When it became clear that all the luggage had been unloaded from my flight and my bag was not among it, I briefly considered losing my shit but decided against and instead queried my way to my airline's lost luggage window. It turned out there were six other bags that hadn't made it onto our Brussels Airlines flight.
As I gave my flight information, described my bag, and wrote down my contact information, I began to feel a slight sense of relief: at the very least this would mean one fewer bag to deal with on the Madrid metro today. I figured my bag would come in later that day and I could pick it up when I returned to the airport the next day to fly home. If not? Well, maybe that would be okay; in that moment I felt very zen about the possibility of having lost it forever. Sure there were things in there I wanted, but after having lived with very few things over the last two and a half months, I felt sure I could let go of my attachment. I was practically a Buddhist monk by this point.
And the most important thing was that I still had my computer. Losing that would've been a completely different thing - it had all my writing on it, all my photos from the last several years.
But I did not receive an email later that day letting me know they'd found my bag. Nor the next, nor the next. But the depression didn't start to sink in until I was reunited with the rest of my wardrobe at my mom's house and realized that there was nothing there I liked as well as what I'd lost in my missing bag.
In accordance with the instructions I'd received at lost luggage counter in Madrid, I waited five days before attempting to contact the airline about my missing bag. At this point I was jetlagged, PMSing and had caught a cold on the trip home. Needless to say, my ability to deal with stress was not at an all-time high. So when I went onto the airline's website and read that I'd only had to wait three days before contacting the airline, my frustration level went up. When I entered the case number into the tracking system and it said that my file was no longer available, frustration leveled up to simmering anger. Still, I attempted to follow the next-step instructions and fill out an inventory form so they could search for my luggage by its contents. But at the top of the form, I read that if I didn't complete and submit the form within 5 days of the luggage being lost, I was contributing to the permanent loss of my missing luggage and the airline recused itself of responsibility. At which point I had a meltdown.
My mom, luckily, was calmer and more solution-oriented. She suggested emailing the airline to see if I could get some help. And, after a couple hours of stewing about it - and finally deciding that if the airline abandoned me I could always get my revenge by writing a tell-all blog post about my experience - I did email them. And waited. And waited. With each day that passed, I felt surer that my luggage was lost forever and that I would never hear back from Brussels Airlines. I would never be compensated for my lost items. Each day I remembered another item in my bag that I longed for: the journal in which I recorded my travels, a skort I'd fallen in love with, the few souvenirs I'd actually bought while abroad...not to mention the bag itself, which was a Christmas present from my mother. Each day the helplessness sank in a little deeper.
On Tuesday, September 9th I sent three emails - two to different Brussels Airlines addresses and one to the lost luggage department at the Madrid airport - in a desperate attempt to get any response at all. Then I spent a couple of hours online trying to find replacements for the clothing I'd lost, which by this point I held no hope of Brussels Airlines paying me for. When I couldn't find some of my favorite pieces, a dense gloom enveloped me. I spent the afternoon moping and then took myself out for a depression dinner of fried food and beer at a nearby pub.
I was in the process of finally trying to remember and write down all of the items that were in my lost bag and feeling sorrier for myself by the minute when I randomly checked my phone and noticed two missed calls and a text message from my mom. The text message read, Guess who just came to the front door????????
My missing bag had just been delivered to her house, a little after 7pm, 10 days after it had been lost! So happy I cried!
Over the next two days I received responses to the emails I'd sent in desperation to the airline and the Madrid airport. Based on the information in those emails and the tags on my bag, I pieced together what had happened. My bag had been found on Sunday, August 31 in Brussels and flown to Madrid on the same day. But instead of calling or emailing me, like they said they would, they put my bag on a plane to the U.S. and then flew it all over the States for a week before it finally made it to Redmond, where a driver picked it up and drove it 20-ish miles to my mom's house, where she did a happy dance and then tried calling and texting me.
In the end, I'm thrilled and grateful to have my bag and its contents back. I'm impressed that Brussels Airlines found it and returned it to me, several thousands of miles away. And in future I will do everything I can to avoid checking luggage when traveling in Europe. (Honestly, I took too much with me anyway.)
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