April 26, 2023
In Minervino Murge: day 2
I awaken early, and while Rachael’s still sleeping I start pulling together an estimate for how much cash we need for the remainder of the tour. There’s the cost of all the unpaid lodgings ahead, the train from Padua to Bologna (fortunately, we just booked our train north from Puglia a few days ago), food and daily expenses, cash for the taxi to the airport. We aren’t really budget travelers, and it’s quite a bit of cash we’ll need to pull out of ATM’s. We’ll start today, of course.
Also, it occurs to me that the fastest way to reduce our outstanding debt is to prepay as much booking as I can while our cards are still alive. I discuss this with Rachael once she’s up and has some coffee flowing in, and she agrees. We also talk over how we’re feeling about the fiasco and agree that it’s a significant problem but not fatal - not a reason to think of canceling the tour and going home, for example. She then leaves for the store and the nearest ATM while I start prepaying bookings. Only about half of them allow prepayment but it’s better than nothing. By the time Rachael returns I’m done with all the prepayments possible and have reduced our cash needs by about $2,500.
Rachael comes back quite frustrated. For one, Minervino is a quite confusing city to navigate. The heart of the city, the oldest quarter just above where we’re located, is for good reasons referred to locally as the Labyrinth. For another, the store isn’t well stocked and she’s only partly successful in her shopping spree. For yet another, she’s freezing because it’s cold out and very windy. Worst of all though, she was unsuccessful at the ATMs. Both cards were rejected, at two different banks. So that’s a significant concern. We’ll try again when we go out together, but without credit cards or access to our debit accounts we really do have a problem. Our €100 won’t get us very far at all.
Rachael immediately gets back in bed and under the covers to get warmed up, and then after about an hour we leave together on foot. We have three tasks on the agenda: try again at the ATMs; walk back up to the restaurant to ask again if they’ve seen the wallet; and go to the police station to file a report. In the meantime, we’ve heard back from our host. She posted a notice to the community bulletin board, to alert people to the loss and how to report it. Very helpful!
The ATMs are still a failure. It’s just as she said - it looks like the banks are prepared to honor the transaction but it’s the card itself that’s being rejected. Thinking back, she’s not sure she’s used either of them since we arrived in Italy so maybe there’s an overseas block on it or something like that. We plan to call our banks when we return to find out what the issue is.
Coincidentally, the police station is only two blocks from the restaurant. We pass it in the way there, consider stopping, but I propose that we go to the restaurant first. It’s bound to take some time at the police station, but if we’re lucky and the restaurant has the wallet, the stop’s unneeded.
The restaurant is closed. They aren’t due to open for lunch for another half hour, so it’s not surprising. I knock on the door but no one answers, so we head down to the police station. Right before we get there a car stops next to us and the window gets rolled down. It’s the manager of the restaurant. He recognizes us from yesterday, tells us they looked further and still didn’t find the wallet, and wishes us luck. So that’s a dead end.
The experience at the police station is as good as we can hope for, and quite uplifting really - one of those encounters that restores your faith in humanity at a time it could use some restoration. Three folks help us out: the police officer on duty, who speaks just a bit of English; another city employee we snagged when we couldn’t find anyone at the police station at first; and Giovanna, a very personable young woman who stops in and we gradually come to realize has been brought in as a translator. Rachael complements Giovanna on her excellent English skills, and she tells us she worked in London as a nanny for half a year, and before that had an American boyfriend. If it hadn’t been inside the police station I’d have tried to take photos of all three of them.
Our situation was already known to the station when we arrived because of the bulletin our host Angela posted earlier today. The interview process was very thorough and took around an hour and a half. Giovanna was frequently consulted by the officer crafting the report, both to obtain information from us and to proofread portions of the report. I suspect her role in the department is more than as just a translator.
We wrap up at the police station about two. We thank them all profusely for their help, and they wish us luck and promise they’ll be in touch immediately if there are any developments. We feel very good from the experience but don’t really feel any more hopeful than when we arrived.
