One of the tourism high points and cultural gems on a visit to the Austrian capital is the Spanish Riding School (Spanische Hofreitschule) with its history of over 450 years of continuous operation. The white show-horses are bred in Piber (Western Styrian region of Austria). In Vienna they perform in the Winter Riding School at the Hofburg Wien.

We didn’t catch the famous horsey show but we managed to spot them in their exercising yard prancing up and down. Whilst we were there the Lipizzaners (as the Spanish horses are known) were taken out for a canter through the cobblestone streets of the plaza. There was a brief moment of excitement when one of the white stallions did a runner, giving its handler the slip and tried to gallop off in pursuit of free range, riderless freedom. Its liberty was short-lived however as it was quickly reined in. The riders in the military outfits must feel a bit like Napoleon, parading about on slick steeds wearing their bicornes (loopy-looking two-cornered hats). Here’s hoping the practice doesn’t lead to a complex!

Another, very different (street) ‘school’ in Vienna, devoid of the glamour of show-horses but with the same ‘professional’ levels of dedication and expertise, is the ignoble art of pick-pocketing. The part of Vienna we stayed at, Westbahnhof, was obviously not the “old moneyed”, elité part of Austria’s capital. Quite the reverse, it was pretty scabrous and untouristy, clearly a migrant area. The entrance to the Westbahnhof train station which was sporting a new modernist facade (somewhat brutalist in taste) was a bit of a magnet for unsavoury types, assorted crazies and dodgy guys milling round it, as well as the standard gypsy beggars. Westbahnhof was also well fixed for grimy lowbrow Turkish eateries.

I was returning to the city centre having already been in earlier in the day and seen Stephansdom (St Stephan’s Cathedral) with its distinctive-patterned mosaic tiled roof; the Stephansplatz, densely populated with Mozart-themed totes flogging tickets to The Marriage of Figaro outside the subway exit, and on the other side of the square, lined up on the street, a row of fiakers (gaily decorated, horse-drawn hire carriages).

I boarded the U-Bahn for the journey to Stephansplatz. Standing up for the short distance (five stops) I suspiciously cast my eyes round the carriage which was sparsely populated. Just the single, odd, scruffy character five metres across the carriage. Just before we reached the Stephansplatz station, the guy darted back past into the heart of the carriage, I thought nothing of it at the time. I exited the train. As I walked along the platform I had a vague sense of passengers following behind me. As I passed a garbage bin I heard the noise of a clanging of metal-on-metal, but again, it didn’t occur to me that there was anything untoward happening.

Up the top of the station stairs I once again sidestepped my way through the strategically placed Mozart hawkers and paused to take a photo of the fiaker horses against a backdrop of Stephansdom. I reached for my Samsung but it wasn’t there! Incredulous that I couldn’t find it, I checked and doubled checked all of my pockets, but to no avail. I proceeded to search my carry bag compartment-by-compartment … same result! I remembered clearly I had it on the train, I had glanced at it on the way to my destination and had returned it in clear sight of all in the carriage to my side pocket (in hindsight, the fateful error!).

I caught the train back to Westbahnhof, retracing the course of the journey in my mind to try to fathom where exactly I parted company with my digital device. All I could be sure of is that it happened somewhere betwixt leaving the train and climbing the escalator – a deft, invisible hand, a blink of an eye and like magic it disappeared from my pocket. I truly didn’t feel a thing!

Back at the hotel I spent a frustrating several hours trying unsuccessfully both online and by phone to contact my mobile data supplier back in Australia. By the time I got through to the hotline they had just closed their service for that day … that meant another seven hours wait till 6am East Coast Australian time to try again.

Although holding zero hope for the recovery of my Samsung, for insurance purposes I decided to report the theft to the local constabulary. The inspector on duty had heard it all before, all too often! He explained how the thieves operate, in teams distracting the mark’s attention, sometimes using attractive young women, etc., universal formula really. I didn’t bother to read the police report of the incident the inspector gave me until I returned home, not realising till that time … it was of course written in German!