Crime

Last week, I had an encounter with another Italian stereotype: break-ins. When I came home Friday, the neighbors were outside and told me (in Italian, so I understood maybe 80%) that there had been thieves and that their door was blocked and ours broken. I went upstairs and indeed the outside door was open, though the inside door was intact. Our other neighbors (with whom we share the outside door) came out and told me that they had found the lock on the first door tampered with, but were able to somehow open it. The lock was broken, though. Our other neighbors (the ones I had met downstairs) were not so lucky and were not able to open their door anymore, so they called the fire department, who came and climbed over our balcony to theirs to break the balcony door and then let them in their apartment. Since I was gone Saturday and Sunday (see an upcoming post about that), my neighbors offered to buy a new lock and install it, and I got the new key when I came back Sunday.
I'm happy that the crooks were apparently incompetent enough not to make it even through the first door. However, this wasn't my first encounter with theft in Italy: last summer, some DVDs were stolen out of a package that I got from Amazon. Amazingly, they were anonymously returned after I posted a note about it in the building lobby (which meant the thief lives in the same building). Since then I have packages sent to my work address.