Monday, March 05, 2007

Rabbia! or Rage!

So to finish up the story of Friday night. She said, “I would like to go out with you but I don’t know you well enough”. I thought to myself, “Well that’s why we would go out”. I should know better. Here you don’t go out to get to know someone. You go out because you know them. UGH!
Anyway after I wrote that entry I went out and my Friday night got worse, much worse. I went to Goblins as every Friday night they have live music, except last Friday night. No live music at Goblins, oh well, so I walk over to the Big Ben to warn anybody over there not to bother with Goblins. I take a seat at the bar with Matteo and Vicenzo. We start talking about how Thursday night had more going on than this Friday night. As we’re talking I suddenly see something out of the corner of my eye. I turn to look and sure enough it’s a pistol. I take in the situation and I see that Isiam (I spelled his name wrong before) is turning over the contents of the cash register to two men. At first I thought this must be a joke. Then I see the look on Isiam’s face and that the two men with him at the register are wearing passamontagne (balaclavas) with the hoods on their jackets up. The danger that is right next to me still doesn’t really register and next thing I know they are gone. Who would come in at 11:30 PM and rob the place at gunpoint? Turns out there are two such low life scums. The whole episode took about 20-30 seconds to happen. The cash register is pretty close to the front door and Isiam was behind the bar by himself. Isiam was on the phone to the police almost as they left and the police arrived in no time, but it didn’t seem to matter as they disappeared into the labyrinth of old streets quickly.
It made me so angry that someone would do that. I was only 10 feet from the little **** but there is nothing I could think of that would identify them and there was nothing I could have done that wouldn’t have been very dangerous. The good thing is one of them picked up the tray on the register to make sure there wasn’t any money underneath. The police dusted the tray for fingerprints so maybe they can identify one of them. I read in the paper the next day that this robbery was very similar to two others that happened back in December so they think same two robbers are responsible for all three. This is the first time they robbed a place so early in the night. The paper reasons they hoped to get a cash register stocked up for the night but the opposite was true. Isiam said they only got around 200 euro. They risk going to jail for armed robbery for a couple hundred euro. The worst part is they ruin how I feel in town. I have never worried about safety in Brindisi. Sure there are some bad neighborhoods but I don’t go there and they are easy to avoid. This was in my neighborhood and too close to home. Maybe I needed a wake up call to remind me to pay attention. What I would give to get my hands on those two…
So I was in the middle of an armed robbery Friday night. Did I mention that last weekend got off to a really bad start!

3 comments:

John Cropper said...

Ahh, that's no good. Sort of crushes the common perception of the bel paese.

How big is Brindisi in respect to Lecce?

Jeff Gromen said...

John,
Just reminds you that crime is everywhere.
Brindisi and Lecce are both listed at about 50,000 residents.

Jeff

Shelley - At Home in Rome said...

Oh man, that's awful! I'm sorry that happened but luckily they didn't get the entire night's earnings AND most importantly, no one got hurt... but I can see how it would kind of ruin the way you feel about your town, when something like that happens it's too close to home.