Originally Posted by
stut
Ah, that train used to be famous for it - complete with exaggerated rumours of thieves using gas to knock people out before robbing them. IIRC, it was up there with Moscow-St Petersburg and Schiphol-Amsterdam CS for theft!
It was a very popular interrail route, and seems to have gone down in legend, like the Brindisi-Patras ferry...
I'd heard the urban myths as well, however this actually happened to me not to a friend of a cousin's sister-in-law. I don't know of anyone else it happened to, and I consider that I was lucky that they took fright and dropped my jacket.
I have no fear of catching trains anywhere in Europe - there were times during that long trip that I sometimes hoped that my luggage would be stolen so I didn't have to carry it around any more, I was sick of the sight of it at the end of three months.