It was like deja-vous. After hours and hours of flight delays, missed flights, and sitting next to Spaniards who don't believe in deodorant, you arrive to the baggage claim. You wait patiently but start to grow anxious as the crowd of fellow flight BA148 goers slowly dwindles, bags disappearing off the luggage belt.
Then, the unthinkable happens: the belt stops. Your flight number, shown on the television above the belt, disappears and is replaced with some flight number coming in from Athens. Damned Greeks. As you wait in the "Equipaje perdido" (lost luggage) line, you remember the debacle two years ago: the horror of wearing the same blue pants for four days, washing your hair with handsoap, using sparingly the free mini tube of toothpaste from good ole British Airways, and fighting with airport people who said they'd already delivered the bags. (In the end they ended up being in some old airplane hangar filled with cardboard boxes that was across the airfield from the rest of the airport)
Luckily, this time only one and a half days of frustration were spent waiting on my beloved possessions. So I guess everything's fine. But c'mon now. Is this REALLY going to happen everytime?