We learned there are two kinds of trains in Italy. The nice high speed seat assigned trains without pickpocketers (pictured here) and the regional trains with pickpockets and scam artists. This is really Mrs. OB's story but you have to picture unsmiling us on a not as nice train as I tell the story.
We got on the regional in Florence for our day trip to Pisa. Being an empty train, we spread out. I had my Carl's Jr. tote bag sitting next to me on the seat. After all, the train was empty so I wasn't concerned about safety. Then the gypsy dude came along with his full size paper of why we should give him money. He held the paper over my tote with one hand while reaching into the tote with the other.
Mrs. OB saw this going on from her side of the train and she jumped up and quite angrily told the guy to stop that and to get his hand out of the bag. Gypsy dude was actually startled and turned around to confront her and got in Mrs. OB's face (without saying a word).
That really pissed off OB who then got up and put himself between Mrs. OB and the gypsy dude and told him "don't you touch my wife!" Gypsy dude was a bit slow on the situation and thought he could intimidate OB by staring at him. Kind of hard to do when you're only half the size of someone. Really, one wrong move and OB would have popped him and we'd be staring at a guy on the floor of the train. So the guy left. Later, one of his cohorts came around with smaller "give me money signs" and hoped to collect but as you can imagine, there was no sympathy from us.
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