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Oh Florentin, my beautiful adopted neighbourhood! I love your scummy streets and the late night bars. I’ve only just returned here on Sunday, after having sublet a place off a friend in a different area, I returned on Sunday to a new temporary abode.<\/p>\n
Today I go to unchain my bicycle and there is a note on it saying “this bike was stolen from me 3 months ago, call me”. There is a name and a mobile number. \u00a0There is also a lock that isn’t mine chaining my bike to the railing.<\/p>\n
So I call my Spanish teacher to tell her I’m gonna be late, call the guy who left the note. We argue. I tell him I’d bought the bike from a German tourist when I got to Tel Aviv (which is true). The timing of the sale fits with his story, but the German girl had supposedluy been riding the bike for a while before selling it, so who knows. I’m not convinced.<\/p>\n
He says he won’t be back for at least two hours. I threaten to call the police. He says he has a receipt showing where he’d bought the bike but I am undeterred.<\/p>\n
Apparently, the guy lives 2 doors down from me. \u00a0His stolen bike just magically appeared in front of his house so he had to do something. I only moved here on Sunday completely by chance, having found this last minute sublet.<\/p>\n
I call the police. They send a car. \u00a0While I’m waiting for the car the police call me back to ask if I have a receipt for the bike. I don’t. The woman asks me “so how do we know it’s yours then?”<\/p>\n
I say “because I just told you it’s mine”. \u00a0She says they might not be able to help me. I say I’ll take a cutter to the lock and reclaim my bike. Apparently doing that would be a criminal offence. \u00a0She tells me to wait for the car.<\/p>\n
When the car gets there, a short, fat, stupid-looking policewoman and a tall, stupid-looking policeman come out.<\/p>\n
The policeman tells me the guy who locked my bike doesn’t have a receipt. They can’t prove whose bike it is. Apparently I can go and file a complaint at the station, but without proof the police will probably confiscate the bicycle.<\/p>\n
After they leave, I call the guy again and tell him this. I say if he’s going to be an asshole about it, I’m gonna file the complaint and he won’t get the bike. We argue.<\/p>\n
In the end he says to wait for him and he’ll come and meet me and we’ll talk.<\/p>\n
It’s been two hours of stress by now and I keep getting phone calls from my hysterical mom trying to be helpful and stressing me out even more.<\/p>\n
I tell her to stop calling me.<\/p>\n
So how did it end? The guy turned up, told me “well, it’s a shit bike so I’m not going to fight you over it. You can have it. I just want you to know that I locked it cause I was angry it was stolen from me. I’d bought this lock especially just in case I ever find it”.<\/p>\n
I told him I understood and was grateful and that I’d have done the same. That I’d had stuff stolen here too (see previous post). By the time I’d met up with him, I was sort of resigned to having to come to some sort of compromise about things, cause were basically at an impasse. \u00a0I was going to ask him to let me keep the bike till I go back to London and then take it back.<\/p>\n
I actually want to give my bike to a friend, but I figured, if it really is this guy’s bike then he should have it if he’s not gotten a better one.<\/p>\n
Apparently he does have a better one, so I got to have a joyful victory ride across town to class.<\/p>\n
Even in a small city like Tel Aviv, what are the odds that a stolen bike would be sold onto a German girl, then onto me who’d end up moving two doors down from the original owner of the bike and park them right under his nose?<\/p>\n
I love this city.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Oh Florentin, my beautiful adopted neighbourhood! I love your scummy streets and the late night bars. I’ve only just returned here on Sunday, after having sublet a place off a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n