Morning One.
Looks like only 3 out of our 8 bags made it. The only one I actually cared about did not. I took out some of the kids clothes from their carry on to make room for some toys and plane activities, unfortunately I didn’t plan as well as I should have for the real possibility of a missing luggage. I didn’t leave a pair of sandals for Noah that I meant to so now he only has some regular shoes to wear around the house.
In many ways it feels and seems exactly like it did three years ago. Nobody seems different or older except for the kids, but even in them the personalities are the same.
Later…
We went back to the airport to check on the remaining bags. The airport is actually pretty nice and seemly very organized. Of course this doesn’t help our cause as we still have to ask where to go. We are pointed to an area that says Authorized Personal Only. As we approached the entrance, Vaseli keeps going much to my surprise. Some younger looking guy says something which sounded like an annoyed version of “Can’t you see the sign?”. Presumably he tells the guy that I’m looking for lost baggage. He then signals me to go through the door. Now I’m confused but head through the door nevertheless. I find three of five missing bags, luckily the only one I care about is among them.
These three bags are pretty large and I look towards the front entrance to size the customer service factor. I quickly determine that we’re just not there yet and I’m on my own. We’ll need a few more decades between us and the communist experiment formally known as Yugoslavia.
I precariously stack one bag on top of another and drag them away. To my surprise the young guy that was supposedly in charge said he would take one of the bags for me. As we headed out the smile on my face again turned to confusion as he is quickly heading to an area in the opposite direction of where we were we came from. As I looked back, I saw on Vaseli’s face the expression of a man that just heard a surprise verdict.
I went into this hallway where there was an older looking guy in a uniform sitting at a small table, legs crossed, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. I couldn’t make it out exactly, but two fuzzy words started to come into focus. The first was “Interrogation”, the next was “Turkish”. A woman in a similar uniform appeared out of a side room with a stream of words I had no chance of deciphering. Usually I’m more prepared with a slightly more respectful reply, but in this case I just gave a random response in English almost like a Rorschach experiment.
What followed was a string of circler questions leading to the same destination, “How much do you want to pay to get out of this torture chamber” or so I imagined. Luckily for me I once went through a real communist border interrogation during my first visit here. This uniformed refugee of the past, even with his costume and slanted looks didn’t really intimidate me. After playing the part of a dumb tourist, I think he grew tired and told the woman to have me open up one of the bags. I give the “Like I Care” look in return. Looking a different direction, he picks the suitcase in the middle which also happens to be the medium sized one.
The woman asks me to open it up and I gladly oblige. It opens up revealing a whole lot of very boring looking cloths. The old commandant in charge quickly loses interest… nothing to play with here. The woman barely lifts a few items as asks almost apologetically to please close it up. To my surprise she strikes up a conversation after I tell her the important suitcase is the larger one they didn’t pick because it has some of my kids clothes in it. With an actual smile on her face, she says she is surprised I’m old enough to have kids. At first I’m not sure if I should take the bait, but I figure why not. I tell her she has my passport in her hands so she can see for herself.
I then made the mistake of saying that in fact it’s my birthday in a few days. This is true, but not technically speaking, meaning it’s not what is reported in my passport . Luckily I don’t have to explain the details of this and I leave saying “Hvala”, hesitating a bit first, of course, the woman delighted with my attempt.
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