10.16.19
If you have done any amount of traveling you have probably met Travel Angels. You don’t need to be religious or even spiritual, but if you keep yourself open to them, they will show up when you need them. We have met many and have even been travel angels ourselves! It takes no training or preparation, you just need to be there to help someone in need.
Recently Kathleen was in need as she realized she left her phone behind on a bench and when she returned it was gone. She actually was at three different locations, searched them all and wondered what to do. The added level of stress was due to the fact that there were some personal documents in the case which could have opened up an even worse nightmare of identity theft. I’ll tell you now the story has a happy ending, but here’s what happened in between.
The first step most people take is to use their “Find my Phone” app to track it down. If you don’t have that app on your PC or on another phone, do it now. That app allows many things, including the ability to wipe out the phones memory so nothing can be retrieved. When she used the app it appeared that the phone was on the way south out of town, but that can be deceiving since it is not 100% accurate. She fretted over it and stayed calm and tried to set up another phone, which is always good to have. But her spiritual angel appeared, a nice fellow traveler from Australia who spends his time between Split and his home country. She got the phone back, the man would not accept any money for his troubles, and it ended Happily Ever After.
And this gentlemen was not the first Travel Angel we have met! In our eight months as traveling nomads we have lost:
– A credit card at LAX the day we were leaving! We never knew until the gate agent paged us to get it.
– And yet another credit card was left in a grocery store terminal in Barcelona. Again, I did not know until the next morning, went to the store and the card was in the manager’s office.
– A passport…yes, really. In Sevilla, Spain, it fell from a pocket while fishing for change. We realized it 15 minutes later and happened to talk to JUST THE RIGHT PERSON, who brought it back.
– At one of the airports we were running late and were in the WRONG LINE, since we had luggage to check, a rarity. An angel saw us in line, told us we needed to go to another area to check the luggage first and even took us there herself. Because of her blessings we checked the luggage, got in the right line and all was good.
– And there was one where the Angel was unknown as I left a backpack sitting at the BUS STATION in Deva, Romania, took a taxi to our room, realized a bag was missing, hauled ass back to the station…and there it was. Our Angel was watching over our bag which had lots of stuff which would have been missed.
All these Angels, known and unknown, were there at the right time and helped turn a stressful disaster into a minor inconvenience- and learning lesson! And there have been those we have helped as well, mostly because of the experience we are/ have learned along the journey. The first time(s) for everything is a challenge, but we LOVE helping people avoid some of the mistakes we have made and learn from our experiences.
But sometimes angels can’t help…and so far we have lost: 1) two jackets in Cadiz, Spain (left behind), 2) another backpack at a train station in Prague with chargers, cords, but nothing valuable, 3) some towels in Croatia and 4) my phone, which was lost on a river raft. Truth is, these things can happen anywhere, any time, but since we move so often we have gotten this process down to a science (?)- or so we hope!
