I mostly avoided a lot of the bad news in Europe relating to airport delays, but Glen and Julian seemed to take some sort of perverse delight in reporting on baggage delays, flight delays, security delays at various airports around the continent. We’d also been very lucky to avoid any delays, cancelled flights or lost baggage so far. But when we got a notification that our flight from Lisbon to Amsterdam would be delayed by 20 minutes, I could avoid it no longer. 

Twenty minutes wouldn’t ordinarily be a worry, but we had a tight, 45-minute turnaround in Amsterdam before our flight to Newcastle. We got to Lisbon airport with plenty of time to spare and the woman at the check-in counter was very helpful. She said we wouldn’t make our connection so moved us to the later flight which would leave Amsterdam at 10:45pm. I figured this wouldn’t be too much of a problem for anything else.

We went to the lounge and I tried to call Europcar to change the pickup time for our car rental at Newcastle. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get through to anyone and even when I emailed I was rebuffed and said I’d have to talk to Expedia and change my booking through there. Unfortunately, being so close to pick-up time, I wasn’t allowed to make any changes. I figured I’d leave it and there’d probably be someone at the desk at Newcastle when we arrived, even with it being late.

After our flight we explored Amsterdam, confident that our baggage would arrive in Newcastle with us. Even without the delays experienced across Europe, I wasn’t confident that our baggage would make the short turn around time from one plane to another. As it was, when we left Amsterdam airport, the baggage claim area was overflowing with left/lost luggage.

We returned to the airport with plenty of time to spare, Glen unfortunately being hit with a headache and neither of us in the mood for anything else. We boarded our flight, taking off late, and landing at Newcastle International Airport sometime after 11pm. We then joined a queue with everybody else, including Brits, as passports had to be processed thanks to the fuckery that is Brexit. Honestly, this part made me the angriest of all. Well done, Britain. 

We got our luggage (hooray!) and walked out to the arrivals lounge to find the car rental desks closed. We walked over to the other booth outside where we were directed to go, only to find that everyone from Europcar had gone home hours ago and we were without a car. Considering this was a prepaid booking, I’m staggered that no one follows up to ask if you’re coming or not. Even more pissed off to find out the next day that our car was given away anyway. Ummm…so do I get my money back? “You’ve got to talk to Expedia, but there’ll be a car for you tomorrow.” 

I think car rental companies are entirely deserving of the same bad reputation as insurance companies.

We returned to the terminal to see about next steps. Our accommodation in Durham was about 40 minutes’ drive away. There was an amorphous blob of people waiting for taxis inside that would take hours to process. I called the three nearest hotels, all of which were either full or wouldn’t process guests after midnight for some bizarre reason. Welcome to British hospitality and greatness.

Almost at whit’s end, I opened up Uber to find that we actually could get a car from Newcastle to Durham and someone picked up almost immediately, a crazy Turkish guy who’d lived in England for the past 25 years. He was only too glad to slingshot us around the many many roadworks between us and our final destination (either our hotel in Durham or death). He told us that he’d been playing a VR flying game before coming on shift and his head was all over the place. I felt so safe.

Despite the constant chatter, the vociferous and energetic declarations, and the rally car–style driving, we arrived at our accommodation in Durham alive, sometime after 1am. Fortunately there were no issues with checking in — the key had been left for us on the desk — and we got in and went to sleep. The rental car hire is still to be sorted out but that’s a job for another day.

Data disaster

We woke the next morning to a lot of messages on both of our phones, all from our mobile phone provider in Australia. We both had about forty messages, the earliest starting at around 1:46am that began with, “You’ve enjoyed 85% of your roaming data included in your plan,” which then continued with information on how much going above the 100% would cost.

Being asleep, we missed these very helpful messages and instead, whatever was using up our precious 2GB of data, continued to not only expend whatever we had left but gaily exceeded it, running into the THOUSANDS of dollars. The messages came through every few minutes, saying we had “spent approximately $XX outside of your plan’s monthly inclusions for PHONE NUMBER.”

By the time we woke up, the bill had skyrocketed to $2900. Both of us felt ill. While Glen tore around trying to find out exactly how this had happened (at first he thought he’d been hacked, then he realised he’d allowed his laptop to use his phone as a hotspot, and then, in desperation, he tried to reassert that it was hackers, to which I rolled my eyes), I looked again at the messages and breathed a sigh of relief.

All the messages were relating to Glen’s phone number and not mine. As account holder, I get all the notifications, but fortunately, the exorbitant fees were no fault of mine. I was then able to breathe a little easier to be the supportive, loving husband that I am. 

