Losing My Wallet in Luxembourg

by Apr 30, 2014Europe, Luxembourg0 comments

We flew in to Luxembourg late on a Thursday night and were looking forward to a late dinner or at least finding a nice bar to have a glass of wine. Turns out everything closes pretty early in Luxembourg.

After negotiating the local bus (knowing when to get off in the dark was pretty hard), finding our hotel and wandering around for 20 minutes, we decided that everyone must have left or gone to bed that night. We had to settle for some cheesy bites and fanta at a Quick Burger as that was about all that was open.

We ended up having to just chill out in our hotel room but at least it was a nice one. Only issue was the slightly odd exhibitionist shower set up…

See through shower in our hotel room

We woke up bright and early(ish) to go to one of the top rated breakfast spots in Luxembourg (usual plan of find a place ranked highly on Tripadvisor and go there). Coming from London, we were expecting a few people as whenever a place has a half decent review it gets lines around the block so we were surprised to find it half empty. It seems sleepy and quiet are the best ways to describe Luxembourg.

After a peaceful, quiet breakfast at Golden Bean we started wandering around the Old Town.  The Old Town area of Luxembourg City sits up high with a sort of valley that runs around it so we started with checking out the view of the valley from a spot nearby.

Luxembourg City Cathedral

Valley

Valley

Valley

After checking out the view and the cathedral nearby, our first stop was the Tourist Information Centre to see what there was to do in this little city.  After chatting briefly to the guy on the help desk, we grabbed a map and were off on our own little walking tour (you can join a tour but they run at 2pm in the afternoon and we had a train to catch).

Valley

The Casemates of Luxembourg are the old, roughly 400 year old defenses that are mostly underground.  For 2 euro we did a quick little tour of them along with the 3 or 4 other tourists in the city at the same time as us.

Walls

The Casemates

The Casemates are the old stone buildings/wall on the left there

After that brief little bit of excitement (it was pretty tame really), we pretty much just meandered our way around the city.  Nothing seemed amiss as we strolled along in the sun enjoying the view.

Valley

Walking

But when we got back to our hotel room something was definitely amiss.  My wallet to be exact.  And I am the last person that should be losing a wallet.  Most people who have spent more than 30 minutes with me have probably seen me do my OCD pocket check dance (I basically have a compulsive need to tap every pocket every few minutes to make sure I still have my phone, wallet, keys etc on me).  So I was pretty surprised to find that despite my pocket check dance, I was now down a wallet (that contained a bunch of IDs, credit cards and cash).

After the original panic and swearing fit, I left Dayna to settle the bill at the hotel and took off on a much quicker tour of Luxembourg in reverse.  Well I would like to think it was quick but you can only run so fast in denim.

After a fruitless jog (at least I got some exercise in!), I got back to the hotel to start cancelling cards before we got directions to the local police station.  I completed the police report and detailed everything which then got translated in to a french police report for me to sign.  So with a heavy heart and light pockets, we set off for the train station as we were starting to cut it close on making our train from Luxembourg to Koln and needed some food first (losing your wallet makes you hungry).

We decided just to walk all the way to the station because the bus required coins and my recently departed wallet had all of our coins in it.  We were pretty much at the train station when I got a call from an international number.  It was a girl calling to explain that she had my wallet and I could come and collect it right away.  She spoke perfect English but when she pronounced the place where I should pick up my wallet I couldn’t understand any of it.

It sounded like:

“No problem, your wallet is safe with us.  Just come pick it up anytime at Flugellyboo Tickety-bucket”

I gave up and handed the phone to Dayna to see if she could translate Flugellyboo Tickety-bucket for me but she had no luck either.  We tried recruiting a shopkeeper who turned out didn’t speak any English before successfully convincing another customer in the store to translate for us (although it was quite funny when she asked what language we needed her to translate…just English thanks, we just don’t know the place name).  She spoke for a minute and eventually translated for us that the wallet was at a police station that was only 2 blocks away from us.

At this stage we were cutting it fine to get to the train on time so we got over there quickly.  Thankfully we managed to pick up my wallet (after an awkward conversation involving miming losing my wallet) and we made it back to the station quick enough to get on the right train.  We even had a chance to grab a bite to eat before jumping on board.

So after a night out in Luxembourg old town, a slow walk (followed by a swift jog) around the city and visiting 2 of the local police stations, we were on our way to Cologne/Koln.

Great to know the Luxembourg locals are kind enough to look after their tourists and hand in lost wallets.  They must not have trusted the police with the cash as they took that out before handing it back.  I’m sure an envelope with the cash will turn up in our letterbox any day though…

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