We’re Real Minimalists Now
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re in Helsinki, Finland. Our luggage? Still in Vienna. 16 days and counting.
We’re Real Minimalists Now
About a year ago, Lee bought us four Apple AirTags; we put one in each of our two suitcases and two backpacks. Since then, he has enjoyed studying the app every time we’re separated from our bags: “Mine’s on the plane! Where’s yours?” It mostly seemed ridiculous to me—nothing ever happens to our luggage. I’d rather stick my nose in a book while we wait for take-off.
Who’s grateful for those AirTags now? Me, that’s who.
In a way, it’s reassuring to know where our bags are, and not feel completely in the dark, but it’s also incredibly frustrating. We know exactly where they are! Can’t we just get them back?
Well, no, it turns out. A couple of days after our borked flight, we rented a car and drove from Prague to Vienna to get the bags. It seemed like a reasonable thing to attempt, given that WE COULD SEE THE AIRTAGS AT THE AIRPORT. No such luck. Our bags have been moved to some sort of outbuilding, which were told is the ‘high security transfer area.’
My luggage is sitting there—I can see it. I refresh, over and over, all day, every day. I wave at the little icon on my phone, the one that says ‘Lisa’s Luggage.’ Hello, Lisa’s Luggage! I see you! I miss you!
We are muddling through with only a few cheap outfits from H&M, and none of our usual stuff. We’re making contingency plans—do we buy new bags? Order new stuff? We made an inventory list, and submitted it to our claim page. It has now disappeared.
We’ve found all these groups of people bonding on social media—some have been waiting in limbo for their bags for more than six weeks. Most of them, though, have at least gone home, where they have—y’know—clean clothes.
The whole situation has begun to feel absurd and surreal. That suitcase in Vienna, full of dirty laundry and moisturizer and resistance bands is—quite literally—everything I own.
At some point every day, I want nail clippers, or a snippet of electrical tape, or my collapsible travel mug. By the end of the month I’m going to need fresh contact lenses, and that’s going to be challenging.
But once I adjusted to the idea that I can’t solve this problem in any kind of a hurry, I settled down and tried to enjoy Prague. A few days after the wild goose chase to Vienna, we went to buy tickets for the Hop-On, Hop-Off bus (affectionately known as the HOHO bus, which is irrelevant to this story, but I like saying HOHO bus).
We found a young man standing on the street in Wenceslas Square, under a big red umbrella, holding a list of ticket options, and bought ours from him. One look at his eyes told me where he was from; he seemed surprised when I asked if he was Ethiopian. He was. He didn’t speak much English, but we managed to get our tickets. I wanted to ask him what part of Ethiopia he’s from, and where is family is, and does he get much news from home, but we didn’t have that much language in common.
Later that same day, we had an Uber driver who spoke even less English. He was able to communicate that he was from Bukhara, Uzbekistan and had been in Prague for two months. Lee asked if he liked it—we, of course, were smitten with that beautiful city and its food and culture and history). He gave a sad thumbs-down. As far as we could tell, his life dream is to visit Brooklyn. I thought about him all the rest of that day: I wonder what he dislikes about Prague, or does he just miss home? What (or whom) did he leave behind? How difficult is his life here? How much is he making, driving that car? Is he able to break even, or possibly send something home? I wish I could’ve asked more.
We left Prague this past Monday; Lee was worried we wouldn’t be able to fit our crappy new clothes into our backpacks. I loaned him the flowery pink grocery bag that lives in my purse, and told him he looked like a real globetrotter.
When we landed at the Helsinki airport, we saw signs with information for people “fleeing from Ukraine.”
I adjusted the weight of my small backpack, and we headed for our hotel, secure in the knowledge that whatever happens to our lost luggage is a solve-able problem.
Take care,
Lisa
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