Who Do You Call If You Need Help While In a Foreign Country?

For the most part, when I travel I feel totally safe, but I am always cautious. One time in Milan I was with two girlfriends, we were all in bed and our hotel room was located on the third floor.

One of my friends said, “Roni, are you in bed?” I was in the bed next to her.

I answered, “Yes.”

She said, “Is Michelle next to you?”

Again, I said, “Yes.” because Michelle and I were sharing a bed that night.

She said, “Then if we are all in here, who just turned the light on in the bathroom.”

We all immediately sat up in bed and waited for whoever was in our bathroom to come out. There was an extremely drunk Italian man walking out of our bathroom. He had somehow climbed up the wall (there was no railing, no balconies, nothing we could see he could have grabbed on to so we had no idea how he did that) and was now standing in our room, talking in Italian and bleeding from his face.

We didn’t know what to do. This happened years ago and there were no cell phones, we were just three scared girls in a foreign country. At first we thought it was funny, but then we soon realized the gravity of the situation and started screaming at the top of our lungs, stomping on the floor in order to get some help.

We couldn’t go to the door because he was blocking it so all we could do was stomp our feet and scream. Thankfully pretty soon people came inside our room and threw him out. I still have absolutely no idea what they were saying, what he was doing, or what happened to him.

If something like this were to happen now, I would immediately reach for the phone and dial the emergency number, or just scream like hell because the thought of a strange man bleeding from his face in my room scares the beejebees out of me.

Below is a list of emergency numbers, it’s a good idea to always know the emergency number of the country you are visiting.

Have you ever had an emergency while traveling? What did you do?