CULTURE, CRIME, AND PUNISHMENT: EUROPE TRIP PART 4

Let's start with taking your life in your hands when traveling in Europe.  Even our local guide in Haarlem, Netherlands (20 miles west of Amsterdam) lamented that bicyclists have been given rather liberal legal preference when it comes to right of way laws.  On this trip, our second in less than two years to the Netherlands, what we experienced last time in Amsterdam was also the norm in much smaller Haarlem.  Bikes Rule.  The pecking order is 1) bikes, 2) cars/trucks, 3) pedestrians.  So on foot you take your chances.  

Yes, there are stop lights and walk signals.  Cars and people mostly obey them.  Not so much cyclists.  They whizz across lanes and around corners going full cruising speed and the onus is NOT on them to beware.  Sure, they are supposed to yield to motorized traffic coming from their right and are supposed to use caution at crosswalks. But...we learned the Dutch word for bike and took to warning our fellow travelers by shouting "feits! feits!" whenever bikers came barreling down on our group.

In Europe there are a LOT of bikes.  Moms pick up their kids from school ON BIKES! (And even Grandma gets a ride.) I love the idea of human powered transport and thumbing the nose at the fossil fuel industry.  But hey, give a care for the lowly walker!  

When crossing the street, even WITH the walk sign, you can get across two lanes of stopped traffic, but watch out for that bike lane (as wide as a car lane) because they DO NOT STOP, so don't assume you can safely walk across the entire street on a walk signal!  It amazes me there are not more collisions.  What you can count on, in some places, is being yelled at or flipped off if you venture into a biker's claimed territory.  (All of this also held true in Paris, but the bikers were more friendly and less confrontational.  Or maybe by the end of our trip we'd become more docile in their presence.)

Moving on to Italy, in Rome in particular, crossing the street becomes an act of living on the razor's edge of life and death.  Our tour guide actually gave us a tutorial/demonstration on crossing the street. There are stop lights and walk signals at some corners, but crosswalks with no signals were more prevalent.  So, we all followed behind him as he confidently stepped off the curb into a crosswalk where 2-4 lanes of cars zoomed by without a glance at him until he calmly kept walking, with arm casually outstretched, turning his head to make friendly eye contact, and walking at a slow and measured pace across the street as cars stopped within a foot of him/us, grudgingly giving in to either stopping or running us over, which seemed the bigger hassle for them I guess.  A few stragglers in our group tried to pick up the pace and sort of jog across the street, causing our tour guide to call out, "Don't run!  Don't run!" as if doing so turned us into prey.  It was all very dramatic, but I'm proud to say we became quite adept at stopping traffic.  Caio!

By the way, in Austria, there are ample stop lights and walk signals and NO ONE will step off that curb without the walk sign lit even if there hasn't been a vehicle in sight for the better part of a month.  I love this allegiance to an orderly society. 

So pickpockets are a thing.  I have some nostalgia for the "profession" given that I loved reading Dickens' Oliver Twist and our high school senior play was the musical, "Oliver!"  Great fun, those street urchins!  In real life 21st century big cities, pickpockets are no joke.  And they don't wear the giveaway raggy clothing.  They look like regular people; they are clever, and skilled and can spot a careless tourist with uncanny accuracy.  They must hate that automated announcements in the Rome and Paris Metro stations warn passengers about the presence of pickpockets.  Go to any crowded area where tourists gather in tight knots of people (public transportation, iconic sites such as the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Vatican, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, museums, cathedrals, etc.) and you are are pretty sure to encounter a situation where you are being targeted.

What to do?  Be hyper-aware.  Be street smart.  Do not give them something to get.  Men in our tour group were advised to use a hidden money belt for extra cash, I.D., and credit cards.  Phones and wallets should never be carried in a jacket or back trouser pocket.  Women should carry their purses with a cross-shoulder strap in front with a hand over it, not slung behind flapping about at your side or on your back.  Backpacks and purses should have locking zippers and "no cut" straps.  Crazy, huh?  What's up with petty street crime in Europe?!?  Well, I Googled pickpockets in American cities and got the same information at our major tourist attractions.  But at home we are much less diligent, aren't we?  

And pickpocketing isn't the only tourist-targeted crime.  How about the clipboard scam?  Or the sidewalk art?  The slow count? The bracelet scam?  Or the souvenir vendors?  

