ANCONA FALCONARA AIRPORT: I know I screwed up but I want my stuff! (or how I learned to survive Italy with only two T-shirts)

IT WASN'T UNTIL I WAS sailing 40,000 feet high in the air - somewhere between Switzerland and Germany - that I realized that my two checked bags probably wouldn’t be joining me in Ancona, my final destination.

I became aware of this dismal truth when I happened to notice my baggage tickets listed Zurich and Munich as arrivals with absolutely no mention of Ancona.

The flight attendant explained the simple solution: find my bags in the baggage claim and re-check them. Easy. The only problem was when my flight from Zurich landed and when my flight to Ancona left -10:15 AM and 10:45 AM respectively.

Surprisingly, my usual tweak of a self (I’m a spaz) remained calm. It is uncertain whether I can credit this to the several deep breaths I took, the fact that I was too delusional to fully comprehend what was going on (I hadn’t slept for nearly twenty hours) or the painful truth that there was no one to blame but myself for not double-checking the destination of my own beloved bags. Somehow, I managed a friendly chat with the young girl sitting next to me for the remaining fifty minutes of the flight and I (briefly) forgot about my lost luggage.

For the next four days, I would be forced to do the unthinkable - the worst nightmare for a closet girly-girl: wear other people's T-shirts.

Yes, for the next four days (days I seemed to be photographed more often than Paris Hilton), I alternated between a navy Michigan tee and another that reads, “Czech Me Out,” obnoxiously across the chest. While I was thankful my friends were generous with their clothes (I never once judged their taste), I also understandably wanted my own stuff.

Despite the twice-a-day showers and constant perfume spraying, I never felt rid of the sticky, overly-used stench that one acquires while traveling without a clean change into their own ratty T-shirt and mesh shorts. And so I was reluctantly forced to live a painful ninety-eight hours in this condition.

I knew I wouldn’t live this way forever. I knew my bags and I would eventually be reunited and our embrace would be sweet and loving. I also knew that in the scheme of things, my ordeal was petty and my view on the whole thing was ridiculously absurd and juvenile.

I knew all these things, and yet they made no difference. I wanted my bags, and I wanted them now.

Anyone who has ever lost a bag while traveling can relate; it is those who lack the experience who simply don’t get how miserable it truly is.

So while it was a painful (and smelly) four days, it was also four days that helped me form an unbreakable bond with anyone else who has ever lost their luggage.

- Ann Curran