Spokane to Stuttgart

Jim Wilson kindly drives us to the airport and we check our bags to Stuttgart. The last leg of our trip will be by train and so we verify with the agent that our bags will meet us in Stuttgart. She agrees and it even says so on the baggage claim check. Ha Ha, not so, as we will discover later.

We fly Alaska Air to Portland and then board Condor Air for a flight to Frankfurt. The flight is delayed for one hour because the TSA has chosen this plane for an unannounced security check. We’ve never encountered one of those before but the gate agent assures us they happen all the time and randomly.

Condor Air is a partner of Alaska and Lufthansa and even though we’d never heard of it they do a fine job of getting us to our destination, albeit an hour late. We have a close connection so we speed walk through miles of airport concourse and arrive at the correct train platform with one minute to spare. The train however is running a few minutes late so we have time to take a breath. When we board it’s standing room only so we hold on tight as the speeds are upwards of 90 miles an hour. At the first (and only) stop many people disembark and we find two seats together. 

Stuttgart, like most of the rest of Europe, is experiencing a heat wave. Infants and the elderly are at risk, and we agree. It’s HOT. We find the travel center, but no baggage claim, so we inquire at the information desk only to be told there is no baggage claim at the station and there hasn’t been one for eight years. We talk to a Lufthansa agent and he says “oh oh” and we all agree that it will be best if we find our hotel and start making some phone calls.

At the taxi queue we give the hotel address to the first guy in line. He smiles and says it’s right there, across the street. We schlep our carry-ons through the hot air and drop them gladly at the Hotel AM Schlossgarten front desk.  They tsk tsk with us and offer to see what they can do about locating our luggage while we find our room and have dinner on the terrace.

We freshen up a bit and then sit under an umbrella next to a municipal park at a secluded table. Feels good. We order a tomahawk steak with fries (JMB) and a sea bream with house salad (PKB).  All delicious right down to the pomegranate seeds in the salad. We observe people enjoying the adjacent park, biking, walking, taking photos: municipal serenity. 

Feeling hopeful we approach the hotel desk. The clerk has tried but failed to communicate with Condor but has a website for me where I can register the lost bags. I go upstairs to begin the process while Jim goes out to buy toothbrushes and toothpaste. By the time he returns I have attempted to fill out the form 5 or 6 times only to be met by  error messages at random points in the form. I Google Alaska Airlines and speak to a customer service agent who denies any responsibility and cannot even provide a phone number for Condor Air. Really? Are they partners or not?

I find a number for Condor on line, but can’t get the call to go through. I speak with the desk clerk and she also cannot get the number to work. She has taken a real interest in finding our bags and together we try different approaches.  I find a number and she takes the phone to make inquiries in German. Finally we speak to the Lost and Found office at the Frankfurt Airport. She tells us she has no baggage only lost jackets and misplaced laptops but she has the answer we’ve been looking for: Condor Airlines baggage service at the Frankfurt Airport. But, she tells us the office is closed for the evening and won’t reopen until 7am the following morning.  And so we brush our teeth and try to sleep. Tomorrow is car pick-up day and we will need to have an early breakfast and be on our way to the Mercedes factory.

As I toss and turn I can see an eerie light shining through the window. I get up to look and realize it’s a Mercedes symbol in white neon turning slowly on top of a clock tower.