Day 2 - Tallinn, Estonia  - How to get the airlines to ship our bags????

Joan's View

With the time change, I was up late last night chatting with United and doing some other reading. Today's focus was trying to get the airlines to ship our bags. Since there are AirTags on them, we know exactly where they are in Dulles, but getting someone from one of the three airlines to coordinate putting them on a flight has been ongoing. United and Lufthansa say it is Scandinavian Airlines responsibility, and Scandinavian has only a limited presence at Dulles.

It was about noon our time when we went to Omniva, the local postal carrier,  to cancel our empty bags getting shipped to Vilnius. Tony's phone still can only call out of Estonia so we walked to the store again to use their store phone. On the way back we stopped for some breakfast at a grocery store - coffee for Tony and a pastry for me. 

Most of the day was spent working on getting the bike bags on a flight. Below is our Airbnb workspace.

We had several ideas during the day. Tony called Ron Fairbanks, a good friend and his best man from college, who lives near Dulles, and asked if he would go to the airport to see if he could get the bags moving. Ron made one trip to the airport and is going back as I am typing. Thank you Ron!!!

Another idea was to contact our brother-in-law, Tom Stokes, since Tom has over a million miles of flying in his career. We tried to use his premier executive status at United, but that is still a work in progress as well.

We did find a person at baggage claim in Dulles, Juan, who called us back and seems to take a genuine interest in our case.

Among all this, Tony's phone, our phone with international service still does not work within Estonia. Several more calls were made to Spectrum trying to get that resolved, but it looks like we may have to switch carriers while here.

We ventured out for dinner and ate at the old town square. This square in Tallin is the oldest square in Europe. It's really a beautiful kind of medieval area. It was kind of nice eating outside under cover while it rained. You can see how Tony is feeling right now after doing months of research to make this trip happen but faced with the possibility that the plan is going to drastically change. We are scheduled to start biking Sunday morning.

Tony's View

How can this be so difficult!!!!!!!  All three Airlines blaming each other while our bags just sit there. After talking to so many people and being on the phone almost for 30 hours, we have gotten no where. Hopefully, someone gets them on some plane tonight. What can I say, that is what we have been doing since we got here. I have rarely been known for patience and my frustration is going through the roof. It is a good thing Joan is here to keep me a little grounded.