The Twitter Train Luggage Swap

More travel mishaps today, this time from guest poster Michele Aggiato, who shows the power of Twitter beyond simple travel tips and banter.

OK, it wasn’t the smartest move taking the wrong luggage and jumping off the Eurocity train, scared of missing my connection to Monza.
They were both trolleys, black and heavy. Only, mine was hand baggage sized. The one I had picked up was much larger. I completely ignored this – one of life’s great mysteries! I travelled in ignorant bliss for another hour with what I supposed to be my luggage. I only realised at home that the Swiss chocolate I had bought for and promised my kids was missing. Instead there were shirts, suits and underwear. Not my stuff.
My wife, even more shocked than me, continued repeating like a broken record: ‘Where is your Mac? Where is your Mac?! Where is my brand new MacBook Air?!’

Thank God I had it in my bag, so at least nothing too valuable was missing. Of course the kids didn’t share this attitude of positive thinking: there were enraged about their lost chocolate orgy! So while there where crying like crazy, I became convinced that somebody else had picked my luggage, somewhere between the Swiss Border and Milan Central Station.
I didn’t try contacting Trenitalia’s customer support for lost items, this would have been totally useless. Thankfully, I did remember that I had left some magazines with my name on it in the front bag of the luggage. Who ever had my luggage could find me with a simple search on Google. So, why not try a message in the bottle, Twitter style?

So I tweeted this:

Two hours later, I got this reply:

WOW!! Within less than 3 hours I actually found the person who had my luggage, and whose luggage was standing in my living room!

Having a look to Fabio’s profile, I realized that he had created it solely to reply to my tweet. Talking to him later, he told me he found me by making a cross search between my name and “wrong suitcase.” My tweet was the top result on Google.

Fabio’s parents were traveling on the same train with me. I felt so sorry to hear that they were going to a funeral in Southern Italy. Once they arrived in Milan, they immediately recognized that somebody went off with their bag, but realised it wasn’t intentional when they found such a similar bag on its own.

They did the right thing: going to the nearby police station in front of platform 21 at Milan Central Station and declaring the mix up. Two days later I could pick up my bag in Milan. And as I was going to Zurich the very next week, I brought their suitcase personally to Fabio’s father work place.

About the Author
Michele Aggiato lives in Italy and grew up in Switzerland. Zurich – Milan by train means a lot more to him than just a journey. Michele describes himself as a ‘social media addict, connector, blogger and father of three. Passionate about human relations, food, travel and tourism.’

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This entry was posted Monday, 28 November, 2011 at 11:01 am
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joolsstone on December 1st, 2011 at 10:38 pm

Wow!!! That is an amazing story! I can’t beleive that someone managed to find you on twitter through a google search, when most people can not even find me on facebook

joolsstone on December 10th, 2011 at 5:28 pm

That is a pretty cool story, including that he created an account to respond.

It didn’t happen to me, but here is a story. There is an American TV Show called Amazing Race. A reality thing based on travel. On the very first show, one girl dropped her passport in a gas station. The guy who found it tweeted out about the passport and within a short amount of time (under hours, but with TV editing no clue exactly) tracked them down at the airport to let her continue on the race.

joolsstone on December 13th, 2011 at 4:56 pm

I thought about that too. I am not so sure. The production team, at least what I see after editting, is pretty good about letting teams fail if they make a mistake.