I was 'robbed' in France

Many of you may have heard the famous song 'I was lost in France' by one of my favourite singers Bonnie Tyler and I also fall in love with the song as it was beautifully sung. But I never knew that I will have to repeat the title of the song a little reworded as 'I was robbed in France,' one day.

In my previous post on 'A visit to Sacré-Cœur - Paris,' I said in the ending note that while visiting the beautiful piece of architecture was a great thing to do, the going away from the place left me in quite a bad taste and that I would write about it in my next post - and this 'the' next post. 

As I said in my previous post, we found it very difficult to find a parking near the small bazaar leading to the Sacré-Cœur and we had to go down in an alley finally to find a parking. The alley seemed less frequented as it was a residential area and probably was the reason why of writing this post.

While we were driving in Paris, we found boards at many places that tourists should not leave valuable things in their car as car burglars often break the car windows to snatch the valuable. While I was parking the car, I mad sure that I do not leave behind any valuable on the seats, though the boot contained laptops of sons and other shopping.  But one thing attractive was the camera casing of my camera that we left in the car and probably that prompted a thief to break in the rear right window of the car and snatch the 'camera' - which may have been a disappointed for him as it was empty.

We were saved because of the security system fo the BMW cars as these do not open unless one has the original keys. So even after breaking the glass, the thief could not open the doors and was to contend with empty camera casing.

But in doing so, he did the damage. And now you can well imagine how expensive is the window glass of a brand new BMW we had rented form Germany to visit Holland, Belgium and France. Luckily at the time of renting the car, I had insured the car by paying a little extra that helped us out of the misery and any further financial loss.

Although the experience was pretty bad, but all Parisians are not bad. The owner of the house in front of whose house we had parked our vehicle was an  old woman. She along with her son came out and help us clean the mess of broken glass pieces from the car. 

The old woman (left of the photo) had gone to the neighbours across the street and when she saw us in distress came for all out help with her son 

Not only that, her son also used scotch tape to close the broken window lest its pieces fell on us while we drove . The photos (above and below) are with the good people of Paris and my family.

Although we had not lost anything valuable, our day was lost as the car rental company had its office at the Charles de Gaulle International Airport, which was quite far away from the place of 'theft.' So we drove to the car rental company, where our car was replaced with a similar BMW car for our further journey in Paris and back to Kiel, Germany.

So while you are in foreign lands, be careful of your belongings as pick-pocketing and car burgling are often experienced by tourists not familiar with Paris and its 'life-style.'

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