The Return To America

One month has passed since the heroic(?), epic(?) journey to Germany
from America. Today was the first leg in the chaotic(?), clandestine(?)
soul-less sub-human return to America. Read between the lines here, I am
not home yet, in fact, I have not even crossed the big pond yet.

I can really blame this one on Ole Hoffmann. He called it this morning,
telling me that he sensed that I would be having some trouble with my
flight. Did he in fact sic his Santeria gods upon me?

He did bring it up in context. As usual, I was a little behind schedule
this morning. We planned on leaving the house at 10 am, but I was not
ready. I still needed to burn cd's of photos to leave with Ole and gang.
I also did not have room in my travel bag for everything I was carrying.
Since I arrived, I bought 2 pairs of shoes, one set of loafers at the
flea market for €3, and one set of fake Birkenstock's. Part of the new
cargo is little presents for everyone on the Great list, more to follow
in that later. And every good beer drinker needs to fill the luggage
with rare cool beers from far away places. This trip would be Berliner
Kindl Weise, a sour beer only available in Berlin. This beer is the
archetype of the Berlin Weise category in the BJCP. I HAD to bring a
case back with me.

So we are late in leaving the house, getting on the road at about 10:30,
not bad for me. The taxi was on it's way, we were fine... or were we?
Once we were on the road, traffic seamed to be crawling. In fact traffic
WAS crawling. We exchanged worried glances, but kept our cool, and
watched to see what would happen.

Then he said it. 'You know Wilbur, I have a bad feeling about this
flight of yours, I think you will have some trouble. Maybe you are
staying in Berlin tonight after all." That was it, he jinxed my flight
from the start.

We arrived at the gate at 11:10 am, checking in for a 12:10 flight. In
Minneapolis, this would be a sure-fire disaster. There is no way to
negotiate the airport and NSA security and make a flight in one hour.
You must be at the gate 30 minutes before departure. Tegel Airport in
Berlin is different, the security gate is behind the luggage check-in.
No traversing the airport to find your gate after NSA bull. Sure, there
is the super thorough xray and security check, and they did a great job!

Ole saw me off at the gate, and we both thought I was home-free. Our
fears were exaggerated, and I was on my way. Rather than boarding
directly, we took a bus to the plane, parked remotely on the tarmac.
This flight was the KLM city hopper service running on Fokker 100 jets,
too small for the standard terminals gangways. We taxied out and were in
Amsterdam at Schiphol Airport at 2:00 pm.

Now comes the first wait. My flight for Detroit leaves at 3:30 pm, so
what to do? The Rijks Museum at Schiphol! The featured exhibit was the
Maritime Powers, a collection of paintings by Willem van de Velde Sr and
Jr. What a nice distraction from the monotonus boredom of watching inane
travelers. The information cards were even in Dutch and English!

Now it' time to get on the plane. The gate number is E9, which turns out
to be some Inter-Atlantic super-gate. There are at least 4 security
stations for interviewing people boarding the planes. Flight are
scheduled about 1 hour appart, and the gate serves more than one
aircraft at a time. We are flying a Boeing 747-800, so there are about
400 people to check in.

Here comes the screwy security snafu. Northworst does not allow ANY
liquids on their flights, a change from when I came over 4 weeks ago. In
fact Northworst is the only airline enforcing a no liquids rule. So in
line to check-in, the polite security droid girl must tell lots of
passengers with duty-free liquor that they are not allowed to take their
tax-free booty. IF you bought it at Schiphol Duty-Free, that was OK, but
if you bought it in some other airport, you were screwed! Man, were
people pissed!

In addition to Duty-Free, people who had brought on toothpaste, hand
lotion, hand sanitizer, lip balm, etc, were told they could not bring it
on. Even travelers that had already cleared a security checkpoint at
another airport on a previous leg were not told they could not bring
these terrorist oriented liquids onboard. This was really sick, people
were just fuming!

I forgot the best part, the line to get to Inter-Atlantic super-gate E9
was about a block long, and it never went down! They were boarding
flight after flight at this gate, so the rush was never over. I got in
line at 2:50, and thought I would not make my flight. Wrong. Do you know
how long to takes to get 400+ people into a 747? Longer that 30 minutes.

People just kept coming. There were a lot of kids too, more than seemed
like a good comfortable amount for a 9 hour trans-Atlantic flight.

3:30 - still boarding.

3:45 - still boarding.

4:00 - There seems to be some trouble. Seems to be mechanical problems.
The attendant lets us know that they are getting close, but there is
some mechanical issue, and we will be ready shortly.

4:20 - Captains turn. There seems to be a bad computer that controls the
waste system for half of the lavatories onboard. They are looking for a
replacement computer, and will replace it before we leave. At least
another 30 minutes before we can be clear to leave.

5:00 - Mechanics are on the plane, there is a lot of activity.

5:10 - Some ground crew cheif comes on and explains that the computer
was not the problem. There is still a problem with half of the
lavatories onboard. 400+ people would have to use 50% less bathrooms for
9 hours. This seems to be a BAD idea. We are now waiting for sign-off to
leave.

5:30 - Sign-off is not received. We are in contact with Detroit to see
what should happen. The captain comes on and announces that either we
will go and people missing connections in Detroit are staying in
Detroit, or everyone is staying in Amsterdam for the night. We won't
know for at least 30 minutes, so we are allowed to get off the plane,
but not leave the Inter-Atlantic super-gate area of E9. This is bad.

6:00 - With considerable regret in his voice, the ground chief announces
that we are staying in Amsterdam for the night. Welcome to the Netherlands.

We need rooms for 400 people. Where do we all go? They ground chief
tells us to proceed to Arrival Gate 3 for our overnight packets and
hotel vouchers. Where IS arrival gate 3? We all start out and cross the
airport and a bunch of us leave the baggage area. We find the Arrival
Gate 3, but we are supposed to be INSIDE the security area. Now we much
back-track across the airport and re-enter the security area via the
Gate 16, the Unclaimed Check-bag entrance. We finally arrive at arrival
services, after crossing the entire baggage claim area 3 times, once
across inside, once back outside, and once again inside.

Are you bored, it's not over yet!

We all get our vouchers and reservations. My hotel is the Van De Valk
Hotel Schiphol A4. At this point it's important to really analyze this
hotel name. Van De Valk - Van De means royalty, so this place is owned
by some rich dude. Hotel Schiphol A4 - It's a hotel, and it's near the
airport on the A4 highway. This is a giant dormitory for travelers that
miss their flights a Schiphol. I bet they don't even have regular rates,
this place is the faceless soul-less machine of handling travelers
stranded in strange airports because of computer malfunctions of waste
handling systems.

At check-in you get a room, dinner, breakfast, and 5 minutes of long
distance. Everything else is extra. The rooms have a ambience of
sterileness and insanity. It really makes you want to go home.

Tonight I sleep. Tomorrow at 6 am we are back on the bus to Schiphol to
try again to make the trans-Atlantic crossing.

Keep you fingers crossed...