Finding your car in a crowded parking lot can be a nightmare, especially before the days of keys that automatically unlock your car for you (y'know, so you can use it for its real purpose, which is using the noise to figure out where on Earth your car is).
We've all had one of those times where we're positive that we're right near where we parked, but for the life of us it just doesn't seem to be there anymore. The worst part is when your brain starts to wonder about what could've happened, and then you start to worry about if your precious vehicle was stolen, and now you're stranded and going to have to call the police. Of course, we always find the car; it's just not usually anywhere NEAR where we thought it was.
However, in the case of one elderly German man from Frankfurt, not only did he not find his car, but he reported it stolen to the authorities, only for him to just stumble across where he left it 20 YEARS later!
The 76-year-old man, who has not been named, originally called Frankfurt police to report the car stolen when he couldn't find it. This was back in 1997, and he must have definitely long since stopped hoping that his car would magically be found. Well, it turns out that it was, and that the car wasn't stolen at all: he had forgotten where he parked it.
He received a call about the car, which a demolition survey crew had found sitting in an old parking garage in an industrial area of the city. The entire building was set to be demolished, but plans couldn't move forward because of a mysterious car sitting in the way. Police immediately checked for the owner of the car, discovered the man's two-decade-long case, and got in touch with him to mention they'd found it.
He was driven by police and accompanied by his daughter to be reunited with the car, according to German regional paper Augsberger Allgemein. However, as is probably not surprising given it having been left unused for 20 years, the car was pretty severely in need of repairs and couldn't even be driven out of the garage.
What's the longest you've forgotten where you left something and couldn't find it?