The travel fiasco began with the sound of Christmas music in the midst of the summer vacation season when Required Rogers World Airfield.

Before it was over, plane delays would cause my girl Elena and I to miss a liner and be stuck in a foreign town thousands of miles from home without bags and a place to stay.

Just before 8 a.m. On that Friday in June, we had appeared at the Oklahoma City airfield with plenty of time before our 10:10 a.m. Flight to Atlanta. We were planned to arrive shortly after 12 p.m. in Atlanta with a long layover before boarding an international flight that would take us, with a six-hour time difference, by 9:45 a.m. The following day to Venice.

We wondered out loud what we might do with all of the additional time before we needed to catch a Royal Caribbean cruise for an interesting adventure on the Adriatic Sea and to towns like Koper, Slovenia ; Ravenna, Italy ; and Dubrovnik, Croatia. We were initially supposed to go to Egypt to celebrate Elena’s graduation from Washington School in St. Louis, but it had been canceled because of the political disturbance there. We had thought about other trips, but logistics had stopped those. Then Royal Caribbean offered a special trip on its second week of a new itinerary in the Adriatic. It was a opportunity to take Elena on the promised trip.

We researched the trip and its five cities. We were told about the region’s history by relatives who had been there. We were excited about visiting and exploring historic destinations for the first time.

Stranded in Oklahoma City

With only 30 minutes left before our flight, we anticipated the intercom statement to ski the airplane. Instead we heard that all security checkpoints had been closed, and those passengers who had been cleared must evacuate to the west side of the airport.

Being a reporter, I naturally started asking questions.

I talked with a few of the 2,500 passengers who were marooned that day, all with different stories of travel plans that would be delayed. There were stories of a woman bowler going to a national championship, a pa taking his boys to Key West, Fla, to go underwater diving, a woman flying into Oklahoma City for an audition that she would miss, and a Nigerian businessman in this country for a display. Most expressed concern about my travel plans and wished us the best on getting to Italy on time . No problem, I declared ; we had masses of time to reach Atlanta for the 6:30 p.m. Overnite flight to Venice.

I was still confident even after the bomb scare climaxed in early afternoon when police found the suspicious package contained a bullhorn playing Christmas music, a mobile phone, batteries and wires. But as the hours passed, the brightness faded. We eventually left more than 6 hours later on the same plane to Atlanta that was meant to leave at 10:10 a.m.

Missing Flight After Flight and Our Ship

Our Atlanta flight arrived just as our original Venice flight was taking off, so we rushed to the international terminal to see if an 8:30 p.m. Flight to Venice was available. A cranky clerk battered frenziedly on her keyboard and told us the 8:30 flight was not available. However , she found an overnite flight that hooked up to Venice thru Paris, which gave us plenty of time to get to the ship before it launched. The clerk continued to pound at her keyboard for another 30 mins, griping because she thought we hadn’t informed her about our 2 checked bags. We assured her we had, and she commenced pecking wildly on the keyboard again before telling us our bags would arrive in Venice on time .

We eventually received our boarding passes and made it to the gate just before the doors closed for the Paris flight. As the airplane departed, I was ecstatic that everything was going to work out.

Then the plane was delayed just about thirty mins before landing in Paris. We rushed to get to the Venice connection, only to be informed at the security checkpoint that we must return to the ticket counter as we had not received a boarding pass in Atlanta. (Later on we were told that clerks cannot give boarding passes on flights lasting more than six hours.) After running to the ticket counter, we were said to the gates to the Venice flight were closed.

We thought about our options : Book the next flight to Venice and miss the ship’s departure by about 30 minutes or find a flight to the ship’s first stop in Koper. The sole problem is that Koper cannot be reached by plane or train, only by personal car. So we took the 1st option.

A Place To Remain, But No Baggage

Country House is owned by Rosa Milevoj and Loris Bernaroinelli. Rosa, from Croatia, speaks 8 languages and was formerly a ship employee. Her man, Loris, is proud that he is mistaken for actor Robert DeNiro but speaks tiny English. He , however , loves the sounds of Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Lady Gaga and other American vocalists and will dance or sing loudly to the music.

After more than thirty six hours in airports, we devoured the normal Italian dinner that evening of pasta, cold meats and cheeses, bread and salad, with the red wine that Loris and the Country House graciously served. The dinner guests eat just outside of the villa where the owners ‘ tiny dogs wander the estate and stare at the diners, in hope of a handout or for food to fall from the table. The estate smelled of lilac flowers as the birds chirped softly in the background till Loris made a decision to start singing again. Most of the other dinner guests were Italian, with one couple being from England.
Also,we thought about trip in some religious place where we will find peace and lovely nature like as Medjugorje in Bosnia, where we can find anytime some good Medjugorje accommodations.

We returned to the Venice airport the next morning to retrieve our bag. I found Elena’s bag in lost bags but not mine. A clerk then told me that my bag possibly would not arrive during the whole trip due to a baggage system snafu in Paris, regardless of if it had left Atlanta.

As we started to leave, I spotted a woman with long kinked hair and wearing a white sun dress sobbing near the lost bags window. The baggage snafu had said another victim.

Inside a few minutes, we returned to the same Air France clerk, who prepared us again at the Country House for one more night. Rosa volunteered to call the airfield to gripe about my bag, and that was entertaining to listen to Rosa’s Croatian voice talking Spanish to a clerk in Italy. Rosa then found an airport bag clerk who just happened to be swimming in his Speedo at the bed-and-breakfast’s massive pool, found near one of Venice’s many canals. He shortly returned with the final decision : My bag was lost, and we wished to go to Venice to buy clothes,writes tagza.com.