Paula and I are home at long last. That is more than we can say for our bags, which were lost by Meridiana, the small airline that delivered us from Naples to Charles de Gaulle (CDG), Paris. Yep, my luggage got lost twice on this trip--both at CDG. Paula and Rick both had their luggage lost once, also at CDG.
When I was in Rome, my host Richard Boly, Acting Economic Counsel at the US Embassy had warned me to avoiud CDG for precisely this reason. He said that CDG was first in the world at losing luggage and estimated that it lost one out of five bags. At the time I thought his estimate had to be unreasonably high. But recent personal experience has four bags out of four lost.
But I cannot blame CDG for my biggest loss there. That I have to blame on my own carelessness, my own weariness of security searches. I underwent approximately 15 of them on this trip. The last of which was to get onto my flight home with Paula. As I went through, I was randomly pulled aside for a very thorough go-over, that included searching through my wallet. It was also the most hostile go- over.
I got distracted and forgot to pick up my computer when I walked away. I did not discover this until arriving in Philadelphia. US Airways, who flew us home was sympathetic but could do little. They gavce me the security number for CDG, which I called. But the guy who answered spoke no English and my French was way too feeble to explain my problem.
I got my friend Scott Briggs, who speaks fluent French to call. The problem now is time zone. CDG security Lost and Found is only open from 9-11:30 a.m. and 1-4 pm Paris time. That means that when Scott is awake, they are closed and when he is sleeping they are open. There is also an email address for contacting them but no one has answered Scott's message so far. Scott promised to get up super early this morning and try again, but I'm starting to lkose optimism that I can easily solve this problem.
I have nearly 10,000 words of notes for my Global Neighborhoods in that computer. They can be reconstructed but it would require a great deal of time and requiring people I just interviewed to tell me their stories a second time.
I keep remembering the words of my older brother. "Any flight you can complain about was a success." He's right of course. But right now, it's hard to take this light heartedly.
