Episode 1 – The ticket controllers

I start my days like any other decent person, I go to work, I pay my taxes, I never take something for granted… BUT I won’t buy a season ticket! I used to buy though, and after spending thousands of CZK for 2 years for nothing cause I was living near to the center and to my workplace and nobody ever checked it, I decided that it might be the time to save some money. So no more season tickets for me, only a ticket now and then when it’s about going on a long distance route. Everything worked perfectly for about half of year and I was also prepared to accept the consequences. Well that thing happened today. I was coming from work (8PM) took the metro for 3 stops and… there they were, only they 2 on the deserted station.  

One of them stopped me, asking for a ticket. He was an old, tall guy with a ‘pissed off’ face, that kind of person that if you would ask for some help in English, he will hate you for being an invader of his country (aka. a foreigner). Of course in this situation he was speaking English, because when you need to ask for money you would speak even Chinese. So anyway, he started – you can find the approximate conversation bellow:

-          You have two options either pay me now 800 CZK or show me your passport.

Strange, showing the passport I don’t find it as an alternative to paying the 800 CZK, so I said:

-          I don’t have money with me right now, but tell me for what you need my passport?

           And then he came with the classical reply, just absolute non-sense:

-          Just to see it.

      Ok, whatever, it’s anyway not a local passport so I will just show it to him.

BTW – he cannot force you to show him your documents, he has no authority to do it.

-          It’s not from Czech Republic so you have only one option: to pay me now the 800 CZK.

      Which is crap! I really didn’t have the money.

So from this moment I tried to explain him that I actually live here, I do have an address in Prague where he can send the fine, or if he wants I can withdraw the money from an ATM. But no, the things aren’t that easy! He knew that he’s not allowed to seize me nor to force me to do anything, so verifying the truth of my sayings or even goin to an ATM is just loose of time for nothing. Even so, he tried a last catch – the police trick. He said that if I don’t have the money to pay now, he will have to call the police and then the police will call the foreigner’s police for verifying the address in Prague, where they can send the fine. Well…. that’s just a bit too complicated for that! And who will ever answer the phone at 8PM for the foreigner’s police? And more than this… who will ever call 112 for someone that doesn’t have the money to pay this fee right away?!

That was the best I could have taken. I agreed on paying the fine but not on place cause I don’t have the money, and now what?! So I was after a long day at work – and I mean a 10 hours LONG day, and now I was pissed off because some guy is trying to sell me old tricks to make me pay the fine when he could just send it at home if he was so turned on, on this thing. So then I just told him:

-          What if I am just a visitor in your country?! What if I don’t have a place to stay here, so I only have the passport from my country?! What if I don’t use cash because I have the credit card?! And I didn’t buy the ticket! Now what?

Apparently, that was all it took to get away. Lucky day I guess.