The binkie and the pickpocket

"How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter prejudices sometimes! I might enter Florence under happier auspices a month hence and find it all beautiful, all attractive. But I do not care to think of it now, at all..." -- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad

There was a baby's binkie lying in the middle of the floor. I keep flashing back to the moment when I first saw it. I knew something was wrong. Why wasn't anyone picking it up? There had to be five, six, ten people crammed into the entry corridor to this train car -- two of them women with babies -- but no one was picking up the dropped binkie. I pointed at it, but no one noticed. They were too busy helping another tourist get his bag onto the luggage rack. I was irked, so I ignored it too and waited for the chaos to clear so I could put my damn bag in the damn luggage rack and move to my damn train seat.

I was already annoyed. I'd arrived at the Rome Termini train station with my grandparents in tow. We'd had no trouble getting there via the subway from the hotel, my grandparents each carrying two bags, me carrying my own luggage and running ahead to make sure we were headed in the correct direction. We needed to find the main terminal so we could catch a train to Florence, our next destination. After huffing up three or four flights of stairs, we finally found the correct escalator, and I led them to the self-service ticket booths.

"Okay, Florence," I said. I started punching buttons. "Do we want a direct train or a local train?"

"The direct train would be half the time," my grandma pointed out. My grandpa considered this.

"Yes, but it's also more than twice the money," I said. I looked at my grandpa. "If this were me traveling alone, I'd do the local train. I don't mind the extra time." I shrugged. "But you guys are paying, so it's up to you."

At this point, a short Italian man approached from behind, and pointed at our screen.

"That's the direct train, you want that one," he said.

I shot him a look. "Thank you, I got it," I said. I knew what he was up to. He'd aid the helpless American tourists, then ask for a tip. I wasn't having it.

My rudeness didn't deter him.

"Here, push this, three tickets." He reached over my shoulder and touched the screen.

"Thank you, I got it," I shouldered him out of the way, but he continued giving direction from behind me, and my grandparents were listening to him.

"Let's do the direct train. It's faster," my grandma said.

I sighed -- so much for saving a little money -- and punched it in, trying to ignore the advice of the guy behind me, who was telling me how to choose seats.

"Okay, cash or credit?" I asked.

"Credit," my grandpa said, handing me his card.

"This machine may not take your card," I said. "Is it a chip-and-pin?"

"What?"

"A chip-and-pin. Does it have a pin number? European card readers are finicky, it might not take the card unless it has a pin number."

"No, this one doesn't have a pin," Grandpa said.

"Here, this one has a pin number." Grandma handed me another card, but we'd already tried to slide the first card, so we had to cancel the transaction and start over. The guy behind me huffed and tried to lean in. I turned to him.

"I got it," I said, seething. I turned back to the screen and hurriedly punched the buttons, making no mistakes. The guy slipped away as we were paying, finally convinced I would not allow him to help.

"Alright, we've got more than an hour until the train. Should we grab a coffee?" I asked.

"Sure." Grandma and I led the way up another escalator to a coffee shop. We sent Grandpa to sit with the bags while we ordered a round of caffeine.

I'd intended to pay for the treat, since my grandparents had been paying for every meal and train ticket since they joined me on my travels a few days prior, but Grandma had her wallet out.

"How much?" she asked the barista, waving two 50-euro bills.

He waved his hand at her and took one. I made sure he gave her the right change.

"Grandma," I hissed as we brought the coffee back to the table. "You shouldn't flash money around like that. Not here."

She looked struck for a moment. "You're right," she conceded. A small victory for me.

I wasn't sure why I was counting victories.

We sat down with the coffee, looking down at the floor below, the chaos of the terminal. A large woman with stringy, greasy hair was walking from tourist to tourist, holding a paper cup, begging for money. I didn't see the guy by the ticket booth anymore; he must have moved on to a different terminal. Or maybe he was just trying to be helpful.

Whatever, we got our tickets.

"What time did you say the train was?" Grandma asked me, sipping her caffe americano.

"It's at 13:15, which is..." I realized I'd figured the time conversion wrong. Damn you, 24-hour clock. "Oh crap, that's in 15 minutes. We need to go."

We gulped down our coffee, and I felt particularly sheepish as I followed my grandparents toward the escalator...the escalator that only went up. There was no down escalator. We couldn't find a way down, so we walked the length of the floor, to the other side of the station, losing precious minutes, until we found a stairwell. We huffed with our luggage down the stairs and landed at the base of the giant timetable. I stopped to examine our ticket.

"Which platform?" Grandma asked me, a note of panic in her voice.

I glanced up and down to be sure, and I opened my mouth to answer. But my grandparents weren't listening; they were talking to another man, another helpful local, who'd approached us, the lost Americans.

Ugh. We must scream "tourist." I gritted my teeth as he waved at me, signaling to hand over the ticket so he could look at our train number. He glanced at the board.

