TRAVEL REGRET #3 Italian Police

Oh, Italy!

What a magnificent country: beautiful, welcoming, charming, and full to the brim of annoying tourists. Now, I can’t say too much here as I have just spent all weekend walking around Prague with a massive camera hanging off my neck while trying to sneakily look at my map so I don’t look like a tourist. I know, I know; the pale pasty British skin would give it away in a second.

But man how I hate other tourists.

Not travellers mind you, aside from Australians with Southern Cross tattoos who spend all their time either getting pissed, talking about getting pissed, roping others into getting pissed or recovering from getting pissed. Nor do I like those fancy travellers who claim to be backpackers then have the most expensive bags possible, stay in the most expensive hostels, eat out in restaurants (not just scoffing down bread and butter with some local cheese so you can claim you tasted the local cuisine), and generally flaunt their cash in a manner that says, ‘I’m roughing it so when I go home to daddy I can tell him how the other half live.’ Nor do I like dreadlocked travellers, people who go to India once then spend all their time talking about enlightenment and wearing loose fitting clothes, 18 year olds who act like they are the first people to do everything and… and… and…

Calm down! My word, if you let me I’ll be here all day going on and on about all those people who get my goat. I’m sure you all have the same: certain travellers you encounter who drive you mad.

Anyway, we are not here for all that, we’re here to hear about Italian policemen and just what it is that occurred in Rome one hot and steamy night that has caused me enough regret to write about it.

Well, one night back in 2008 a group of us who had partaken in a few cartons of red wine (only the best for this traveller, though it was Italian at least …) decided that it would be marvellous to go and have a look at this Trevi Fountain we had all heard so much about.

Once we arrived, we further thought it would be even better if one of our number went for a little dip in said fountain. It was, after all, very hot at the time. Oh, and he was Australian so of course he was a little worse for wear.

Low and behold however, but who should appear the second my friend’s feet were submerged in the fountain? The very Italian policeman who this whole post is devoted to, of course.

(Now, what you should know before I continue is that I had just gotten back from travelling around Eastern Europe, where one of the warnings I had received was that there were many fake police accosting tourists and issuing false on-the-spot fines.)

‘Hey you, get out the fountain!’ the police officer bellowed at my inebriated Aussie chum.

Clambering out my friend and the rest of us all laughed until I, with a keen eye for detail, noticed that the policeman’s uniform was the not the same as those of the other police I’d seen all over the city.

The officer approached my friend and, in a rambling monologue of Italian with scattered English thrown in, he informed us all that it was illegal to swim in the fountain and as such my swaying companion would now have to pay €40 right then and there or come with the officer to his official lair.

At this point I gallantly stepped in and informed my cross-eyed and slurring pal that this man was no policeman, but instead a con-man, out to take his hard earned cash right from his shaky palm!

Well, as you can imagine the policeman didn’t much like this and so I zipped off to try and find a ‘real’ policeman to come and save the day.

Low and behold there was one on the other side of the fountain, a carbon copy of the other officer save for his shirt being a much more police-like blue.

‘Officer’ I said. ‘You must come quick. There is a man pretending to be a policeman and issuing fake fines to my upstanding friends.’

The blue clad policeman gave a knowing nod and hurried along with me. My friend at this point was standing somewhat hemmed in by the fountain and a high wall and I unwittingly went to join him, unaware of the trap that awaited …

The two policemen nodded to each other in a manner that I will never forget. They then turned to my friend and I, smiled, and, after conferring somewhat in Italian, informed us that we would both now have to pay a fine.

As it dawned on me that these two men were not in fact con-artists but simply two officers of the law from different departments, it also occurred to me that the only way out of this situation was to let loose that weapon all Englishmen and women are born with: the gift of the gab.

Well, to cut a long story short my attempts to argue, assail, flee, bargain, dictate, harangue, debate, flatter, and generally seek a verbal form of escape all failed. Soon enough another car arrived to whisk my friend off to our hostel and collect our passports. Somewhere in all this malarkey word must have gotten out for in no time at all there were, and I am not exaggerating here, about twenty members of the Italian police force surrounding us and the fountain.

There was at one point even a chief of some kind, drawn to the spectacle perhaps due to a very, very slow night in the office.

At some point my passport vanished and I was told that in order to be able to claim it back I would have to appear before a European court in the morning. As it turns out it is illegal to claim that an Italian police officer is not an Italian police officer.

Who knew?

Well, the ground at this point was sinking away from me as I determinedly stuck to my guns and blabbed away about embassy this, national scandal that, European rights whatever, until the police all got thoroughly bored, told me I would have to report to the police station in the morning, and then sank off to bed. With my passport.

By this point I was alive with indignation and righteousness and so, surrounded by my thoroughly bored and tired friends (this ordeal had taken us to 3am), we trooped off in search of the British Embassy.

Now, I’m sure that we all have had moments where we envision going to our embassy and having the doors open wide, a cup of tea placed in our hands and rock solid security surrounding us till we can be whisked away in a helicopter.

Unfortunately, as I found out, that was not the case. The British embassy was closed, dead, empty. I called the emergency number and it was, of course, disconnected.

Great!

Never fear however for I am a lucky individual and also have Australian citizenship. Off we went then to the Australian embassy where I expected my antipodean brothers to open their arms and hand me a chilled beer before once more making arrangements for my immediate departure by helicopter.

It was closed as well.

Yep, the Australian Embassy was also closed.

Well, what I would have given then to be an American and know that all I need to have done would be tap my heels together and a team of navy seals would have emerged to help me storm the Italian police headquarters and seize back my passport.

Instead I admitted defeat and trudged back to my hostel, the whole way haunted by what awaited me in the morning and just how I would explain to my parents why I had to appear before a European court whilst hiding the fact that it was all down to some drunken silliness.

In the end the whole thing was solved miraculously and rather anti-climatically. Accompanied by a young Brazilian who by chance had been studying law in Italy, the next morning we honed our arguments on the march to the station, the whole time practicing Law and Order like scenes of courtroom magic in which my innocence would be professed. We arrived at the station, some words of Italian were exchanged, and then my passport appeared and I was sent on my way with even so much as a slap on the wrist!

Now, I know they say that Italians can be a passionate bunch but to this day I have no idea what happened that night to quell their tempers so much that, instead of going to court and spending my years alongside Foxy Knoxy, I instead was granted my freedom. Perhaps they had been awed in delay by my verbal ability? Perhaps it had all been some kind of elaborate joke? Who knows!

At the end of the day I did learn a valuable lesson that night, well, a few in fact: