Built into the wall, this spotlit treasure on display in a glass box with an oval opening. Found in our room in Cologne’s lovely Dorint Hotel.
If I’d had a long string of pearls, I’d have rested them in the bowl overnight.
If I’d had false teeth, I might have showcased them here.
If I’d had some udon, I’d have had an elegant bowl to eat it from.
If I’d had a pet mouse, it would have had a home and water source.
If I had a hammer…
But alas… I came unprepared.
Pickpockets, thieves, and con artists aren’t to be blamed for all losses. When you travel, don’t rip yourself off due to ignorance or naiveté.
So you’ve done your research, studied up on foreign currency, and made the long-awaited journey to elsewhere. After touchdown, you trudge through immigration with no surprises. You have whatever visas are required, perhaps your yellow immunization card, onwards tickets, proof of transfer tax or visa fees paid, whatever foreign officials can throw at you. Now you need a taxi.
Who knows if you’ll find an organized taxi queue or a pack of hustlers? Chances are, your research has suggested that you only use official taxis and agree on a rate before stepping in. Taxis can be a traveler’s first rip-off. Try to get a vague idea of what the charge should be, airport to hotel. Your hotel may be able to tell you via email before you leave home, or your travel agent; at the least, ask at an information booth in the airport when you arrive. Still, you can’t always protect yourself from unscrupulous practices.
For example: the tired traveler flies into flower-filled Changi Airport and instantly feels at ease. It’s neat, clean, functional, and aesthetic. Rules are adhered to in Singapore. The streets are as safe to walk as the tap water is to drink. What sort of thief can operate in such an ostensive utopia?
The traveler collects his luggage and changes a little money at the airport booth, then jumps into a taxi to his hotel. “Fifteen dollars,” the driver might say as he pulls up to Raffles or the Regent or the Mandarin; and in most cases, the visitor pays and that is that.
Many American tourists’ first sense of Singapore is not at all that of an exotic Oriental land, but rather, that the place resembles the modern city in which they live. Therefore, a surprising number of American tourists happily, ignorantly, accidentally pay their taxi fare in U.S. dollars. What taxi driver will refuse an instant bonus of thirty percent? That tourist has been self-ripped, so to say, and the driver is hardly to blame.
More cunning, though, is the driver or shop clerk who recognizes your naiveté and slips some worthless or worth-less money into your change. This happened to me once in Singapore. A taxi driver put a few Malaysian bills into the stack of Singapore bills he gave me as change. The pink Malaysian bills look remarkably similar to the pink Singaporean ten-dollar notes. So similar, in fact, that the passing of them could have been just an accident. But the ten-ringgit Malaysian notes were worth less than half the value of the Singaporean tens.
Other self-rips include pavement wagers, which I’ll discuss later. These include the three-shell game and three-card-monte. Like casino games, you bet against a house advantage. Unlike casino games, you cannot win.
I’ve already described a prevalent, greed-based self-rip called the bait-and-switch scam. This one occurs when you’re offered a deal too good to be true, a camera, for example, at such an irresistible price. You think it might be stolen, but that’s a detail you just don’t want to know. You test and scrutinize the item, you hem and haw, you buy it, and you get self-ripped. Read more on bait-and-switch.
What about tipping policies—are you prepared? Do taxis and waiters expect a hefty twenty percent? Do locals simply round up to the whole number? Are tips considered an insult? Are they included in the bill? Are they included in the bill with a blank total on the credit card slip, encouraging you to not notice and add more (or, to be fair, allowing you to lessen the included tip)? Tipping ignorance may lead you to self-rips. The State Department travel site won’t help you here, but internet research, travel guidebooks, and some great apps will.
Bob Arno and I are travel enthusiasts. We adore the variety of London one day, the next Johannesburg, Mumbai, New York, Florence, Sydney, Cairo, Buenos Aires… all in a year’s work. The last thing we want is to frighten travelers.
We believe that awareness and forewarning put a serious dent in the number of needless thefts that occur. One wallet stolen: it’s a small crime, not devastating, and its likelihood and consequences do not spontaneously occur to people traveling to unfamiliar destinations for business or pleasure. Since the threat never enters their minds, they are not prepared to protect themselves.
Yet, the after-effect is annoying at the least, troublesome and humiliating at worst, with the added potential of identity theft, which begins with stolen information.
Bob and I say awareness is your best weapon. We say do your research, raise your antennas, and go forth: explore and savor the natural and cultural differences that make each country and city unique. Rejoice in your fortune to be able to travel. Bon voyage and travel safe!
For more self-rips, read Cash or Credit Card?.
Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter Two: Research Before You Go
Who steals bag tags, and why? It couldn’t have fallen off.
I had just received my Star Alliance 1K tags from United and, having lost many previous luggage tags, I added a sturdy cable tie to the wimpy strap provided by the airline. I attached one tag to the bag I check and one to my roll-on. (Yes, I realize I’m a little OC.)
It was my first trip with the new tags. Bob and I flew from Phoenix to San Francisco, then on to Monterey. Both flights were on small aircraft where I was made to give up my roll-on plane-side. In San Francisco, the tag was still attached. When I got my bag on the Monterey tarmac, it was gone.
No “equipment” had handled the bag; only humans. It was lifted onto the plane, then taken off. I can’t see how the tag could fall off or break. But who would steal it, and why? Does it have value on the black market? Or did someone want a souvenir with my name on it?
Do you like hearing the sounds of lovemaking from the hotel room next to yours?
I’ve had my fair share of overhearing neighbors in hotels. Not surprising, given the number of nights I spend in hotels each year (average: 240).
Sex sound effects are certainly superior to the sounds of snoring, or worse, fighting. I’ve been kept awake entire nights by both. Yeah, travel is glamorous.
Unlike next-door-snoring- and next-door-fighting-wakefulness, other people’s nighttime sex sounds put me into a sort of dreamy, foggy trance—as long as they don’t go on too long. One night, wakefulness dragged on and on and the neighbors’ lovemaking sounds—loud and dramatic as they were—became repetitive and predictable. I had no urge to tune in, as with a fight or loud conversation. It wasn’t interesting. Still, I lost a night’s sleep.
I can’t help wondering about the noisy neighbors. What do they look like? How long have they been together? Do they always sound like this? Maybe they’re each married to others.
Mornings-after are amusing if I get a glimpse of the couple. Once we got in the elevator together and went down for breakfast in the hotel restaurant. I sipped my coffee stealing glances at the two strangers I had intimate knowledge of.
A few years ago we stayed in the antique-filled East Concubine Suite of the five-room Red Capital Residence in Beijing. On its intricately-carved opium bed was a porcelain headrest and a note suggesting that couples take care in their positions so as not to damage the ancient bed.
Soon after we turned out the lights we heard the amorous sounds of our neighbors. Bob was convinced that it was a recording, piped in for realism. Thankfully, the moans and gasps did not continue all night.
What about daytime sex sounds? I hear them about the same way I notice people’s tattoos and rubberneck accidents: with a squeamish fascination of private things exposed. (I know tattoos are not private, but I was taught not to stare—but I want to stare—and at tattoos, I sometimes do, though not without a slightly naughty sense of illicit license.)
On an amusing, tangential note, I used to live next door to a prostitute. While she did not conduct business at home, she did take appointments. Her answering machine blasted each john’s message. “Hey honey, remember me, Jim? I’ll be in Vegas next week. I’m the one who…” And here we were treated to usually unfamiliar, vivid, and sensational details. On beautiful days when her open windows faced mine, it was impossible to ignore the variety of plaintive and seductive messages left by hopeful men seeking Cinda’s services. Compelled to overhear the men’s intimacies, I had this same sense of unwilling spying and illicit knowing.
So here’s my survey, travelers: do you like to hear the sounds of sex from an adjacent hotel room? Yes? No? Comments? If you’ve read this, you have to answer.
Cadiz hotel mystery knobs. What could they be for? They’re way up there, beyond my tiptoed reach. There were no connectors, no hoses—not even a bidet, although they’re de rigueur in Spain.
Any ideas?
