La Police!

So here's an interesting story, the most scary and funny thing that has happened to me in this country:

I was walking home from the university after the Normandy excursion, and a black car pulls up to me, a guy rolls down the window and says "Hey, stop it's the police!" And I thought to myself, "oh cmon, like it's actually them." But sure enough, 3 other cars that actually looked like policecars pulled up and before I knew it I was surrounded by 6 people! Of course I had my camera with me, so one officer took that and went it to his car as he sorted through my photos. Another lady asked for my ID and she looked at that in her car. Then I proceeded to get grilled with questions by the remaining people. I did pretty well, but obviously with my Michigan driver's license and my not quite 100% oral comprehension level, they knew I was American. So after the questioning I got my stuff back and they said I could leave. I was pretty curious about why they did this, but as I thought, they just told me that they were doing random checks on the streets because as one officer said, "il y a des fous" (There are crazy people).

As I walked away relieved that I wasn't in trouble with the French government and laughing from the experience, I thought about how crazy it would be if this happened back in the US. Obviously if someone has reason to just randomly stop you because of some kind of suspicious behavior then that's different, but this was rather unexpected. If nothing else, it makes for an interesting story down the road...."Well that one time I was stopped by the French police..."