Tag: luggage

Sara & Luke’s Visit


There was a whole potato on that stick five minutes before I snapped these pictures. I hope this wasn’t the best part of Sara and Luke’s visit to our town/region, but then again, she seemed pretty happy with that potato, so maybe it’s not such a bad thing. Or maybe the comfort-food aspect made all the trials and tribulations of the travel over here seem survivable.

Weather at the first stop on their flight itinerary prevented them from taking off on the day of departure — but only after having spent seven hours in the plane waiting for clearance and runway traffic jams to clear up. 350 flights were cancelled that evening, but Sara and Luke were lucky to have relatives in the area with whom they could spend the night and try again the next day. The next day, they did manage to get on a flight, but it too was delayed for three hours, risking a missed connection in London on their way to Munich (final destination for the first leg of their trip to Europe).

When they finally stepped through the immigration security barrier at Terminal Two in Munich, they were exhausted and dismayed to find they would be wearing the clothes they came in for at least a few more days — somewhere between their last stop in the U.S. and their arrival in Munich both of their bags got lost. Or at least delayed.

In the end, both of their bags were finally delivered to our apartment in Regensburg, but we were never sure when that would be. Sara and Luke called the airline(s) every day trying to get an estimate of when their bags would show up, because waiting around here for them was not part of the plan. So we ended spending a lot more time in Regensburg, waiting for the magical phone call with their luggage drop-off window, hanging out at the Bürgerfest. Which, by the way, was a lot of fun this year despite the weather. It was nice to see Tammy and Sarah cut loose in front of a ska-punk band shell down by the Weenie Shack.*

Maybe that downtime was for the best, since they had a very heavy itinerary — two stops in Spain and a few days in London — after their short visit to Regensburg. We sure enjoyed having them.

wir sind zurück gekommen

So, after very uneventful flights from K.C. to Chicago to Munich, we’re back. All flights were smooth and on time, and even our shuttle pick-up and drop-off was easy. Still, we learned a couple things along the way:

  1. Space Bags! Space Bags! Sure make the packing easier. Not sure what happens if TSA needs to open your stuff up, however. Do they have vacuum cleaners available to re-shrink your stuff? We packed 4 space bags full of clothing and of those, only one got torn. Bummer. Probably our fault, because we had a bunch of metal (cans of mexican food staples, primarily, plus assorted Bed Bath & Beyond goods) in our suitcases along with them.
  2. Apparently we purchased our tickets back when two checked bags per traveler were included in the price. We had one big suitcase each and were over weight (and so were our bags, ha!) but the ticketing agent suggested we purchase a cheapo bag from the gift shop to check. Fortunately, I’d purchased a new backpack while in KC and still had the old one (empty) in the one of the suitcases. So we pulled it out and filled it up with heavy stuff and easily skated under that 50 lb. per bag limit.

got my stuff back!

Big ups to the Hotel Unirea for offering to call — and keep calling — Austrian Airlines to inquire about my lost bag for me while I was at work today. Big boos to Austrian Airlines having lost it in the first place, and making me wear the same clothes three days in a row, and not having the decency to deliver my lost bag to my hotel. They made me come pick it up!

This morning (It’s about 6:30 now) I will do a full shave (I didn’t trust the flimsy disposable one in my Star Alliance overnight bag to do anything more than my neckline) and wear clean, non-jean, non-t-shirt clothes for the first time since Sunday morning at 4:00 Central European Time. I’m really looking forward to it.

I tend to ride to and from the office in a taxi while it’s dark when I’m here visiting. Various members of the hotel staff have been calling at all hours of the day/night to the Austrian Airlines department at the Iasi Airport and reporting back to me. I found out yesterday at 1pm that I’d have a two-hour window to pick up my stuff, starting at 12pm (so much for the two hours). I was prepared to take a taxi out to the airport and back, but Vlad suggested he drive me in the company car. Vlad has been very, very helpful in lots of office-related ways. He sacrificed his lunch hour and I am grateful for that. We got stuck in traffic, further shortening my 2-hour window to arrive at the airport. The image at left actually does not show one of the reasons we got stuck in traffic. Those horses were moving along at a good clip.

After work last night, I grabbed my camera and tripod (thanks Sarah) and tried to capture the city in a more festive light: