A Painful Trip Home

After spending several weeks in Italy I was more than ready to come home. I had a great time, saw some incredible sights and spent some real quality time with my wife; but I missed my recliner and was experiencing TV remote control withdrawal symptoms, so it was time to go.

The spent our last night in Italy in a nice hotel near the airport so we could use their shuttle to ensure we got to the airport with plenty of time to check our bags, clear customs and security.

I awoke on the morning of our departure excited and ready to head home. International travel is always an adventure with long flights to be endured, customs officials to be dealt with and the rare opportunity to be told to remove your shoes in several different languages. I knew it was going to be a long and potentially painful day but, always the optimist, I was hoping for the best.

The first clue that it wasn’t going to be my day should have come when I smashed my thumb in a freak accident while checking out of the hotel.

I have checked in and out of thousands of hotels all over the world and have never suffered a physical injury while doing so…until now. As we boarded the shuttle to the airport, my hand was wrapped in a bag of ice but I was still hopeful that the rest of the trip would go smoothly. I should have known better.

The next hint came when we arrived at the airport and checked in for our flights and the machine printed out boarding passes for Sandra all the way from Florence to Reno, but only printed one for me from Florence to Frankfurt.

When I approached the Italian airline employee, she shrugged and said in broken English, “Sometimes these things work, sometimes they don’t; there is nothing we can do about it here but they will fix it for you in Germany.”

So when they took our bags and checked them both through to Reno I knew that my wife and luggage would be flying home, but I was only checked as far as Frankfurt, I admit to being a little apprehensive.

The travel gods dropped me another hint when our flight from Florence to Frankfurt was delayed over an hour making our connection to San Francisco very difficult. I have to admit that not having a boarding pass to a flight that I was going to have to run to meet, if the German customs agent and security people would even let me through to the gate since I did not even have a boarding pass, left me feeling more than a little anxious.

It was raining when we arrived in Germany (naturally) and we were so late that the airline had a bus waiting on the ramp to drive to take us straight to the international terminal.

When I tried to explain to the nice German girl that the nice Italian lady had said I could get a boarding pass there, she said something that sounded like, “Yeah, yeah, get on the bus.” Naturally I felt much better about my situation after talking to her.

Fortunately for me the German customs agent was in a hurry trying to process all of the Americans running late for the San Francisco flight that he just stamped my passport and sent me through. I thought my luck had changed until I showed my passport to the agent at the counter who told me that I was in the computer but she was unable print a boarding pass for me. After several attempts to fix the situation she said, “This is most irregular and I cannot help you”, then handed me back my passport and left.

By the time I found someone who could get me a boarding pass I was assigned the last seat available, a middle seat between an overweight German and a very gassy young American, who made the 11 hour flight seem twice that long.

At this point it seems almost unnecessary to tell you that they lost our luggage, by now I fully expected that, what I didn’t expect was that they would call me at 1AM two days later when the bags suddenly arrived in Reno and ask for directions to my house so they could deliver them.

The moral of the story is leaving Italy is painful, but it’s sure good to be home!