At the bank

The only scary incident I had on my entire trip was at the bank machine. I needed some cash so I visited a bank machine at “Banque Postal”. Everything was going smoothly until the machine only gave me 10 Euros instead of 200. Funny how the only time that I’ve had difficulty with a bank machine happens to be in a foreign country. I went into the “Banque Postal” to reclaim my money when I realized that it is not a bank at all – in fact it is a post office (I had a 50-50 chance there). So some advice … use the bank machines at an actual bank and not a post office posing as a bank. In the post office the employees barely spoke English (one of the ladies thought I wanted to buy a box to mail a parcel – clearly my French needs some work). Luckily the man in charge spoke a bit of English and was able to help me out. He called me into the back room of the post office which was dark and grey, and he went into a third room behind some glass that was probably bulletproof. I was pretty certain that he was going to rough me up (French style!), but instead he reached into a big vault and pulled out some cash. Fortunately he was able to verify that the machine short-changed me 190 Euros and was able to reimburse me. After exiting the back room I had a quick glance at all the people standing in line for postal service – and who was standing in line but witchy woman! And she was with a man who wasn’t crossword puzzle man. The scandal!