Traveling anywhere involves going a little bit outside of your comfort zone. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Yankee traveling south of the Mason-Dixon line, or a Yankee fan courageously showing your face (and ball cap) on Yawkey Way after 10PM— there are simply some moments where you just bite the bullet and see what happens.

So I arrived in Poland for a week of meetings after making a tight-ish connection through Brussels. My luggage, unfortunately, was not so lucky and opted to sit in Belgium’s capital and eat waffles. No big deal; I initially figured that the next plane would arrive and the bag would be delivered to my hotel by nightfall. I went to the Lost Luggage desk to confirm.

“Your bag will be here in two days,” the woman told me. Two days?! Where the heck am I, Bandar Seri Begawan? It would appear that direct flights from Brussels only happen every other day. The European Union, as it turns out, is not as connected as you might imagine.

So having no more than one word of Polish in my repertoire, I got to the hotel and asked where I could do some impromptu clothes shopping. The receptionist was unfamiliar with the town, but she did point out a bus stop where I could take a journey and reach a vaguely described shopping mall. Me, I was tired, and knew enough about the Polish language to know that it’s kinda tricky (read: HARD TO UNDERSTAND). I also had no zlotzy on hand and really just wanted a place I could access on foot. Besides, the last time I was in Poland and rode a bus, my friend and I were fined as soon as we boarded because we hadn’t any small money and neglected to buy a ticket. I needed to be a more responsible traveler.

Feeling unsure of my surroundings and language skills, I dropped my backpack in the room and struck out into the little town center. I didn’t know the Polish words for things like “socks”, “unmentionables” or “smart casual clothing”, but I did have some faith in my shopping skills. I just needed to find a promising storefront with a Visa sticker in the window.

It didn’t take long before I found a small supermarket. I ducked inside with a mental list of things that I knew I was missing: toothpaste, face wash, eye makeup remover. This should be easy.

Using my internal divining rod, I navigated to the beauty aisle and started to sweep over the small selection but promising selection of beauty products.  As I scanned each bottle, I slowly realized that my Polish was absolute garbage, and honestly I could not determine the purpose that each product advertised.

What appeared to be makeup remover had been placed alongside the bottles of nail polish. I had visions of blinding myself with acetone come the end of the night if I failed to translate appropriately.

“Excuse me,” I said, flagging down the first woman around my age who appeared to share an equal interest in her beauty regimen, “Do you speak English?”

She shook her head ‘no’, but I had already decided that this question would be a formality. I thrust two products at her and pantomimed my interpretation of their use.

“This—“ I showed her the bottle of blue liquid, “for…” and then I made like I was taking off my mascara.

She studied my charades challenge and then nodded in the affirmative. Then we moved on to face wash before I graciously let her go with a sincere dziękuję (thank you). All was going well. I found a travel size tube of toothpaste and then made my way to the checkout.  Easy day.

Right outside of the supermarket I spotted what would prove to be my Polish clothier. From my time in Senegal, I can recognize the significance of the word “promotion”, so I excitedly climbed the stairs and entered a store that would offer everything that I’d need…and clearly on sale!

From the music that was playing (‘Total Eclipse of the Heart‘) to the selection of patterns at my disposal, I felt like I was straddling the fashion divide of The Golden Girls and a walk-on extra for the music video ‘99 Luftballons‘.  Whatever.This would have to work.

I went up to the till with a big handful of clothing. The clerk figured out pretty quickly that I had no Polish and showed me the total price with a calculator. In my haste to get this shopping mission accomplished, I had failed to look up the currency conversion. The clerk could have written “hello” upside down on the calculator screen and it still would have meant the same thing to me. I nodded and handed over my credit card. Overusing my one Polish word to the salesgirl, I smiled and took my bag of clothes back to the hotel. Yes, I still felt off my game without my luggage, but I decided that I was gonna look just fine.

 

So everything went more or less well with my purchases. The only misstep ultimately came in the tooth department. Did you know that denture cream does nothing to clean teeth? The container also looks a whole lot like tooth paste. Whatever I bought was composed primarily of petroleum jelly and I was left swiping my teeth and goo-filled toothbrush back and forth with the hotel hand towel for about five solid minutes. Nasty. I never want dentures.

After two days of feeling off kilter without running (my shoes were in my bag) and sleeping on scratchy sheets in the nip (ditto for the pajamas), my suitcase was finally delivered to the hotel. Upon spying my purple bag at the front desk, I did a white girl happy dance and announced to everyone in earshot that I was going to take a shower.  Which I did.

At this stage in the game I am suspicious that this has become the world’s most boring story— and indeed it ranks up there with, “Let me torture you with my boring travel horror experience!”  I apologize for taking up your time. But what I did learn was that I really didn’t need my bag— or at least all of the crap in it.

Nobody at the conference ever noticed that on day three I had finally slathered my face with my own moisturizer, or that I was no longer on day six of the same pair of skinny jeans. I own way too much stuff.

So I’m at the airport now and headed home with a connection through Germany. You can bet that I once again checked my bag and placed inside of it some of my funky new Polish products. I have no idea if these things will make it all the way to London, but at the end of the day it won’t really matter. I’ve got what I need right here. As well as a whole closet and bathroom full of stuff waiting for me in my apartment.