The Sordid Saga of my Suitcase

After having spent two great days at Lyon, K and I left for the airport with an excited anticipation running through our veins, for Barcelona was to be the high-point of our trip, especially for K. We reached the airport, checked-in and took off with a slight delay, nevertheless looking forward to Spain with enthusiasm…half an hour into the flight (and just another 40 minutes short of arriving at Barcelona), we were informed that we’d have to return to Lyon because of technical problems…so about-turn and we reached Lyon at our scheduled arrival time for Barcelona! A little re-thinking will have to be done for today’s itinerary because of this slight delay, we said to ourselves. After waiting over two hours Air France finally informed us that the next flight to Barcelona is full, so we would have to go there via Madrid - and would reach there at 19:30 instead of the initially planned 10:30! Considering that we didn’t have much of a choice, we accepted, extending (?) our stay in Barcelona by one day and thus changing our tickets to Bordeaux, and shortening our stay there!

We reached Madrid, ensured that Air France and the next airlines Span Air (an airline company at the same level as our good old Air Deccan - worse in my opinion!) would see to it that our bags were transferred and boarded the flight, which was over an hour late - once aboard we were once again informed that there are technical problems and so there would be some more delays! Amazing isn’t it? But the story doesn’t end there…so we tell ourselves that nothing could possible go wrong after this and reach Barcelona at 21:10…after much confusion about where we could collect our bags, we started looking for our bags…which don’t seem to have arrived! It was like a nightmare coming true!

After registering a complaint for the loss of bags, during which my heart kept sinking further and further seeing the number of bags lying in enormous piles all over the bloody airport, we finally exited the airport around 22:20, having lost an entire day! K’s bag reached the next day, but mine didn’t reach till the day we were due to leave and neither company was willing to take responsibility - so I left Barcelona with 3 pairs of clothing which I proceeded to wash, re-wash and wear for the rest of the trip…

My bag reached Barcelona, the evening I left (4th August) and with much relief, I asked my friend to have it forwarded to Paris, hoping it would be there by the time I got back from Cologne. After having waited 10 days for my bag, I finally went to the airport on the 11th, hoping to return triumphantly with my bag in tow…little did I know that Lady Luck wasn’t feeling particularly happy with me…

Kitana and I reached there around 11:00 and spent the whole of the day at Charles de Gaulle, going from terminal 3 to terminal 1 to terminal 2 to terminal 1 to terminal 3 to terminal 1 to terminal 3. It took us over two hours and inquiring at innumerable counters and asking innumerable people to find out that my bag has reached Paris! Triumph, short-lived happiness… because we were then informed that I would still not be able to lay hands on my eagerly awaited Delsey because of some ridiculous bureaucratic procedures…it seems Lufthansa brought the bag to Paris and Swissport is the agency that contacts and delivers the bag to the passenger…now Lufthansa is at terminal 1 and Swissport at terminal 3 (which incidentally are next to each other) but yet another company is responsible for taking the bag from terminal 1 to terminal 3 and apparently that is at terminal 2…let’s complicate things further shall we? So it appears that thousands of bags are lost everyday, despite all that elaborate checking-in procedure and all those labels and it takes them a minimum of a week to process all the bags received at CdG Paris, make an inventory and then forward them to Swissport…as a result Swissport on the 11th of August had received bags that had reached Paris on the 2nd of August! Unbelievable isn’t it? I offered to hunt through the thousands of bags myself, but they couldn’t authorize me to do so - after all I could be a terrorist couldn’t I? In the end I left the airport, defeated, frustrated, angry, and completely exhausted wondering what I’d done to deserve this turn of events that turned my dream vacation into a nightmarish bag-hunt and that had its toll even on K’s vacation and his very first trip to Europe.

Everyone told me to look at it like an adventure and we did initially, but the adventure died somewhere between Barcelona and Paris…they kept telling me that it was just a bag with some clothes, that my family wouldn’t be upset if I returned without gifts for I’d already bought most of them, that they were merely material possessions! How can I possibly not worry about my things? How do I explain to them the value of those possessions - not just monetarily (it would be a huge blow if they were truly lost) but also emotionally? How will I ever be able to replace that gorgeous top Papa brought back from Budapest? Or the manicure set he brought back from Italy? Or the Swarowski earrings that he brought for Ma on his first few trips and which she gifted to me some years back? How will I ever replace those things that he gave me, things I will never ever give away or throw away? How will I possibly replace the bag itself, which was Papa’s and represented to me my father’s trips to Europe, a legacy that I want to carry forward? How could I possibly continue to enjoy myself, and spend money without thinking more than twice each time I reached for my wallet? And how could I not feel bad about having to ask friends to run around and endure the endless bureaucratic procedures so that I receive my bag?

I have returned to Pune without my bag, entrusting Kitana with the honoured task of ensuring my bag is forwarded to Bombay, praying it reaches there safe and sound within the next few days - it’s been over a fortnight since I’ve returned (and exactly a month since my bag was first lost) and there is still no news of my bag…and that is the wonderfully sordid saga of my suitcase!

