I almost bought the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

The Lufthansa flight out of Athens to Frankfurt was departing before 6am, which meant that we were there at an ungodly hour on the Monday after our vacation. We were taking the flight to Frankfurt so that we could connect to the early flight out to Chicago and be there that same Monday. (That way, I saved one vacation day.)

Being overly optimistic, I thought that I would read my book on that pre-dawn Lufthansa flight. As soon as I boarded and sat down, I removed the book ‘The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari’ from my carry-on, shoved it into the seat pocket and promptly fell asleep.

I had picked up the book from my local library without knowing anything about it. It had a catchy title and the author’s last name was Indian which piqued my interest. (I recommend a lot of books here, but this is not one of them. I could never quite connect with the book, so I only read a few pages.)

After getting off the plane at Frankfurt and while walking towards my connecting flight to Chicago, I remembered that the book was still in the seat pocket. I rushed back to the gate but they wouldn’t let me get back onboard. Instead, I was directed to Lufthansa’s Lost and Found office. I gave the person there at the office the book’s details and my contact details and boarded my onward flight to Chicago, without the book.

Three days later, from Chicago I called up Lufthansa, but they said it would take time. So I waited to hear about how I could retrieve the book. Meanwhile I renewed the book to buy some more time. After around 3 weeks, a letter from Lufthansa showed up saying sorry, and that they hadn’t been able to locate the book.

So I went to my library to pay for the book. (The book was available for under $10 from several discount booksellers on the Web, but the lady at the circulation desk said that there was a “processing fee” as well, so I would have to pay somewhere around $25.) Before I could hand her the money, she noticed that the book could be renewed one more time.

I didn’t want to renew it, but she insisted. “You never know. You might find it somewhere in your home or in your car,” she said.

A few days later, when I was checking my online account, going through the books I had checked out from the library I noticed that The Monk book was not in the list. Perplexed, I drove to the library and checked the shelf. The book was sitting there. And from the markings, I knew that it was the exact same copy that I had left in the aircraft seat pocket, back in Frankfurt.

I never found out how it made its way across the Atlantic and back to my local library.