My wife and I travel to Europe several times a year. One thing that has always bothered me is that you cannot enjoy a meal in a nice restaurant without gypsies coming to your table to try to sell you flowers or some other nonsense. They can often be quite intrusive and refuse to go away. It has been particularly bad when we have tried to eat out in Milan and Venice. I am less interested in why the gypsies do this (that is their culture) and more interested in why restaurants and other businesses allow them to get away with it. In every case, the gypsies appear to be literally invisible to the restaurant staff and they allow them to come right in the front door and wander around the dining area unmolested. This would never happen in the United States, Can you imagine the reaction if the homeless were allowed to wander around a Manhattan 5-Star restaurant to panhandle from the customers. How have the gypsies established themselves so well in Europe that they are free to behave in any way they wish, anywhere they wish?
Wow. Of all the trials and tribulations of my recent 4-country trip, and in my previous dozen trips, I have never encountered this. Is it just in Italy that you see this? The times I have been to Pisa I have never seen it…
I’m with Anthracite – never experienced this. I mean, I have had gypsies come up to me in cafes, etc. but, in every case the gypsies were chased off by management… sometimes, with an (IMHO) unecessary degree of force (rocks, etc.)
The only time I saw any was when I turned around and one of them (a teenaged girl) had her hand in my purse and was just extracting my wallet. It was under the Arche de Triomphe rather than a restaurant, however. No gendarmes in sight.
I was in Italy and Greece last May for a total of 3 weeks, and only once was I approached by a Gypsy. I and three companions were having dinner at a cafe in Athens, we were sitting at a table outside. A little girl, about 10 years old, with a bucket of gardenias waltzes up to our table, singing, and puts on her little “would you like to buy a flower?” act. And yeah, we knew she’d be just as flirtatious and adoring to all the other tourists around, but she was just such an absolute doll we couldn’t resist. Besides, the flowers were only 500 drachma (that’s, what, about $1.50 American?) and the charming little show she put on was alone well worth the price. If we had been constantly harassed by Gypsies it might have been a different story, but she was the only one, was just as cute as a button.
I don’t recall restaurant management doing anything about the situation, or seeing any other Gypsy incidents elsewhere.
Now, stray dogs and cats, on the other hand, they seem to be able to wander where ever they please–up and down the street, in and out of restaurants, through archeological sites. There were dogs all over the place in Pompeii. What’s up with that?
Yeah right. Happens all the time. When I used to live in LA, I routinely encountered unsavory persons selling roses in restaurants. And it really pissed me off. It’s like extortion. They come up to couples and show the roses to the woman, and then they give the pitch to the man. And how can you turn down your woman?
These roses are garbage, discards from REAL florists. They are known in the trade as “bullets” because the rose blossom looks like a bullet. They are discarded because the flowers will never open.
Anyway, to answer the OP, if these “gypsies” (or whatever offensive ethnic slur you chose to call them by) are allowed to proceed unmolested, it is because the restaurant gets a kickback.
“Gypsy” is a slur?
By gypsies do you actually mean gypsies or do you mean poor unkempt looking people?
In Dublin we have people who come around Pubs/some restaurants selling roses. I agree they can be very annoying but when they do and are not thrown out it is because the have the permission of the owner. I know this as I’ve worked in several bars.
BTW From the sounds of it you’d love Thailand. Try sitting in a restaurant on the Koa San(sp?) in Bangkok and have very young children, some of them severely handicapped begging from you. It’s heartbreaking.
In **** restaurants in Manhattan, Gypsies or somebody trying to pass as Gypsies, but apparently not walk-ins (I do not know whether they are allowed to work there or are on the house payroll), entrertain customers. Flower-girls and cigaret girls are ubiquitous. I think I saw it in other cities as well. But never in Europe.
