The Tragedy of the Lost Phone

30 October 2018: Nice to Frankfurt

We left a sunny Nice this morning to arrive in the dark and rainy Frankfurt. The Lufthansa flight was non-eventful but noteworthy for having Economy seats wider than you find on Qantas. The taxi ride itself was also non-eventful until I discovered I’d left my beautiful red iPhone in it. The hotel was vey lovely and phoned the taxi company twice a few hours apart but to no avail. It was not handed in. It didn’t help that I paid by cash, or else the credit card trail could have identified the taxi. 

The hotel staff directed me to their sole customer computer to attempt to track my phone. We couldn’t seem to make it speak to us in English so Emma used the Google Translate app that you hold over foreign writing and it translates. Fascinating. It also had a keyboard with keys in a different order which we thought must have been a peculiarity of German keyboards but when I repeatedly entered a password incorrectly and turned on the seeing eye, I discovered that it was actually just like a keyboard in a high school computer lab where mischief had been at play. Since I had turned off mobile data and sound, there was little chance of tracking it that way either. I was able to disable Apple Pay’s access to my credit cards though. Optus systems were down so am yet to be able to raise the official Lost Report from them. At least I had only backed it up a couple of days ago.

I consoled myself with a veal schnitty for lunch. I should have had a beer with it but was spending the afternoon polishing up my presentation for the conference that starts in two days time.

………………

Evening Update: Optus has now barred all calls and lodged the official lost phone report. I have completed an online report with Frankfurt Polizei. I have shared a bottle of Spätburgunder (Pinot Noir) with Emma and eaten too much once again. So life isn’t so bad right now.