Lost Luggage in Vienna: How I Finally Got Results #europetravel #lostluggage #travelhacks

24 Jun 2026 · 2 min

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1:34

Michelle L. Jensen recounts a travel nightmare that began with a disrupted Iberia flight from Los Angeles to Vienna, forced to stop in Madrid because of French air‑strike closures. Upon arrival in Vienna, the airline lost her and her mother’s luggage, leaving them without clothes for three days. Repeated attempts to reach Iberia’s English customer‑service line failed, with calls dropping and a language barrier preventing effective communication. After using the free Mango Languages app (available through many libraries) to gain basic German, Michelle finally reached the airline’s German hotline. In the hotel lobby she handed the phone to a German‑speaking concierge, who negotiated with the airline and secured the luggage’s delivery within half an hour. She advises travelers to use local‑language resources, enlist hotel staff, and leverage free language‑learning tools, and promotes her blog “Travel Her Story” that chronicles 35+ countries of experience.

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Losing your luggage is always a nightmare, and I experienced that when I went to Vienna. I was on Iberian Airlines flying from Los Angeles to Vienna, Austria, with stayover in Madrid, unfortunately, because France was striking and of course couldn't fly over France. Me and my mom were already a day late on our trip due to that, and then they lost our luggage when we arrived in Vienna. Told us it would be there soonish, but another day went by. So by this point, we're like 3 days in the same clothes. My mom's cranky about it, to say the least. I'm not thrilled either, but I'm also like, what do I do? So I just keep trying to call Iberia Airlines and I get nowhere on the English hotline. It keeps disconnecting. I can't get anybody on a phone and my German is not that great. I did Mango Languages, which is a free language learning app if you have a library card. Check your library. I'm not gonna say every library, but check. So I didn't have enough to communicate with somebody on customer service in German. But what I did do is I finally got through the German line and the minute I got through, I was sitting in the hotel lobby and I handed the phone to the concierge concierge who could speak German because she lives in Vienna. She was able to get our luggage to show up in the next half an hour. I don't know what she said to them because it was all in German, but if you find yourself stuck with luggage or something like that in some situation that you can't get through on the line, try to speak the language of the country you're currently in. Find the concierge, explain them the situation, and go, hey, can you talk to this person? I am Michelle L. Jensen from Travel Her Story. There you go for the tips to my blog. Here you follow for the tea and the weird travel stories that have helped me throughout my travels of 35+ countries over the last decade.