Peace
WAG, but it might be possible that the owner or manager or whatever is getting a cut. In my burg, there’s some company that employes ex-cons as streetcorner flower vendors. I see a couple of the poor bastards out there every day, in all kinds of weather, hawking freakishly large carnations to rush-hour commuters. I’ve heard that these guys are paid a pittance for all the crap they gotta deal with.
Around here, the Rom stick to doing substandard blacktop work on little old ladies’ driveways and stenciling your street number on the curb. Spring Grove Cemetary has a large number of Rom “residents,” and there are always a few dozen of their grieving relatives moving through town. During sweeps, the local news shows will do features on “Gypsies Here to Break Into Your House,” usually to coincide with the annual pilgrimage to the grave sites in Spring Grove. One of my favorite drunken pastimes is to call up poor ignorant news directors and berate them for promoting negative stereotypes of the Rom through their culturally insensitive programming. I reduced one to tears once.
Look out mavpace–I once asked why “gypsys” were scam artists and was educated about the Romany. Call these people “Travelers”. Whether you buy this or not–differ at your own risk.
“Travelers” are something entirely different, but basically a large family (they’re all related to each other) of scam artists. I saw an expose on TV about The Travelers, ISTR they are of Irish origin.
“Gypsy” is considered pejorative; the more preferrable term these days is Sinti or Roma or Rom. But in Greece at least, they are very, very poorly thought of and are the subject of a lot of ethnic slur type jokes. Street urchins, beggars, and scam artists are generally said to be “gypsies” (they use that term instead of whatever else), whereas it is generally assumed that stick-up men and other violent criminals are either Albanians or druggies. Not that any of that is really true, but that is the prevailing stereotype. There is a big encampment of itenerants at the dump near Athens, and they are always referred to as “gypsies”. It is said they sort through the trash (including medical waste), clean it, and resell it to whomever. I once read an article in the newspaper about an accident at the dump where at least one “gypsy” had been killed by a trash truck. The tone of the article was sort of to the effect of that it was too bad that they all couldn’t have been gotten rid of, if not necessarily by a violent means.
I once walked up the hill to the Philopappus monument in Athens on an apparently slow tourist day and encountered what was an elderly “gypsy” woman selling “hand made” table linens (which you could have bought in the nearby Plaka tourist district for less, but I as a potential buyer wasn’t supposed to know that) to the tourists who would disembark from their buses there. She couldn’t tell if I was native Greek or what, and so tried in poor-old-ignorant-me versions of Greek and Italian and English to interest me in her wares. I passed on, but later as I was leaving a bus full of Japanese tourists pulled up and when she saw them get out, she began to hawk them in equally “broken” Japanese. Not exactly the ignorant peasant woman that she wanted most people to think she was!
When I was in Italy, gypsies were a constant harassing presence in the main streets (but not the restaurants) of Rome but were not a problem in Florence (Firenze) or the smaller cities. I’m not surprised that that they were in Milan & Venice.
I thought the Travelers were Scottish. Does anyone have the 'dope on the travelers. Sounds like a good column for Cecil.
http://www.kateoconnor.f2s.com/travellers.htm
Well in Ireland we do have a community called “Travellers”, there are other names but they are basically insulting slurs so I’m not going into them.
I’ve heard several theories about their origins. The one I kind of like is set in famine times. A displaced group started moving around and kind of just kept going. They are definitely not related to the Romany people so are not gypsies in that sense of the word but are called gypsies by some people over here.
There is a lot of ill feeling towards them here. Some of it brought on by themselves ( setting up camp on playing fields and leaving them in a terrible state when they leave for example) but there is also a lot of prejudice heaped on them aswell. They are immediately looked at as trouble by a lot of people and not given a change.
There is a lot of poverty in the Travelling community but a lot of people see a few with nice cars or vans and immediately assume that all of them are in the same boat.
There are a lot of halting sites(places where they can legally stop) around the country but there is a lot of community pressure against them when they are set-up.
That’s about all I can think of at the moment. When I have my first coffee my brain might start to kick in.