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. We now have to rush to our last meeting with Franco outside Mergellina station. It’s 5:00 and Michele hustles us toward the train but I’m transfixed, feet rooted to the ground. I’m watching a living, black, organic shape in the sky as it morphs like an amoeba, low over the city. It’s huge, monstrous, yet graceful, and I know that it’s thousands of starlings flying some innate choreography, like a screensaver in the sky.
Michele calls Franco when we arrive at the station. Franco is unenthusiastic on the phone. “I have someone fixing the boiler right now. Well, Okay, I’m coming.” But as usual, he’s warm and lively when he zooms up on his scooter.
Despite his griping, Franco likes the film. He chuckles. He’s only concerned about certain people knowing what he does for a living. I presume that everyone already knows—he’s been working out in the open for decades. If Bob and I, a couple of occasionally-visiting foreigners, see him at work, it must be common knowledge. But it’s the neighbors in his building he’s concerned about, and his younger children. His two grown children were raised knowing what their father did. But it’s different with the small ones now. He knows they’re going to find out, but he wants to delay it.
The sky has turned from luminous dark blue to black. I’m freezing and dying to get off my feet, but this is clearly going to be a long meeting, standing here in front of the train station, circling Franco’s scooter. Franco’s phone interrupts us continuously. He wanders a few steps away to take calls, but speaks loudly.
Franco has a serious question. He asks if we think he looks like a pickpocket. We say no, not at all. He looks like an ordinary man, trustworthy. Franco likes this, and says that’s his goal. That’s why he carries no tool. The tool makes him recognizable.
I notice how very beautiful this piazza is. The surrounding buildings are immaculate, brightly painted, and warmly lit. The trees are heavy with ripe oranges so perfect they look fake.
Franco speaks sadly about his wife’s depression, that possibly it’s a form of relief: it’s okay for her to fall apart now because he is finally healthy. It is ironic, because all the times he was drug-sick or in jail, his wife had to hold the family and finances together. Bob insists she is sad because of his profession, and her worry that he can go to jail at any time. Franco says no, he hasn’t been arrested in ten years.
About teamwork, Franco says his brother is an excellent Nona (blocker) and has a gift for reading the body language and mood of marks. He can separate a couple swiftly, which is exactly what the pickpocket needs. Franco sashays gracefully between Bob and me, making me spin away. But his brother wants to do the extraction, and that he is not too good at. This causes rifts and family arguments. Bob later describes Franco’s demonstration as “smooth and practiced, like a slalom skier.”
Finally we say goodbye and Franco speeds into traffic. Michele has a lot of catching up to do translating the gist of Franco’s rants. His (Franco’s) language skills are very poor, though sometimes he is colorful and poetic. He cannot speak in Italian at all—only in the Napolitano dialect. He knows there are words out there, Michele says, so he reaches out and grabs one, though it is often the wrong one. Michele is rather colorful himself.
Together, we take the small streets back to our hotel and Michele points out what the neighborhood was like when he grew up here. It’s a long, long walk, but it warms us. We pop into bright little shops along the way and pick up cheese, bread, grapes, and that incredible licorice liqueur.
This is Part 9.
Read Part 1.
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. After his demonstration of hard bargaining, pickpockets Angelo and Luciano smoke on the narrow balcony while we chat in the kitchen. Shortly, Angelo announces that he needs to get back to work. He’s got a lot of christmas presents to buy. He kisses all the children again. We all trek down the dark stairwell and the thief bids his farewell with the customary kisses. The waitress spots him and begs for a photo, along with Bob. She remembers Angelo from the film, too.
The restaurant is small—maybe five tables inside, more outside when it’s warmer. Bob and I take a corner table with Luciano, Michele, and Lucca. The place is all family run. The waitress points out her father-in-law the chef, her mother-in-law, her husband. Luciano says he sometimes buys food here and brings it upstairs, when no one feels like cooking.
I ask Luciano if he liked the film about himself and his pickpocket friends. Yes. Did anything negative come from it? No.
