Have you ever paid 5 € for a rose that you never got? No? Well, we have...

So, todays topic is about scams perpetrated by locals on tourists. There are various travel scams that occur in many places that a tourist should be aware of. These are designed to get your money under false pretences. They fall into these three categories: overcharging, cheating, or forcing you to pay for a service you don't want, and outright theft.

You have probably already heard about various travel scams, such as hit and grab, taxi scams, fake officials, the rose scam, the wristband scam, etc. We ourselves did not believe that some scams are carried out until we ourselves encountered this scam that we will remember until the end of our lives.

Every year in the summer, we go to the Slovenian coast and spend some time there, as we did then. Like every day, after spending the afternoon at the beach, we went to a restaurant where we sat outside on the terrace and ordered something to drink and eat, whereupon a little girl came up to us and placed a rose on the table on either side of us.

We were both afraid of her, as we were very involved in the conversation. When we saw the roses, we said thank you, but the girl didn't want to leave, but just looked at us and looked at us. We asked her if she spoke Slovene or maybe English, but she didn't answer us; instead, she just held out her hand and pointed for us to give her money. We wanted to return the roses to her because, despite the fact that we are on vacation, we would not like to spend too much money and we are still students. Despite the fact that we gave her back the rose, she did not want to leave the table but stood with her hand outstretched to give her the money.

The waiter comes back to our table and tells the girl to leave, saying that if she doesn't leave, he will call the police. The girl didn't care about him, and in our opinion, she didn't understand him at all. The girl took pity on us, and we gave her 2 € each, but she still didn't leave, but she showed us five fingers, which we assumed meant that we should give her that much money.

At that moment, we just looked at each other and gave her 5 € each, just to make her go and to give us peace. The girl left with money and roses that we had paid for. When she left the terrace of the restaurant, we saw her go to an older man who took money from her, whom we assumed was her father. When we saw that, we felt better about giving her the money so that she wouldn't be in trouble because of us.

The moral of the story is: don't fall for scams, but if you feel like you'll be helping a child with

the money you've earned afterwards, do it. We were both sceptical at first, as the money was extorted, but in the end we saw that we had done well. Be safe!

"Take only memories, leave only traces."

Till next time. :)