Left Luggage – Lock up your bags and explore

I got bumped off of a flight to Krakow once and was forced to spend an extra nine hours in Berlin. Do you think I spent all of those hours hanging around Tegel airport? Heck no! When things go wrong, I try to make the best out of the situation; I treated it as an unexpected opportunity to spend a few more hours exploring the German capital, and I took full advantage.

The one barrier that I faced to enjoying my extra afternoon in Berlin was that I had my stuff with me. While my checked luggage was being held at the airport for the later flight, I still had my carry-on to deal with. The last thing that I wanted to do was to drag a bag around town with me. Fortunately, I knew about left luggage.

Left luggage provides a safe storage space for your bags for a few hours or even a few days. I can remember when there used to be luggage lockers in the Salt Lake City airport (and probably other airports, too) which allowed people with a long layover to go explore the city between connecting flights. Unfortunately, all lockers were removed from US airports as a security measure after the attacks of September 2001, so left luggage is a concept many Americans may not be familiar with. It is, however, still very common in European train stations.

On that afternoon in Berlin, as soon as I had been confirmed for a seat on the later flight, I left the terminal, hopped on the bus, and went back into central Berlin. Once I arrived at the hauptbahnhof (central train station), I deposited my carry-on into a locker and headed out to make the best of a few extra hours in the German capital city.

Because of left luggage, I was able to check out a few more Berlin sites that I had skipped earlier for lack of time, and I also enjoyed a leisurely dinner at a great restaurant along the Spree River in the Nikolai Quarter. After dinner, I returned to the hauptbahnhof, retrieved my bag, and caught the bus back to the airport.

The luggage lockers area at Brussels Midi stationThe first time I used a locker, at Brussels Midi station BerlinBerlinVienna

In most left luggage facilities, you’ll find automated lockers, but at the facilities in Italy that I’ve used, left luggage is an office staffed by personnel who check your bags in, store them in the back room, and then retrieve them for you when you return. Personally, I prefer the lockers system; you never have to wait in a line, and it’s less expensive.

Here’s another use case: after spending a couple of days in Florence, I had reserved a late afternoon train to Rome. I checked out of my hotel in the morning, took my luggage to the the left luggage desk at Santa Maria Novella train station, and then squeezed in a trip to Pisa, which is only an hour away from Florence by train. Again, something that was possible only due to left luggage.

On a couple other instances, while booking train journeys, I noticed that I would be passing through through cities that I wanted to see. Instead of booking the through tickets that I had planned to buy, I instead broke each journey into two tickets, with a forced layover in between.

One such trip was the first time that I ever used left luggage. On a trip from Paris to Amsterdam, I realized that we would be passing through Brussels, instead of buying the straight through ticket, I bought one ticket to Brussels and then a second ticket a few hours later to complete the journey. Left luggage was so easy and worked so well, that I became a fan.

I did the same thing while travelling from Vienna to Munich, and got to spend a few hours checking out Sound of Music sights in Salzburg.

So the bottom line is this: don’t regard your train trip merely as transportation from one city to the next. Check the train schedules carefully and if you see places en route that you would like to visit, treat it as an opportunity to see a place that you otherwise would have skipped and allow left luggage to expand your possibilities.