2 stories

Story #1:

On Monday, Antonello and I went to downtown Naples and shopped around their street fair they have daily. We ended up around the movie section, looking at a huge pile of them. At this fair, because Naples sun is so hot that it can burn your skin off, they have huge umbrellas set up all along both sides of the street to provide some much needed shade. As I was walking around the huge bin that contained the movies, my feet found the gigantic umbrella pole and and since it was a little lopsided, it felt like a trampoline. Well...of course, I started jumping on it and after a few seconds of fun, the umbrella started to fall over! With my huge muscles and of course some adrenaline, I braced myself and grabbed the pole with all my might to bring it upright again. All the commotion caused a few Italians to run over to my aid; I showed them my muscles and they laughed. After finding a movie, we decided it was time to go home so we headed to the bus stop...this is where Story #2 comes alive so keep reading.

Story #2:

After the street fair, Antonello and I (and our four bags full of goodies from a successful shop that afternoon) got on the bus to head home. The bus was absolutely packed and we barely found seats. The bus system here requires you to pay for a ticket ahead of time and when you first enter the bus, you are required to put your ticket into a machine which prints the time/date and spits it back out to you. As much as this is required, many Neapolitans end up taking a chance and riding the bus for free...as long as the "controllore" (or ticket checker guys) don't catch you and make you pay money (usually 40-80 euro) for cheating the system.

On this particular day, Antonello decided to take a chance and not stamp our tickets so we could use them for another day. Lucky day for us because through the sea of people came one of the ticket checker guys!!!!! (I forgot to mention that it is rare to see them on the bus.) Coming up to us and asking for our tickets, Antonello handed him our blank ones and this ticket checker guy was not happy with us. Thinking it couldn't get worse, it did. My wonderful fiance started speaking english and saying to the guy, "I don't understand you. What is happening?" I couldn't believe my ears...he was totally pretending to be American not understanding what was going on so maybe we wouldn't have to pay. Antonello kept looking at me and saying, "What is happening Sarah?" I started kicking him and telling him to speak Italian but he kept a straight face the whole time and wouldn't stop. Well, this ticket checker guy thought that BOTH of us were Italian and were lying to him.

By this time, EVERYONE in the back of the bus was listening to what was happening with us and was telling the ticket checker guy that I was American but he didn't believe anyone, including me. He was pretty mad at this point and said to both Antonello and I, "Andiamo polizia!" That means, "Let's go to the police." He made us get off the bus with him and at this point, my heart was in my throat and I thought I was being taken to jail. I started saying, "Mi dispiace, mi dispiace!", which means, "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" He proceeded to write something on both of our previously blank tickets and walked away. After turning to Antonello with a surprised look on my face, he explained to me that we had been given "warnings" and if we did it again, we would have to pay 80 euro for our shenanigans.

We escaped, but just barely. Criminals on the run.