It’s funny how sometimes, a seemingly pleasant day out can quickly take a turn for the worse without any anticipation. Much like what happened to us as we planned to head to the National Museum in Sarajevo to visit the Siege exhibition. We piled onto the first old-style tram that came our way, purchased our tickets and sat back to take in the sights of the journey.
Not two minutes into our journey, Scott turned to me and said “Uh oh, I forgot to validate our tickets”.
“What do you mean, validate? Validate how?”
I didn’t even realise why he was saying it until I saw two inspectors making their way down the bus checking tickets. Oh crap. We were supposed to validate tickets after we got on?
The inspector hovered over us and took our tickets off us. Then he disappeared. We tried to remain calm and hope that we had just had our tickets relinquished as punishment for not validating them, but as the tram pulled up to the next stop, the inspector tapped Scott on the shoulder and told us we must get off. I of course reluctantly followed.
The inspectors started pointing at the text on the back of the tickets, which clearly stated that if you were in possession of an un-validated ticket, you would face a fine. We did not have enough money in our budget to be paying any sort of fine. Gulp.
Three inspectors were now surrounding us, and as we tried in vain to attempt to tell them in English that we hadn’t realised we were supposed to validate them (a half truth, as Scott had vaguely remembered reading something about it online once), they kept thrusting the tickets and a piece of card in our faces, telling us we must pay a fine of 13 Euros each. 26 Euros. I was not going to pay 26 Euros for what had effectively been a two minute tram journey for which we had originally paid 1.50 Euro for the two of us.
“We have no money” Scott kept saying to them.
“Bankomat right there” the fat, surly inspector said and pointed to one of the many banks which line Sarajevo’s streets.
“But we don’t have an ATM card”. A total lie, but hey, we were not going to pay 26 Euros.
“13 Euros. You go to bank.” Oh crap, they weren’t going to let this go.
“We have no money. Julia, show them your purse!” Double crap. I had the remnants of our Croatian money in my purse, which would have more than covered the fine, and which I had to quickly remove and pull out an empty purse.
“Look! No money. We’re going to the museum! We have no money!”
“Policija!” One inspector said to us and pulled out his mobile phone. The police?? What the f*ck? How did this escalate that quickly? And yet, somewhere deep down, I knew he was trying to call our bluff. So I said nothing and stared at him.
“All our money and cards are back at our guest house. We have no money.” Scott re-instated, at which point the inspectors grabbed a seemingly innocent bystander from the street and proceeded to bark at him. They were obviously wanting him to translate to English that we had to pay the money.
“They are saying you have to pay the money. I love having visitors in my country and would normally be on your side, but in this case, it does clearly say that you have to validate your ticket. Do you have any ID on you?” The stranger asked us.
“No, we’ve left it all at the guest house.” We knew that if they had no ID, they had no proof of who we were.
“Is there any way we can pay the fine another time? At an office? Later or tomorrow?” We asked.
The stranger spoke to the inspectors and then replied “They said you must return here at 8pm tonight. To this exact spot. And pay the fine.”
Okaaaaayyyyyy. Now it was all beginning to look a bit fishy. We agreed, both knowing full well that we wouldn’t return at 8pm.
“Ok” Scott said. “We’ll return at 8pm. My name is Mike. Tell him my name is Mike.”
The stranger told the inspectors Scott’s “name” and then turned to us and said “Ok, you should come at 8pm….but they don’t have your address or anything….so I guess if you didn’t want to….” He trailed off, knowing he shouldn’t be saying that.
Another tram pulled up and Scott scooted off. “Quick – we’re getting on this tram and we’re not coming back”
As we dashed off, the stranger yelled “MIKE!” to which I shouted “Sco- I mean, Mike! They’re shouting us again!”
“Ignore it!” Scott shouted. “Just get on the tram!”
We jumped on and pushed our way through the crowds to the validating machine. We weren’t going to get caught twice.
Later that day, as we were waiting for a bus home (we’re not fools) we were chatting with a young Bosnian man who told us that he regularly jumps the tram without paying. When we looked shocked (we hadn’t told him about our treatment earlier) he said “But you shouldn’t try that. You’re not from around here. And the men who run the trams, they are very dodgy.” Hmmm, you don’t need to tell us that.
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