My Trip to Holland

Last week, my bosses bosses boss came up to me and asked me how my
Dutch was.  I said "Not so good".  To which he replied, in a terribly
thick Irish accented attempt at a Bob Barker-like, American announcer
voice "Well it's a good thing that they speak English there, because
You're Going to Holland!"

I restrained myself from clapping my hands wildly and kissing his
cheek, as I might if I were actually on the Price Is Right and said
instead "Ok, Sounds good".

So this Monday I flew to Schiphol airport just outside of Amsterdam to
visit a company that does gaming machine certification and fairness
testing.  Brian would be interested to see this place as he does a lot
of work with gaming/gambling machines.  I had to prove to their
engineers that the product I made is fair and won't cheat anyone out
of their money.  Which is a load of hog-wash really, because all
gambling machines cheat people out of their money.

Just before I landed I snapped a couple of good shots that show just
how elaborate the Dutch dam/canal system is.  Living below sea level
takes a lot of planning, as those in New Orleans have learned.

It looks to me like if they had a significant rain fall, the whole
place would be under water, but I suppose that they have hundreds of
years of land reclamation and flood management experience to fall back
on.

My visit to the company was uneventful, and the guys offered to take
me out gallivanting in Amsterdam, which would have been interesting,
if not a little frightening, but I had to catch my 9:25pm flight back
to London so I didn't want to risk it.

I was back at the airport about three hours early for my flight.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The Dutch are really weird.
 I went into the airport bath room and instead of having
advertisements above the urinals, then have little dioramas of toilets
in inappropriate scale, located in surprising places.  I had to take a
picture.

Yes, as far as I can tell, the diorama on the left is a top down view
of a suburban residential road, with a driveway leading up to a large
toilet, rather than a house.  The diorama on the right is a lineup of
people waiting to get onto a city bus, and indeed, there is also a
large toilet waiting to get on as well!
I love these people!

After the toilet fun I had some time on my hands, so I tried to sweet
talk my way into one of the private airline lounges.  Not holding a
privileged status with any airline, and the fact that I was flying the
no-frills, discount airline easyJet that evening, prompted them to
turn me away despite my best attempts.  So I had a little supper and
tried to snooze a bit in the comfy reclining chairs out in the mall
area.

I woke up with a start at exactly 9:25pm.  You may have noted that
9:25pm was the departure time of my flight.  I'll also point out that
I was in the commercial area of the airport and had no idea where my
gate was or which gate I was flying from.  So bleary eyed and fresh
from sleep I ran frantically through the terminal trying to get a grip
on the situation.  I pulled out my boarding pass and found out that I
needed to be at Gate H, I was still near Gate A.  So I sprinted.  A
long way.  Tears streaming from my face partly because of the dry
continental airport air blowing in my eyes, and partly because of
exertion.  The airport staff and fellow travellers were gracious
enough not to stare openly as I flat out ran the length of the
terminal.

Amsterdam being what it is, everyone flying to Britian have to
undergo a second round of security checks, so I had to line up for
a second X-Ray scan and metal detector.  You can imagine the
amount of toe-tapping I was doing.  Luckily there was only one
person ahead of me and it went very quickly.

When I got to Gate H, I realised that there were boarding areas H1
through H8.  My boarding pass said only gate H, which didn't help
much.  So I started running once more.  I was looking for easyJet
flight to London Gatwick.  I passed three Thompson flights and an
easyJet to London Stanstead, but no Gatwick, and it's departure time
was all wrong.  So I ran to the very end of the Gate area and realized
that there were no planes there.
I couldn't believe it, how could I have been *that guy* who missed his
plane home!?

I'm not one to give up so easily, plus this was the best cardio I had
gotten in awhile so I figured I might as well run back along the gate
to talk with an easyJet employee.  She had no idea where my plane
might be (I'm not making any of this up).  So I ran back further along
where I had come from and looked up at a sign.  Now I swear that when
I ran down that hallway before, this sign didn't say "9:25 easyJet
flight to Gatwick London", but this time it did.  Cruel fate was
mocking me this evening.  I nearly fell down the stairs trying to get
around the corner to see if they were still letting people on the
plane.


Turns out there was still one more person after me holding up the
flight, so it wasn't only myself that was causing a delay.  That made
me feel a little better.  EasyJet has a no assigned seating policy so
I sheepishly tried to find an empty seat while other travelers glared
at me warningly.  I understood.  Who'd want to sit with the sweaty,
out of breath guy who helped delay the flight?  Despite all of that,
we managed to land before our scheduled arrival time and I learned
some valuable lessons about traveling.
1) Sit close to your gate
2) Travel with someone whenever possible
3) Pay frequent attention to the time
4) Don't drink a half-litre of Heineken with dinner.

So it looks as though our next trip will not be our December trip to
Canada as we were expecting.   There are some good deals on trips to
Portugal the weekend after next, so we're going to book that tonight
or tomorrow!  It's off season, but the weather is still nicer than
London.

Ate a vista