In the spirit of all things diversionary, and to commemorate my plane going to Kuala Lumpur, I decided to fly to Paris and my luggage decided it would prefer a holiday without me. I guess I shouldn´t complain though - one man I met in London was trying to get from Australia to Moscow and he was being sent to Vienna, and a lady trying to get to Birmingham was also being sent to Paris with me. I even heard someone getting off the 12 hour flight from Singapore being told that to reach their final destination they would have to go via Singapore - I think that might have made me violent...
More problems ensued at the Air France check-in because I had been re-ticketed with an unknown person called Amy, and because she was not with me at boarding they wouldn´t let me on. Turns out it didn´t matter that I had no idea who she was, but I was very pleased they´d given me an invisible friend to keep me company.
Finally, after they´d got everyone on board and done the final head count, they agreed to let me on - so yes, that´s me, the person that everyone else thought had made the plane late. However my new special friend never did materialise so they just scribbled her off my ticket - very advanced.
It was around this time that we established that my luggage had not made it from Qantas to Air France, and no amount of asking them to hold the plane/phone Qantas would help; they advised me to wait til I got to Barcelona to complain. On the plus side there was some luggage on board that belonged to a man that they would not let board, due to Qantas messing up his ticketing (perhaps because he didn´t have an invisible friend?) - but they wouldn´t let me borrow his clothes and insisted on finding his luggage and getting it off the plane - bizarre, but he was the actual reason for the delay fellow travellers.
All this led to me arriving 11 hours late to Gerona where my very patient sister had been waiting at the train station for me. Unfortunately when I borrowed a text message off a very kind spanish girl to let Nicci know my ETA, I never specified where we would actually meet - so very patient Nicci waited at the train station, while I walked right past where she was sitting and made my own way to the hotel.
As for the saga of the "retarded luggage" (I´m quoting Air France) - I spoke to them this morning and it has been identified. They didn´t tell me where it is, but we know for sure it is not in Barcelona. But I am very pleased it has been identified.