"No! Go Away!"

Vatican City, Italy 2012

In Minnesota, where I am from, the only place you really ever see "street theater" or "beggars" are around the cities, such as St. Cloud, St. Paul and Minneapolis. Although traveling around the major cities in Europe it is very common to either see a form of street theater or be approached by someone begging for money.

I traveled with the organization EF Tours and as we walked throughout the cities our tour guide reminded us that if a beggar came up to us we must be strict and say "No! Go away!". Since I'm from a small town, I'm not accustomed to being approached so often and being begged for money. It was something I needed to get used to but when people constantly keep invading your space by jingling an old rusty can of change, it gets extremely annoying! Needless to say, I adapted quickly at being aggressively saying "No! Go away!".

Another big thing, especially in Italy, if they aren't beggars, they're pit pocketers. It was highly encouraged by EF Tours that we all brought a money belt that we could tuck under our shirts because pit pocketing is such a common thing in big populated areas. If you think about it, tourists are always gawking at buildings and sculptures that they've never seen before and often are so distracted that it makes money snatching very easy.

Rome, Italy 2012

The picture above, shows several men completely coated from head to toe in something that makes them look like aluminum figures. They stay still all day long like human statues. The image on the lower right is also an example of a human statue. Yes, that is an actual person. I stood there for the longest time staring at the mummy statue until finally I saw the person blink! I did the same thing that most everyone does, stop and stare. I believe if you stare at them long enough, they human statues will wait for you to blink or slightly look away and then they'll move.

There are many different kinds of street theater such as, musicians, singers, mimes, people who act like statues, magicians, and so on.

Many of these beggars and entertainers  make tons of money everyday doing what they do, so our tour guide did not want us giving our money to those who really didn't need it. (Though I did give some money to the occasional entertainer that I personally thought was good at what they did.)