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RE: The Iron Gate - DateThursday - SevenDaysOutside Challenge
This is a beautiful gate. I'm wondering why they are closing these sites. They are part of the common history and should be shown to everybody. So sneaking a camera or a phone and taking photos does not seem a bad idea. 🙂
Actually only the main entrance is closed, I wonder if they ever open it, maybe for a ceremony or something.
There's a side door that is open to the public. I've been inside, there are caretakers watching the place, once you step in, you're reminded that you're not allowed to take photos!!! Right away, before you can even have a look inside.
Now, this might happen for two reasons. One, to protect the frescoes, but I'm not really sure if a flashlight from that distance can damage them so much. Two, to make money. You know, there are little printed brochures for sale at the entrance, postcards and a bunch of other things. If photographing is allowed, who on earth would buy those? Nowadays everyone has a phone with a camera, right?
I tend to believe it's the second. You have to pay an entrance fee, which is almost $2. So money talks.
I have a very bad experience. It happened at the orthodox cathedral in my hometown. I was with a guest from Sweden, wanted to show her the city. She's never been to an orthodox cathedral before, so we went in and started to take photos. This is somehow a normal behaviour, you want to have some memories and photos to show at home to your loved ones, right? It's just that there was a sign at the entrance saying no photos! And we missed that because we were looking at the beauty of the place.
At that point a cleaning lady came out of somewhere, shouting at us, that photographing is forbidden. I said I'm sorry, I did not know that. This wasn't enough for her. She kept shouting at us, damn tourist, they never pay attention, they think everything is allowed and so on and on, damn tourists!
I was shocked, to tell you the truth. Told my guest to go, we're not welcomed here and we left.
I was thinking. We were in the Lord's house, right? It doesn't matter what religion we are talking about, but each religion teaches about forgiveness, about helping others, especially those in need and so on. We made a mistake, although no damage was done. We asked for forgiveness and yet we were verbally abused. There was no forgiveness for our mistake 🙂
I could go on and on about cases like this because this was not the only incident.
In conclusion, I think in some cases it would be very indicated to rethink the whole role of people like this woman and others who sometimes tend to forget that they're serving God and their role is to help people, not to punish them 🙂.
Yes. It's all about the money, unfortunately. It does not matter if we talk about a church, a castle or a museum.
Something similar happened to me. I was told by a handyman to let my camera at the entrance or to get out. The handyman, not the guide!
I believe these people are trying to show us how important they are despite their actual jobs.
The company I'm working for is quite big. So they had to hire a 5 cleaning ladies. Working with foreign customers, we had different delegations visiting us on a daily basis. I still remember a funny thing.
We had some visitors from the UK and one of the guys (actually, the CEO of a huge company but a very friendly and nice person) spilled coffee during a meeting. It was an accident, something that can happened to everybody. The reaction that one of the cleaning lady had...the screams and the attitude. I've never felt so ashamed as I did that day. It didn't matter that the general manager had a conversation with her prior of this visit. Nothing was important apart from her broom.
I guess this behaviour is these people's way to express their frustrations. Our lady was not happy that so many "young people earn money just playing at a pc". This was her opinion towards our job. She could not stand the fact that working in IT is better paid than cleaning.
It is too bad that people like them make us feel uncomfortable at work or on vacation.
I guess, apart from religion, the education has a very important role.