Luggage

By Marko Nuoramo

This memoir is dedicated to my dad Juhani Nuoramo, the best father in the world and

my sister Sandra Nuoramo for working on this story with me and the rest of my family because

they are always there for me.

~

Marko Nuoramo

Our Finnair Airbus A320 flight from Helsinki was about to land at Cilipi airport, which is

the Dubrovnik airport on the Croatian Mediterranean coast facing Italy. We were under the cold

rain clouds, which pushed wind at both sides of the plane. If there was crosswind, we would’ve

landed in Split instead of Dubrovnik. Luckily; the wind died down and we landed in Dubrovnik. I

was excited for this autumn break.

When our plane touched down, outside the window, the only thing I saw was a typhoon

flooding the dirt off the runway and a small white house with a glowing light bulb on the front

porch. As we reached our final parking point; I grabbed my jacket and my backpack from above

and skipped down the path to the stairs. “Bye,” I thanked the flight attendant.

Only 7 people were in the whole plane (including the flight attendants and a baby) When

I jumped off the last step I thought to myself that it’s still really hot in this area of Europe. As I

entered the terminal building, I pulled out my Finnish ID card; it was enough to prove my identity

since Finland is in the European Union.

When we walked to the luggage pick-up something wasn’t right. New bags kept coming

on the carousel, and they went around and around. Yet, there was no sign of our bags.

Everybody’s luggage came except for ours! What happened? Why now? My dad and I were

very confused and tired, so we stomped over to the luggage information desk. Dad asked “what

happened to our luggage?” “I don’t know” the lady replied. “I will have a check” she added. I felt

the quivering nerves in my body that I couldn’t stop moving. I was so scared because everything

that I possibly needed for this trip was in my Reebok duffle bag, which didn’t appear on the

merry-go-round of bags. Luckily, my toiletries were in my hand luggage! I would’ve regretted

losing anything from my luggage; it contained so many of my precious and favourite clothes that

I would dread losing.

Twenty minutes later, the terminal workers claimed that they emptied out everything in

our Airbus, every compartment. Nothing. They were sorry for our luggage, but they had to

continue unpacking the Monarch flight luggage. There were two of the same airlines flying to

Cilipi but from different cities, Manchester and London Gatwick. The lady quickly lent her PC to

dad to book a night at the Hilton Grand Imperial hotel. Dad told the lady sadly, “I travel 200

times per year, and for five years, this hasn’t happened to me once.”

“Well, I guess we will go over to Bingo Rent to pick up a car,” my dad remarked. As we

slowly foot stepped our way to the other side of the airport campus where the Rent-a-Cars were,

our minds were filled with sadness and disbelief. A lot of British passengers from the Monarch

flights from Manchester and London Gatwick queued up to register them a Rent-a-Car. Ours

was registered on the internet. Awesome deal, 29 Euros for 1 day! As we drove to Dubrovnik,

my dad and I had a funny feeling about the coming week. First of all, we came on the day that

Europe’s weather changed: 0 degrees in Madrid, snowing in Finland, Poland, Germany, Austria

and a tropical typhoon on the South and Mediterranean.

Secondly, not only did we not pack for this weather, we didn’t even have the things that we had

brought with us to begin with.

When we arrived at the Hilton hotel, we were given our room straight away, the last one

on the 4th floor. It was next to the elevator that goes to the fitness club, swimming pool, sauna

and much more. The receptionist told us our room, “4th floor, last room. “Thank you,” my dad

replied.

We had a fun night at the hotel, at the sauna, my dad and I spoke Finnish and another

guy in the sauna understood us and started speaking Finnish. We got into a nice discussion. He

told us that he is from Estonia and worked in Finland for a long time so he learned to speak the

language. So he came to study Politics and Economy at the University of Dubrovnik. Next to

him was his friend from Croatia so we decided to be polite and speak English. We went to swim

at the swimming pool and after all of that, my dad and I returned to our room.

We watched a Serbian movie with all of the countries famous actors in it showing on

Croatian TV! We laughed all night and finally fell asleep.

Despite all of the obstacles, we still had an amazing trip full of adventures. There is

always going to be things that we never expect, but it’s about how we handle these situations

and making the most of them.

Luggage:

Landing in Dubrovnik could only mean one thing: Typhoon rains, hailing, bad weather, and bad

luck.

About The Author:

Marko Nuoramo is 13 years old, lives in Warsaw, Poland and has 2 sisters one of them is

Sandra and Satu. His dad’s name is Juhani and his moms name is Biljana. He is a Pulitzer

Newberry Prize-winning author of Seasons End, Football Dreams and Luggage books.