Just yesterday, I said to my cousin Abby what a pleasure it is to toodle around Paris with her. Our days together had been flowing perfectly from one thing to another, the timing has worked out just right, and each detour seemed to just bring us a new delightful surprise. Until this morning. This morning, after dropping the girls at school and having tea and croissants at home, we head out to the Hotel de Ville for a Doisneau photographic exhibit of Les Halles (back when it was still what Zola called "the seedy underbelly of Paris" and was a dirty, living, working enormous outdoor market). We try to get there a bit before it opens at 10am to beat the rush, but instead the rush beats us. It turns out to be over a two hour wait, and we don't have that sort of time since Abby is meeting a friend for lunch. Instead, we decide to wander up and see what's at the Centre Pompidou. However, once we get there, we see another enormous line, so we opt to walk around the isles in the Seine instead.
As we are leaving the Pompidou, I tell Abby how we had looked at an apartment near there but didn't want to live in that neighborhood because it was just too seedy and gritty. And not two minutes later, I am sandwiched by two guys pressing against me harrassing me for a signature for something. I do what I think I'm supposed to do in this situation which is at first ignore, ignore, ignore and just keep walking. But it's tough to ignore, since they are litterally pressing into me. One has his pen open and it's hitting my favorite jacket, and I keep brushing it away. And finally, when they just will not leave me alone, I turn and tell one of them that if he touches me again, I will call the police. They leave, and I think the victory is mine, then realize in the next split second that they have pickpocketed my wallet -- which was zipped up in my front jacket pocket, ironically, because I thought it would be safer there than in my purse. (G once caught somebody with her hand in my purse coming out of the metro.)
And so, a visit and some calls to HSBC to cancel my credit and ATM cards, and a visit to the police station to report the theft. After he hears my description and I say they were speaking a different language, my friendly gendarme asks me if that means they are Middle Eastern or Eastern European, and since I honestly don't know I keep flip-flopping as he is already typing out the other. Finally he says to me, "Just stop guessing. I'm putting down 'Eastern European' because that's what they were." Apparently, only "gypsies" are issued permits for pickpocketing in the square of the Pompidou.
Naturally, though my wallet is normally near-empty, I just took out 80€ from the machine and stocked up on 30 metro tickets. And, I lost my hard-earned carte de séjour. And I really loved my little wallet. Thank goodness I don't carry around any of the rest of our credit/ATM cards or any more of my IDs. I am pretty calm about it both because there's nothing I can do about it now (unless I somehow figure out how to turn back time and deliver a well-deserved kick to the groin) and also because of what I call my "Alternate Universe Theory."
There is, actually, a pseudo-scientific Alternate Universe Theory that every outcome that is possible does, in fact, happen in some parallel universe. So when something bad happens, I like to think of all the other universes in which I would happily trade for this one. For example, in this case, there is an alternate universe where they grab my wallet and whole purse and run. It's my favorite purse, and it's currently holding a camera plus the girls' birthday gift to me -- a pretty little Paris-themed notebook so I can jot down notes and ideas on something other than the backside of a receipt I will later lose. There's another universe where this happens on my birthday instead of today. There's another universe where instead of my wallet, I am raped or hurt. There's another universe where they get my wallet, and the guy does, in fact, ruin my coat with his stupid pen. And in any of those universes, I would think longingly, "If only I lived in the universe where all they got was my wallet..."
Having said that, and having tried to look at this in the best-possible perspective, I'm not looking forward to going back to the Préfecture de Police and getting the replacement for my carte de séjour. Sigh. If only I lived in the universe where they took my wallet, but I had forgotten to put my identity card in it.
As we are leaving the Pompidou, I tell Abby how we had looked at an apartment near there but didn't want to live in that neighborhood because it was just too seedy and gritty. And not two minutes later, I am sandwiched by two guys pressing against me harrassing me for a signature for something. I do what I think I'm supposed to do in this situation which is at first ignore, ignore, ignore and just keep walking. But it's tough to ignore, since they are litterally pressing into me. One has his pen open and it's hitting my favorite jacket, and I keep brushing it away. And finally, when they just will not leave me alone, I turn and tell one of them that if he touches me again, I will call the police. They leave, and I think the victory is mine, then realize in the next split second that they have pickpocketed my wallet -- which was zipped up in my front jacket pocket, ironically, because I thought it would be safer there than in my purse. (G once caught somebody with her hand in my purse coming out of the metro.)
And so, a visit and some calls to HSBC to cancel my credit and ATM cards, and a visit to the police station to report the theft. After he hears my description and I say they were speaking a different language, my friendly gendarme asks me if that means they are Middle Eastern or Eastern European, and since I honestly don't know I keep flip-flopping as he is already typing out the other. Finally he says to me, "Just stop guessing. I'm putting down 'Eastern European' because that's what they were." Apparently, only "gypsies" are issued permits for pickpocketing in the square of the Pompidou.
Naturally, though my wallet is normally near-empty, I just took out 80€ from the machine and stocked up on 30 metro tickets. And, I lost my hard-earned carte de séjour. And I really loved my little wallet. Thank goodness I don't carry around any of the rest of our credit/ATM cards or any more of my IDs. I am pretty calm about it both because there's nothing I can do about it now (unless I somehow figure out how to turn back time and deliver a well-deserved kick to the groin) and also because of what I call my "Alternate Universe Theory."
There is, actually, a pseudo-scientific Alternate Universe Theory that every outcome that is possible does, in fact, happen in some parallel universe. So when something bad happens, I like to think of all the other universes in which I would happily trade for this one. For example, in this case, there is an alternate universe where they grab my wallet and whole purse and run. It's my favorite purse, and it's currently holding a camera plus the girls' birthday gift to me -- a pretty little Paris-themed notebook so I can jot down notes and ideas on something other than the backside of a receipt I will later lose. There's another universe where this happens on my birthday instead of today. There's another universe where instead of my wallet, I am raped or hurt. There's another universe where they get my wallet, and the guy does, in fact, ruin my coat with his stupid pen. And in any of those universes, I would think longingly, "If only I lived in the universe where all they got was my wallet..."
Having said that, and having tried to look at this in the best-possible perspective, I'm not looking forward to going back to the Préfecture de Police and getting the replacement for my carte de séjour. Sigh. If only I lived in the universe where they took my wallet, but I had forgotten to put my identity card in it.
1 comment:
Kazz - so sorry to hear of this theft. I fear this every time I go to European cities. It's especially bad in Spain and Italy too, I believe. Glad nobody was hurt.
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