I knew that I’d experience and learn a lot during this trip, but that I’d experience this much, I had no idea! I’m not sure I wanted to experience all of this and am not sure when I’ll be able to look back at it as an enriching experience or laugh it off…as of now, my only desire is to hear that my bag has safely reached Bombay and to see it in my house, open it and reassure myself that everything that I put inside is still there! Even though the sight of my mother at the Bombay airport provided the much-needed solace and comfort I was aching ever since I realized my bag hasn’t reached Barcelona and even though being back home has taken the edge of the constantly nagging thought that ran parallel to everything else I thought about during my trip, I am still not entirely at peace…waiting to hear from Kitana that my bag is on its way home. Hope it’s soon! *Crossing my fingers*

Euro-Rail II

Lyon – the second commercial capital of France, the center of the ancient French silk industry, the capital of French gastronomy and the city of the famed frescoes that have earned themselves a place in the list of UNESCO world heritage sites. There seemed to be enough reasons to visit Lyon, yet people’s eyebrows went up when I cited the city in my list of destinations. To my relief, Lyon, with its eerily quiet and deserted streets after the peopled streets of Montpellier and Nice, did not disappoint. In fact it was quite a relief to the senses to wander in the quiet streets of Vieux Lyon, or the Colline de Fourvière or Croix Rousse, specially since it was amazingly pleasant (almost cool) after the heat and humidity of the previous two cities!

The high-points of our stay in Lyon:

Hôtel du Tourisme, where we stayed, a tiny but cozy place on the banks of Saône, a 15minute walk from the old city – affordable, clean and quite perfect! Our room overlooked their terrace which though a tiny, poky place at the back of the hotel had been transformed into a lovely, charming terrace providing the perfect ambiance to jot down the day’s notes with a cup of coffee…

The splendid view of the entire city from the Cathedrale de Notre Dame at the Colline de Fourvière which made worthwhile walking up 250m above sea-level instead of taking the cable-car, which any normal tourist would have done!

The satisfying meal we had at a restaurant in Vieux Lyon – I decided to throw caution to the winds and went ahead and ordered Rossbeef, served with potatoes stewed in the juice of the beef and green salad, while K had fish served with vegetable and saffron rice. It’s true that Lyon is the capital of French gastronomy – never have I enjoyed beef as I did that day and never has the meal in France been so completely satisfying…the dessert was the icing on the cake…

Walking around the corner to look up to one of Lyon’s acclaimed frescoes – even though I’d read much about them and seen a show on Travel and Living that focused on the frescoes of Lyon, nothing prepared me for the sight. An entire building painted to resemble a bookshop, a postman in the act of collecting letters from a postbox (which was real, not painted), citations from the French classics all over the building, a pigeon caught in the act of taking off, it’s shadow remarkably captured on the building’s façade. Despite the fact that the second fresco we saw was far more interesting, it’s the image of the former that has been burnt into my mind.

Failure to understand:

The charm behind the traboules – courtyards between buildings that apparently serve like secret passages from one street into the next, which we spent hours hunting, going up and down streets in the vain attempt to unearth them – only to finally find one traboule which was simply a dingy, stinky passage between buildings and not the least bit enigmatic or charming. Perhaps the charm lies in stumbling upon them and perhaps they were really useful during the war, we regretted having spent much time and energy looking for them!

The fuss about Croix Rousse, which at one time was the quartier of the canuts (silk-weavers) but today houses apartment complexes and offices and is just another neighbourhood – the cafés and restaurants didn’t bear a patch on those in Vieux Lyon and walking up this 250m seemed to have served only one purpose – that of leaving us dog-tired!

Unfulfilled Desire:

Attend a silk-weaving and painting workshop (lack of time) and buy a hand-woven and hand-painted silk scarf (was way beyond my reach) this time…next time!

Euro-Rail I

It's bloody strange, but I wasn't very impressed with Nice, apart from the pure azure of the sea...the Promenade des Anglais was not the least bit impressive, being just that - a promenade - and not really this strip that attracts the most elegant and chic of them all! As for the hotels down that strip, I'm afraid the less said about their facades, the better! It wasn't all bad though - I'm just exercising my spirit of criticism...the view from Colline du Chateau stole my breath and the Côte D'Azur is gorgeous and merits every compliment it has ever received! Breathtakingly beautiful - the view of the Baie des Anges from the Colline (that I posted earlier) or the Cascades from where you get the view...

Interestingly the apparently chic restaurant close to the Marché des Fleurs was quite a disappointment (mainly due to the snobbery of the waiter) but a simple, very basic restaurant close to our hostel was an absolute delight. At Restaurant du Soleil, run by an old couple I found a warmth that stole into my heart along with the soul-warming food! The monsieur running the place totally made me evening when he complimented my French : "Vous parlez bien en français, mademoiselle...continuez le bon travail!" Goes without saying that I skipped all the way back to the room ;-)

While Nice failed to inspire awe, Eze, a quaint (albeit too postcard-touristy) medieval village a few kilometres from Nice, charmed me completely with its colourful boutiques, narrow winding lanes and steps leading up to the church and the garden with a splendid view of Nice and the Côte d'Azur stretching up to Corsica...it was there that I truly felt I was at the famed French Riviera watching the crème de la crème of automobiles roll smoothly into restaurants way beyond my reach, all driven by chauffeurs that were polished to a shine, just like the cars! ;-) I'm not sure what I liked best about Eze - the drive to and from the village (uphill by bus and downhill in a Merc-cab!) or the breath-taking view from Jardin des Plantes Exotiques, 249 m above sea-level.

