So, I split today’s blog into two parts.

This part is all about the great #findingtoddsbag2015 saga which happily finally ended today.

If you want to read about the rest of the day, click here.

Ok, so like I said, the saga is over…

But not without me taking matters into my own hands.

The most frustrating thing with this whole lost baggage thing in the lack of communication afterwards.

My bag was lost in transit when British Airways decided to cancel one of my flights two days ago and put me on two different flights from Dallas to London and then on to Oslo.

Inevitably what happened was my bag got taken off my original airplane in Dallas and put on my new flight.  Of course whoever was handling things didn’t pay attention or more likely just didn’t care that London wasn’t my final destination and I was infact transferring to another flight to Oslo.

So instead of my bag going with me on my flight to Oslo it got loaded onto a conveyor belt in London.

When I arrived in Oslo and found my bag missing I already knew what happened.  I went to the lost baggage area and filled out a report about the bag including all the original and new flights I took that day.

This is where I left it two days ago and where the communication nightmare began.

The first problem was the contact info I was given was an airline baggage company out of Oslo and not British Airways.

Not so surprising it was ridiculously hard to get a timely back and forth dialog with the tiny baggage company.

But I tried anyway…

Yesterday when my bag hadn’t arrived and I hadn’t received an email saying “hey, we got your bag and we’ll be at your hostel later today” I sent them an email asking for an update.

A few hours later I sent another email

No reply!

Until late last night when they emailed me to tell me my bag was arriving at the Helsinki airport at 10:45pm.

Sweet!

The girl at the front desk of the hostel had earlier told me that when they deliver lost baggage they usually do it around midnight so I just assumed the bag would soon be in my possession.

As midnight came and went and I went to sleep I knew, just knew, that it would be delivered while I was sleeping or early in the morning.

And then I woke up this morning and still no bag!

I sent another email at 6am frantically telling them I was checking out this morning and taking an afternoon ferry to Estonia.

My worst fear was that the bag, which was now at the Helsinki airport, would get delivered to my hostel after I had long checked out.

By 8am I still hadn’t heard back from them and that’s when I took matters into my own hands.

I knew the bag was at the Helsinki airport so I just went down there to find it.

It cost me 10 euros (about $16) to travel there and back and took 3 hours of my time but I finally was able to track it down.

My bag!

My beautiful fully packed with lots of clean clothes bag!

IMG_8418

If I hadn’t gone to the airport, by the way, the lady told me I would have been waiting at least a few more days as the bag was delivered on Finnair but no one thought to communicate that with British Airways.

When I came back to the hostel just after noon I was already past my checkout time but I didn’t care – I was gonna take a nice long shower and shave all the scruff off my face.

Oh, and change into some nice fresh clothes after wearing the same damn clothes for 4 days.

Just hopping out of the shower I felt so refreshed, so happy that I can finally move forward with this trip.

In the end this whole thing that was put in motion by British Airways changing my flights cost me my planned afternoon in Oslo and also the half day today I was going to spend exploring Helsinki.

Annoying to be sure but not the end of the world…

Anyway, enough about this saga – you can read about the rest of the day in Part 2.

USSR Trip 2015, Trip Journal

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