Dream: Antwerp airport

I was at an airport, quite a scruffy airport to be honest. In fact I thought it was Heathrow at first, and then I discovered I was in fact at Antwerp airport, and I was catching a flight to Paris. Clearly I was going home. I wandered through the terminal in search of the check-in, which I eventually found in a small warehouse type building.

I went up to the desk to check-in my two items of baggage, which were a rectangular card board box and a holdall. The box was fine, but I was told the holdall was in fact 2kg over the limit. I thought this strange because neither item seemed to weigh anything to me. It was chaos everywhere and before I had time to do anything they were being whisked away on an open conveyor belt system.

I got the idea that I would take a couple of things out of the holdall and carry them as hand luggage to avoid excess charges. I was also getting a little concerned time was running on. I was looking around to try and see my bag but I couldn’t. There were lots of bags of course sliding along, and to make matters worse the conveyor had been built so that it also served as the conveyor belt to take the dirty trays from the airport restaurant down to the kitchen for cleaning. I saw my cardboard box disappear into a hatch, and then I eventually saw my bag upside down underneath the conveyor belt. Clearly, it had fallen off. No wonder so many bags get lost by airlines I thought.

Undoing the top of my bag, which had now become a ruck sack and not a holdall, to my surprise I found a lot of things I hadn’t expected. Amongst which were a china tea pot, a cup and saucer and a delicate little vase. At this point I mentioned that Julie must have put them in without me knowing. Julie is a neighbour of mine. Fearing I might now get reprimanded for having other things in my bag unknowing to myself I handed the vase to the airline woman. Who immediately snapped it in two by accident. I was mortified, but it did at least gloss over the problem of having mysterious items in my bag.

Next problem was to find some suitable bags to transfer these things into so that my hold luggage would be less weight. Some plastic and some cardboard bags with string handles appeared, and I quickly put the tea pot and other crockery into it. I was really running short of time now. I closed up the ruck sack, and sent it on its way with the other bags and leftover trays of food and dishes.

Suddenly I seemed to have no hand luggage except for these bags of crockery which surprised me. Still, no time to worry about that. Then they told me the Paris flight would be leaving twenty minutes early! I was in a panic, but soon realised they meant the incoming flight. When I asked when the flight for Paris was leaving, the air hostess turned a very serious shade and looked at her feet without speaking.

I then trudged off towards the departure gates feeling lost and uncertain if I would ever leave this place.