The devil is in the details

Baggage

I've decided to steal a page from HD and put up placeholder posts until I have the time to actually sit down and write them. The real posts will show up during one of my next two evenings (depending on how late the dinners end up going.) I know, I know, I'm such a tease.

Someday, this will be a lame post about my luggage woes.

UPDATED TO ADD:
You may have noticed that during my pre-travel posts, I mentione that I was packing a lot. Part of the reason for that was that I was unhappy with the size of my suitcases. I have a variety of purses and duffel bags and two suitcases: one a carry-on rolly bag and one a large rolly bag. I felt like the large rolly bag was way too big for the purposes of the trip, but I couldn't quite fit everything into the smaller carry-on rolly bag. So I was puzzled. In the end, my roommate R. loaned me her carry-on sized rolly bag, which was just a little bit deeper than mine and held all of my stuff perfectly, with just enough room for souvenirs. At that point I was set, and I went off to work on Monday morning with that suitcase, a purse full of all of my important carry-on stuff and my laptop (which is very small). I ran into my boss as soon as I walked into the door of the lab and he started making fun of me, saying that I had too much luggage. Even though no one else that I asked seemed to think that I had too much luggage, I was paranoid all the same. The boss seemed very anti-checking luggage when we got to the airport, so I just went ahead with my over-the-limit number of carry-ons and figured I'd rearrange things so that they fit into two bags, which I did. Everything was fine on the Boston to Amsterdam flight. While traversing the airport in Amsterdam, the boss even apologized for making fun of my luggage earlier. He was jealous that I could roll my luggage on wheels while he was stuck carrying his.

However, there was not nearly as much room on the Amsterdam to Copenhagen flight: it was much more like a US domestic flight, and business class (again there was no first) had no more room than coach. I knew I was in trouble when the rolly bag was too wide to even make it down the aisle. I don't think that I have ever received so many dirty looks in my life as I futilly tried to put the bag into the overhead compartment. In the end, the steward came over and saved me by saying "I think I have some space in the front closet. I'll take that." At the same time, I was rather embarrassed because my boss was there watching all this ("There's another perk of business class," he said.") and also because I was getting so many dirty looks from both the seated passengers and the passengers who were stuck waiting behind me in line. I don't know why, but I felt like everyone was looking at me and judging me as "a stupid American" or "a girl who thinks that the rules don't apply to her" or some other combination of those sentiments. I know that I would judge someone else harshly in the same situation (or at least, I would before) but it was really annoying at the time, seeing as how I was entirely mortifyied that I could have been so blatantly disregarding the rules. In the end though, it worked out just fine and I realized that I would never see any of the people on the plane again, so it wasn't the end of the world if I screwed up that once.

I didn't end up sleeping on the second plane because the guy next to me was very into elbowing me (which is in some ways an intersting segue to the next post) and then I was in Copenhagen ready for the craziness to begin.

Oh....the pilots on KLM speak Dutch, of course. I don't know what it is about me and Danish and now Dutch, but they really remind me of the Swedish chef. I'm told that only Swedish should sound like that, but they all do to me. I think that it is because I am most sensitive to the cadence of the speech. Anyway, I expected the pilot to say "bork, bork, bork." after many of his instructions.
(Yes, I AM odd, but please blame it on the wine.)

posted by Immunegirl @ 11:03 AM