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13 July 2009 8:30 AM
The Idea of Fairness in Rome
Visit Italy lately? Turns out you weren't being paranoid:
Ah well. As long as they're good-humored about cheating me how can I complain?ROME, Aug. 8 -- Any tourist here knows the sensation: that gnawing feeling that Italians do not pay $3 for a tiny cappuccino or $4 for an unordered basket of bread.
To no one's surprise the suspicion often reflects reality, as restaurateurs will admit in candid moments. It might be an extra 30 cents for an espresso, or a $5 tithe tacked onto a bottle of wine. It may even mean the substitution of lower grade ingredients. But the practice of charging tourists more does exist and is committed daily, even hourly. If executed properly, the turista will be none the wiser.
"You think you are being taken care of," said Christian Boyle, a Londoner who has spent some months in Rome. Soon after arriving, she and some friends displayed fatal naïveté, when they were not sure what to order at a restaurant just off the Piazza del Popolo. "We couldn't decide,'' she said, "so the waiter said he would bring us some things to try.''
"One thing kept arriving after another," she said. Things were fine until "he charged us full price for all these little dishes that we thought we were just trying."
Exploiting a tourist is not surprising anywhere, but some residents say the Romans have their own flair.
"They don't see it as a crime but as a kind of justification," said Tegan Shioler, a Canadian chef and sommelier who has worked in restaurants and hotels around Rome for several years. "It is part of the Italian psyche, and I don't think it is done without humor. Italians are very possessive of their culture, which makes them beautiful. But some Romans disdain visitors, so they humorously justify the fact that to be served is some sort of privilege."
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