Feeling little pain from the bullet wound to his shoulder and vaguely baffled at the attention, Ralf Bolowski, the German tourist who was shot Monday on the Circle Line, was released from the hospital today and shrugged off any attempts to make him the latest poster boy for urban violence.
Asked if he was angry, outraged or sickened by the horrors of the city, Mr. Bolowski said simply: "I imagined my vacation a little differently."
He said that getting shot was shocking enough. But he said what followed was almost equally astounding -- the scrutiny of the police, the attention of medical personnel and the relentless crush of the media.
When Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani took a helicopter to his bedside within hours of the shooting to express the city's apologies, Mr. Bolowski said he told the Mayor not to worry about it, that he held no grudge against the city. "I told him it was O.K.," Mr. Bolowski recounted in an interview at his uncle's home here. "There was nothing he could do about it."
Two Kinds of Luck
Mr. Bolowski, a 31-year-old postal worker from Hamburg, said that getting shot was just bad luck, the kind of thing that could happen anywhere. But his good luck was apparent today as he freely moved his right arm and said that doctors told him the bullet passed through his right shoulder without hitting a bone or major artery.
"When he got here, he said he was fine," said Jeremy Korman, the first doctor to examine Mr. Bolowski in the emergency room of Lincoln Hospital. "He insisted he wanted to go home and get on with his vacation and be back with his wife. He was upbeat and optimistic and appeared well."
Mr. Bolowski was struck by a single bullet as he, his wife and two friends were on the upper deck of the sightseeing boat Monday afternoon, as it cruised north along the Harlem River between Manhattan and the Bronx.
Today, the police said they still had no suspects in the shooting and had not yet determined whether the cruise ship was the target of a sniper. But investigators now suspect that the bullet was fired from the Manhattan bank of the river and they investigated a wooded area at East 177th Street, where a police spokesman said some residents try out their guns.
Police Escort Circle Line
The spokesman, John Miller, said investigators found casings from bullets but could not determine whether they were connected to Monday's shooting.
Circle Line cruises resumed today and there were plenty of passengers. As an added measure of safety, the cruise boats were accompanied by police launches.
Mr. Bolowski, speaking in German, said he appreciated the work of the police and the hospital staff and the touches of sympathy from New Yorkers. Letter carriers from the Morris Heights post office in the Bronx sent flowers to their fallen foreign colleague and four police officers appeared in Mr. Bolowski's hospital room this morning bearing Coca-Cola and cookies and said in unison: "Guten Tag. Wie geht es Ihnen?" ("Good day, how are you?")
Mr. Bolowski, a tall, lean man with thinning blond hair and a mustache, attributed his quick recovery to his efforts at keeping in shape by playing weekend soccer.
When he was released from Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx this afternoon, he returned with his wife, Gunda, to the home here of his aunt and uncle, Helmuth and Adeline Bolowsky, and immediately called his mother in Wingst, a suburb of Hamburg.
A Mother's Instincts
"The shot went right through," he told his mother. "It didn't hit the bone or any big blood vessels or anything."
His family in Germany heard a radio report Monday night about the shooting in New York of a tourist from Hamburg. Worried it was Ralf Bolowski, they immediately called their relatives on Long Island and found out their instincts were correct.
But today, Mr. Bolowski was reassuring his mother that all things considered, he had been treated well. "Of course there was a doctor," he told his mother. "Probably no one has ever had so many doctors as I have."
Speaking with reporters in the living room of his relatives' home, Mr. Bolowski said he had a clear memory of being shot.
"There was a loud bang. I stood up. I felt the pain here," he said, touching his shoulder. "And I fell to my knees."
He said he instinctively touched the wound. "I put my hand on it and took it off right away," he said. "Then Gunda saw the hole in my shoulder."
He said he did not panic because he was immediately attended by two people on board the boat -- a Norwegian doctor and a German-born woman from New Zealand who translated for him.
Weighing an Invitation
This is Mr. Bolowski's third trip to New York and he said he was eager to resume his plans to visit Washington, Niagara Falls and New England.
He said he and his wife and two friends from Germany arrived in New York on Saturday and decided to take the Circle Line on their first day in the city.
He said his wife, an employee of an accounting firm, was overwhelmed by the attention of the media and city officials. "A normal citizen can't stand so many reporters," said Mr. Bolowski.
Mr. Bolowski said he was weighing an invitation from the Mayor for a tour of the city, but feared another day in the limelight. "After a day like today I think not," he said. "But if the next days are a bit quieter, why not? Who gets an offer like that?" His uncle, who came to the United States 38 years ago an operates a deli in Queens, said he would not mind tagging along.
Mr. Bolowski said he harbored no hostility toward New York. "What happened to me, how often does that happen?" he said. "The chances are one in how many?" He said it was his second Circle Line cruise and he did not rule out another ride.
In fact, the only thing that seemed to rattle Mr. Bolowski today was being told that the railroad station he used Monday morning for the trip into Manhattan was the scene of the Long Island Rail Road shootings last December in which six people were killed.
He whistled at that one, looked at his uncle and said: "You didn't tell me about that."
