✈️ Episode 3: The Carousel Saga, Spot the Bag.

✈️ Episode 3: The Carousel Saga, Spot the Bag.

The airport carousel is humanity at its most primal. Forget hunting and gathering, this is the real survival test, stand in a loose, wild herd, stare at the black hole of the chute, and hope your bag emerges like a prize from the void.

The first ten minutes are like a nature documentary. A hush falls over the group, everyone edging forward, sniffing the air like wildebeest at a watering hole as the carousel leeches in to action. There’s a false sense of security, you’ve been fooled… at least another ten minutes passes, and then… thud! The first bag drops. Not yours, obviously. Probably not anyone’s. It’ll go round three times before some guy in a hi vis jacket heaves it onto a trolley.

I learned quickly that if you’re going to play the carousel game, you need an edge. My Fjällräven Splitpack has that edge. When I took it to Milan Bergamo for my little Parma camping trip, and then on to Napoli, it was the only one of its kind on the carousel. A rare unicorn in a field of boring black mules. That’s the dream, spot it instantly, grab it, walk off like a pro.

But my two hard cases? Yeah… they’re black. Glossy black rectangles that look identical to at least twenty others doing laps. The sort of bag where you hesitate for half a second, someone else swoops in, and you realize you’ve been staring at their suitcase for ten minutes.

So, I modded mine… sort of… Enter Ikea luggage straps. Royal blue. Bright enough to be seen from space. When those cases come through the black flappy things, they’re unmistakably mine. Everyone else is squinting at tags, I just wait for the straps to shout at me, “Oi! Here we are!” I don’t have to do the awkward half grab, half apologise shuffle. I know my bag when I see it. They’re not ‘stylish’, but in EDC terms? That’s high vis functionality.

And still, in the back of my mind, there’s the dream: a Rimowa. The Porsche 911 of luggage. Grooved aluminum, understated flex, wheels so smooth they practically purr. A suitcase that says: “Yes, I take travel seriously and I have no regrets about my life choices.” One day… For now, I’ll keep rocking the Fjällräven and my Ikea belt system… I’m not sure how long I’ll be like that though… it’s an itch… and it you know me… I can’t resist itches for that long.

But the carousel isn’t just about the bags. It’s about the people. And here’s where the etiquette goes completely out the window.

• The Edge Hog: plants themselves at the very front, blocking the view for everyone behind, even though their bag is probably still at Heathrow.

• The Phantom Grabber: yanks a random case, inspects the tag for five minutes, then shoves it back against the flow, nearly decapitating someone’s unsuspecting, innocent toddler.

• The Baggage Optimist: muttering “any second now” on loop, even though they checked in last…. Often they can be seen pointing and shouting to someone on the other side of the carousel that they are clearly with but they’re in the ‘divide and conquer’ mindset.

• The Perimeter Camper: hangs back politely, only to sprint like Usain Bolt when their bag finally appears.

• The Hero: wrestles six oversized cases off the belt at once, none of them theirs, while their whole extended family cheers… they will also have had one too many glasses of Prosecco, usually.

Carousel etiquette is simple: don’t hog the front, don’t send bags back upstream, and for the love of all that is holy, step aside once you’ve got yours. Sadly, 75% of travelers missed that memo.

So, episode three concludes with this lesson: the carousel isn’t just luggage retrieval. It’s a microcosm of human behavior under mild stress. And like most things in life, it’s easier if your gear is unmistakably yours.

May your bags arrive quickly, your straps shine brightly, and your dream Rimowa stay just out of reach… but not for that long.