I’ll be the first one to admit it: Poland doesn’t have the best track record with travelers when it comes to theft. Have I had sisters have their bags stolen in the train station? For sure. Did my father get pick-pocketed on a bus? It’s true. Did my mother once have her backpack cut open while we toured a crowded cathedral? I shan’t deny it. But times are changing. All that happened in the 1990s or early 2000s, a time when Poland had not yet joined the European Union and the economy was struggling to get on its feet.
I’m proud to report that my experiences since returning to Poland in recent years have highlighted just how much an increasingly secure economy and relatively low unemployment rate have done to decrease theft. Only last week, my sister forwarded me an article about a young Polish boy who found a wallet filled with thousands of zloty and ATM cards, and handed it into the police. Mentioning the story to my program director, he told me that he recently had heard of a similar case in which a couple travelling through Poland left a backpack filled with their passports and several thousand dollars in cash. The backpack was returned. Neither of these incidents would have peaked my interest had I not had firsthand experiences during my time here to help me formulate a hypothesis about an increasingly safe Poland.
Maybe should I preface my stories by claiming full responsibility for having been careless and neglectful of my belongings. Even now, as I sit in a café writing this, I just used the restroom, naively leaving my purse and books at my table, though I had enough sense to bring my wallet and phone.
The first incident occurred as I began preparations for the harsh Warsaw winter and commenced my search for a winter coat at the mall. I dragged my friend from store to store, trying on parkas and coats until I thought he would slap me for being so indecisive. Then, just as he finally convinced me to leave for the evening and mull over my options, I realized that my iPhone was missing.
I was horrified. I’ve never lost my phone and for the first three minutes, I couldn’t believe that it wasn’t somehow hiding in my oversized tote. Finally, I accepted that I had absent-mindedly set it down in a store. I jogged from store to store, and eventually a clerk saw my flustered face and asked if I had lost something. Sure enough, she returned my phone. But how easily she or another customer could have taken it and never thought twice!
By now you may be thinking what a lucky, though foolish, girl I am. Surely I learned my lesson! But, how sadly mistaken you are.
Only a week later, while waiting at a bus station in a small city in eastern Poland, I decided to take advantage of the restrooms before continuing on my journey. I paid my two zloty (you have to pay for public bathrooms in Poland) and returned to my seat to continue waiting for my bus. Ten minutes later, as I made my routine travel inventory of my belongings, I began to hyperventilate as I realized with horror that I’d left my money purse in the bathroom. Worse yet, in anticipation for travelling by bus and train, I had taken out a regrettable amount of cash and kept it all in a bright, little, red, rubber purse. As I frantically sprinted to the bathroom, I saw a woman coming out of the bathroom stall I had used and I watched with relief as she handed my purse to the woman in charge of the restroom. The worker saw my concerned face, and as soon as I asked for the purse, she happily returned it.
Though my mistakes here were silly, and I know I was terribly lucky considering my lack of concern for my belongings, the events gave me faith in humanity, and in the honesty of Poles. Telling my program director about my idea for this blog, he chuckled at me and warned me that I should not expect any such luck in the future. Poland, like any country, has its own portion of thieves and pickpockets. Nevertheless, I think that I would rather stay optimistic and believe that these are signs of a culture and society that in many areas is prospering, and thereby becoming safer.
Katherine Rivard graduated from Georgetown's Walsh School of Foreign Service in 2015 with a major in culture and politics. She participated in the Berkley Center's Junior Year Abroad Network while studying in Warsaw, Poland during the fall semester of 2013.
