At the square where coaches depart for foreign tours, a dozen or so tour leaders always meet. Before the scheduled meeting time, they still have a few minutes to exchange news, anecdotes and warnings concerning tourists.

Tour leader Agnieszka, who led groups to Italy, looked up from the travel documents to greet a colleague.
“​​How are things with you?” she asked her colleague
“Fine. And you?” the woman addressed replied.
“Other than the fact that one of my tourists fell into a canal in Venice,” Agnieszka replied, “nothing special has happened.”
“How did she fall into a canal?!” Her colleague, who had already heard quite a lot, was completely surprised.
“Classic. Her boyfriend was taking her picture. Over the canal. He told her to step back so he could frame it better. She stepped back without seeing that the embankment ended and ended up flailing her legs between the gondolas.” Agnieszka sighed resignedly. “I don’t know anymore what I’m supposed to warn these tourists about. I’m running out of ideas. Now I suppose I’ll have to tell them to be careful not to fall into canals.”
“But how did it end?!”
“Generally well,” Agnieszka said impassively, returning to leafing through the attendance list. “She fell between the gondolas, and the gondoliers rushed to help and pulled her out using those poles they push off the bottom with. The only thing is, the woman emerged from the canal covered in foul-smelling sludge.”

Her colleague nodded sympathetically and returned to her coach, where a group of tourists going on a trip to Paris was waiting for her. For a moment, she wondered whether to warn them about the banks of the Seine. But she decided they would take it as gross impoliteness and abandoned the idea.

When, three days later, shortly before midnight, she was waiting for the group beneath the Eiffel Tower, she no longer remembered the story of the woman who had fallen into a canal in Venice, or the additional warnings that should be given to tourists.

The tourists arrived slowly, tired and fascinated by the illuminated Eiffel Tower. At exactly midnight, the whole group was there except for one person—a woman. Her friend admitted that she had lost sight of her while getting into the lift on the second platform. The tourist had not fit into the lift. But that had been a good half-hour earlier, so she should already have been downstairs. The tour leader decided that the tired group would wait in the coach parked nearby, while she remained at the meeting point to wait for the unfortunate lost soul.

After half an hour of waiting, the tour leader began looking around with growing concern. She knew that the delighted and tired group waiting in the coach was undergoing an inexorable metamorphosis into an angry and tired group. After forty minutes of waiting, she herself was angry and beginning to feel cold. She decided to give the woman an hour before notifying the police of her disappearance. Then she noticed a tourist running towards her. The woman’s eyes were wild, her hair was dishevelled and there was foam on her lips. She was like a fury when she stopped in front of the tour leader and, breathless, began with an outburst:
“Where were you waiting for me, huh, where?!” she shouted at the tour leader.
“Here,” the woman under attack replied.
“And where did I get into the lift, huh, where?” The woman jabbed the tour leader in the chest with her finger.
“Here, in this spot,” the tour leader replied, moving to a safer distance.
“What do you mean, here?!” The woman was still furious, but the answer slowed the momentum of her attack.
“Here, in the western pillar, was the entrance where you got into the lift,” the tour leader replied.

The woman stared at her with eyes still full of hatred and asked:
“And why did I get out over there?” She stretched out her hand and pointed accusingly at the pillar on the opposite side. “And wait there for the group for almost an hour?!”
“It’s possible,” the tour leader said gently, taking another step back, “that the lift you took down was the lift operating in that pillar. The tower has four legs, and the lifts have stops in each of them.”
“Then why,” the tourist roared, her fury returning, “didn’t you tell us that the Eiffel Tower has four legs?!”

Grażyna Hanaf