What happens when you lose your wallet in a foreign country?

Well, it was bound to happen, as much time as I've spent on the road, and as bleary-eyed as I've been at times: my wallet went on a Forever Walk here in Bologna, and this post is a little guide to What Happens Next. After the jump: I just explained what's gonna be after the jump, why am I restating it here?

Portrait of the author upon having seen his wallet go astray

First: the general wha' happen is as follows: one morning, I was walking to the coffee shop in my neighborhood to pick up a bag of Moka-ground coffee beans. (I'm a deep lover of the "become a regular morning customer at your neighborhood spot" routine, but for monthlong stays I gotta simplify, man!) About halfway there, I was puzzled to realize I'd put my phone in my lefthand front pocket (usually it's in the right) and pulled it out to switch it over. A few minutes later, I arrived at the coffee shop, and realized my wallet wasn't where it usually is - and where my phone had been.

I powerwalked home, hoping I had (once again) left it on the coffee table instead of grabbing it on my way out the door. It wasn't there. The two possibilities, I think, are: either I knocked the (slim) wallet out when I pulled out my phone and somebody grabbed it off the street, or I was pickpocketed, either that morning or the evening before at the piazza film festival's screening of Peter Bogdanovich's Last Picture Show (introduced by Wes Anderson! Cool evening!)

The good news first: I've always made a habit to leave at least one card at my apartment or hotel room when traveling, Just In Case. Pre-pandemic I actually usually only ever left my lodgings with one credit card and whatever cash I needed for that day's outings, but I'd let that slide a bit on returning to travel. Still, while this meant I had lost three cards (and €20 in cash), I still had a couple of spares back at home, which - in concert with Apple Pay on my phone - meant for all intents and purposes, I was still able to function as usual.

This is lucky break number one: it's 2022, and Italy (formerly one of the more "make sure you have cash" destinations) is now a place where you won't get an eyeroll at a gelateria if you pull out a credit card for a €2 cone. Losing my debit card might be complicated down the road (I have a small Swiss alpine town to visit later this month, genuinely the only place I think I will actually need cash before I return to the states) but for now, having any kind of credit card and/or a phone works just fine.

In any case, however it happened, those three cards and a wallet were gone now, so it was time to used the things that I (mercifully) have prepped for every international trip I've taken since about 2009. I keep a "trip safety" Google Doc where I list the phone numbers for my various credit card companies, a copy of my passport photo page, and contact information for all my lodgings, consulates, etc. It's something I've never needed before, but acted as a kind of mental safety belt (and something my folks could look at if they needed to reach me urgently and couldn't get to my cell). Most credit card companies will, after some extensive identity confirmation, send you replacement cards on the road, and so I set to getting these cards replaced. (Again: I have something I can use, but having lost a wallet once, I now more than ever want to be sure I have some spares.)

The tricky thing - and something the internet is surprisingly terrible at educating you about, I find - is that staying in a rental apartment (VRBO, AirBnB, whatever service you use) usually means you don't have access to whatever mailbox or mailroom your building may have. In some cases, your lodgings may have entry intercoms that go to the host's phone instead of an in-unit buzzer. In short, receiving things at a rental apartment is generally not easy, as I found out in 2017 when trying to get some packages delivered in Berlin.

My first call was to my debit card bank, as this felt like the most urgent replacement. I had entertained hopes that once I connected to the right department, they would recognize my situation as common, and throw a solution at me: "Oh, we can have it sent to a local DHL office," "We have a relationship with the front desk at X hotel," "typically we send it to the nearest consulate," etc. No such luck: they needed me to provide an address. Well, I figured, I'd give them the Florence consulate. It's not a long trip, it's a cheap trip, and since they were telling me it would arrive next week, I knew I'd still be able to zip over for a day to pick it up. I wasn't 100% sure the consulate would accept it, but why not live large. Done and done. After getting off the line, I contacted the consulate (via email, as they don't accept phone calls) and asked if this would be okay. No response. Hm.

The next day, having put it off in the hopes of getting an official answer first, I decided to call AmEx. They clearly had much more experience, and after listening to me talk through my situation, they clearly explained that they'd send a card via a courier service (DHL, FedEx, etc) so I wouldn't need access to a mailbox as long as they had a working cell number the courier could call when they arrived. Would I be in Bologna for more than a week? I would, and that sounded great! They submitted the order, and gave me a specific delivery date. Full steam ahead.

Riding high and confident that I knew how this all worked now, I called Capital One, the final card provider, and talked through my tale one last time. The customer service agent went through the usual identity confirmation routine, asked my address, went through a few rounds of entering it into the system, and then jumped back on the line. "Great! So your new card will be issued within the next fourteen business days" [what] "and should arrive to you within five to seven business days after that" [um]. I politely said, "oh, so that would be... a month or so from now, potentially?" which she confirmed.

"I'm so sorry," I apologized through a rictus grin, "I should have checked about the timeline in advance, when I said I was traveling in Italy I meant I'm only going to be here temporarily, so if this is possibly arriving after the end of July, I won't be here to receive it. I know I made you go to all the trouble of taking down that address, but maybe it makes the most sense to just have it sent to my home address."

"Oh," she said, audibly frustrated, "I've already submitted the order." "Ah," I politely flailed, "is there a way to cancel it? I'm sorry, I just - won't be here to get the card, so." She disappeared for another ten minutes or so, and informed me that their system wouldn't let her cancel or reroute the order, but that what I could do was call back the next day (as they can only report a card missing once per day) and report the new, as-yet-unprinted card missing as well, to trigger its replacement and get it shipped to my home address. Which is what I've since done.

