Badajoz, Extremadura, SPAIN. November, 1999. Most city bus passengers in Badajoz, Spain, buy daily, weekly, or monthly bus passes. The bus driver will sell you a single-ride ticket, but if you simply board the bus and take a seat he'll assume you've bought a pass. His job is to drive, not to check tickets. Ticket checkers board buses at random. Threatening signs on buses imply you'd rather languish in a Turkish jail than get caught without a ticket.

The system works the same way in Madrid and other European cities.

Vicki and I were riding in Badajoz one day when a ticket checker boarded. He wore a no-nonsense, starched gray uniform. He carefully checked our tickets, nodded grimly that we were okay, then turned to the woman behind us. She and her small child wore dirty clothes and had stringy hair. Mom had a scar on her face and wild, black eyes. Instead of producing a ticket she started screaming at the ticket checker. "I paid the driver but he didn't give me the tickets." She reminded me of a war movie, but without the Uzi.

Instead of writing her up, the ticket taker, thoroughly intimidated, turned to another passenger. "What's a guy to do?" Meanwhile, the bus driver quietly pointed out that this woman rode his bus every day and never paid. The ticket checker ignored him, until the driver finally shut up.

At the end of the line the woman, still screaming, took her kid, got off the bus, and disappeared into the crowd. The relieved ticket checker headed to the cafe, break time, the morning's work successfully concluded. The bus driver calmly turned the bus around and prepared for the return trip.