And finally…lost wallet turns up a decade later with cash still inside

According to local reports, in 2007 Kosovan immigrant Pjeter Marku was working on a building site at a postal depot in Härkingen, in the canton of Solothurn, when he lost his wallet.

The wallet contained his identity documents, credit card and 500 francs in cash and a blue 20 franc bill from an old banknote series that he had kept with him for nearly 20 years, being as it was, the only money he had to his name when he began life in the country in 1989.

Marku arrived in Switzerland to start his new life with only that 20 franc note, he told local press.

However, he never spent it, and over the years its sentimental value became more and more important to him.

After losing the wallet he and his colleagues searched the building site in vain, and Marku had given up hope of ever seeing his precious 20 franc note again.

But a few days ago he received a call from Härkingen postal centre to say an employee had found it.

Going to pick it up, Marku found it still contained the 500 francs in cash – and the special 1989 note he thought gone forever.

“The Swiss really are honest people,” he told the paper.