At a Stranger’s Mercy – Rome

It was on a dark and stormy night in Rome that I met the next stranger I would like to introduce to you. I started out this particular European vacation by flying into Rome’s Fiumicino Leonardo da Vinci Airport via Houston and London Heathrow.  Since I was arriving later in the evening, I decided to arrange ahead of time for a driver to take me from the airport to my “guest house” in the heart of Rome. I am forever grateful that I did so, as it was the only part of my evening that would end up going as planned.

When I got off the plane that Sunday evening, I had been awake for 20+ hours and was arriving at my fourth airport of the day. Once airplane mode was turned off, my phone dinged with a message from my driver letting me know he had arrived at the airport.  I was exhausted, brain dead, and jet lagged but excited to start my adventure as I waited at the baggage carousel for my larger suitcase to show up . . . but it never did.

I stood there as one by one my fellow passengers claimed their luggage with a growing sense of dread that slowly turned into disbelief. Disbelief because there was NO WAY my checked bag could be lost for the SECOND time in a row traveling to Europe! When it became clear that there were no more bags arriving on the carousel, I messaged my driver that I would be delayed even longer as I had to talk to customer service. He assured me that it was no problem and he was happy to wait, despite the significant delay. (This service had already been paid for ahead of the trip, so there was no payment at stake and the company was not liable for short notice flight cancellations, delays etc.)

When I walked up to “customer service”, I stood there waiting for the young woman behind the desk to finish whatever she was doing on her personal phone and bother to look up and acknowledge me. Once I finally had her attention and explained my situation, she had to call another person over to figure out what to do. This person then gave me a long form to fill out requesting a detailed description of my suitcase’s contents. It was an additional 45 minutes before I could finally leave the airport. During this whole process, my angel of a driver let me know that he had gone ahead and parked his vehicle and was actually waiting inside the airport just outside of security for me. By the time we drove away, he had been waiting two hours for me at the airport on a Sunday evening.

The drive into Rome was uneventful, although it was raining as I had arrived in town on the tail end of a major thunder and lightning storm. It took about 45 minutes to reach my guest house. The SUV barely fit in the narrow, dimly lit side street where we stopped next to a large, windowless wooden door with a barely visible address and no signs marking it as a commercial property. The driver clearly felt as dubious as I about leaving me at such an unmarked location, but it had to be the right place per my directions.

I entered the code I had been given onto a keypad by the door illuminated by my phone’s flashlight, while my driver unloaded my one and only carry-on suitcase. When the door opened, I found myself staring down a long COMPLETELY dark hallway with a staircase at the far end of it. The driver mentioned that a lot of power was out because of the electrical storm that had just passed through. The lovely man offered to carry my bags in, but I decided on the spot that facing a dark strange hallway alone was better than facing a dark strange hallway with someone I didn’t know, no matter how wonderful he had been. So I tipped him with the Euro cash I had on me, although not truly enough to properly thank him for sticking by me through all the unexpected delays on a Sunday evening with wife and kids waiting for him at home. Not once did he make me feel like an imposition or inconvenience, and he would have braved that pitch dark hallway if I had said yes.

So after he drove away, I stuck my courage to its sticking place, grabbed my suitcase and headed into the dark building, the windowless door cutting off my light source from the street as it closed. My airbnb instructions had said my room was on the 2nd floor, accessible through another keypad locked door. Following the light of my iphone flashlight, I made my way up the stairs to the “second” floor. When I entered the tiny (thankfully lit) lobby, I could see four room doors. Only one had a sticky note with a name on it, and it was not my name . . .

Seven years later, I still remember my exhausted bewilderment as I triple checked all the doors for my name, desperate for a bed after almost 24 hours awake, my checked bag lost, and driver gone. Neither panicking or giving up on finding a solution was an option as I was completely alone, so I sat and double checked my airbnb instructions and thought through my options. I had a number for the proprietor, but I was in the heart of historical Rome in an actual stone building and there was absolutely no cell service in that lobby. I decided my only choice was to go back out into the street in the rain and hope someone answered my call late on a Sunday evening (not guaranteed in Italy); however, I needed to first recharge my courage for a bit. I had been there about 15 minutes when it suddenly hit me, I was in Europe and floor numbers start at 0, not 1!  I got up and dragged my suitcase up one more flight of stairs, and, sure enough, there was another door that opened with the same code.  And when I entered the lobby to what American’s would call the 3rd floor, there was a door with a sticky note with my name on it!

I look back on that whole arrival experience and cannot imagine what it would have been like without a very kind driver who sacrificed a chunk of his evening with his family (I was his final ride that day) to patiently wait for an American with an already delayed flight compounded by a checked bag that never arrived on a stormy Sunday evening.