A very costly cone
I went to get gelato with my roommate today at our favorite shop down the street. He went to pay for his cone with a €20 bill, but the cashier stopped him. “I can’t accept this,” she told him. “It’s not real.”
Understandably, he was confused; it isn’t everyday that someone accuses you of passing counterfeit money, and apparently they didn’t cover this in his 3-week “Survival Italian” course. But either way, it definitely seemed real to us. “Look here,” she explained, making a small tear in the bill. “There should be little fibers when you rip it, and this doesn’t have them. The paper doesn’t feel right either.” He grabbed the bill out of her hand before she could rip it even more, and we examined it in greater detail. We still weren’t sure that she was right. If this was a counterfeit bill, it was a very good one. The water marks were there, along with a perfect metallic strip like all Euro bills.
“Don’t worry, it happens all the time,” she told us as she dug through the cash drawer. “In fact, I probably have a fake €10 in here right now. They make a lot of fake €2 coins too.” (Looks like it would have been useful in his language course after all, right between the chapter about “At the airport” and “Buying a train ticket.”) My roommate was worried because he had recently exchanged a large amount of money at a Western Union office. “What if all of it is fake? I just paid my rent with that money!” The cashier shrugged casually and said something about how they slip the fake bill into a stack of real bills to pass it off.
I went to translate that to him, but as I was speaking, I realized I had misunderstood her. She wasn’t explaining how it was possible that he had received it– she was telling him how to get rid of it. “Next time you buy something, put in between two other bills. Most places won’t even notice.”
Since it’s really in their best interest, I’d assume most shopkeepers would want to fight against counterfeiting and urge someone to report incedents to the police. But this one seemed largely unconcerned, as long as it wasn’t in her cash drawer. It’s kind of like the idea of paying taxes– a rather unpopular activity around these parts. Everyone wants social benefits, free health care and unemployment protection… but they’d really prefer not to contribute personally to the system with their tax deductions if possible, thanks. That’s why living in Rome is sometimes like experiencing an alternate reality. (Or alternate real-italy as I like to call it.) The rules of the rest of the universe do not apply.
My roommate eventually paid for his ice cream with a different bill, and we returned home. After checking the rest of his money and deciding it looked ok, he slipped the €20 back in the pile. He seemed to have recovered from his initial shock. “I’ll probably use this to buy beer later,” he said. I’m pretty sure he crossed over to the other reality right then, at least temporarily, and started down the path to becoming a true Roman. When he starts waxing his eyebrows too, that’s when I’ll know for sure.
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Tags: counterfeit, gelato, italy, rome
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