(there's a lot of text here, so I've included smileys to help those short-of-attention ride the emotional rollercoaster without having to read the whole post!)

Coming out of the McDonalds in Weil-am-Rhein (never let it be said that Mr. Idiot is a gourmet or has tastes above his station in life), I spotted a wallet on the ground. Since I’m always telling visitors that Switzerland is the one place that you’re almost sure to get your wallet back if you lost it, I thought that I’d play my part and try to reunite the wallet with the owner.

And I learned a valuable lesson. It’s tough to be a Samaritan, especially close to the frontier.

A quick inspection of the wallet showed that it belonged to a young man, mid-twenties. There were a little bit of cash, a few French credit cards, an AHV card, and an employee card for one of the SWISS companies at the Basel airport. So, in brief, the wallet of a Frenchman who works in Switzerland, lost in Germany. Unfortunately, there were no contact details – no address and no phone number. I tried Googling the chap from my phone, but nothing useful came up. Facebook was equally unhelpful.

Since my German is non-existent and the French and Swiss borders are only 1km away, I decided to try to hand in the wallet in France. I headed to St. Louis, where I tried to stop at the Police Nationale. Except that the Police Nationale have closed their office on the main road in St. Louis, and helpfully not posted their new address anywhere. I then headed to Huningue, only to discover that there isn’t a police station there, either.

I crossed the (unmanned) border at Huningue and happened to run into two Swiss police conducting an investigation – taking photographs of what must have earlier been the scene of an accident. I approached them and explained my predicament -- their advice was to go to the airport, because that’s where he worked and that’s where I’d certainly find the Police Nationale.

So I headed to the airport, paid my CHF6- for parking, and started searching for the French police. After something of a wild goose chase, I ended up at the information desk. They helpfully told me that the French police at the airport are closed on the weekend. They offered to put the wallet in lost-and-found, but when I explained that it had been lost elsewhere, they didn’t want to take it as they wouldn’t commit to tracking down the owner. They suggested I head upstairs to find someone who works for SWISS to track the chap down.

I headed to the SWISS counter, only to find it manned by two SwissPort staff. After explaining my story, though, they went above-and-beyond the call of duty. We couldn’t find the chap in the SWISS directory, nor by contacting SWISS in Zurich. So they headed to the phone book, where they found two people with the same last name. They gave them both a call, got one answering machine and one person who didn’t know the young man. At last, I thanked them for their help and said that I would try to drop it off with the Swiss police instead, as the AHV card was surely the best way to track down the young man.

“Oh,” said the lady at the counter, “the Swiss police are here, right downstairs. I’ll come with you in case I need to translate.” And so she did. We went down to the Swiss police, who were business-like but friendly enough, took my details and committed to returning the wallet to the young man.

When I got home, I Googled the name and found that he’s got a Facebook account. No idea why it didn’t turn up on my mobile, but there you go. Given his unique last name and the small village where he lives, I also managed to track down what I assume to be his parent’s phone number. So he now has a Facebook message and a voicemail telling him where he can find his wallet. I have no doubt owner + wallet will be reunited, albeit with the CHF50- finders fee that he’ll be charged to recover it. That’s more than the cash that was in the wallet, but hopefully it will save him the hassle and expense of replacing his work ID and credit cards.




Lessons learned:

1. If your name, address and phone number are in your wallet, you’re much likely to get it back. Trying to return the wallet to this young man took up the better part of 2 hours of my day. I’m not sure most people would have bothered with such a small amount of money.

2. The Swiss (both people and police) seemed much more interested in reuniting wallet with owner than the French. I’m not sure if this is cultural or just the people I met, but the Swiss were prepared to go out of their way to try to return it.

3. Hopefully I’ve earned some karma.

Excellent story! And people say there is nothing to do in Switzerland on the weekends.

I wonder if dropping it off at the AVS office would have been another option?

Good job you!

Hats off to you. Finding the man and contacting him directly certainly ensures he'll get the money back.

To be honest, I would have given it to the manager at McDonald's and left it at that.

Thanks for being a good person.

I wish I had unfailing trust in human nature, but I made a judgement call that the young lad was far more likely to receive the wallet and all the cash inside if I left it with the police rather than at the restaurant. I also thought that the police would make an active effort to track the guy down, whereas the McDonalds manager would probably just put it in a drawer in case someone came in looking for it.

