Extortionist foreign Metro 'police' (and other adventures)
Okay Ana-Maria (or amc as you now call yourself), I am posting to get things going. I am also procrastinating, but we all have our ulterior motives.So, let me preface by saying I am not trying to brag that I live in London where cheap airfare to fabulous nearby places is a huge perk. If you lived here, and you're anything like me, you'd use every spare quid to plan a trip too.
So, a couple weeks ago Jen and I took a trip to Rome, about a week after I got back from California. Two hour flight, no big deal aside from what a huge pain it is to get to Stansted Airport early in the morning. But that's why Ryan Air is so cheap. We arive without incident, and buy Metro tickets to get into the city center only to discover that the ticket machine which stamps your ticket with the time and location where you boarded is broken. A uniformed Metro employee opened the gate and was waving everyone through, though, so we thought it was no big deal. Upon arriving at our destination, we almost get out of the underground station before being accosted (okay, not rudely at first) by a uniformed Metro employee who asks to see our tickets. We show them to him, and of course they aren't stamped so he asks for our passports.
This becomes one of those moments when internally I am thinking 'Am I supposed to give it to him? He does have a badge. What do I do?' We ended up handing the passports over, and he walks us over to a woman seated at a table he tells us will speak better English. The woman starts off nicely, but quickly becomes very rude when we try to explain that a person in a uniform identical to her own had told us to go through without the stamp. This would not be such a big issue if not for her insistence that we pay a €100 fine (!) for improperly using a €1 ticket, which we purchased, as instructed by her conterpart. By the way, a €10 fine would be understandable, but 100? Seems to me like an excellent scheme to entrap and extort money from tourists. I figured this all out 60 seconds too late, and now all I was thinking was 'How are we going to get our passports back and get out of this?'
Mid-explanation, the 'Nazi cow' (as Jen and I later affectionaely dubbed her) cuts me off and very rudely says 'You can't expect things to be like in your country,' by which apparently she meant the expectation that we should obey the instructions of agents of the government with authority to fine us, and not get in trouble for doing so. 'You stop talking,' she says. 'We are finished'. I was seething mad, and more so for her lumping me together with the jerks who give American tourists a bad name, while I was attempting to be quite reasonable with her. We told her we had no money (which was true) and she proceeded to write us tickets, which Jen (being a good law student) refused to sign because we couldn't read Italian and we might be admitting we committed a crime, which we felt we had not done. She gave us our passports back with the tickets and threatened that the company would track us down in the United States and send us a bill. We left.
All this took place at a small complex of tables where the Metro gestapo were running their little racket, and several other obvious tourists in backpacks (like us) were dealing with a similar situation. The lone Italian man who had been stopped was royally pissed off and looked like he was going to hurt someone. Who could blame him?
So, boys and girls, the lesson is... well obvious enough. I would expect this sort of thing in Latin America or the Middle East, but was a bit surprised to see such a scam going on in Western Europe. Then again, in most of our country you can't smoke indoors except in your own home (not that that affects me particularly), so I guess standards of 'civilization' are relative. I hope you at least found something entertaining in the story. Cheers!
posted by Zack @ 2/02/2005 03:02:00 PM
7 Comments:
Wow, that's pretty balsy for scammers to heap so much insult on top of injury! Glad things turned out ok for you two. :) What were you able to see on the trip?
And yes, I *love* stories.
(I've reverted to initials since starting my own little blog and the traffic I'm getting--obviously it isn't anonymity, but...well...it just feels more comfortable than a full name.)
Surprised at this happening in Western Europe? You obvious didn't read Rick Steves Travels Italy with the same religious fervor as my mother--apparently Rome is a hotbed of crummy little scams (aka paying an arm and a leg after getting your picture taken with a greasy little man dressed as a gladiator who smells very authentic)! I only bring it up because it was driven unrelentlessly into my head during our little family jaunt four years ago...
I still want to go back.
Rome definitely does have its fascist constituency. When Lindsay and I took a train from Rome to Venice this past summer, one of the train workers threatened to kick us off the train unless we gave him 50 euros (I'm not wasting my time going through symbols for the proper euro thing). So I gave him the money, but then we were worried that he would come back and demand more. I felt like I was in Iraq for crying out loud.
Anyway, to make a long story medium length, I found another train worker later that morning (3am) and told her in my best broken Italian that the guy took money from me (ok I don't speak any Italian . . . except possibly made-up Beatles lines from [the] Sun King - now we'll see if Ana Maria is paying attention). She confronted him and had a conversation in what I believe to be actual Italian . . . and then he pulled out the 50 eauros. I asked the woman if my ticket was ok, and she said "yes." So I grabbed the money from his hand, apologized for "my" mistake (I'm no fool - I wanted off that train with all my stuff), and headed back to my train car.
And as far as the metro goes . . . ? We bought tickets the first time, from a machine where the words were completely scratched off, only to find that we were the ONLY people who were buying tickets. EVERYONE just walked on in. There were 3 "guards", but none of them said a word to anyone. That's probably why the metro in Rome is the most disgusting and creepy public transportation known to the developed world.
I also got a "rose hander-outer person" (kind of makes me think of elementary school valentines this time of year . . .) so mad at me that he just rattled off all the filthy language he knew in English - which was somewhat impressive.
Anyhow, that's all I have to say about that ancient dirty citywhere everyone has to go ONCE (twice was too much for me).
Vic, by the way (if you've made it this far) . . . that book you were talking about . . . I, uh, read that one maybe. It's slow in the beginning, but really picks up through the beginning middle through the later middle parts, dropping slightly in intensity towards the end. I haven't finished it yet, so don't ruin the surprise. Thanks.
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How's that, Ryan? :) (Glad you escaped unscathed!)
hehe... i got to hear the story first-hand BEFORE all of you, as i drank coffe with zack in covent garden while i skipped work cause i told my boss i had "personal" doctor's appointment. (i've never been to italy and have a relatively uneventful life but wanted to brag about living in europe too!! how sad am i??)
Thanks for all the comments everyone. Missy, you are so right, I guess I just like to think the best of everyone around the world, or at least countries with McDonalds. I was wise to the whole gypsy throwing her baby at you trick, however. I let that brat hit the pavement. I wasn't about to let her other kids pick my pockets while I am standing there holding that baby! That'll teach 'em.
Ryan, the Rome Metro is indeed the world's filthiest form of public transport (okay, somewhat limited perspective on that point, but I bet it holds up). I too saw lots of Italians getting on for free through the exits, which I was not going to do after the aforementioned incident. It would only make sense to create a more efficient gate system that prevented people without tickets from getting on in the first place, thus avoiding the whole dedication of man/woman-power to ticketing. Then again, that would spoil the source of revenue. I gotta say though, after the £2 minimum tube charge in London, I thought €1 was pretty reasonable. Even the rickety NYC subway was nearly $2 last time I was there.
Oh yeah, Ryan, and did the carabinieri (whoever they are) have the menacing fascist-looking black uniforms, complete with black leather gloves, when you were there? They were pretty intimidating, I thought.
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