Yes we were almost scammed!

As every big city has its downsides, also BA is famous for its thieves and scams which especially tourists has to bare. Also for us this happened already the first day in the city…

We had heard that there are clever thieves in the city who attack especially the travelers with their backpacks and luckily we were aware of this while it happened to us! When we just had arrived to the city and were looking for our hostel on the main street during the day, one local guy came to tell us that a bird has pooped on the back of my bag. As soon as he said that he can help to clean it if I just take my bag down we knew immediately that this was a scam! We said politely no and kept walking. However, this man didn’t give up so easily and he started to follow us! When we found our hostel and went inside we thought that now we are safe but no! This man came inside and was still looking for us! Luckily there was a security man on the door to who we said about the guy and he went after him but the man had already left. So we were lucky enough that we didn’t lose anything but we had heard that there are many travelers that have lost everything when they have let the person to start cleaning their bags.

Another thief we encountered on our last day in the city in the subway. We had to take the subway during the morning rush hour so the cabin was full of people. While standing with our backpacks on the back and trying to stay still while the crammed subway was moving, I noticed that a man next to me had covered his hand with his shirt and put the shirt over my purse. I already felt that he was trying to open the zip of my purse but again, lucky me, I noticed it on time and stopped him from stealing my stuff! It was quite uncomfortable journey in the end when we knew that a thief was standing next to us but there was nothing we could do about it…

Even after these incidents we are still positive about travelling and we know that we can't hide the fact that we look like tourists and there always will be people who will try to fool us. Never knows what will happen but as long as we are aware of the things around us we should be fine. 

Tourists in the big city - we still love BA!