FYI: Don’t ride a bus without a bus ticket!

Today I decided to play hooky from school so got together with one of the girls I met this weekend for lunch on the outskirts of Rome. She lives in an apartment outside “downtown” Rome, so I took the subway and wandered around looking for her building. The density in Rome is intense! The large apartment buildings go on for miles it seems and they all look similar. Getting the opportunity to see a genuine Roman home was fun and a nice break from my hotel room.

On my way back I decided to take the bus because it would give me the chance to see some other parts of the city. When you get on a bus in Italy you must already have a ticket, because there is no machine to buy tickets once you get on. Normally you would buy your ticket from a newsstand and you validate the ticket when you board the bus, however, there is no one who checks your tickets when you get on the bus. My friend was telling me earlier in the day that she knew someone who rode the bus for two years without ever buying a ticket. Did I hear someone say Murphy’s Law? I couldn’t find a place to buy a ticket before my bus showed up at my stop, so I decided to hop on. I was riding happily for a while before my luck changed. Our bus pulled up to a stop and there were three men in blue uniforms waiting to get on and I new what was going to happen next. The sequence of events reminded me of an action movie, because as we were pulling up I knew that I should get off before I got caught, but there were too many people in front of the door so I could hop off quickly. The men got on the bus and started asking everyone for their tickets and unfortunately I did not have one. I tried to make up some excuses in Italian that I had lost my ticket, but it was apparent that my strategy was not going to work. They wrote me a ticket for 50 euro and said that if I did not pay them at that moment, the fine would increase to 150 euro. Considering that I need to use the public transportation system for the next few months, my immediate thought of ditching out of the ticket was not an option. Being banned from the bus and trains might make it more difficult for me to get around. After paying the fine on the bus, the man kindly told me that my ticket would serve as my bus pass for the rest of the day. Thanks officer! It was a lesson learned the hard way, but it was a cheap price for a fun adventure and now a great story.