Apart from over-consumption of beer, music, sleep deprivation, and a fair share of hangovers, the most ‘memorable’ part of this trip was that I had my first brush with misplaced baggage.
Ibiza-Barcelona-Munich was the route and the layover at Barcelona was an hour only. Sure enough, on landing at Munich, I was not surprised to find that my bag had not reached.
After a brush with German bureaucracy (‘Please fill this form. And then this one’) l was off to the hotel (sans a change of clothes).
My flight to Delhi was in exactly 24 hours and I was told that the next flight from Barcelona (with my bag, hopefully) would reach in 18 hours. Which is where I found myself 18 hours later.
I was nervous about getting the bag (and completing the paperwork) in time for my check in. Anyways, I had to go through security to reach the ‘lost baggage’ section. Took a wrong turn and had to go through security a second time – I was sure that some smart police official would catch me and ask, in his Germanic tone, “Sir, why are you going through security again and again? Could you please step aside?”
Since I am not updating this blog from a German jail, I managed going through the security a second time (a rather nervous fifteen minutes).
On reaching the ‘lost baggage’ section, I was told that my baggage was ‘most probably’ coming on the Barcelona flight which was ‘on time’. The ‘on time’ was re-assuring but the ‘most probably’ was not. And I was pointed towards the baggage carousel for the Barcelona flight.
Standing there, watching everyone else excepting for me, pick up their baggage from the carousel, I had a sense of Déjà vu. When there were only three people left waiting for their baggage (apart from me), I laughed out loud wondering what my Plan B would be. Do I take my flight to Delhi sans my baggage? Or Do I skip that flight? Mentally I made a note of how important my stuff in the bag was.
Fortunately, I did not reach that fork in the road and I saw my bag. Long story short – this is what I remember from my trip – and not the extraordinary amount of beer and paracetamol guzzled and not the thump-thump-thump-thump in the Ibiza night clubs at five in the morning.
