage. Needless to say, that’s a trip I’m now very diligent about taking.
Even more bizarrely, I may just be one of the first victims of toilet cubicle crime in the area too. On Friday, I used the restroom at the local shopping centre (now Scandinavia’s biggest, by the way) and while doing so hung a small plastic bag, containing a DVD my daughter had just picked out for our upcoming car trip to Denmark, on a hook on the wall. I came out, washed my hands and realized I’d left the bag on the hook. Of course someone else had gone into the cubicle so I waited, and waited, feeling in my bones that the DVD was not going to be there when the occupant emerged. Sure enough out came a girl, to reveal an empty hook, so I asked her if she had seen my shopping bag. I spoke Norwegian but she answered me in English saying she had just gone in there so she didn’t know what I was talking about. It was hard to communicate with the hand drier blasting in our ears but she then switched to Norwegian, obviously taken aback by the fluency of my English, and continued to act as if I was delusional. Of course then I did doubt my sanity (I often do) and looked in the adjacent cubicle to check that I hadn’t got confused, but really I knew that she had gone in straight after me and must have taken the bag. I stopped short of asking to see inside her zipped shoulder bag because I felt so uncomfortable about accusing her of stealing outright.
Luckily a cleaning lady was standing by the door, and looking suspiciously at the girl, who was Asian, asked me what the problem was. I told her and she called security. All the time the girl’s face was expressionless while she took her time washing her hands and drying them; I stood fidgeting wondering if I was going to make it to the preschool on time to fetch my younger daughter. The 'suspect' then went to leave the restrooms but the cleaning lady told her to wait which she did calmly for a few moments until security arrived.
I explained to the very, very attractive young man in uniform what had happened and before he could say anything, the thief unzipped her bag, and slowly extracted my plastic bag. ‘Bitch!’ I said, almost spitting at her, displaying a fury I hadn’t realized was bubbling under the surface. She muttered in English that she was sorry, to which I batted back ‘You’re not sorry’! It’s as near to a cat fight as I’ve come in a longtime and for a guilty moment I wondered if I could be arrested for name-calling. I said I didn’t want to press charges, as I needed to go, but as I departed in a rage, expressing gratitude to the cleaning lady, the guard was checking the thief’s ID and searched the rest of her belongings. I guess she's now telling her pals what a shit day she had in Friday.
So there I was, twice in less than three days, touched by crime. My daughter is telling anyone who will listen that a robber stole her Daddy’s green bike and that a woman tried to steal her DVD but was caught by a policeman who went into the ladies’ toilets.
After the constant need for surveillance of one’s person and belongings, both inside and outside the home, while living in Manila, moving to Oslo allowed a drastic down-adjustment in security levels. And sure - Oslo is a whole lot safer than Manila, especially out on the wealthier Westside. However, after this week, I’ve realized that it’s not quite the crime-free utopia I naively took it for. Shame.

The greater shame is the anger that both these incidences has generated in me personally and the ripple of negativity that I am now proliferating by sharing them with you. Obviously it's time for a trip abroad.

Thank goodness for next weekend's 18-hour return car journey with three kids to Denmark for great-grandmother's 90th birthday party (and you thought I didn't have a social life!). That's sure to instill a sense of calm and relaxation in the household, isn't it?