Being fooled in Milan

The more you travel to different countries and places the more confident you get about your own knowledge about travelling in general and how to act in certain situation. When you are still a novice in travelling, you get suspicious easily and might not know who to trust or recognize if someone is trying to fool you. After travelling in Asia and being fooled so many times, I thought that inter-railing in Europe is a piece of cake. This turn out to be something totally different…

When I stopped in Milan for couple of hours to change my train on a way to Zürich from Rimini, I decided to take a subway to check the famous Dome in the center of Milan. I looked that it would be only couple of stations away from the main station and I would have enough time to go there. When I was struckeling to buy a ticket from a vending machine which only worked in Italian, what seemed to be a nice man asked if I needed any help. He helped me to choose a return ticket which seemed to be the price I also thought it would be. The ticket worked fine and I was happy that there were still people who would help a lost tourist in this world. 

So I saw the magnificent Dome of Milan but I couldn’t really enjoy the sightseeing while I was stressing to catch my train on time. So I hurried back to the subway station and wondered why my ticket didn’t work anymore even that it was supposed to be a return ticket! Then I realized what had happened before! This nice man, who had offered to help me, instead of a return ticket had bought two one-way tickets! And this worked fine because when I had my ticket in hand, I turned around and ran to the subway, while this man went to the vending machine to pick up the second ticket the machine had printed out. And when I checked the back information of the ticket it said that it is valid for months and it has to be marked before using. So this man was fooling stupid tourists at the station to get free tickets for him which he could use in many months ahead. 

When I realized what just had happened I felt so stupid that I had been so blue-eyed and believed the good will of this stranger. In the end, the situation actually only made me smile because this man was so cleaver to fool me in a place where I never thought I would get fooled.