Lost and found

This morning when I arrived at work, there was a message on the phone from the Lausanne police informing me that my wallet had been turned in and that I could go pick it up from the Lost and Found office at my leisure. Not a bad way to start a day.

At lunchtime, I took the metro downtown and swung by the office. The clerk there had no idea how or by whom the wallet had been found or turned in, but was happy to give it to me when I presented my passport and a 5 CHF fee. From the looks of it, the wallet had suffered during its time away from me (it had clearly spent some time in the dirt), but was otherwise ok. The police apparently had separated the contents from the wallet, so I received a small rubberbanded stack of cards as well. A quick check through the cards revealed the following.

Items left in wallet:

• My CFF 1/2-price railway pass
  • Pretty much everyone in Switzerland already owns one of these, so I imagine it's not particularly valuable, although it does cost 150 CHF a year.
• My Mobilis transit pass
  • This gets me onto the subways and buses for free, but it is only a monthly pass and expires in less than a week. Thus, I'm guessing, it is not too valuable.
• My Lausanne Public Library card
  • I'm lucky to still have this one.
• My health insurance card
  • This one would have been mildly annoying to replace.
• My EPFL identification
  • I really wasn't looking forward to replacing this, so it was nice to get this back.
• My Budget Migros credit card
  • This is my Swiss credit card and I'm really surprised that this was still inside. It requires a PIN to use for most purchases, but I think what really threw off the thieves is that it looks a lot more like a customer reward card (which it is) than a credit card (which it also is).
• My Stanford Federal Credit Union debit card
  • Another surprise, but it was fairly deep inside the wallet and maybe tough to get at.
• My Coop Supercard
  • Another customer reward card, definitely not a prize.

Items removed from the wallet:

• One 100 CHF bill
  
• My United Mileage Plus credit card
  • No big surprise, this is in the front of my wallet and screams MONEY!
• My PostFinance bank card
  • This doesn't work as a credit card and is only useful for getting cash from an ATM, for which you need a PIN. Of course, I also need it to access my account online so until I get a replacement in the mail, I can't be sure that they didn't do any damage.
• My California driver license
  • This is the real bitch of all bitches. No doubt to stem the (fear of) hordes of illegal immigrants from driving legally, it is a royal pain in the neck to replace your license in the state of California. You have to physically present yourself (and your thumbprint) at the DMV along with another form of government issued identification. What someone over here would want with it is beyond me, unless of course they planned on using it as ID for use with one of the other stolen cards.
• A business card with my Dad's work phone number on it, probably out of date
• A business card from the restaurant "Madame Sans Gênes" in Paris, which I had had on my person (on and off) since I dined there in May, 2000
• A bus receipt from the Airport Shuttle that I took to Ferihegy Airport when I left Budapest in June, 2000

All in all, it could have been worse. In the end, I lost the 100 CHF I had in the wallet, 50 CHF to replace my PostFinance card, and 5 CHF to pick up the wallet. Even though I got some of my credit cards back, I'd already canceled all of them so I still had to cut them up. The loss of the driver license is really the worst part, as it truly cannot be replaced. I called the DMV today and they agreed to mail me "duplicate replacement" which is like a normal license, except it says "duplicate" or "copy" or something else suspicious on it, it doesn't have a picture on it, and it doesn't count as legal identification. As, in theory, I am supposed to apply for a Swiss license soon, I am hoping that this will be sufficient. Switzerland has a deal wherein you can present your foreign license and they will give you a Swiss license with nothing more than an eye test and a first-aid course, so I'm hoping this ersatz CA license will be enough. We shall see.

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Now an amusing endnote to this whole affair. Serge -- the Swiss guy who tried to kill me in France a few months ago -- upon hearing my story told me that the exact same thing had happened to him a few years ago in Geneva! Not exact, like someone stole his wallet, but exact, as in two people accosted him, one tried to get him to do the "Zizou dance", and the other one took his wallet while he was distracted. Unbelievable! Fortunately for Serge, though, he wasn't alone. And, in an even weirder turn, the guy he was with recognized what was going on as the exact same thing had happened to him before as well! He told Serge to look in the second guy's hand, and lo and behold, there was his wallet. Serge took his wallet back and the guys wandered off, claiming the whole thing was a joke, so it was no loss to him. Still, I wish that he had told me this story at some point in time as it really could have prevented a lot of drama.

So, my advice to travelers. First, do not come to Switzerland. It is nothing but a den of thieves (note the 50 CHF fee to replace my frigging bankcard) and roustabouts. If you spend any amount of time here, you will be accosted and you will be asked to do a Zidane dance, during which someone will attempt to lift your wallet. It is as inevitable as death, taxes, and Norv Turner leading the Chargers to Super Bowl glory. When it finally happens and someone comes up to you asking you to "dance like Zidane," you should immediately "make like Zidane" and head butt them as hard as you can in the chest. Maybe it'll teach the little punks a lesson.