Luciano tells how sometimes he’d ask a mark for the time, just to get him to raise his arm and elbow. Then he’d move his own arm forward to block the mark’s arm from coming down. That gave him the moment he needed to get into the pocket. Also, when people were all bundled up in the winter, he’d knock a mark’s hat off. That’s all it took to distract him.
The pickpockets like to take most of the cash, but leave some, Luciano says. That way the victim doesn’t think he’s been pickpocketed, but wonders where his money went. Did he spend it? drop it? forget to get change? They don’t like to take a wallet, either—they like to take the money and leave the wallet if they can.
One of us asks Luciano if he ever felt bad about stealing. If he ever had regrets. He says yes, and tells about the time he stole from a man just before christmas and managed to pass off the money. The man caught him, but when the police accused him, he had no evidence on him. Still, he knew the police knew. Meanwhile, the man had begun to cry, he was so upset. He gave the money back to the victim. “Most of it,” he clarifies.
Coffee comes, then limoncello and a delicious licorice liqueur. The brand is Strega, Italian for witch.
This is Part 8. Read Part 9.
Read Part 1.
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. Michele arrives promptly at Circumvesuviana station with his brother Lucca. Lucca’s nice to have along, and also helps translate. We cross the street and head into the market.
Luciano’s standing in his spot looking forlorn. His cigarette stand was seized by police at 10:00 this morning. Seizures usually occur about twice a year, but this is the second time this week. Between the two raids, he lost about €700 worth of cigarettes that he hadn’t yet paid for. “I haven’t done it for years, but this morning I was very tempted to go back to my old work on the trams,” Luciano said. The cigarette sales are surely illegal in some way or another. Mob-supplied, stolen, counterfeit, something. We all mourn with Luciano, though. It’s his livelihood and seems better than outright thievery. It has kept him from pickpocketing, anyway. I silently dwell on the fact that he kept his appointment with us, even though he has no business in the market, a fact that impresses me.
Up to now the news of Luciano’s loss has usurped the obvious: no Angelo. We’re disappointed that once, again, he’s failed to show up. Bob had predicted it. Angelo must be mad that Franco had more face-time in the film, he surmises.
Luciano invites us to visit his apartment, just a few blocks away. As we walk, he wonders how we located him in the market—how we knew where he stands with his cigarettes. We remind him that he told us vaguely where two-and-a-half years ago during the film shoot.
His apartment is four flights up, over a restaurant. Michele inhales deeply and suggests we have lunch here later. It’s the kind of simple neighborhood place that churns out dependably decent meals. A steady stream of motor scooters load up with take-out. We stand in the fragrant street while Luciano rings his wife and converses with her on the buildings’ intercom. Bob has pushed him to call Angelo again and Luciano is asking his wife up there to do so.
Meanwhile, a waitress at the restaurant has recognized Bob. She calls out “film,” and makes camera gestures. Bob promises her a photo later.
Eventually the five of us trudge up the four flights: Luciano, Bob, Michele, Lucca, and I. The stone steps are worn smooth and deeply concave. Though we think we have no expectations, we’re surprised at what we find upstairs. The apartment is large, spotless, and sparsely furnished. The kitchen table is long, covered with oilcloth, and dotted with ashtrays. A glass and polished wood china cabinet is filled with porcelain treasures. A magnum of wine stands on the kitchen counter. A pan of cooked tomatoes stands ready to top spaghetti. There are lots of kids of all ages, including Luciano’s grandson Giuliano (not his real name), maybe 18 years old, who is the son of Mirco (who is presently in jail and married to Luciano’s daughter Alessandra).
We get a tour: The master bedroom is kingly; ornately furnished with baroque antiques, a lavish baby crib (“there are always babies coming to visit in Naples”) and a red-and-gold striped bed suitable for royalty. I see an antique telephone and a framed photo of Luciano’s wedding on the polished bureau. We’re herded across to the bathroom, which is as big as a bedroom and includes an outrageous Jacuzzi tub surrounded by roman columns and sporting its own roof. There must be a hundred bath products on the shelves. I’m not sure what to think.
Luciano reveals that the apartment is not his, but belongs to a mobster relative who is in prison. He and his wife live there in the meantime with an assortment of other family members. “We don’t need this,” Luciano says, “we do it for the family. My wife and I would be happy with a mattress in a bare room.”
