Once, as a child.
I was 11 and walking a neighbour’s dog in the park. A guy came up to me and started a conversation. I got a weird vibe immediately, mostly because he was just too interested and sort of intense. I think I just said I need to go home, and he let me be.
But I saw him again a couple months later, on a local train. I was with my younger sister and I remember pretending to take pictures of her, but with the man in the background so I could show my mum later on. Unfortunately, he noticed what I was doing and confronted me (in Germany, taking pictures without consent is illegal). He got pretty scary, but there were lots of people on the train and he couldn’t do much.
When we got off the train at the main station, my sister and I were both really scared. He was following us. We were supposed to take a bus to a more remote location, and I didn’t feel like that was safe. So, instead, we used a trick we’d learned from detective stories: when you think you’re being followed, take a nonsensical route to confirm. We went down to the subway station, and then back up. He was still following us. We ran for the first store that seemed safe enough, a small place with older ladies selling loose teas. As we were telling them that we were being followed, we saw the guy walk past outside and disappear in the crowd. He hadn’t seen us enter the store because we were too fast running up the stairs from the subway.
I’m really glad it was daytime and that there were lots of people around. I stayed on the lookout for the man for months, but fortunately never saw him again.