Scarlett Travels: Austria, Part 1
I’ve been to Europe more than 20 times over the past decade.
I’ve traveled through airline strikes, air traffic control disruptions, snowstorms, COVID restrictions, changing entry requirements, overnight delays, canceled trains, missed trains, border crossings, volunteer missions into Ukraine, and enough airports that I no longer expect travel to be perfect.
Things happen.
Flights get delayed.
Bags get lost.
I’ve learned to roll with it.
This trip felt different.
Not because one thing went wrong.
Because every part of the system seemed to be straining at the same time.
I’ll start with my mistake because that one belongs to me.
My flight from Boston through London landed in Munich at 11:30 Wednesday night. Somewhere between booking the flight and booking the hotel, I reserved my Marriott room for Thursday night instead of Wednesday night.
Not Thursday morning.
Thursday night.
That one was entirely on me.
After landing, I went through passport control, headed to baggage claim, and waited.
One suitcase arrived.
The other didn’t.
There was no British Airways baggage office open that late.
There was just a man collecting unclaimed luggage.
He didn’t speak English, which isn’t a complaint—I was in Germany—but it made figuring out what to do next a little more challenging.
Eventually, I understood enough to know I needed to come back the next morning and deal with the third-party company that handles baggage issues for British Airways in Munich.
Fine.
Annoying, but manageable.
The missing suitcase wasn’t carrying anything I absolutely needed.
It had Lightning McQueen toys for my grandson, a bottle of ranch dressing, a few cans of clams, a large container of Old Bay Seasoning that apparently looked suspicious enough on an airport scanner to deserve extra attention…
…and my shower scrunchie.
My plan had always been to spend the night near the airport. After an overnight international flight, I wasn’t about to drive two and a half hours to Salzburg in the dark. I grabbed a taxi and headed to the Marriott.
That’s when I discovered I’d booked the room for the wrong night.
Fortunately, the front desk manager found one room.
While checking me in, he mentioned they’d had 11 flights canceled in the previous three days because of the heat.
Eleven.
Because of heat. Something about the runway melting…..
I’ve watched Europe get warmer over the years.
I’ve never had a hotel manager casually mention flight cancellations because it was too hot to fly.
That got my attention.
The next morning I took another taxi back to the airport.
My plan was simple.
Pick up the rental car.
Retrieve the suitcase.
Drive to Salzburg.
Apparently, I had underestimated Munich Airport.
First came Europcar.
There were sixteen people ahead of me and only four associates working the counter.
An hour and a half later, I finally had the rental car paperwork.
Again, nobody was rude.
Nobody was standing around doing nothing.
There just weren’t enough people.
Before heading to the baggage office, I walked all of my luggage out to the rental car.
By then I’d been dragging a large checked bag, a backpack full of technology, and my purse around the airport for hours.
I asked the man at the baggage office if I could leave them there while I retrieved the missing suitcase.
He said no.
He wasn’t allowed to accept them, and if I walked away, they wouldn’t be monitored.
So my choices were simple.
Drag everything through customs.
Or walk everything to the car and then walk back.
I chose the car.
It took more time.
It still made more sense.
Then the real adventure began.
The baggage office told me my suitcase was in storage and I’d have to go through customs and border control to retrieve it.
They gave me a temporary pass that expired after one hour.
The line I had to stand in wasn’t for people retrieving luggage.
It was the same line everyone else was using.
By the time I reached passport control, my pass had expired.
Fortunately, they let me through anyway.
I finally reached the baggage office.
The employee searched.
Made phone calls.
Waited.
Then apologized.
My suitcase wasn’t there.
So I went back out through customs and border control.
Again.
Back at the office where I’d started, another employee made another phone call.
Another apology.
Apparently, my suitcase wasn’t in the baggage office after all.
Now it was supposedly in a storage closet just beyond customs.
Which meant…
I’d have to go through customs a third time.
That was where I stopped.
My passport had already been stamped when I entered Germany the night before.
Since breakfast, I’d already gone through customs and back out again trying to retrieve one checked suitcase.
I finally asked the obvious question.
“Does anyone actually know where my bag is?”
Nobody answered it.
Instead, they apologized.
Again.
The employee wasn’t the problem.
In fact, every single person I dealt with genuinely seemed to want to help.
The problem was that nobody seemed to own the problem.
Everyone had one piece of information.
Nobody had the whole picture.
So we agreed they’d ship the suitcase to Austria.
The next day it showed up at my son’s house.
No phone call.
No text.
No email.
Someone simply left it in the foyer and left.
Lightning McQueen made it.
The ranch dressing made it.
The canned clams made it.
Even the Old Bay survived.
And yes…
My shower scrunchie made it too.
By the time I finally left Munich, the drive that should have taken about two hours and twenty minutes took more than three because of traffic.
I arrived at my hotel in Salzburg around six o’clock that evening.
Then I realized my original hotel mistake in Munich had followed me to Salzburg.
Because I’d booked Munich for the wrong night, I was now one night short in Salzburg.
Once again, Marriott found me a room.
Once again, the person checking me in mentioned my Marriott status.
Maybe that helped.
Maybe it didn’t.
If the hotel is sold out, status doesn’t magically create another room.
But twice in two days, someone found a way to accommodate me, and I’m grateful they did.
As ridiculous as this all sounds, here’s what stayed with me.
I’ve been traveling to Europe for years.
The mountains haven’t changed.
The villages haven’t changed.
The people haven’t changed.
What feels different are the systems around the journey.
Extreme heat is now affecting flights.
Airlines rely on layers of contractors.
Companies outsource pieces of the customer experience until no one seems able to solve a simple problem from beginning to end.
And for the first time in more than twenty trips, I caught myself wondering whether being American changes how we’re received overseas.
I don’t know the answer.
Maybe it doesn’t.
I hope it doesn’t.
But the fact that I even asked myself the question surprised me.
Travel has always taught me about the places I visit.
This trip taught me something else.
Sometimes the biggest lesson isn’t about the destination.
It’s about what the journey reveals.
A few hours after my suitcase finally arrived in Austria, British Airways emailed me a customer satisfaction survey.
I’ve flown British Airways many times, and I’ve generally had very good experiences.
That’s why this one stood out.
It wasn’t one bad employee.
It wasn’t even one bad airline.
It was a reminder that modern travel feels more fragile than it used to.
And I have a feeling this trip is just getting started.
Scarlett says no.