The Matt Faus Blog

As mentioned in my previous post, we saw a lot of beggars in Paris that all had the same ploy: poor Bosnian women that had lost their passport. Now, there are poor and homeless people that have legitimately fallen on bad times out of their control and we should help these people. However, these beggars were little more than con artists leveraging the power of deep-seeded human desires to win a few coins, not terribly different than prostitutes. So, in my desire to get a refund for being so uncomfortably assaulted at the Arc du Triomf, I decided that the next Bosnian woman to ask for money from me would see the tables turned. At the Notre Dame Cathedral, such a woman came up to me and before she could say more than a few words I explained to her how I had lost my passport and my wallet and that I needed money to get back to the United States. As she realized that her plan had backfired she reached into her purse and gave me a 10 cent coin, from Australia. That’s right, I got money from a beggar. Boo-ya-kasha!