Village Idiot, we need more people in the world like you!

Not only did you give up your valuable weekend hours to ensure that this guy's wallet would get back to him, but then you come home and take the time to relate the story to your fellow EF members and throw in some good advice/info!

Kudos!

I am sure you did. If only everybody was as honest and persistent as you are.

Something similar happened to me in London a few years back .. I found someones wallet and blackberry in a cab. The cab driver was totally disinterested, so I took it with me, did some sleuthing with his name in various London directories and to cut a long story short, discovered where the man worked and left a message with his PA.

The man turned up the next day at lunchtime at my office to pick the things up .. not only did he have the most enormous bunch of flowers from the smartest flowershop in the city and a bottle of Bollinger (oh yes) but he also had bought me a voucher for £200 to spend at the Oxo Tower restaurant.

My karma paid out that day! Hope yours does too, but even if it does not .. bask in the warm glory of the thanks and replies on this post.

I kept expecting the story to go bad at some point - you know, like the owner of the wallet accusing you of stealing it and attacking you when you tried to deliver it.

Meh. Too fluffy for my tastes. Needs more action.

Well, I actually have a nice story to tell about a London cabbie. I once left an important file in the back of one when I was dropped off at my office. It contained all my wedding preparation stuff, including my birth certificate. Anyway, luckily the lovely cabbie remembered where he had dropped me off and returned it to me about three hours later.

Ah. As this is a family board, I left out the part of the story where the huge dog chased me and tried to pull the wallet out of my hand. But trust me - it really got the adreneline going.

And when the guy in the shop pulled the gun on me and demanded both my wallets.......

But why dwell on the negatives, I always say...

And I almost forgot. There were sharks.

Sharks with frickin' laser beams.



But the lad got his wallet. And that's the important thing.

I 'misplaced' my Blackberry at the Street Parade last summer. Which was a huge issue since my entire life was on it (including scans of all important documents and errr...creditcard details).

A couple weeks later I received a registered letter from the city of Zurich, that my blackberry has been found and I can come to the lost and found to retrieve it.

Everything still there, and not even accessed since the missed calls and messages notifications were still present (notifications dissapear when you've used essentially anything on the phone). Very Impressed, only in Switzerland!

Well, I cannot envisage that happening in London, sadly. In fact, there I have had my purse stolen on more than one occasion.

However, here in Malta I left my purse on top of the car park paying machine at the airport, having flown back from Zurich, and driven home. At 11pm I received a call from HSBC asking if I had lost my purse. I replied no, I don't think so ... until I checked and realised that I had. They then informed me that it had been found and gave me the mobile number of the young man who had found it and had called HSBC to inform them. I called him and arranged to meet him at his workplace the following day. However, my car was virtually on empty and I could not find his office (and had no means to buy petrol) so he told me to stay where I was and drove to meet me and handed over my purse which was, of course, intact. I was incredibly grateful yet he refused to accept any form of monetary thanks for his time and consideration.

I know a member who found an unsigned credit card at Leitsipark last week, she phoned his bank rather than hand the card in. FWIW the person is from London, were not all bad.

he he - I know that!! I lived in London for many, many years and would have done the same. I was just unlucky a couple of times.

I believe you have met the member concerned, a real lady!

I've also heard of a situation where someone was biking and their backpack (with wallet and cellphone etc.) fell off the bike.

They returned on their path to find the backpack up against a light post with the valuables gone. However there was a note left by someone who has found the pack, and taken the valuables, but said here are my contact details so you can retrieve your phone and wallet, didn't want to leave them in the bag to be stolen.

King among humans that person was. Sometimes you just have to love Switzerland!

I think you said in another thread that you had long blond hair, I suspect this had something to do with it!

Well yes I did (and have) but I am sure he would have done it anyway

Sorry to hear. But once I found a blackberry on the street in London, I was on my way to dentist to get rid of my wisdom tooth. After operation, I saw a message left on, plz post to this address and so on, so I posted it.

Two wallets found, one from primrose hill, left this at police station and another one inside black cab, gave it to the driver.

Once my hubby lost iphone. He was drunk and phone got out of his pocket inside black cab while he nodded. But a next passenger who found called me after he went through recent contacts from my hubby's mobile phone as it wasn't locked.

What goes around, what comes around.
Sometimes things also happen in London. ^^