In the 80s there was a way to cheat phone booths in Germany: With a small tool that had an adjustment screw you could position the hook switch to an exact position where the phone booth had already connected the line but did not yet power up the rest of the machinery (including coin counters)
You could then call arbitrary nunbers by pulse dialing using the hook switch (the rotary dial was still powered down)
Basically a EU pulse dial version of phreaking.
My father, who died this year, used this a lot too make “free” calls in the 80s.