No shopping in Paris

In May, my mom and I spend a couple of days in Paris. We expected a nice journey, but the trip didn't exactly live up to our expectations.

On our first day in Paris we were robbed in the subway. It all happened really fast. It was really crowded, and just as we wanted to get out, a man pushed my mom away from the exit and snatched away her bag. The next thing I saw was my mom standing there surrounded by coins that fell to the ground. No sight of the thief. It took her some moments to realize that everything was gone. The money, all of her cards, the ticket for the parking lot at the airport ... We headed to the next information point, but unfortunately neither of us did speak a word of French. The lady at the counter wasn't very helpful. In bad English she described us the way to the next police station. After half an hour of searching we finally found it. But there the next language barrier came up. The police officers English was even worse. We tried to explain what happened and that we needed a police report for our insurance company - but he didn't seem to understand and went on and on talking to us in French. Finally I called my boyfriend’s French mother and asked her to talk to the police officer. It turned out, that the problem was the photocopier at this police station. It didn't work and that they wanted to send us to another place. 

So our journey went on. When we arrived at the next police station another officer with poor English skills asked us to come in and take down the incident. Somehow we managed to answer his questions. When did it happen? Where exactly did it happen? Under what circumstances...?

When he asked what the thief had looked like my mom, who doesn't speak English well herself, stammered something like "Muslim". The police officer nodded and wrote something down. I sighted. "Mom, you can't just say the man looked like a Muslim. What if the police officer is a Muslim himself? That is somehow discriminatory" She looked even more frightened after that. 

After a couple of hours we were finally back in our hotel. What a day! At least our passports weren't stolen. Still we could enjoy the remaining two days, even if we had to skip shopping in Paris!