Soon after Ciara Lo arrived in Bologna, Italy, from her native Hong Kong last month, her wallet was stolen. But when she went to file a police report, she was told she would have to wait outside, she said. And when the 22-year-old student tried to open a bank account, she said she was turned away --
Soon after Ciara Lo arrived in Bologna, Italy, from her native Hong Kong last month, her wallet was stolen. But when she went to file a police report, she was told she would have to wait outside, she said. And when the 22-year-old student tried to open a bank account, she said she was turned away — by an employee who made a remark about the coronavirus.
After months of anti-government protest and civil unrest in Hong Kong, Lo, an English major, said she had been eager for her semester abroad and her first trip to Italy. She flew to Bologna nine days before she was scheduled to, worried that her exchange program might be suspended because of the virus.Instead, she says she got long, hard stares at the Bologna airport and wondered if it was because of her face mask, which she had worn for the entire 16-hour flight.
Story continuesLo was also taken aback by her treatment at Intesa Sanpaolo, a bank where she tried to open an account so her parents could wire her money. At one branch, a teller told her that she could not open an account because she did not speak Italian. At another, she said she was escorted out by an employee who told her, apologetically, that she had to leave because she was from “the zone of the coronavirus.
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