I’m touched to see his smallest granddaughters run up to him for hugs and whispers. He’s a thief—or a former thief—and a beloved family man.
Bob does some magic tricks for the kids. They’re delighted, as are the adults, and beg for repeats. Everyone who’s remotely old enough is smoking. In the middle of the tricks, in walks Angelo, like a hurricane—and like a celebrity. He’s wearing a cheap suit that doesn’t fit him very well. On second glance, I notice that the jacket doesn’t match the trousers. He’s wearing a bold blue tie and a hat pulled down low. “It’s warmer to dress like this in winter,” he explains, and the hat partially hides his face.
Angelo makes the rounds with hugs and kisses like the favorite uncle he must be. Right away he agrees to participate in our undefined film project. He makes it clear though, that this time he wants big money. He pulls a scrap from his wallet and shows us a phone number: he’s been called by producer in Milano but, he says, he’ll “only do a film with Bob Arno.” He’s famoso now. People recognize him from the film, and he has “molti fans,” He’s even been asked for his autograph. He rubs his thumb over two fingertips and raises his chin.
The kitchen has become chaotic with all the company and excited children. Michele is busy translating for Bob and Angelo. Lucca is translating miscellaneous scraps of conversation for me. I’m feeling faint from the smoke. We’re invited to eat something, drink something, but we decline, not wanting to impact the family even more than we have.
This is Part 7. Part 8 coming soon.
Read Part 1.
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. Leaving our hotel at 12:30 to meet Michele for our 1:30 appointment with Luciano, we pass by the San Carlo bus stop; it’s unavoidably on the way to where we’re going. As we approach the bus stop, a bus pulls in and off jumps Franco. We give him a subtle greeting. He’s friendly, polite, but also subtle, just pointing to his watch to indicate our 4:30 meeting time. Clearly, he does not want to linger with us. We keep walking, barely breaking stride. It feels a little like we’re undercover colleagues exchanging a mumbled secret in a black-and-white spy film, pretending we don’t know each other. It really is an odd coincidence though: we and Franco converging unplanned on a single point in this large city.
We continue around a few corners and there at Maritime we run into another team of pacco men, a pair we’ve never seen before. They offer an iPad, quickly adding “no bandito,” only €250. When that doesn’t work they flash an iPhone 5. Both devices are in slim black cases. Bob tells the pair that his friends are pacco men. He pantomimes a few switchy-moves. The duo’s faces go blank, then they smile and say their names: Antonio and Enzo. “No—Francesco!” the one called Enzo corrects quickly. Was it an honest mistake by his pal? An alias? Did Antonio use his partner’s real name by accident? Or did the partner want to forgo aliases?
Antonio suggests coffee; we don’t have time, though we’d have loved to linger with these men. Lacking time to finesse it, Bob just flat-out asks how they do their switch and, to our surprise, they show us, amid much nervous laughter. It’s now basically a one-man job. The seller drops the iPad, in its black cover, into a messenger bag he carries low, in front. Immediately, he pulls out the dummy which is in an identical black cover. The cover’s zipper has been glued shut, which buys the thieves precious minutes to get away after a sale.
Antonio and Enzo-Francesco are apologetic about their work, explaining that they don’t like it but there are no jobs in Naples. Unemployment among young people is almost 50%. The pacco men ask if we’d like to go eat with them. We point to our watches and to the nearby tram. It’s a shame we don’t have time. We leave them and dash to the tram. Bob has had his glasses camera running.
This is Part 6. Read Part 7, in which a lifelong pickpocket now reformed, lives by selling cigarets—until his stand is confiscated. We visit his home, meet his family, perform magic.
Read Part 1.
NAPLES, ITALY, the week before christmas. At the Piazza Garibaldi bus stop outside the main train station Michele goes to buy a bus ticket while Bob and I scrutinize people. We spot a scary-looking hooked-nose pickpocket we’ve filmed but never met. He recognizes us and turns his back, steps behind a column. I inch forward to look at him; he retreats.