The clipboard scam is usually a young woman (or two) approaching with a clipboard pretending to be deaf.  She indicates with a smile that she'd like you to sign her petition by a charity protecting the deaf.  You are a good person, she is well groomed and sincere, so you are tempted.  But, wait, is this just the distraction you've heard about that can give her partner (a pickpocket) access to your unguarded treasure?  So, you say no and walk away.  Good for you.  If you do sign, suddenly the deaf woman speaks!  She starts to explain that you have just agreed to make a donation and will badger you to do so.  Some people do.  Some don't, so she follows them and the badgering gets a bit more aggressive.  A variation on this is a young woman targeting older tourist women with, "Hey, Lady!  Do you speak English?"  She gets your attention and seems to be in some sort of trouble and needs help.  Again, not to be cynical, but this is also a way to engage and distract you for nefarious purposes.  (Both of these happened to me personally in Paris; I was not taken in either time. I am "stranger danger" suspicious by nature and also had been well schooled on the scam trade.)

In Florence, Italy it was common to see what appeared to be artists with suspiciously similar watercolor paintings of famous buildings and landscapes displaying their "art" in city squares where hordes of tourists walk to get from one side of the square to another, or stop at a cafe for a cappuccino or whatever.  It seemed weird that they'd put their art down on the cobblestones, obviously in harm's way from the footsteps of tourists.  Except that was the point.  Once an errant shoe hit even a small corner of a "painting" the "artist" was on his feet shouting that the painting was damaged and now the hapless "mark" was being told very aggressively he just bought himself a painting.  Some are chased down and bullied into forking out the euros. (I saw this myself, but the mark just kept walking and the artist gave up.) Some escape after a public shouting match.  Do not step on the paintings!

The slow count is commonly used in restaurants and cafes I guess.  We didn't encounter this since we used mostly credit cards.  But it's a scam where, after paying and waiting for your change, the waiter (or vendor) counts out the change in an agonizingly slow and halting manner hoping the mark will become impatient and distracted enough to just grab the "change" and call it good, never realizing what they grabbed is far less than what was owed.

The bracelet scam occurs when a vendor with handful of "free friendship bracelets" holds out one just for you!  He's friendly and the colorful array of bracelets are attractive, but he can slip one on your wrist before you know it and once there, he demands a "tip".  Nope.  Just keep walking.

The souvenir vendors are ubiquitous (best known for their presence in Paris at the Eiffel Tower) and can be a bit aggressive with their sales pitches, but kneeling with their wares spread on a cloth cover in front of them, it's a pretty straightforward deal.  Buy overpriced cheap replicas of the Eiffel tower if you want.  Just know these vendors are operating illegally and the police do occasional sweeps of areas where they operate.  All can look quiet and calm but a signal goes out from vendor to vendor warning them of a sweep and suddenly they pull a string on their ground cover, the whole thing starts to engulf their wares, and turns into a satchel they throw over their backs as they jump walls, hustle up or down nearby stairways, and basically run for cover from the police.

Of course big cities also have big city crimes, but at no point did I ever feel like I was in true physical danger.  As I checked the news from home (both local and national) there were stories of shootings every day.  Never did I read or hear of such a crime in the same time frame in Europe.  On a whim, when I Googled "shootings in Rome yesterday", what popped up was Rome, Georgia!  Not Rome, Italy.  

That's not to say bad guys are not around.  You may have heard about the jewel heist at the Louvre  -- a week after we were there!  I was not involved in any way except to note, after the fact, that the gallery where the jewels were kept (I didn't go there) is very very close to the Mona Lisa room which I most definitely visited.  I did not see any suspicious characters at the Louvre, except Buddy the Dog who goes on trips with us.  (I know it's weird; there is a story behind it, but that doesn't really make it that much less weird.)  

What we did see all over Paris were "echelle de meubles",  furniture ladders.  They are used in centuries old tall buildings (like in the photo) to move furniture in and out of apartments where the inside is not at all conducive to getting a sofa up the stairs, no matter how much you pivot. (Cool "Friends" episode reference, that. LOL)  So when we heard about the heist and how it was pulled off we felt very Parisian as we nodded in resigned understanding of how this apparatus could look very at home propped up against an exterior wall of the world's most famous art museum.  C'est la vie.  

At least, that's the view from here... ©

Photo Credits:   Clipboard and vendor scams I found on the internet but couldn't find anyone to attribute them to.  The art scam photo came from a Tik Tok post on a site called "Explore Florence".  The other pix were taken by Hub.  Credit where due.