"Platform 11. Follow me," he said, handing me back the ticket. He set off, my grandparents in hot pursuit.

"I knew that," I grumbled. "If you'd have just given me two more seconds..." I trudged behind the three of them.

He led us to Platform 11, then motioned for me to hand the ticket over again.

"I know we need to validate it," I said, waving the ticket under the machine like I'd done in England. Nothing happened.

He scoffed and grabbed the ticket from me and stuck it in a slot I hadn't seen. He rolled his eyes and clucked at me as he handed it back. Stupid tourist.

I was boiling. The guy started off down the platform to show us the correct car. I looked back to make sure my grandparents were following, but they were fumbling for change. They knew this guy expected a tip, so they were getting it ready.

I turned on my heel and left. I found the correct door, refusing to make eye contact with our guide as he waited for my grandparents to catch up. There were a bunch of people packed into the doorway, so I waited. A woman stood in the door of the train, looking down at me, and I swept my hand to the side in a gesture of, "Are you getting off the train?"

She shook her head. "Here," she said, grabbing my suitcase and lifting it up onto the train steps.

Oh no you don't, I thought. I'm not tipping you for helping me with my bag. I put my foot on the first step of the train, grabbed my bag handle from her, and waited.

That's when I noticed the binkie. Also a guy holding a food basket, but -- I didn't think they sold food in baskets on these trains. They sell food in more airline-like, rolling carts. He must be a local vendor. What's he doing just standing there, next to the woman with the baby?

This tourist struggling with his bag was taking forever. No one was picking up the binkie. I shoved my way in, threw my bag to the right of the luggage rack, and stepped into the seating area. I was so angry with my grandparents, I didn't look back to make sure they found the right car. I figured they were busy tipping the guy -- wasting more money -- and would find their way onto the train after the haze of people cleared.

I walked to the end of the car, found my seat, and sat down. I crossed my arms, like a toddler having a tantrum, and waited.

A couple minutes went by before I spotted my grandma sauntering down the train with her bags. She made eye contact with me from a few rows away.

"Grandpa got pickpocketed," she said.

My heart dropped. "What? What did he lose?"

"Nothing," she said, maneuvering her bags around a woman in the aisle. "She got his wallet, but then she dropped it."

I got up to help her, lifting her bag to the rack above the seats. "What? She dropped it?"

"Yeah. She dropped the wallet on the ground and he got it back." She sat down and rolled the other bag under her legs.

My grandpa walked up the aisle behind her, his bags in tow, his face dazed.

"You got pickpocketed?" I asked him for confirmation.

"Yeah, but I got it back," he said.

A man behind me wearing a black sweater spoke up.

"She thought I was a police officer," he said. "I saw her do it, and she dropped it and left."

My grandparents thanked the man profusely. My grandpa put his luggage away and slumped into his seat. We sat in silence for a minute.

I couldn't help myself.

"I'm really pissed about the whole last 15 minutes," I told them. "I knew where we needed to go. You should not have let that guy help us."

My grandma looked at her hands in her lap. "You're right," she said for the second time that day.

My grandpa didn't say anything. After a minute, I patted him on the shoulder.

"You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah." A minute later, "I gotta check my pack."

He took his backpack down and checked to make sure his camera was still there. It was. They hadn't gotten anything. But he'd had his wallet in his front pocket -- like Rick Steves says you should -- and still he hadn't noticed when they lifted it.

It was a miracle he'd gotten it back. I tried to feel thankful, but I just felt angry. Not with my grandparents anymore, but with the pickpockets, the poverty in Italy, all of Italy.

The train ride to Florence was mostly silent. I couldn't think of anything else but what had just happened. I knew my grandpa was going over it in his head too. I asked him a few more times, "You okay?"

"Yeah," he replied each time.

But I wasn't. I couldn't look at Italy the same way anymore. It's like Mark Twain said -- under other circumstances, I may have seen Florence, and then Venice and Verona and especially Lake Garda, as the most beautiful places I'd ever been. The places were beautiful. We did recover, and we had a wonderful time, me and my grandparents, touring Italy.

But I kept seeing that binkie, and thinking about the people that would target my grandparents -- two of the most wonderful people on Earth -- to con. Luckily the Termini station pickpockets are not Italy's ambassadors to the rest of the world...but in a way, they are. When I think back on my time in Italy, that five seconds of apprehension -- that binkie -- is the first image that comes to mind. It's a rotten fact, and under any other circumstances, it wouldn't be the case. The majority of the people we met in Italy were kind and welcoming and wanted nothing more than for us to enjoy our time in their beloved country.

But I keep seeing that binkie, and I can't look at Italy the same way anymore.

All was not lost! Here we are, thoroughly enjoying a bike tour of Florence.

There are lots of moments in Italy I do remember fondly, immortalized in this letter to myself.