I tried to be vigilant for our trip. While MrFodder was taking photos in the Louvre, I was watching both of our bags and pockets. I constantly checked my bag to make sure I still had my wallet and camera (had a few scares, but it turned out I had just left my wallet in the hotel room, or put it back in the wrong pocket). When we were leaving Florence, the woman who ran the B&B that we stayed at warned us to make sure our bags were secure in Rome. In fact, Rome was the only time that someone tried to steal something (that we know of). On the train, there was a hand on my bag. I thought it was MrFodder, and it was a really crowded train, but I turned to MrFodder and could see both of his hands. Luckily, that was our stop, so I hopped off, and saw that my bag had been zipped open, but thankfully, I had clipped the clip to hold it down, which stopped him from unzipping my bag all the way, and it didn't look like anything was stolen.
But other than blatant thieves, there are the less blatant scam artists, which we encountered a few of. The first was the flower lady. She came up to us on Tower Bridge with some hand-made flowers, and put one in MrFodder's hand. Then she asked for some money "for the children", and he gave her 20 pence. It's probably not even worth that, it's some crepe paper and aluminium foil.
But she said the £1 and £2 coins in our coin purse, so she demanded one of those, and kept saying "for the children". Sadly, we gave in and ended up giving her £1. But from then on, we resolved not to give money for these crappy things.
Some of our uni friends went to Europe together, and one of them was given a bracelet and ended up giving the guy €20 for it, because the guy told him that he had bought it. So that story was fairly fresh in my mind, too.
We were scam-free until we hit Milan. We went to a park behind where the Milan Expo 2015 was being held, and this guy comes up to us and starts telling us about Africa. He asked if MrFodder was from Africa, to which he replied that he wasn't, and we tried to keep walking, but he followed us, and kept trying to ask us questions. I was the one who got baited this time, when he mentioned Kenya, and I stopped to talk to him. Then he said he'd give us these bracelets, and that they were free. So he picked some out, tied them to our wrists really tightly, and cut the ends off with a nail clipper. Then he asked us for money "for Africa". (What's with all these claims that it's for something else?)
We shook our heads, and said we'd give the bracelets back. And he kept saying, no, we had to give him money now. But with the flower lady still on my mind, I started walking away, and he kept following us, saying that he gave us bracelets, and now we had to give him money. We kept walking, and finally he gave up and turned away in disgust. I suggested we keep the bracelets on, as a deterrent to other people trying to do the same thing.
However, when we got to the cathedral, there were tons of people selling stuff. MrFodder was trying to take a photo of me with the cathedral in the background, when some guy puts some bird seed in my hand and starts whistling to attract pigeons.
I thought it was a funny gesture, so I offered him 1 Euro for the seeds. He said, "No, 5 Euros." And he saw that I only had €20 notes in my wallet, so he grabbed out €15 in change and started waving it at me demanding €5. Then other guys selling bird seed and other stuff came over and started telling me that I had to give him €5 as well. I kept refusing, and finally, I gave him the €1 coin and walked away. During that harassment, it seems someone else had come over to MrFodder and given him another one of those bracelets.
Three bracelets and a potential psittacosis* case later, we walked back to our hotel in frustration of scam artists.
Our free walking tour guide in Venice said that there's a human trafficking business around smuggling in disabled people from poor countries to beg for money in tourist areas, and the only reason such an industry thrives is because stupid tourists (like myself) indulge them. So while we did not give any money to beggars, we did fall for these tricks. On one hand, I do admire how enterprising these people are (as soon as it started raining, all of them had umbrellas in hand, ready to sell), on the other hand, I hate how they prey on people. Though I guess as they say, "A fool and his money are soon parted."
* Yes, we had just seen that episode of House where someone gets diagnosed with psittacosis and his hand rots and must be amputated. How am I supposed to play Dota 2 without my mouse hand?!
No comments:
Post a Comment