Pickpocket warning in Paris metro
On the train to Amsterdam I sat next to a shaken, exhausted tourist from New Zealand with her eyes red from crying. She had been robbed three hours earlier in the metro. Her designer purse, a 25th anniversary present from her husband, with her passport, wallet with credit cards and 200 euros, her medicine, her camera, glasses and sunglasses, important papers, and keys, had been stolen as she turned to move her two suitcases.
"Was it at Châtelet?" I said. She nodded.
Châtelet is so notorious for its pickpockets that I avoid going through that station at all costs. When I do, I bring a zippered shoulder bag and keep the front of the zipper gripped in my hand.
This story had a relatively happy ending. A French woman passerby she asked for help had taken her under her wing and spent the next three hours with her, going to the police station ("They were completely disinterested and wouldn't take the report") and the lost-and-found at the Châtelet metro, and letting her use her phone to call her husband back in New Zealand to cancel all her credit cards. This Good Samaritan then lent the tourist 200 euros and bought her a ticket back to Amsterdam with only an email address as surety.
The French are wonderful at stepping up when you really need their help. It is one of the things I love about them. I wonder if this would have happened in New York.
Five days later, the purse was found unharmed at the Louvre metro station. The thief had taken thirty euros, a Mont Blanc pen, and some sunglasses, but nothing else had been stolen.
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