Did I mention that one of the airlines lost a piece of our luggage? Well, they did. We saw it go on the plane in Charlotte, but we didn’t get it back when Martinair bumped us from our Orlando flight. We’ve been trying to track it down ever since. On Friday, I got an email that says:

Thank you for contacting US Airways about your baggage. We apologize you have been without your luggage and we thank you for your patience. We have checked your file record and see that your luggage has arrived to the destination city and is available for pick up. emphasis mine

So we came to the airport a day early to make sure we had time to get our bag. We got to Amsterdam at noon. It’s now 4 o’clock, and I don’t have my bag. I have a headache, a righteous anger and a cranky baby, but I don’t have my bag. My bag that contains all of Rockford’s new pants and my external hard drive. Which is storing most of Poppy’s baby pictures. Which is why this is not just giving me a headache, it’s breaking my heart.

The man at the baggage claim that handles US Airways stuff says the tracking number I have is no good here; it’s only good in the United States. The people at the U.S. 800 number say the bag is here. Or maybe it’s en route. When I called back today, they said maybe it wasn’t quite here yet.

I hope I never have to fly again.

Departure
We sat on the runway in Atlanta for an hour and a half.

The journey
Poppy slept for about 5 hours of the 8 and a half hour flight. She’s a peach of a traveler. I watched “Over the Hedge” and then slept for a little while – maybe an hour – and Rockford didn’t sleep at all. But he did watch “16 Blocks.” I don’t think that’s an even trade.

Arrival
We got off the plane to find that KLM’s baggage handlers had broken our stroller. They snapped one of the legs in half. After we showed our passports to the guy at turnstile, I went straight to the KLM service counter to file a claim. The lady there typed something up and printed it out for me, but we have to mail it in to the KLM office ourselves. After I finished up there and Rockford gathered the luggage that actually made the flight, Rockford went to find the Martinair baggage claim office to see if our fifth bag had made the trip. It hadn’t. Martinair says they never got the bag from US Airways, US Airways says they gave it to Martinair, and it looks, for now at least, that we’ve lost most of our clothing. They gave Rockford a phone number to call. It’s a US number. And we don’t have a phone.

First impression
The cows are taller here.

The apartment
Downstairs isn’t so bad. It’s entirely Ikea-furnished – and we’re not averse to Ikea. But the toilet is in a tiny closet just inside the front door, and the only sink downstairs is in the kitchen. I can’t figure out how to open the door to the “patio” – which, by the way, was the first thing to make me think “tenement housing” – and there’s no oven. The living room area isn’t horrible. It’s just sort of empty and sad.

And then I went upstairs.

There are three bedrooms. This, we thought, was a good thing. I think we were mistaken. The rooms are numbered 1, 2 and 3. The people who arranged our housing put a crib for Poppy in Room 3, the smallest of the bedrooms. A very kind gesture, but the crib is about a foot and a half deep, and it’s broken. Rooms 1 and 2 are basically the same – two twin beds and a tall Ikea bureau in each. Room 2 has 2 big Ikea desks in it, too – perfect for scrapbooking. But all of my scrapbooking stuff is in Charlotte.

The bathroom is pink tile with a sink on one wall, a showerhead on the other and a drain in the floor. When I was first exploring the place, I was worried we didn’t have a toilet at all, that we were just supposed to use the drain in the middle of the bathroom floor. So finding the wee WC was actually a nice surprise.

We’re in Atlanta. They’re supposed to start boarding in about half an hour.