We walk back to the B&B along the same route we biked last night with our eye on the streets and margins, but of course find nothing. Soon after we’re back Rachael gets out her debit cards in preparation for calling our banks, and suddenly her face drops. Looking about as crestfallen as I’ve ever seen her, she says they’re both expired. One expired just at the end of last month (after we arrived in Italy), and the other probably four or five months ago. She has no theory for how this happened, but it doesn’t matter - our primary strategy for managing the crisis just went up in smoke.
Rachael calls our credit union (for the card that just expired) to explain our situation and find out what is possible. It’s a lengthy, frustrating conversation, but the short story is that the only option is an expedited delivery of a new card to our home address on file (Elizabeth’s place), where Elizabeth could then potentially have the card express delivered to us somewhere down the road. Maybe a week? Oh, and they canceled my card once they learned it’s been lost.
So it’s time to think outside the box a bit. We call Elizbeth to let her know what’s happening so she can watch for the new card and let us know as soon as it arrives so we can decide what to do next. Then we call our son Shawn, who is relevant here because we can feed him cash immediately through an account we share. We’re thinking he could use PayPal to relay us some cash, although we don’t really know how we’d receive it.
Somewhere in here Rachael does some research and discovers Xoom, a money movement app that’s a part of PayPal now. Maybe we’re the last people around to hear about Xoom, but it sounds like just what we need if we can figure it out. It allegedly supports cash pickup transfers to thousands of outlets worldwide, including three in Manfredonia where we’ll be in just two days.
Rachael and I spend a frustrating hour trying to figure out Xoom, which doesn’t seem to work exactly the way its documentation and the Vimeo demos show. Eventually we’re exhausted and hungry, call it a day, and walk up seven or eight flights of ancient, well worn stone and marble stairs to the commercial center and settle in at a pizzeria. The pizza is good, the price is right, and fortunately they take card payments and our credit cards still work so we don’t have to chip away at our big €100 cash reserve.
There is so much to be chagrined by and regret in this saga, but one is that I feel robbed of the chance to explore Minervino Murge and the adjacent national park. It’s a place I’ve wanted to see ever since looking down on it from above fifteen years ago. The only real look I get is when walking to dinner and back, but it’s enough to see what a remarkable place it is. Labyrinth is right!
Rachael swears she never wants to see this town again, but maybe I can slip over for a longer look some year during our long stay in nearby Gravina; and maybe her attitude will soften in time and she’ll come with me. In the meantime, here’s a too-quick look at an exceptional place.
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1 year ago
1 year ago
Thanks for the tip, and for still following along. We were just talking with Racpat about Ithaca and what a great place it would be for a longer stay. We’d love to make it back there again some day.
Oh, and I’m pretty sure that the tour is still on. One way or another we’ll manage to get our hands on enough €€€ to see us through.
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I'm seriously obsessive-compulsive about my wallet and my phone while on tour. While riding, I'm constantly unzipping my handlebar bag to make sure they're in there, and when I'm off the bike, I'm constantly feeling for them in my pants pockets.
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Having the two different credit cards is a life saver. The air tags sound like a good idea too.
All the best. We are impressed with your creativity.
1 year ago
I'll add another vote for the airtags. Touring last fall in Spain, I had one on my bike, and one in my wallet. One of the airtags was in my checked bag for flying. What I like about the air tags is that you can set it up so that your phone beeps pretty quickly after you leave your wallet/keys/whatever behind - it only takes a few minutes.
I also travel with a spare no-fee credit card - because I was caught out travelling once when the bank cancelled my card because of fraudulent charges. I keep that card separate from my wallet, with a photocopy of my passport.
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Fingers, toes, and anything else crossed that might bring you good luck.
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And it’s nice to hear from you! Coincidentally I almost emailed you last night to make sure you two were OK when I realized we and no one else had heard from you in the last two weeks.
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