So, I realize the following statement is going to jinx me in the biggest way possible, but it’s still true (for now anyway, fingers crossed): of all the thefts and vandalism we’ve been victim to in the last couple of the years, nothing has happened to me personally. I did have a very close call when we were in Spain. We were sitting at an outdoor café and I happened to notice this guy kinda walking back and forth on the street in front of us, nonchalantly, yet still seemingly paying a suspicious amount of attention to our direction. Naturally, as a mother of two attractive teenage girls, I made a mental note of this. However, I was only thinking of myself and the girls. I hadn’t thought about my purse sitting beside my feet on the ground. Several minutes later, I see this guy walking up the stairs away from the café carrying my bag in his arms. I have no idea how we didn’t see him come behind us as we were chatting and actually grab my purse which was practically touching my feet, but at any rate, that was a very, very close call, with my camera, sunglasses, iPod, Swedish ID…And, to complete the story, I yelled out “that guy has my bag.” And then several people stood up as if they were going to run after him if he ran, but that man just stood there sort of stunned and paralyzed and Bryan got to him first and the guy just handed my bag right over.
However, with the exception of my one close call, I’ve actually had the opposite luck, if you will. Instead of having things taken, I tend to find things. Multiple times I’ve found 20 or 50kr bills (not so much, $3 or $7). I found 20 euro once at Oktoberfest in Munich. The best, however, was finding a 1000 Norwegian krona bill crumpled and stuck between two stones on a street late at night. I still feel terrible for the person that lost it, but it was in the middle of the night, on a deserted street with no one else around anywhere. Based on how it was hardly even visible, I suspect it had been there a while, stepped on and over many, many times before.
Yet, very recently, I found a 500kr ($76) Swedish bill on the floor of a store. This felt really different to me than finding something on a street at 2 am. Not at one point did I think of keeping this money. I wanted to get the money back to the rightful owner, but, naturally, this seemed very tricky. I could ask anyone in the store if they lost 500kr, and they might just say yes anyway. I could give it to the store owner, but still, that didn’t feel right either. I walked around the store with the money for a while to see if anyone seemed like they noticed they were missing it, and listened in to conversations for awhile, but nothing.
I decided to call my husband for his opinion of what I should do, and with his amazing Swedish skills, he googled this, and found some commentary on almost this very same scenario. The person should not give the money to the store owner or *obviously* just keep it. There’s a place specific for this. A lost and found of the city, through the police department. Another story which brought us to wondering if there was a specific protocol for such things, was a story his Swedish teacher told in class: she found a very expensive watch in her front yard, and if the owner didn’t claim it in 3 months, it was legally hers. Or, if it was claimed, the owner must give a reward of 10% of the value, which for this watch, happened to be a lot of money. This was intended to begin a conversation in Swedish about ethics. What’s ethically right or even the social norm in any particular place?
Here is the information for hittegods (found items):
http://www.polisen.se/Service/Hittegods/
More Specifically for Stockholm:
So, I went last Friday to take the money in. A couple of thoughts on this: first of all, the hours are very restricted Mon- Fri 10-3 (typical Sweden) and only street parking, so we had to pay for parking (so it actually is kind of inconvenient, and actually costs you money to do the ‘right thing’). But, all in all, it’s a great concept. We went in the room, and there were hundreds and hundreds of keys hanging on a wall under labels of months going back to July. The other interesting part of lost/found items, if you find something, you have two weeks to turn it in. And like in the above story, If it is claimed, you get a reward. If it is not claimed in 3 months, you get to keep it.
The best part about doing this, however, was when I was telling the lady at the counter that I had 500kr that I found that I would like to give her, the guy sitting behind us said in Swedish “I can not believe there are still people like this left in the world. If I hadn’t seen this myself, I never would have believed it.” This was one day when I was incredibly proud to speak English. I’m not saying I did anything great, and I’m certainly not saying one nationality of a person is more likely to return lost money than another, but on that day, I was proud to make an impression on somebody-- him knowing I was an American.
And, the thing is I doubt highly that money is claimed. I doubt very much somebody even knew they were missing that money until much later, in another store, at a restaurant, and they reach into their pocket to pay, and its just not there…I doubt they thought about retracing their steps or more so, thought there was any hope in doing that. They would have to have known the exact place, exact time and location to claim this. I’m sure they would be just like I would in the same scenario, and just feel terrible but accept it as a loss. I hope they do get it back though. I really do! But, if not, I get a little 500kr treat somewhere in January.
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