With the commonly high rates of any traveller hoping and praying for smooth flying and easy transit, the chance of error and unpredictability is clearly very high and well assumed when it comes to air travel. With a delayed flight in Newark and functioning on minimal sleep, we weren’t off to the best start. Arriving in the Frankfurt airport realizing that the gate to our next flight had already closed, we proceeded to the next best step of booking another flight to our final destination, Krakow. Up until the point we were repeatedly rushed to run to different terminals on complete opposite sides of the airport and had been told unreliable information from multiple representatives, did our anxieties begin to arise…especially mine. Sprinting and sweating, we were oddly told to run to a gate of an overbooked 12pm flight to Krakow in the following 20 minutes. Upon arrival at the new gate probably 3 miles from where we started, we were told there were no seats left, let alone eight of them, and we were out of options until the next morning. At this moment, I came to the realization that I had made a very bad mistake. Due to the fact that I was barely coherent, attentive and being rushed all over the place, I realized I had forgotten my backpack with my laptop and camera in it at the previous gate we no longer had access to. In a panic thinking of the highly likely event that a random person found my bag and stole it, which easily and collectively contained items worth nearly $3,000, even more anxiety became significant. Trying very hard to keep calm for the next 3 hours as my heart was in my throat, we were told that someone had found the bag and it would be delivered to some United counter. In an unnecessarily ginormous airport such as Frankfurt, the referred and unspecified “United counter” was one in a million to find. We soon obtained help from a very patient woman at United customer care, named Sabina (and her colleague Adrian) where they made numerous phone calls to contact different gates in the entire airport to find this bag. With their immense help, I will forever be in great gratitude to them. After many moments of panic and breathing exercises, a woman came down to finally return my bag. Unexpectedly, I recognized this woman who worked for United in the first terminal / gate we were previously at. About 2 hours prior at the first gate, out of nowhere and by the miracle of chance, this was the time I had realized there was a good chance of us staying for the day in Frankfurt due to lack of flights departing to Poland. Somehow, I happened to approach her and ask about activities we could do as a group in the area. Without ever realizing she’d soon be my saving grace, she later was the woman who found and handed me my bag and told me, “I had a feeling it was yours.” With enormous relief and alleviation, everything seemed to finally be getting back on the right track. Even though we couldn’t get to Poland on the planned schedule, we were able to explore bits of Frankfurt. We visited a medieval square in the city and explored its quirks, finishing this stressful day at a small café where we had a well deserved glass of red wine. We made the best of our situation and it happened to be a fun and successful delay. Lesson of the story: talk to people you come across because they may be some of the most important people you will ever meet.
