ArtTraveler backstory: Searching for Easy Jet´s lost luggage in Malaga

"Searching for Easy Jet´s Lost Luggage Office Malaga Airport" Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

It was stark contrast.

Two-plus hours before touchdown in Malaga late July, Gatwick´s Easy Jet cattle call check-in was pushing forward as Easy Jet yellers, hired to keep an endless line moving towards the budget airline´s bottom line, herded us along.

As I posted from London, I had become a victim of Easy Jet, forced to explore London at premium prices for two nights, one and one half days.

I fondly remembered the days of Swiss Air and polite and generously providing (no peanuts or pretzels) flight attendants and even leg room.

Enter Easy Jet.

So, when I landed in Malaga´s Pablo Picasso Airport at about 8 p.m., I found our flight was the only one on the ground expecting luggage.

It would turn out to be another Black Friday.

"Ghost Town" at Malaga Airport Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2011)

Five of us waited as the conveyor belt wound its way loop to loop fruitlessly with only one or two pieces of luggage on it, none of them ours.

We waited another 15 minutes for divine intervention.

No luggage. It´s missing in action.

 

This is not the time you rent Internet time to discover your EU air passenger rights.

My mission was to find the Easy Jet´s lost luggage office, an office itself that appeared disguised as a wall.

With workable Spanish, I asked directions in an increasingly vacant airport. It could have been 3 a.m. or high noon for Samana Santa and everyone had gone to fiesta.

The place appeared nearly vacant.

One “I” booth person directed me to the other terminal.

Once there, yet another officious person who knew nothing turned me around from whence I had come for a half kilometer walk.

In the end, I gave up, hired a cab up the mountains and called the next day to sort it out, but not before deciding to take a few pictures to document my perceptions.

As it turned out the next day, the airline´s lost luggage office was tucked in a far away corner, barely visible, unlike the two separate, cavernous check-ins at separate Gatwick terminals.

Rock on and practice peace and love.

Stefan, the ArtTraveler ™

ArtTraveler notes:

After living at the Hotel Queen Mary in Budapest (3.5 stars), I heartily recommend it: old on the outside, otherwise totally modern (23 rooms); 

The owner and staff are affable and speak English and German. Tel: 0036-1-413-3510; www.hotelqueenmary.hu; info@hotelqueenmary.hu.

 

 

Check out a sculpture or mosaics workshop or walking tour in our beautiful mountains. See: www.spanjeanders.nl and www.competafinearts.com.

 

"Walking the Walk," near Canillas de Albaida, Andalusia Photograph by Stefan van Drake (2007)

  

Contact me at stefanvandrake@gmail.com or by calling (34) 951 067 703; from the UK at BT landline rates, 0844 774 8349.