The remaining detail in all of this is that, never having heard back from the consulate in Florence, I reached back out to my debit card bank to ask them if they had an update on the shipping of my replacement card - thinking mostly that I would want to make sure it had been successfully delivered before making the trek to Florence. They sent me a tracking number, and - gloriously - it was DHL. This opened up a new route; with the shipping information and tracking number, I was able to use DHL's web portal to redirect the package from the consulate's address and instead have it held for pickup at a DHL store here in Bologna, arriving just one day later than scheduled. One-day trip to Florence: averted!

(To be clear, I love Florence, but after a 30-minute layover in their train station on the way to Bologna, it's been confirmed that this particular summer is an extremely terrible time to be in any of the major tourist destinations in Italy, thanks to revenge tourism and the general broken-brain trauma that everybody seems to be suffering.)

One last update: FedEx, having held my card in Milan for two days without explanation, and without allowing me to redirect it to a pickup point, flagged it as undeliverable, then lost, and thus continues their perfect streak of never delivering something they were ostensibly paid to deliver. We're... still working it out.

So, at the end of the day, I'm out €20, some mental energy, a chunk of time, and one fond-and-familiar-but-not-expensive wallet. It's not the worst outcome by any stretch of the imagination, but just for any of y'all who are thinking about your own travel horizons, here's a few general rules of thumb that (while causing you little if any inconvenience) would set you up well for similar happenstances:

1. Keep a document - online or on paper - with your credit card companies' phone numbers so you can easily cancel and reissue cards if you lose your wallet overseas. It's also useful to have their apps, which make it very easy to temporarily freeze your cards the moment you find them missing - this has been a huge save for me in the past when I've simply temporarily mislaid my wallet.

2. Once you settle into your accommodations, if you feel reasonably secure about the place, leave at least one, and ideally all-but-one, of your credit/debit cards there. When you leave the house, just take what you need. (I never take my passport or driver's license into the world with me unless I need to when I'm abroad.)

3. My stupidity about pocket management aside, I do think the fact that I've been traveling as much as I have in some of the more pickpocket-friendly destinations I've been through and not run into this before is partly due to keeping my (thin) wallet in a front pocket. If you don't knock it out into the street, it just makes you a slightly less obvious target.

4. I didn't do this, but it's not a bad idea to have a laminated card in your wallet with your email address and/or phone number on it. On the off chance that somebody found my wallet on the street, I might have gotten it back; if somebody pickpocketed me, what are they gonna do with it, email me to death?  hmmm on second thought don't do this, u might get emailed to death.

5. If and when you do lose your wallet, go ahead and freeze those cards, retrace your steps to where you last know you had it, and if you've lost it, go ahead and get on the phone. If you're not on the road much longer, it may make the most sense to just have the reissued cards sent to your home; most card companies will let you keep using the new card via Apple or Google Pay, which will work on most contactless payment systems, which means you'll be fine in most parts of Europe at least as of 2022.

6. If you are on the road for a while, go ahead and be proactive in talking to your credit card company/companies. If you're staying in hotels or the like (either in your current location or wherever you'll be in the coming week or two) go ahead and check to see if they can accept a replacement card on your behalf. Some things to establish up front when you call the credit card companies:

• Let them know how long you will be staying where you're staying
• Ask them the turnaround time for delivery of the replacement card, and be conservative about the address you provide in response; if they're estimating toward the end of your time in your current location, send it to the next spot (or even two down the road) rather than risk it arriving delayed after you've left
  
• Confirm what service they're sending it with, if you can (UPS, Fedex, DHL, or postal carrier). They may not know which one they will use before submiting the order, but in some cases they can, and they almost certainly will be able to confirm if it's coming via post or courier. Couriers will give you flexibility on receiving; if they're sending it via post, I would either just write off that card and have it sent to your home address, or have it sent to a hotel you've booked toward the end of their estimated delivery window, after confirming the hotel is willing to receive it for you.
  
• If they're sending it via DHL, you will likely be able to redirect the package to a pickup point; I also have found DHL couriers are reliable about calling you if they can't find your name on a building buzzer, which is what you want in these cases. If you have a choice, ask for DHL!
  
• If they confirm that they're using FedEx and you're staying in an apartment building, I strongly recommend asking them to ship it directly to a FedEx service point (in Italy, these are often print shops that also sell shipping supplies, packaging, etc.). This should avoid what seems to have happened to me, which is the FedEx courier seeing my name wasn't on the buzzer, and rather than calling my cell, throwing the package into the deepest recesses of the ocean.
  
• If your next stop is a hotel with a front desk, that might be a simpler or cleaner solution even with a courier, but the good news is that whatever address you provide, a delivery from FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. will not end up in a mailbox you don't have access to, which I think is the worst-case scenario in all of this.

7. Once you've approved the replacement and the order has been submitted, hang tight - it'll likely be a day or two before you get confirmation of the replacement card having been shipped. Continue to be an advocate - you may need to call, chat, or check an app to get any tracking number attached to the card. Once you have that tracking number, especially if you're lucky and they're shipping via DHL you can most likely reroute the shipment as needed - if you're unsure that it'll come to your current location before you move on, you can ask them to hold it at a pickup point in your next city, etc.

Finally - if you've done a little bit of safeguarding so you're able to function without the wallet you lost, I'd say just breathe deeply, appreciate that you're still on an adventure, that you get to keep exploring the world, and consider it a mildly unpleasant tax you had to pay for the privilege of getting to be on the road. It's a good exercise in flowing where the world is taking you, a reminder that you are luckier than most, and a very useful reminder that you are not in control! Stay open, stay grateful, and stay mobile, cats n kittens!

Pictured: all the Mug Americane that I am tragically unable to purchase without my beloved wallet (replacement credit card has a rigid "no Mug Americane" merchant category prohibition)