The Worst Travel Experience; What You Mean You Lost My Luggage?

By far, I would have to say the worst travel experience I ever had would have to be in August 1988, coming back from Germany to JFK Airport in New York. I was in a rap group called JVC FORCE and we had a first overseas tour. In school we read, A Tale Of Two Cities, a novel by Charles Dickens that starts out, "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." This trip epitomized that phrase for me forever.

The trip itself was incredible, the experience was unforgettable. We flew in to Frankfurt and performed all through Germany for a month in cities including, Frankfurt, Bremen (where the make Beck's beer, which was my favorite), East Berlin (before the wall came down), and Hamburg, just to name a few.

What made it the worst travel experience wasn't so much the trip there or the experienced in Germany. With the excepting of the promoter getting drunk the night before we were going to East Berlin, oversleeping, missing three planes and almost having to go home half way through the tour because we couldn't get in touch with him. That and he still owed us a lot of money from the night before.

What made it the worst travel experience was the return trip when they lost of luggage in JFK airport. I mean we just flew halfway around the world for the first time, traveled by plane, train and automobile through Germany and they lose our luggage for 8 hours inside JFK. They were able to verify it was on the plane and that it got off the plane but could not find it in the airport. The three of us in the group, our manager and 26 other people on the plane's luggage. How do you lose 30 peoples luggage in the airport?

To top it off, when we approach the people at the airport about our luggage we get someone whose job it is to know where our luggage is to give us an answer like, "What do you expect me to do, pick up the airport and shake it until your luggage come out. Hey you know what your luggage looks like and you can find it..."

Eventually our luggage was found; safe and secure. One of the guys in my group had most of his money in one of his suitcases and it was all there. Even though that trip is one of my fondest memories, it has to be the top on my list of worst travel experience ever.