We’re writing Friday, January 6th. I got invited to a Nikon product announcement at Nikon’s Belgian HQ. It started at 18h and since I didn’t feel like racing to Brussels from after work, I decided to work from our offices in Brussels the entire day. Up at 5h30, in the train at 6h30 and at my desk at 7h15 (what can I say, I’m a morning person).

After work I met up with Filip near the train station and we headed to the press event. (more on that later, that’s not what this post is about)

We left Nikon HQ around 20h30 and decided to go out for a quick snack. Together with Bert, Stacy, Tom, Pieter and Filip we parked near the station in Zaventem and had dinner at a pita place. A good hour later, a dinner and lots of laughs later we headed back to the cars and went our separate ways.

I opened the car door to get my backpack and the goodie-bag Nikon gave us but immediately noticed that my bag wasn’t where I left it. I got to my knees to check if it had slipped under the seat and that’s when Filip (who opened the driver side door) noticed that the window on my side was smashed…. (the small window at the front of the door). Filip rushed to the trunk to check his photo-gear, thank god that was all still there. But my backpack (my beloved Timbuk2 bag) and a camera that Filip got from Nikon to test were both gone.

So we called the cops. They took our statement (both our first time in a police vehicle), checked the car and told us to send them the serial number for the stuff that got stolen.

What was in my bag? My work laptop, my iPad (3G, 32GB), 3 notebooks (school, work, projects), my Bose headphones, my digipass rsa thingy form work and last but not least: my house keys. (work laptop was encrypted, iPad had a long password/wipe-after-4-attempts settings on it so my data is safe)

I wasn’t sure who had a spare key to my apartment (my key had broken about 3 months ago, I was using my sister’s spare key and hadn’t given her a new one yet) which meant that I couldn’t get into my own place. So I crashed at Filip (and Sara)’s place for the night. When I got there, I called my dad to let him know what had happened and he told me that my mom had a spare key as welL. What a relief.

Saturday morning I took an early train to Leuven, stopped by my mom’s work to pick up the key and rushed home. Everything was still there. Don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to be back home. Calling the landlord on monday to see when/if we can get the locks replaced.

Writing this on sunday evening, I’m doing better. But Friday evening I was shocked. Really shocked. Nothing like this has every happened to me before…I want to thank Filip and Sara for the hospitality and support, love you guys!