Across the street we identify Nuncio, the pickpocket-in-a-business-man-disguise who Bob stole a tie from so many years ago. Last time we saw Nuncio he greeted us with hugs and kisses. Michele and I trot across the street to speak with him. As Nuncio hops on a bus, Michele asks if we can speak for two minutes. “Not even one second!” Nuncio says with venom. Michele is unnerved.
Hooknose remains at the bus stop. Bob pushes Michele to go alone to request a conversation with him. Hooknose says “Get away with your cameras. You’ve already ruined five families!” Gentle Michele is shaken. I am shaken. We’re finding out how Naples’ thieves react to us after the broadcast of our film. Those who were in it: warmly. Those who weren’t: hostile.
The three of us take the subway to Montesanto in Quartieri Spagnoli to meet the famous screenwriters. Five of us settle into a corner table at a nearby nameless restaurant. The meal is simple and delicious: pasta, octopus, fish, and an assortment of vegetables. The restaurant entrance is lined with huge jugs of homemade limoncello. Bob and the screenwriters hit it off and our film is a step closer to reality.
We leave lunch to return to our hotel at 4:30 with little time to spare. Then we tram back to Circumvesuviana station at 5:30 to meet Michele and go back to see Luciano in the market with, hopefully, Angelo. Luciano is there with his wife again, and grown daughter Alessandra (not her real name), who is lounging on her Vespa. Alessandra is married to Mirco, another of the pickpockets in our film, currently in jail. (Mirco used a bank card from a stolen wallet at an ATM, and was IDed by the ATM surveillance video.)
Angelo could not make it: “he is in Roma. Will come tomorrow.” Bob is very disappointed and believes Angelo is avoiding us. But Luciano is full of more stories from his early days. Alessandra listens without much interest. I’m losing interest, too—it’s cold and I’ve been on my feet for days. Luciano says we should return at 1:30 tomorrow to meet Angelo. Bob is certain Angelo will not show up.
Leaving the market we once again pass through the Piazza Garibaldi bus stop outside the main train station, where Michele will catch his train home. Michele and I are a little spooked being there, after the chilling reception of the thieves earlier. I’m queasy standing there as we debrief, and cold, and feeling sensory-overload. We finally say goodnight to Michele. Bob and I walk down Corso Umberto toward our hotel, which is far away. Two blocks later, we find pacco men.
They’re selling iPads. Bob schmoozes with the very handsome seller, but they don’t have a common language. The pacco man phones his friend who is nearby and speaks English. The friend zooms up on a scooter driven by his wife and, before even arriving, waves and shouts that he remembers us from 5-6 years ago. He introduces himself as Carlos. We talk about the pacco business, which is the bait-and-switch business, just another form of stealing. We talk about the job market, or lack thereof, and life in Napoli.
After 15 minutes, I use Carlos’s real name, which I remember from May of 2002: Dante (another fake name I’m using for this story). He’s floored. “How do you know my name?! He’s amazed, shocked, impressed, and this adds a further level of trust and friendliness. Remembering a man’s name goes a long way in a nefarious reunion; even criminals are proud to be remembered.
Dante tells us he makes about €500 a week in the iPhone and iPad pacco trade. He said it’s getting harder because people know the trick. Bob asks the guys to demonstrate the switch. Dante demands €30 apiece for the three of them; we decline.
It’s only 8 p.m. but it’s been a very long, very standing day. An overwhelming day. Still, we choose to walk the long distance back, and decide to try the restaurant Nennella in Quartieri Spagnoli for dinner. We have more valuables on us tonight, but the restaurant is only a few blocks into the danger zone. We’re in luck: though there’s a big crowd waiting to get in, we’re only two and there’s a table for us right away. The place is all about fun. It used to be known for incredibly cheap good food. It’s still cheap, still good, not great. The entertaining waiters sing, dance, pantomime and inspire a lively, disorganized atmosphere. When a diner leaves a tip, he’s asked to throw it into a communal tip basket which is lowered from the ceiling by a rope, and all the waiters yell out “Grazie!”
This is Part 5. Read Part 6.
Read Part 1.