Now as I head to Lyon, I'm glad I did visit Nice and the French Riviera...as I leave behind the coast with its pebbly beaches and calcareous, rocky mountains, into a region marked with verdant hills and vineyards on both sides of the tracks I hope Lyon doesn't disappoint me...

(This and the series of posts that shall follow were scribbled hastily, untidily while travelling aboard the various trains that I took to reach my destinations...

The photographs are courtesy K, since I shall only develop mine when I get my bag and thus the many rolls of film inside! )

I'm Back!!!

Des ki mitti aur uski sugandh - nauseatingly cheesy or not, I sure as hell took one deep breath and felt absolutely rejuvenated when I stepped off the Boeing 777 that brought me from Paris to Bombay!

Out of the airport, I drove straight back to Pune coz I was just so tired... the last few days were rather exhausting what with dealing with various people's tantrums (learnt my lesson - never travel in a big group - people have silly issues!), dealing with French bureaucracy and trying not to let my fucked up mood have an effect on K's first visit to Paris...couldn't show him half the things I wanted to, since I was busy getting intimately acquainted with Charles de Gaulle - the airport, not the man (he's been dead quite some time and I'm really not into that kind of stuff!) Spent an entire day there going from one terminal to the other and then back to the first, then the second, then first, then third...all in the vain attempt of procuring my suitcase which had arrived in Paris but which I still don't have because of bloody bureaucratic procedures! I was in a frustrated mess of anger and tears by the end of the day, but pulled myself back in shape and tried to make the best of my last day in Paris - walked down Paris Plage, visited the Catacombs(which were not the least bit creepy! Though quite well arranged and presented very "prettily" I was actually feeling quite bored with the bones by the end!), shared a bottle of wine with friends wondering where life shall take us, sitting on the banks of the Seine...

A grand adventure it was, my Europe trip - much has been learned, much has been experienced - though I wish certain things hadn't happened (no marks for guessing what!) I still had a whale of a time and am so glad I had my closest friend right by my side through out - wouldn't trade a single moment we spent together and will never forget this trip - it has given me, perhaps the most cherished moments of our friendship!

Am so bloody glad to be home...now that I'm back I've pushed the family into settling down into the new house ...enough procrastination has happened on that front! Back to work next week - am looking forward to some routine in life after the last few weeks! ;-)

Forthcoming posts: Euro-rail, Photos

Adventure in Europe...

A fortnight in Europe with my closest friend, K - it's been a grand adventure! From lazing by the Cote d'Azur to admiring one of the most panoramic views from atop a mountain in a very chic, very quaint medieval village near Nice...from climbing the Colline de Fourviere in Lyon to enjoying a gastronamic Lyonnais speciality in the old quartier and admiring the famous frescoes...from delayed and cancelled flights to lost bags (I still don't have my bag, a week after the incident and am wearing recycled and borrowed clothes in the cities I wanted to appear my most chic self!)...from spending time with a new friend in Barcelona, visiting Gaudi's Sagrada Familia and drinking wine a la Spanish country folk from a carafe with a spout, circulated around the table without once putting the carafe down till the wine was over....from a very French dinner and brunch in cafes in Bordeaux, to cozy dinners at another friend's home, discussing books and art and French politics and all that interests us, to taking K to the Quinconces and sitting at the steps of the Monument de Gironde (my favourite monument in Bordeaux) just chatting idly and walking down the quai of the Gironde that flows through Bordeaux...from reaching Paris stressed and on the verge of a breakdown to walking by the Seine, with a pita sandwich in my hand in the company of two of my closest friends, drinking beer sitting by the Seine not far from the Notre Dame and forgetting my worries, to travelling to Cologne to meet a friend from Magdeburg and another friend who I met only very recently and staying in his very cozy and charming house with a garden out of a fairytale, from standing in front of the Cathedrale in Cologne, a very impressive monument to drinking in a brewerie and being told by the waiter that I can't have a fourth glass because I drink too fast and too much...

We go to Paris together for the last few days of my whirlwind trip in Europe - it's going to be a circus with so many of us at Kitana's place and so much fun...crossing my fingers that nothing goes wrong and that evrything else falls into place as well! I can't say I haven't enjoyed each and every minute, but I do wish it could have been a little smoother...but then I wouldn't have learnt as much as I did and I sure do learn alot with each of my trips to Europe...

The best and most memorable moment of the trip...sharing some light moments with my closest friend with a magnificient waterfall behind us and one of the most beautiful views in front of us....I don't think I'll ever forget the beauty of those moments and I'm so glad I could share all this with him...