strange men, any ideas what was going on?

[marmitetoastie]

Hi

im slightly weirded out about something that happened yesterday. I’m mixed race British woman 52 not in amazing shape/v average, on holiday in Sicily with my beautiful dd 17, & Italian-looking son 14.
we were sitting at a nice-ish outdoor restaurant in a busy lane for dinner around 9pm on holiday in the capital of Sicily, bustling Palermo.

I vaguely noticed 2 men having dinner nearby, 40s well dressed. at one point i looked over at one of them and thought he was filming me. He stopped staring but didn’t move his camera, I shrugged it off thinking i was being totally ridiculous.

the next day my son mentioned the weird 2 men who were staring intently at me throughout dinner & my dd said she’d also noticed & agreed. With him. It wasn’t a friendly or “interested” stare, it was serious & constant. Even when some fireworks suddenly went off, I turned to watch, but both my kids say them men just kept staring intensely at me, one had his head at a right-angle to do so, they didn’t take their gaze away to even look at the fireworks.. They also showed no interest in my kids. I wasn’t aware of all this, my kids are pretty independent & not prone to paranoia. I’ve traveled widely.

what the hell was going on? Any ideas?

After dinner I didn’t pay any attention to whether I was being followed, we naturally stayed on the busiest street, buying the normal street vendor tat. we also happened to be staying on that street in a very secure building. Today we left for the airport, not to fly home, to pick up a hire car. We’re a long way from Palermo now, but what’s bothering me is I can’t understand it; the “seriousness” of their staring. Both my kids were adamant it wasnt friendly, just intense.

any ideas what this was all about? - it’s weirded me out.

ty xx

No idea, but it sounds creepy. I'm not surprised you are weirded out. Sorry that you experienced that. I suppose there's no way to know for sure why they were staring/filming, but I understand why it would be bugging you and the need to process it.

I don't know enough about that area to speculate whether it's likely to be a race related thing but it could be if they're not used the seeing people that don't look like them? Do you know if they were staring at your face or body? Not sure if there is more of a culture of staring at women there. Could they have had some criminal intent I wonder? Hateful of tourists so trying to weird them out? I wish it was possible to know. Hopefully someone else will be along with more insight or experience...

There's a fuck of a lot of racism there.

However, having been a teenage girl in Italy, are you sure they weren't staring at your DD? I was stared at pretty constantly the whole time I was there and I was younger than 17.

How horrible. I'm so sorry. My first thought is racism. There are a lot of racist / fascist people in Italy, and the further south you go the worse it is.

Hi
thavks, they definitely weren’t looking at my Dd as the kids were on the other side of the table from me - and that would be totally understandable for Italy.

im half Egyptian/English - most locals think we are Italian, people ask me for directions in Italian all the time. 😂
so weird.

xxxx

Italians stare, that's just what they do. Men at women, women at women etc etc. I realised that when I lived there. Your best bet is just to stare back. Or ask if you can help them I'll echo what someone said about the racism though but would hope things have improved in the last 15 years - I was in the north, home of Lega Nord.
I remember having to explicitly tell my friend to quit staring (lest she get stabbed) when we went over to England and she had a job interview in Croydon.

Filming??? With their heads turned away? Weeeeeeirdos.

Turn off your wifi and bluetooth on your phone just to be extra careful.