Nevertheless, a problem shared is a problem halved and there were many recounting of this event through the final days of our trip. And it also put into scale any other purchases we were thinking of making in the trip. “Don’t you think that’s a bit expensive?” one of us would say. The other would reply: “Well, it’s only one-fifth of a phone bill so it’s cheap by comparison.” Haha.

Glen contacted the provider and let them know the situation. They said they couldn’t do anything until the bill was issued, which was only a few days later. Happily, when it came through, the cost had been reduced by over two-thirds which made us feel a lot better. 

I should add that Glen has form in this area, having overspent his phone bill by about $900 over a decade ago when we went to the UK. The culprit was data then too. Good lesson for next time: switch over to a local SIM.

Delays (part two) and disappearances

After a week or so in London and Leigh-on-Sea, it was time to begin our journey back to Australia. We caught the train from Leigh-on-Sea to Barking, the District line to Whitechapel and then the Elizabeth line to Paddington and finally to Heathrow. 

We arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare, which was just as well because after saying farewell to our bags, we joined multiple very long queues to go through border control and security. We then went to the lounge to wait for our flight.

The Lufthansa lounge was already pretty full and we caught bits of conversation about delayed and cancelled flights, some cancelled multiple times over multiple days. A large increase in Covid cases coinciding with an explosion in travel due to European summer meant staff shortages everywhere and systems that could barely cope. (Lufthansa alone is cancelling 3,000 flights this summer, and Heathrow asked British Airways and others to cancel 10% of their flights last week.)

We waited, hopeful that our flight would go ahead, but after an hour or so we started getting emails to say our flight was delayed twenty minutes. Then fifty minutes. Then an hour. Thankfully we had a comfortable place to sit and good food and drink to keep us calm. 

Finally we were able to board our flight, which only ended up being an hour and a half later than scheduled. This was infinitely more preferable than being cancelled outright, and we were both happy to have chosen to fly from the UK to Germany the day before our flight home to Australia.

The flight to Frankfurt only took an hour and a half and we landed at about 10:30pm. We disembarked onto waiting shuttle buses which ferried us from the plane, around a spookily quiet tarmac, to the terminal. I’d noticed that while we had been put on buses (a good start), nothing was happening with the luggage. The hatch was open but nothing was being unloaded. Still, what else could we do but go to the terminal?

We went through passport control, having to explain to the officer that it wasn’t our fault the Netherlands hadn’t stamped our passport when we left Schengen, and really, what did it matter? But we were eventually let through to wait for our luggage at the baggage carousel. 

Along with many other flights. Honestly, the place was heaving with people, all huddling around baggage belts that weren’t moving, laughing as a message played overhead telling people what they already knew, which was their baggage was delayed.

We were locked in purgatory. And seeing people lying on baggage carousels gave me flashbacks to returning from Antarctica/South America at the start of the pandemic. The sinking feeling came on pretty quick and the fact that we hadn’t seen much activity out on the tarmac had been indicative of a much greater problem.

Hopeful that our luggage would eventually come out, we went to belt 21 to wait. But as the first hour passed and the second rapidly approached, our flight disappeared off the list of flights that were waiting for the baggage. We suddenly didn’t exist. We wandered back and forth between different belts, just in case our baggage had been disgorged at a different location. Alas, no.

People gradually disappeared as luggage slowly arrived, and by about 1am the baggage claim was mostly empty of people, including most of the people from our flight. Left behind were a few whose luggage had arrived. Us included. One poor worker left standing gave everyone the link to register a “delayed” baggage report, then the belts stopped and the remaining people left.

Our luggage was somewhere, just inaccessible to us. We registered our claims then went out to catch a taxi to our accommodation, checking in a few hours late and nabbing a few hours sleep before returning to the airport on Friday morning.

We arrived early enough — thanks to limited airport shuttle times — to return to Lufthansa’s “baggage tracing” with many other people who were searching for their luggage. We returned to the baggage carousels, searching through stacks of luggage like dead bodies waiting to be identified and returned to their loved ones. Despite one of the staff scanning our luggage tags and telling us our luggage was either at belt 4 or belt 1, they weren’t there.

We checked our reports online and Glen’s luggage had been located but mine was still being searched for (which was worrying). We hung around for about an hour and a half, hopefully checking over new baggage that was brought through, all to no avail. With nothing left to be done, we checked in for our flight to Singapore and joined interminable queues for security.

I’m hopeful that our luggage will show up again someday, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes months to sort out. On the plus side, we travelled light from Germany to Singapore and on to Australia, with no trouble along the way. Fortunately, we’d packed an extra pair of undies and socks and took a few essentials with us. I’d like to get my jeans back — though I’m hoping by the time they’re returned to me, I can fit into them again.