Things that go through your head when your luggage is lost.

First of all, I’m speaking from experience so all my references are what I felt and what I went through. Each person is different, we have different tolerances to stress. Depending on how much money you have, what valuables are in your luggage and your experience once it’s lost, it all depends on how you will feel about it.

I had an awful experience, which explains why I had such strong emotions when my luggage turned into hudini. We had doubts about the safety of our luggage travelling before our holiday had began and we spent several days contacting our Airline* to try and swap the flights as the transfer only gave us 25 minutes to run through the airport. So when it vanished because of exactly that, we all but screamed with frustration.

Why me?
What’s happened? How did they lose it?
What do I do now?
Will It get to me before the holiday?
How will they get it to me, my hotel/ship?
Who can help me & Who’s to blame?

Nausea- disbelief

How, how did this happen? what do I do now? How will they help?

The biggest thing for me was that noone expects to lose their luggage so no matter how much research you put into your holdiay you will make a mistake. For me, it was not doing reasearch on the luggage expecations and the procedures, I learnt everything about the holiday and culture. Including learning languages but It didn’t occour to me to learn what to do with missing luggage. I’ve since written up a guide for lost luggage here.

I was sick, litterally. The first four days of my cruise were spent either throwing up or scoffing my face and when I wasn’t doing either of those I was crying and wanting my mom (Yup, a full grown woman, missing home).

Video of the issues that happened before my holiday and during it!

Blaming yourself

What did I do? What could I have done to reduce the chance of this happening?

The answer is nothing, if you’ve followed the guides to labelling your luggage correctly; Luggage tags, notable looking case, take photos and leave a note inside. Then that’s all you can do, once your luggage has gone through the little fairy door, it’s up to the airport to look after it for you.

Untrusting people

It got to a point, around day 8. Where I’d been told for eight days straight “we’ve located it, you’ll get your luggage tomorrow”, at that point I started distrusting everyone and getting really angry at everything. I’d convinced myself that the whole cruise staff were just lying to make me feel better, each one came up with a new story as to where my bag was and where it had been.
Why were they lying, why couldn’t they just tell me “Sorry, we don’t know, but we’ll try our best to find it for you”? It’d have made my holiday so much easier, I could switch off and start to plan ahead.

Hurt

Yes, I mean hurt.
I returned home and still, no luggage was waiting for me. My home was a shell without my trinkets and possesions and whilst it may seem silly to feel so detached from the world from just losing posessions. It felt as thought my home had been burgled. Someone had taken everything I had worked my whole life for; clothing, makeup, jewellery, shoes, cameras, money things we treat ourselves to, to make ourselves feel better.

What would you spend your money on if not for ‘things’?

I work damn hard for my money and everything I had went onto this holiday and my things that went with it. If you remember, I mentioned my partners grandmother had given us the money to go. We have very little and this holiday meant the world to us so any scraps of cash went on new clothes, for me, everything went into it and into my case, to hide amongst the lavish people on board.

I must say, my luggage is a better magician then Dynamo.

It seemed to appeal in several countries and then disappear when I arrived there, how magical!I have since appealed several times to have my claim pushed forward and I’ve been four weeks without clothing, hair products, makeup and well, my life! They will still not give me any money to help me purchase anything since I’ve been home and I’ve been struggling with the basics. Let me tell you, the one dress I bought whilst I was away is not holding up well to the stress of being worn daily.

UPDATE: