Today I was woken by fellow Belarusian hostel (in)mate Slava. He held his phone in front of me, with a translator app open, and the screen said something to the effect of “we have been robbed”. And indeed, someone had forced open our oh-so-secure lockers and taken his and my money. Alberto, the Spanish guy, escaped unscathed, for he had only a few hundred rubels (a few Eurocents – yes, getting 60 Euros worth of Belarusian rubels out of an ATM makes you a millionaire) in his locker.
Like I said, the hostel is a bit of a failure.
Another guest was suspected, but obviously he wasn’t there anymore. Apparently, involving the police would be a lot of hassle and they’d take 2 months to get anything done. Slava and I and a third victim met again in the evening to figure out how to proceed. For some reason the thief had called this third guy today (without revealing his number) and said he’d return the money on Monday (the total sum is something like 600 or 700 Euros – apparently the average monthly income in Belarus is less than 300 Euros according to a quick web search). So even though I would have loved to have a second encounter with the police, we agreed to wait for Monday and hope for the best…
Fortunately, it was ‘just’ money (even though quite a bit). My passport, credit card, camera, etc. were not stolen (or not in the locker in the first place…).
