Day 13: Still no bag.
It’s a small bag. Not valuable, but for $150 worth of film within it. And Dave’s carefully selected wardrobe of favorites: the Hugo Boss blue sport jacket, the loden green pullover, the corduroy vest that makes him look like a college professor. Also, his beloved travel gadgets: the shortwave radio, the travel flashlight and the portable lantern that provides atmosphere to the starkest of budget hotel rooms.
This inventory of missing items, consigned to traveler’s purgatory, has grown more vivid as we survey our losses. Though we don’t yet call them losses. We have our superstitions to consider. And we won’t ignore them again.
Day 1: A four-hour delay at O’Hare on our fall flight to Italy stretches to six. “There was a strike at the airport in Milan,” says the check-in clerk. There is still time to save the bag. It is lightly packed; lots of room on our return for majolica ceramics and smuggled proscuitto. We could walk it on and be one of those despised overhead bin hogs. Too late, I notice it speeding down the conveyor belt. Arrivederci.
Day 2: After touchdown, chaos. Milan Malpensa just yesterday opened a new terminal that aims to make it a hub competitive with the likes of Frankfurt. Bags from Tel Aviv, Athens, Miami and Damascus are spit out randomly on eight carousels in a gleaming marble hall, sending passengers from Tel Aviv, Athens, Miami and Damascus scurrying from one to the next in search of their checked luggage. Did we miss some critical instruction? I’m digging deep for my college Italian. A Berlitz brush-up didn’t prepare me for this. It did give me, “Offro io!” I’ll buy. Which absurdly keeps popping to mind. Perhaps because I would buy, if only there were cappuccino this side of customs.
After four hours, a fellow passenger shouts the lost luggage equivalent of “Land ho!” Dave snares a bag and holds it triumphantly overhead. Hope flames, then flames out. We’re one for two. Not bad, if you’re a baseball player.
We file a lost luggage report. The harried clerk says our bag will be delivered to our hotel in Florence. But her eyes say, If you’re lucky.
Day 3: We’re not anytime soon. The gregarious deskman at our Florence hotel — whom we affectionately call Il Grosso after his full figure — offers to help track down the bag. We set out for the Duomo. But turn back to slide him 10,000 lire. A bit less than $6, a fraction of the cost of traveler’s insurance, which we don’t have.
Day 4: Dave’s socks are begging a day off. We should be on our way to the Mediterranean today. Instead we’ll stay in Florence, clinging to hope. Through an open door in the airline office we have a view of the Arno River. Which is something, considering we’re fourth in line in a country in which lines do not move swiftly. Sooner than we expect a pleasant customer service representative calls us into her office, punches a few computer keys and reports that a truckload of bags is being shipped to Florence today. “Your bag may or may not be on it. I have no way of knowing,” she says brightly. “But would you like a candy?”
Our sights on clean clothes, we head to the San Lorenzo market. There’s lots of beautiful leather but we’re more grateful to find the local Standa department store. Dave’s gleeful: clean socks, fresh underwear, T-shirts in fashion colors!
Back at the hotel Il Grosso, beams. “Your luggage is found,” he proclaims with a Medici-worthy beneficence. “They called me from the airport. They are going to bring it to the hotel.” There are either 300 or 3,000 bags missing. The differing 2,700 are behind the language barrier.
We’re elated. Dave puts on a fresh Standa T-shirt and — offro io!” — we head to Il Ladini for a celebration dinner. Our neighbors at the communal table, a nurse and a retailer from Genoa, comfort us with biscotti and vin santo when we tell them our saga. “Cinque mille,” they say. Five thousand bags missing. It’s all over the news.
Day 5: No bag. Il Grosso is, we think, blistering the airline over the phone in a blaze of Italian from which we decipher only “Madonna!” We give him the address of our next hotel. He thinks our U.S. address will be more useful. We can’t imagine the airline finding us in Manarola, a tiny fishing village on the Mediterranean, if they can’t find us in Florence.
Day 7: They don’t. We stop in Pisa to pick up a rental car at the airport and check in with lost baggage for an update (none). We give the confused clerk our next address. Inconveniently, it’s in the middle of a vineyard.
Day 9: From Florence to the Cinque Terre to Chianti, out there in our imaginations is a parcel truck with one scantly packed, now very dusty, soft-sided black bag bouncing around in cargo. The driver, Italian comic Roberto Benigni, is chasing us around the countryside, always a day behind, missing us when we double back as he steps into a bar for a caffe. Spotting delivery trucks is our new car game.
Day whatever: Dave is addicted to shopping in small towns. “It’s cultural,” he says, pointing out that socks aren’t sold in the shoe store. They’re sold in the sock store. Helpful saleswomen ask if you prefer lana or cottone. In addition to the standard savvy-tourist words for please, the check and bathroom, we learn calze, slip and qualcosa per la barba — socks, men’s briefs and something for the beard. To determine his European size for Dr. Scholl’s foot pads Dave finds himself measuring feet with a pharmacist who suggests his own, 44. With gestures and broken Italian, my husband amuses shopkeepers with his predicament. In Vernazza where he buys a warm pullover a cluster of townies get in on the transaction, calling the airport pazzo. Crazy. The shopkeeper makes a most official receipt complete with a wax seal for him to show to the airline. We part with their best wishes. It is one of few times we are seen as individuals — people with cherished, lost possessions and dirty clothes — rather than that dingy label, tourists. Dave declares he’s never traveling with luggage again. Which would be light if he didn’t have to carry mine.
Day 12: We are trying to smash our one surviving bag under the empty seat next to us. It’s too big for the overhead bin, newly stuffed with ceramic plates, a sizable collection of Italian briefs and an excessive sock wardrobe. At check-in the airline clerk advised us — regulations be damned — not to cargo-stow our remaining belongings. Proving that carry-on scofflaws aren’t born, they’re trained.
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Day 38: The bag arrives home! Though someone has stolen his radio and flashlight, Dave cherishes his clean, rumpled wardrobe. He’ll never travel with it again. After all, it won’t fit in his hand luggage.
