This weekend two of my girlfriends came over from London for girls weekend en Paris. It was a great weekend but our cultural experience was not one we anticipated. On Friday night we had a leisurely French dinner at Chez Jean (which was oddly empty for the night...) with lots of good food and wine. Dinner was obviously followed by us devouring some girl scout cookies at home as you just can't take the American out of us! I mention the wine because we certainly were not moving incredibly fast Saturday morning when we departed for the Pompidou.
Before we hopped on the metro we decided to take cash out of the ATM. I was waiting for my two friends to get their money first then I would go next. Then things got weird. Four to five kids (literally under 10 years old) came up showing flyers to us, and then started to swarm our one friend. They were banging their head on her machine and just causing chaos. And the little sh*ts plan worked. She grabbed her card (luckily!) and took a step back from the machine - what they do in the meantime is push the buttons to get the most cash they could and skedaddle. Some other people started seeing what was going on and came over to us and tried grabbing the kids but they got away. They got 160 Euros, which she will get back but it makes you so angry.
The silver lining was how lovely some bystanders were, so helpful and took the time to stop and explain the situation to us, point us to a police station, etc. Made me love my little community - minus the thieves.
The crime scene, friendly Parisian man helping us:
So instead of a museum we experienced REAL culture! We went to the local police station to fill out a report and at least our officer was quite cute and extremely nice. After trying to describe the punky kids, filling out a 5 page form - we were on our way...hours later, to begin our day.
Moral of the story - be careful, watch out for these kids and the gypsies in general. Don't be too trusting as they have many scams. Here is an article from the Daily Mail UK from a few years back talking two men who were arrested and explained the trafficking of kids throughout European countries and sending them out to steal.
These kids are under 10 on purpose as no one can prosecute them and it is a problem. But I would sure hope the politicians who run our countries could come up with a good solution. Sad for these kids but if nothing is done the cycle will only continue.
Keep your eyes peeled people!
