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China Elevator Stories
"I'm simply going for a walk"
I find myself being followed by a stranger in Austria.
08/09/2023
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
During Austria’s first Covid-19 lockdown, I take the subway to visit a friend. When I exit the subway station at the last stop, I realize a stranger is standing on the platform and is watching me. All other passengers have already exited the station.
A few weeks later I’m at a shopping centre in Central Vienna. Due to the lockdown, all shops except for a supermarket are closed, and the shopping centre is almost deserted. When I leave the building, the same man who had been watching me from the platform a few weeks earlier is standing in front of the building smoking a cigarette, watching me from a distance.
I walk up to him and ask: “Has anybody sent you to spy on me?” He answers: “No, I’m simply going for a walk.”
Another night, a stranger follows me after nightfall. I’m going for a leisurely walk, and when I turn around because I get the eerie feeling that someone is following me, a man jumps to hide behind the corner of a building.
I find myself sitting at a police station a few months later asking the officer in charge if I can file a police report for stalking. The police officer tells me I can’t because I don’t have enough proof of what happened.
Have you ever filed a police report?