Originally sent as an e-mail on 7.12.2008:
(Or "A lost wallet and a found cousin" for those of you who, like me, do not speak French)
So, I arrived in Nantes last Sunday to work for a week at the university and give a talk. The short version is that the visit was nice and involved working A LOT, meeting my collaborator's family, walking around the city, eating homemade galettes (buckwheat crepes) at my collaborator's house, having a very pleasant dinner at a small French restaurant the last night in Nantes AND having breakfast with the family of our cousin S.M. on Saturday morning before I left. All in all, it was a great visit, though the longer version of the story is much more interesting.
After a good night's rest, I strolled to the tram station Monday morning to head to a meeting with my collaborator. As I was trying purchase tickets for the tram to the university, a pickpocket stole my wallet. From my time in New York and Europe, I am usually rather careful, but there was a large crowd, the machines did not seem to be recognizing my German bank cards, everything was in French and I was trying to purchase tickets as the tram was arriving etc.
Anyway, I probably made it quite evident I was a visitor and hence likely had lots of cash in my wallet. I resolved to simply use coins to buy one ticket and deal with getting tickets for the week that afternoon. So, I put my wallet away and pulled coins out of my other pocket. When I turned around literally seconds later with my ticket I realized my wallet was gone. It was an impressive pick I will say. At first I scrambled around to see if it had somehow fallen, but it was obvious it was gone. This was difficult, but, having dealt with the loss of my computer, 10 Euros and some easily replaceable bank, certification and insurance cards really were not such a huge loss. Though I acknowledge that I appear perfectly awkward and look like a good mark everywhere I go, my appearance should also convey the fact that I have no money! :)
I simply got on the tram, went to the office and made the necessary phone calls to cancel all my bank cards from Germany and the US. It did take some time to get things organized, so I lost probably about half a day of work. Though in the end we have some ideas to build on and that is nothing to sneeze at in a week. Also, I did actually very much like my wallet and probably regretted the loss of it most of all.
The university was kind enough to arrange to advance me my per diem and reimbursement by Wednesday, so Monday night L, my collaborator, had me over for his wife's homemade galettes and loaned me some cash for Tuesday.
So, by Wednesday, though I had cash with which to do things like eat, having my wallet stolen made me feel rather violated. I had things like a picture of my god-daughter, my PADI certification card, my OK lifetime hunting license ... all sorts of things that have personal meaning to me from various times in my life. Plus, the wallet itself was bought in New York on one of Amber's visits. Over a couple of days, I had simply let it go and begun to deal with the fact that I had an empty pocket everywhere I went.
Thursday night, I worked late, then got lost looking for a restaurant, finally found the restaurant which was full and wound up having a decent dinner at a small bistro somewhere in the city center. I came home and opened my computer to check e-mail, where I had an e-mail in my inbox from a C.L.. He is the husband of our cousin N., who is another cousin J.'s daughter and lives in Nice, but because I have been trying to find an e-mail address for them for months with no luck, it was rather shocking to have an e-mail from him. They were on holiday when I last visited, so sadly I have never had the chance to meet them. He informed me that the city of Nantes has found my wallet somewhere and is holding it at the town hall. How did he know you may ask??
The wallet had everything in it except the cash (of course, but it was only 10 Euros) and Jeremy is actually a French name, so they simply looked for a Marzuola listed in Nantes. It turns out N.'s sister S. lives in Nantes with her family. The city found S. in the phone book and called her up. She had no idea who I was, but she called N. in Nice to her if she knew of me! C. simply went online and found both my professional web-site and the listing for my talk in Nantes! He e-mailed me to tell me about my wallet and gave me S.'s phone number! I went to the town hall Friday morning and through the use of a few well-planned questions I had plugged into Google translator, found the office and recovered my wallet! That may seem like many exclamation points, but you can imagine how drastically this chain of events changed my week and how at each turn someone in the link could have shrugged their shoulders and nothing would have happened.
Later that day, I called S., who fortunately speaks English quite well, and we arranged to meet for breakfast Sunday morning before I went to the train station and she went to work at the airport. She works for Air France like our cousin D. in Nice and has an adorable three year old daughter named Lo. and a husband La. who loves to grow interesting plants. As a result, they have quite a garden surrounding their house in Basse Goulaine, which is a suburb of Nantes. Anyway, we had some tasty croissants, discussed our lives, reminisced about the time I spent with her family, traced how we were related, and toured their very beautiful home. The house has been in La.'s family for several generations and twice a year they open up their garden for rare plant collectors to come visit. They can buy seedlings and learn from Laurent how best to make them grow in the colder, damper climate of Nantes.
S. had talked to her family in preparation for my visit, who filled her in on all the details of my time there. They seemed to recall the visit fondly and the discussion brought up all sorts of great memories for me like D. recognizing me on the steps of the train station, getting to know everyone at D. and J.-C.'s flat, an amazing meal I can still practically taste prepared by Nadia, playing with D.'s children G. and J. who at the time were 3 and 5 respectively, and a huge birthday celebration filled with wine, food and laughter at A.'s house.
So, for all of 10 Euros and a bit of time, I got to visit with a long lost cousin AND finally obtained an e-mail address to contact the rest of the family in Nice! Plus, it just so happened a colleague who is permanently located in Nice was visiting his family in Nantes and stopped by the department. In another stroke of luck, he invited me to come visit Nice for a week in May, which is exactly when the European branch of our family is tentatively planning to have a reunion!!!! What are the odds???
My collaborator and I checked the public listings in France. Of 12 Marzuola listings, there is only 1 in Nantes! What would I have done without our last name and a French sounding first name??? I only wish I had known earlier so I could have spent more evenings with them.
Admittedly, the pictures are rather lacking due to how much I worked last week, but hopefully even in the dark the buildings in Nantes look beautiful. Bretonne is a really nice area of France with influences from Britain and Belgium (or perhaps they would argue Britain and Belgium were both influenced by them...ha). The tradtional food of the region consists of savory galettes for dinner with locally made cider and a delicious crepe for dessert. I had many nice meals there and wish I would have taken pictures of the places to describe the food, but sadly I did not. The Loire river is quite nice, though so I do not lose my German residence visa and/or work permit, I think the Rhine is more impressive. Ha. The town became famous as a marketplace during the slave trade and there are many older buildings and homes here were built by the wealthy merchants near the marketplace streets. Sadly, I have few pictures of this part of town but you should all visit to see it yourself.
My cousin S. with her family in their garden.
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