Munich Airport & The Tale Of The Lost Luggage

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"You know how lucky I am with regards to never having lost my luggage on a flight? I have a feeling that will change on this one."

So yeah, I called it. Nicki will vouched for me on this one. This is the very message I sent her on Facebook the night before I flew, shortly after the stressful fiasco of obtaining my eTicket. Perhaps I jinxed myself.

Disembarking the plane at around 20:15, I was in somewhat of a hurry to collect my luggage and catch the 21:45 bus to Ingolstadt, lest I have to wait until gone midnight for the next one. I rushed through to baggage claim, sat and waited until a handful of cases flowed past and were swiftly collected by their owners, and then considered that maybe mine had gone to belt 7A - for 'bulky baggage'. I knew the answer, but I enquired anyway.

I walked back to belt 14, and sat like a loner watching a single red case pass by a few times before I sighed and resigned to the knowledge that had been in the back of my mind since the start of my journey: my bag would not and had not made it to Germany.

Calmly, I spoke to a wonderfully understanding and good-humoured woman in the lost baggage department who told me that there is absolutely no record of my bag even going on the plane at Kathmandu. She said that bags often go adrift during long lay-overs, such as my one in Delhi, but I was also reminded of the baggage handler strike in Brussels; she assumed that that's where things had gone tits up.

Being the dick I am, I hadn't attached a name tag or anything to my backpack. I gave my vague description (large and grey with red tags on the zips) and the woman looked at me - in vain - seemingly longing for more details. She asked if there was anything inside with my name on it. I said somewhere in the bottom, there are a few bus tickets, receipts and my hospital form from Goa, but that's all. I forgot to mention that the front zip is busted, although I'm not sure it would have mattered.

She had me fill out a form, and luckily I provided Suzanna's number as well as my own, cos my phone charger was in the backpack and my battery low. She was very positive and reassuring, dismissing any possibility of the bag not turning up. She gave me tracking details and promised a phone call when it arrives. Handing me an emergency overnight kit (which is actually better equipped than my own wash bag), she sent me on my way.

Already having had snippets of European weather during my in-airport stops in both Brussels and Milan, I should have been prepared for the full-on ice-blast that awaited me when I exited arrivals in Munich. I wasn't.

Wearing only flip-flops, leggings, a vest-top and well-thought out warmth providers in the shape of a thin (summer) scarf and hoodie, I hot-footed it (in the least literal sense ever) to the bus stop in the hope that the driver would let me on early. He didn't. So, I performed the shiver dance, hopping from one foot to the other whilst bobbing my shoulders, for half-an-hour, using the last slither of battery on my phone to hear Suzanna tell me: "Polly, it's not cold." Whatever.

Mustering up the last of my energy, I forced myself to stay awake on the bus, lest I miss stop. Ok, I lie; I didn't stay awake at all. But I took sensible pre-journey measures in order to avoid missing my stop, such as sitting at the front of the bus and repeating to the driver about five times: "Ingolstadt Nord Bahnhof, yar?" And guess what? No pot holes. No bumps. No incessant honking of horns. I had definitely left Asia behind.

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