I'm in Barcelona this week, attending the ACM Recommender Systems 2010 conference. Flying here yesterday morning, I had to change planes in Paris. Unfortunately, the woman at the Eva Air check-in desk in Taipei wasn't able to check my bag through to the Air France flight to Barcelona, and the travel agent had only given me two hours in Paris, so I didn't have time to pick up my bag and check back in again. So I didn't clear customs at all, but transferred directly to my Barcelona flight, leaving my bag to make lonely trips around the luggage carousel in Charles de Gaulle airport as it waited for the Air France lost luggage agent to come pick it up.
Once I got to Barcelona at about noon, the very nice woman at the lost luggage desk told me that the luggage would be delivered to my hotel by 9 PM the same day. That proved to be overly optimistic, and by 8 AM this morning, the bag still hadn't arrived, forcing me to attend the first day of my conference unshaven and wearing exactly the same clothes I had worn while traveling for 23 hours the day before. At lunch, I walked over to a nearby H&M to look for some clothes in case my bag was further delayed, but the men's section was limited to one aisle, and the only thing that looked good enough to try on was a shirt with black and grey horizontal stripes that made me look like a mime. So I pinned my hopes on the bag arriving today and went back to the afternoon sessions of the conference. By 5 PM I was feeling quite stale, so I went back to the hotel early to check for my bag, and found that it had finally arrived! I was able to change my clothes and shave. Once I get some dinner and take a shower, I'm sure I'll feel almost myself again.
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