TFI - Zurich. 'Can you describe your notebook please?'

There is a French owned Kids-readymade shop in one of the cobbled lanes that shoots off from Rennweg tram-stop in Bahnhoffstrasse, Zuerich.

Whenever I felt the assembly line offerings from Migros, C&A and Coop were too boring, I would step into this store and would always find some wonderfully made dresses for my kids, be the colour, design, feel of the material...french people got it right!

This particular day, I did my shopping, went to the billing counter with the material and put down my backpack while paying the bill (till date I don't know why the hell I put it down...it was after all a backpack!).

I received the dresses neatly folded and loaded into a plastic bag and turned around to pick up my backpack and...it was gone!

All I could remember was the Notebook!. I was just off from an important (and highly confidential) meeting and made tons of notes in my Notebook which I kept in my backpack!!!

Panicked, I ran to the nearest Police Station (actually the police head quarters located at one of the banks of the river Limmat) and lodged a complaint about the missing bag.

Apart from the Notebook, I also kept few other stuff like my sunglasses and some books. I could not remember all of them when the officer who took my complaint asked me to write down the contents of the backpack. The Notebook, the Notebook, the Notebook was the only thing my mind was repeating...

So I told the officer that I was bothered particularly about the Notebook and that if it falls in the wrong hands that it would mean catastrophe for a big business corporation yadda yadda.

The officer empathised with me and asked me to describe the Notebook.

Here is how the conversation went:

O : How big was that?

I : Roughly about the size of an A4 Sheet.

O : What color was that?

I : Actually a melange of Black and Pink.

O : How heavy was that?

I  : Roughly about 1/2 Kilo.

O : OK. What Brand was that?

I : Nightingale.

O : Nightingale??? hmmm...I have never heard of it! Are you sure?

I  : It IS quite a big Brand in India and I am sure!

O : How much it cost?

I  : If I apply the prevailing forex rate, it is roughly 6 Swiss Francs. 

     But it is very important to me, officer!

O : ... (He was speechless for some minutes). You guys really

      make Notebooks that cheap in India?! I have never heard of 

      it!!!

He asked me to wait, walked back to his superiors and started discussing something animatedly at length.

Poor me! (and him!!) - I was talking about a 192 page ITC made Notebook (yes, the real one with papers, hardbound) and he couldn't quite fit in Nightingale with the Dells and HPs he had ever known in the world of Computers!

Funny thing was, it never struck me until that moment that we might be thinking about entirely different notebooks!!!

The instant I realised it, I offered an apology and explained to him that unlike Swiss people who use files and perforated sheets to make 'Notes', we Indians still use hardbound / softbound notebooks made of the same paper! 

Alles Klar for him from then on and he gave me this beaming smile of having understood a very important aspect of cultural differences between our countries :-)

That was it. I walked out of the police station thinking nothing ever would be done to trace my backpack.

The very next day I got a call from the police station, asking me to walk in to identify the items I kept in my backpack.

To my pleasant surprise, I learnt that my backpack was abandoned at the Rennweg tramstop and a person who noticed the bag lying there, took it and deposited it at the nearest police station which happened to be the same one where I gave my complaint!

All the more surprising was the 'discovery' that the bag actually had my flight tickets for my forthcoming holiday trip to India! In my panicky mood, I completely forgot about the presence of this in my bag and hence left it out while jotting down the list of items in my bag while giving the complaint!

I thanked the officer heavily and walked back with loads of goodwill towards Zuerich Kantonal Polizei as they are known there!

Not the end of the story yet!

Few weeks down the line I got a letter from the Police department stating that they actually caught the thief using CCTV footage from that readymade shop and the thief was a 'She', from East Europe, a mother of two and a well-known shoplifter in that area. What was more touching was what followed in the letter after the above stated details...

'For your information, she will be tried in the court of Zuerich in a week from now and if you could name any penal amount, we would try and get it from her for passing it onto you. We would keep you posted on the court proceedings. You are welcome to attend the hearing if you have time...'

Oh my, I felt like they were the the lovliest of the police forces in the world. I am sure the officer would remember that Indian who described a 6 Franc Notebook even today ha!