When traveling abroad you have to have a healthy awareness of ripoff artists. But if you’re too careful, you might miss out on an adventure.
For example, my roommate and I went to the train station today to get to Venice. Due to my hyper-paranoia we got there about an hour early. We stood around until the train information was posted then slowly got our baggage together. I speak twelve words of Italian, which is enough to find your carriage and seat number on an Italian train. It was going to be an easy trip.
We started walking towards the train when an officious Italian in a blue shirt rushed up to my roommate and demanded to know what carriage we were in- “Uno” and seat numbers (I had to point to 73 and 74 because those words are beyond my Italian vocabulary). The Italian said “Theese waya” and rushed off. Immediately responding to his authoritative air, we dragged our bags behind us and tried to keep up.
After about twelve steps we turned to each other and wondered who exactly this guy was. It’s not typical for an Italian official to offer their assistance. It’s not typical for an Italian official to rush anywhere. I’m not saying these things in criticism, it’s just a reliable aspect of Italian culture. Also Italians love uniforms, and insist on sashes and badges to spruce up any work enforced dress codes. Even the garbage men wear epaulets. Arriving at car number one- which was easy enough to find thanks to the huge numeral one posted on the side- our unsolicited assistant motioned us to follow. The roommate and I banged our suitcases up the steps and paused to wipe the sweat from our brows.
We looked up to see the Italian gesturing to our seats. “Theese eesa eet.” He said helpfully. Well not that helpful really. A goat would have been as helpful by pawing at the ground in front of our seats. We nodded and sat down. “Grazie” I said. My roommate nodded. The Italian put his hand out.
“Teepa” he said.
“Wha?” I replied.
“Eet eesa customary to geeve a tipa” he clarified. My roommate and I looked and each other and snickered.
“No” we said in unison.
“Eet is customary to geeve a tipa” he repeated.
Obviously this guy had a good thing going- pretend to help Americans find their seats on the train, then shame them into giving a tip. But I had encountered better schemes then this. I told the guy in broken Italian that we didn’t have a tip for him, and he could stick it. He was both incredulous and furious and stalked off like he was going to make a shank out of a toothbrush and a lighter. We couldn’t help but be smug for getting the better of this rip off artist.
Waiting for the train to depart, we watched three other sets of Americans suffer the same fate. One husband and wife gave their scam-porter ten Euro, another pair of girls gave a two Euro coin, but ponied up more when they guy kept standing their with his hand out. I yelled “You don’t have to pay him” to no avail. Shame goes a long way with Americans, but standing up to a scumbag just feels so good.
