Bad start

I've never had such a difficult time getting out of the US. I showed up at the airport at my scheduled time on Monday and breezed through the check in. I'd opted to fly out of Reagan and have an extra hop through New York to avoid the nightmarish check in at Dulles. As I arrived at my gate I was feeling quite cocky about being so clever, maybe that was my undoing.

What they had neglected to tell me at the check-in counter is that there were major delays. I ended up spending 4 hours in the airport waiting for a flight and then trying to reschedule when I realized that I would miss my connections. Then giving up and trying to get my luggage back. I ended up going home without my luggage, extremely frustrated, with a crazy taxi driver who had a fan blowing in my face, was whistling, constantly tapping the breaks, and who didn't know where my neighborhood was.

Round two. On Tuesday, September 11th, I went back to Reagan and basically had a repeate experience, minus checking-in any bags. Even though the woman at the check-in counter remembered me from the day before, she told me the flights were on time when they were already running late. After waiting until after my flight was supposed to have left, and seeing the hoard of New Yorkers becoming increasingly ticked off, I decided to explore other options. I finally found a very helpful Delta employee who completely re-routed my trip through Atlanta. The only consolation was that I did get to fly business class across the Atlantic to try and make up for my inconvenience.

Needless to say, I had to do without my luggage for my first couple of days in Albania (yes, that is where I now am), but I was very impressed that it actually arrived at the end of day 2.