I like the excitement of travel, especially a trip back home after a long time. Visit to India is never stress free for me. In effect, I tend to pack a year worth of work in the two or three weeks time and get that done while I am in India. We needed a real break from everything and this time we choose to stop by along the way for a few days at Switzerland. It was fantastic! All of us enjoyed the stay in Zurich and local visit to parts of the Alps and the pristine Swiss countryside.
The trouble started when we left for India via Frankfurt, Germany. When the Frankfurt flight started boarding, we were stopped at the gate and the stewardess insisted that we had to gate check-in two of our hand baggage. We were ok with it expect that we wanted to get them out at Frankfurt and not in Chennai. We had an overnight layover at Frankfurt and needed some of our stuff to go to hotel and change before the next flight. But the system won't allow that sort of flexibility. You can only checkin bags to one destination. Since we had already checked in our baggage to Chennai earlier, the additional checkins at the counter cannot go to an intermediate destination! That was a bummer. So we had to shuffle the contents of our pull-man into the kids back-bags and dropped off the hand baggage for pick up at Chennai. Due to this mess, we entered the flight as the last passengers before the take off. The air hostess hurriedly helped me stow away my carry-ons by picking up my laptop bag and putting it behind the last row of the plane. It was a short plane ride between Zurich and Frankfurt.
We landed in Frankfurt and were received by the airport bus to the terminal. The moment we got down from the bus at the terminal, my wife exclaimed "where is the laptop"?! Only then I realized I had left behind my laptop bag in the plane! We couldn't turn back to the plane. The moment you step out of the plane, there is no way you can go back into it...so I was sent to a Lufthansa information counter to report the 'loss'. I ran over to the counter only to find there a phone which will be answered when picked up before 7 PM. It was 7:10PM and no one was answering it on the other end. It was all mysterious. When I approached the counter nearby, the staff was so rude insisting that we should read our options posted near the phone. She was busy to pack up and leave for the day. I was only hoping we could get back the laptop while the plane is still on the tarmac.
Next we ran back into the baggage claim area to the 'checked-in baggage tracing counter'. All we got there was an email address and a fax number to report the loss! I insisted that I knew where the laptop bag was on the plane and gave the plane number, time, our names, etc. Unlike the checked in baggage that comes with a tracing tag, there is no way to trace an item left behind on a plane. So it is declared as 'lost' even if you knew exactly where and when you left it. Will it be found? what if not? There is no recourse, since there is no way to prove that I had left behind my laptop in the plane. Even to report the "loss" I had to email and report the loss. Until then, my 'loss' was not on the record in spite of speaking with couple of people. Without the laptop how am I going to email them? My hope was to go to the hotel and see if there is a business station to email. I was getting pretty nervous at this time.
That was my work laptop, losing it would have caused me enormous pain. Luckily it was protected by safeboot encryption. So there is no worry about the data security. But I needed the email archives, docs, code, etc back. More over I have to go back to the business and explain what happened. Unnecessary stress. When we walked away from the counter, the man who heard our case, ran behind and said he radio'd someone in the staff and said they found a "Dell" laptop. I was like, yes! Mine is a Dell machine. He was kind enough to explain that he has to go over and get it himself and we had to wait. He gave us all some water to drink and we waited patiently until 8:40 PM. He came back with a bag. Unfortunately, it was not mine! It was a bag from an Amsterdam plane. Our brief hope vanished and I was beginning to freak out at this time. Now our option was to go and email the loss for the record, come back the next day to pursue the recovery. There was no guarantees that it will be found. It continued to be a mystery if we will get back the laptop the next day.
We took the shuttle to the hotel. I had to convert some USD to Euros at the airport. I realized I got a bad deal on that conversion. That was small compared to the laptop. My only worry at this time was to recover the laptop before we leave Frankfurt the next morning. We ordered modest dinner at the room from the hotel bar since the restaurant was closed by the time we reached the hotel. I enquired at the front desk and found a computer with internet connection. I promptly emailed the airline about the loss. I could not sleep for a long time. The next morning we checked out at 6 A.M and went straight to the airport. It was a busy morning. There was long queue in many checkin counters. We were there at the phone counter at 6:50 A.M. Couple of others were waiting there as well. When I picked up the phone and explained, the lady on the other end asked me to wait and she will call back after checking. It was a short two minutes. But it felt pretty long. When she called back she said she found a laptop on that plane and will bring it back to the counter in half hour or so. Again the waiting continued. I went around, got some croissants and coffee for breakfast and patiently waited. A lady walked in with the laptop finally! It was mine. I had to sign up a paper with my id and got the laptop.
We rushed to the Chennai gate and continued our journey peacefully from then on. It was one hell of a night. But it ended well. We are in Madurai now. Sleeping at odd times and staying awake at night! I am glad to type the experience on the very laptop that I lost and found at Frankfurt airport.
Posts
