I am flying to Paris today. As I do before each of these “significant” trips, in preparation for my journey I took the amply-dogeared paperback, The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton, from my bookshelf in search of wisdom, insight, even a mantra, to accompany me. I once took this little volume with me on all trips, for its daily meditative reflections, but I am traveling light this time, and every item adds up.
My purpose was to rapidly grab some pointers to flex my travel muscle, which has become quite inelastic during the pandemic, and good thing that I did, because before I got very far, something happened. We forget, in our dreamy anticipation, that travel brings real-life experiences – like losing luggage.
The journey started out well. When I mentioned to my driver that I was going to France, he asked me if I spoke French, which I have been studying again for six months. We spoke in French all the way to the airport, and I was primed!
The short one-hour hop from Charlotte, NC to Washington Dulles Airport was relatively smooth except for the screaming child over my right shoulder. (Small but essential detail – noise-blocking earpods help.) My intuition prompted me to leave a day early and spend the night at the Washington Dulles Marriott before flying out to Paris the next afternoon (which is today). Dulles is familiar territory – especially one memorable trip to Paris, which began with a delayed flight from San Francisco and a transfer at Dulles, where I had to literally run from the far end of the D gates to the beginning of the C gates (a kilometer longer, or about a half mile, and the longest terminal in the world without a moving walkway). The crew shut the door behind me when I arrived, it was that close.
This time, at Dulles, my one checked bag never showed up. I initially waited at the carousel for 30 minutes, then reluctantly joined the 30-person line of frustrated travelers queuing up over lost luggage. There were only three baggage clerks on duty but they were patient and assisted us one by one. So now I’m in for a little over an hour and it took another 30 minutes to determine that it was time to go to Plan B. In short, my simple black 22-inch bag was traveling around the luggage belts somewhere under the bowels of Dulles airport. While waiting, I talked briefly with a baggage handler who emerged from the hidden chambers – “it’s chaos in there,” he remarked with a grimace, which leveled my expectations. This has happened to me before, too. After flying to the Caribbean some years ago, we arrived in paradise to learn that our bags were somewhere underground on the baggage belts at JFK Airport. That took two days to resolve.
Traveling often, as de Botton described in his book, keeps you aware – including of the disasters that can happen!
After nearly two hours, I took the shuttle to my nearby hotel with a complimentary gift – a plastic water bottle loaded with toiletries and with the assurances by the clerk that my bag would show up. As he surveyed the more than 100 bags waiting outside his window for shipping to their final destination, he explained that baggage handlers actually walk along the underground routes to find lost luggage that, like mine, probably fell off the belt somewhere. “We rarely lose one completely,” he said kindly.
Meanwhile, I was planning a quick shopping trip to Tysons Corner Mall and Galleria the next morning. I packed lightly and I thought smartly, but I realized that, except for what I was wearing, my tops and nightwear were in my carryon bag and my skirts, pants and dresses in the lost luggage. But, of course, there would always be Paris!!
The luggage arrived six hours later at 11:19 pm.
So today, with all bags in hand (and repacking them in case this happens again), I can now return for joyful anticipation of my next two weeks in France. I am well aware that “anticipation” is a huge part of the trip in itself (and usually lasts longer). I don’t need guidebooks for this adventure and only a few maps as prompts and reminders, as I’ve been there many times; for this visit, I yearn to be more centered in the moment with a fresh set of eyes and the requisite problem-solving frequent traveler skills should something go amiss (so far so good on that score…).
Arriving early to a calm and quiet Dulles, I walked into the fairly new, spacious and nearly empty Polaris lounge within 30 minutes and settled into an oversized leather-and-chrome banquette for a light lunch and (finally) relaxed anticipation of my upcoming trip.
“What, then, is a travelling mind-set?” de Botton writes. “Receptivity might be said to be its chief characteristic. Receptive, we approach new places with humility. We carry with us no rigid ideas…(we) admire what they (locals) take to be unremarkable small details…We are alive to the layers of history…Home by contrast finds us more settled in our expectations…”
Being alive to the unexpected and the small details, being open, exercising our curiosity, noticing…Our world has become so much smaller, in not a good way, since the pandemic. The four walls have severely narrowed our imaginations and our appreciation of others’ lives, cultures and realities. I’m ready to break out of that, very ready, even with the ups and downs of the current messy travel landscape.
“It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves,” de Botton writes. “…the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, who may not be who we essentially.”
That’s why I travel, to discover that part of me that only travel can illuminate – and, by coincidence, to remind myself that, come what may, I can do this!
