We woke up in Charlotte and after a decent breakfast at Starbucks, ubered back to the airport. We had plenty of time to kill so Tserka and I went and stood in line for an hour at the help desk to ensure that the bags we had checked in Indy were accounted for and ready to go with us to Germany. Yes, absolutely, your bags are good to go! Fabulous! I took a tour of the airport to rack up a single mile to add to my holiday hundred, then we spend our vouchers on some food.

Let me set the stage for the continued sh@t show that ensued once we landed. Since our original flight was into Munich but this one was into Frankfort with a Lufthansa connecting flight to Munich. We landed 20 mins early and had a 2 hr layover. I had gate checked my carryon since the flight was full and asked if I had to pick it up and if so where. One person told me yes, you must pick up all baggage and go through customs. So we headed to baggage claim. We waited until all bags were unloaded and nope, none of ours were there. Crap. Now things were getting tight to clear security and get to our gate for Munich. We asked another person, what do we do since our bags aren’t here. She said, no, the bags are checked through to Munich. Ok, race to security and find an epic line! Tserka had stayed behind to make sure the bags didn’t show up and we really feared he wouldn’t make it! At the gate, I ask a 3rd person to clarify that our bags were going to Munich. I showed him a bag ticket and he said, yep, all bags are good to go. Phew! We make a back up plan in case Tserka can’t make it (there are flights every 2 hrs to Munich), and board our plane. Tserka boards just a bit after us, I have no idea how he managed it! He is sitting more mid plane and on the right side, we are in the dead last row on the left. The pilot comes on and says we will be delayed a bit because they have to remove some bags of people who chose to not take this flight. Ok, no big deal. Tserka comes back a bit later and says he sees our bags on the tarmac. We assume it is because they offloaded everything and that they would be put back on. Well dear reader, they were NOT put back on! We arrived in Munich and again waited until all bags were unloaded and the only one that made it was my gate checked carry on. It was now around 11 am and to say we were getting cranky is an understatement. The lost baggage people of Lufthansa were very helpful but the biggest issue was no one knew which bag numbers were correct since they had been retagged in Charlotte due to the missed flight. So for 3 bags we had 6 numbers and no clue which was which. They took all of our info and also inferred it was our fault because we were supposed to show ALL of the bag tags to the gate person. It’s a little infuriating in that the reason we couldn’t get on the original flight was because our bags were NOT on the plane and this time we made the plane but our bags didn’t. Next up was the rental car counter. Josh had used his gold member (anyone want a smoke and a pancake??) status to reserve any car that was available on the lot. Since we were behind schedule he had called and told them we’d be picking it up a day late and they guy said sure, no issue. When we got to the counter the rep asks how the day was going and Steve jokingly replies “it could only get worse if you tell us that the only thing left to choose is a bicycle”. The rep visibly takes a deep breath and then tells us that we do not have a car reserved! At this point I give up and go sit down. Josh works whatever magic he can and about an hour later we leave with just our carry ones, but we at least leave the freaking airport! Given that the bags had all of our adventure gear and spare clothes, we elected to stay the night in Freising and hope that our bags showed up. We found a brew pub for lunch and a hotel just up the road. After strolling around to buy toothbrushes and toothpaste, I think I managed to stay awake until maybe 7:30 pm.