A mobile phone that was thought to be lost in Mallorca: that sounds like a typical holiday nightmare. But this iPhone wanted something more! Instead of rusting away quietly on the seabed of Alcudia Bay, it embarked on an odyssey: it was recovered by a German diver, rejected by Spanish receptionists and police officers, rescued in Bavaria and finally taken to London personally by a law enforcement officer from Franconia. But first things first...
Early September: An English woman takes a boat trip around Alcudia, her smartphone in hand, perhaps for one last holiday selfie. A gust of wind, a slip of the hand... and splash! The iPhone sinks into the sea off Mallorca. Its owner immediately comes to terms with it: lost, written off, end of story. Not quite!
A few hours later, a Bavarian man dives into the same bay. A black block suddenly glistens among the fish and seaweed. The 44-year-old man pulls it out, takes it to the hotel and places it on the reception desk. There, they examine it with a magnifying glass as if it had just fallen off a wet brick. ‘You have to take this to the police,’ says the employee with a shrug.
So, off to the police station. The German tourist politely explains his request. The officer looks at the device soaked in salt water and raises his eyebrows: ‘Sir, this is staying here on the shelf. The owner will never get in touch anyway.’ Goodbye to the hope of a Mallorcan happy ending. The Bavarian feels as if he had personally sent a message in a bottle to the shore, only to be told that the bottle now belongs to the warehouse. So he takes the phone with him.
Back in Germany, in the modest Bavarian town of Ansbach, the person who found it did not give up. At the local police station, an officer took the device from him. And suddenly, a brilliant idea: using the emergency call function, he found a saved number: a friend of the owner. One call later, it was clear: the iPhone belonged to a Londoner who had been mourning its loss for a long time. The joy at the unexpected call from Bavaria was enormous.
And that’s not all: Yasmine, a police officer from Ansbach, is planning a trip to London. Instead of DHL or registered mail, she will now deliver it in person. Bureaucracy at its finest: with a suitcase, a plane ticket and an extra piece of hand luggage. And so, the iPhone will soon return to its place of origin: into the hands of its owner on the Thames. From the bottom of the Mediterranean, via a detour with the Bavarian police, to London: a smartphone on a European tour with more experiences than many organised trips.
Sometimes even lost things have more luck and more adventures than their owners. And anyone who has an emergency number saved on their mobile phone may be surprised one day when a Bavarian with a snorkel and a Franconian police officer come to the rescue.