July 17, 2024
Arrival in Frankfurt.
Sometimes things don't always go as planned.
Travelers know that no matter how well prepared and well seasoned you are, the probability game of something going sideways is always a possibility. It's almost as if an evil boogey man lurks around the corner aiming to spoil your vacation plans. I am figuratively speaking, of course, as we did not encounter a real life evil boogey man. Just an archetypal kind of boogey man...
Everything went so smoothly today, until it didn't. We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to check in, dropped off our panniers, and brought our bikes over to oversized baggage. We watched as our luggage was shuttled along conveyor belts, then swallowed into the digestive system of the airport. What happens during this process is still a mystery to us, but it always seems like a small miracle that your luggage shows up at your final destination. You know that feeling. The feeling of relief when you spot your bag being spat out upon the carousel at your destination.
When we arrived in Frankfurt, and mooed ourselves through customs, we arrived at the baggage claim area. The carousel behaved itself and spat out a respectable 3 out of 4 items. Two bikes. Check. Patrick's panniers. Check. Sue's panniers. Bust. We waited for what seemed like an eternity for Sue's baggage to be appear, until we had to come to the conclusion that it was not arriving. We watched the same forgotten bags of other passengers circumnavigate the carousel too many times to count, hoping for a small miracle that ours would appear. But, they never did. Foof!
So, off to the lost baggage tracing desk we marched, and we immediately began to think of a plan B, and take inventory of things that we might need to replace. Panniers, clothing, rain gear, cycling shorts and tops, cycling shoes and toiletries....and the list continued to grow as we listed off the things that were missing. Damn. But, we knew that this was not a trip ender; just a problem that we might have to reluctantly throw some money at to solve.
To make a long story short, there was no actual trace of Sue's bags in the system which meant her luggage never even got scanned and loaded onto the plane in Vancouver at all. We concluded that since my bags had been opened and repacked by Canada Security (they left a tag inside my panniers saying that they had riffled through my gear), that they had probably done the same to Sue's as well. But, somehow her luggage did not end up on the plane.
So, we put in a tracing claim, exchanged all of our information about where we'd be staying, our itinerary, and did all we could for the time being. With nothing left that could be done, we loaded the gear that we had into a cab and headed to our hotel. Our plan B began to take shape along the way. Looks like a trip to Decathlon ( a popular French based Outdoor sport chain) to replace all of Sue's lost gear was going to be in the plan for tomorrow. Good thing we're here in Frankfurt for two nights
On the bright side, we were able to practice our zombie walks around Frankfurt before jet-lag put a strangle hold on us, and sent us back to the hotel for a much needed afternoon nap. We managed to watch a few kilometers of The Tour, at least. Stay tuned. Like I said, not a trip ender, but a royal pain in the you know what.
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