So it all starts and ends at airports. Of course, that's the way it is with airplane travel, so I guess that should come as a surprise to nobody.

I guess it actually doesn't exactly start at an airport. The flight to Amsterdam, like many eastbound transatlantic flights, is an overnighter. Emily had said something about having Patrick meet me at the airport, but then she also said something about me taking the train to Amsterdam to meet her, so I ended up saying, "why don't I just take the train straight from the airport?"

This would all have been a good idea, except for the part where two days before Emily wore her contacts to bed, and then the part where she did it again the next night, and those two parts naturally led to the third part where she woke up the next morning (the same morning I was supposed to meet her in Amsterdam) with her eyes swollen shut.

The flight itself was mostly uneventful, except for the "family emergency" that led to the flight crew being short not one but two flight attendants, and the ensuing pitiful service as the remaining flight crew seemed to be hiding. I got to Schipol, breezed through Customs ("Where are you going?" "Haarlem, but today I'm meeting my sister in Amsterdam." "How are you getting there?" "Train." "You can buy your umbrella downstairs."), and found the train without too much difficulty. Got to Amsterdam Centraal, walked out the door, saw my tram, and hopped on it. Wrong way. Got on the right one, went to the right stop, walked the short way to the building where Em was supposed to be teaching her class ... and she wasn't there. There was, however, a message for me

So I called, and talked to Patrick and Emily, and went ... back to Amsterdam Centraal. From there it was a 20 minute train ride to Haarlem, then a walk through town to their apartment. Total time from arrival: three hours.

And if I'd had luggage checked through, I would have had to wait at the baggage claim, and I would have been in the airport long enough to hear myself being paged. Due to a life of lessons learned, I don't check bags through if I can help it, and on that one morning getting out of the airport faster is what caused the problem.

And in the interest of coherence, I'm going to leave out the parts in the middle for another entry ...

So I got to the airport an hour and a half before departure, as the airline insists (they want two and a half, but they're not going to get it from me), and the KLM gate agent -- it was a code share -- wouldn't let me carry my bag on, even though it was under the size and weight restrictions in effect for Northwest flights, since it was over the weight restriction for European flights. I didn't press the issue, since that never gets you anywhere (and with the militaristic environment we have in air travel now, you never know if they're just going to tell you to go home, that they're not going to let you on their plane that day).

So I got on the plane without my bag, which shouldn't be more than an inconvenience - and in some ways is more convenient since you don't have to schlep the bag through the airport or down that narrow aisle. Or, in the case of Dulles, on the stilt buses.

So I got on the plane, sat down, complete flight crew this time, yadda yadda. They served the meal not too long into the flight, and the flight attendant asked me to put my seat back forward so the gentleman behind me could have some room. No problem. After the meal, they picked up the trays, and I put my seat back. And the guy behind me shoves the seat forward and starts yelling at me about how he paid for his seat too, and I need to give him room. So I asked him if he'd like to ask the gentleman in front of me if he'd like to put his seat forward, since otherwise I wouldn't get the chance to be comfortable. But this guy had been in a war, I presume, and he sure seemed to feel like the world owed him something. So I flagged down the steward (they were all, um, male on this flight it seemed), and eventually they relocated me to another seat, albeit one still in coach, and one that another passenger had paid for since she'd just had kidney surgery and was supposed to have received the special seat with wheelchair accomodations and the airline had screwed it up, so they put her in a window seat with an empty aisle seat. Empty, that is, until they put me in it. She was actually very charming and I thanked her profusely for sharing her seat, which she didn't have to do at all.

The rest of the flight was uneventful, and we got to Dulles exactly on time, and I waddled along with everyone else to the baggage claim -- can you tell where this is going yet -- and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited ... and then the airline representative (a rather flustered looking stewardess) said, "if you're still waiting for bags, they're not coming. There are no more bags."

Feh.

My glasses were in that bag. After seeing what had happened to Emily, I wasn't particularly interested in sleeping with my contacts in, but I'm BLIND without them, and what was I gonna do?

Actually, there's a story there, but that's for another entry.

(10 dec)