A Night In Amsterdam

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Dear Friends,



So here is the way things have went for the past however many hours – I have lost track due to excessive crossing of multiple time zones.

Leaving Edmonton was a breeze (other than goodbyes) and so was the flight to Minneapolis. Things were looking up! When we landed I was shocked at the sheer size of the Minneapolis international airport. It was almost disgusting how big it was. It has a train to get you from one end of the airport to the other. I prefer the speedy floor walky escalator things. I dunno what they are called but this was the first time I ever got to play on them. It feels pretty badass walking on those suckers.

I found my terminal just fine as well as a Quiznoes and had a grand old time relaxing state side.

The turmoil began leaving Minneapolis on my second flight. I happened to sit next to a guy who didn’t think it would be a problem to HOG THE ARMREST FOR 8 HOURS STRAIGHT! And I am too nice of a guy to tell him to get his arm off the damn rest. I think there should be a special place reserved in hell for people who hog the armrest on ridiculously long flights. I lived, but the experience was traumatic.

We touched down in Amsterdam and I groggily dragged myself into the terminal to go search for my next departure. That went all fine and dandy and I enjoyed walking around looking at how European Europe is. I killed enough time that eventually we started going through security to board the flight bound for South Africa.

Cue horrible day.

After clearing security I sat and waited for the boarding call… And waited… and waited… Fifteen minutes after our departure time, the first class folks were called. (Ever notice how they look down their noses at you as you walk past them to join the other unclean heathens flying economy?) Anyways, I finally boarded the plane a half hour past departure time. This usually wouldn’t be a huge deal but I didn’t like the thought of the South Africans waiting for me.

After everyone was seated we waited some more. An hour after departure time, the captain said that they were trying to get the panel that serviced the drinking water unfrozen and functional. A half hour went by.

The plane finally got pushed out onto the tarmac to do its pre-flight safety check stuff. I was getting excited for the take off when I noticed a cloud of smoke billowing out of the left engine (don’t worry, there was no fire) when the pilot revved up the engines to give them a test.

Commence more waiting.

We ended up waiting three hours on the tarmac while the ground crew tried to fix the engine. The pilot sadly announced our flights cancellation and apologized.

The plane was pulled back into the terminal and we sat there waiting… and waiting…

It took an hour to find someone to let us out of the plane.

I cleared security at 8:30. I got off the plane at around 3:00 pm.

To add to the mess was the fact of HOW THE HELL DO I GET TO CAPE TOWN!? New plane? No. Back up plan? No. The flight attendant sent us away to the transfers desk and said that if we could, we should just go home (honest).

When the group of us 500 displaced fliers arrived at the desk, we discovered a line of unintelligible length. That is where I wasted another hour and half – standing in line. The flight company finally figured themselves out and had us clear Amsterdam customs and take hotel and food vouchers.

As for my ticket, they had to reschedule my non-stop flight from Amsterdam that would take 10 hours to an atrocious second round of 24 hours in transit. Yep. They doubled my travel time. I have to fly out to Paris, switch airlines to fly to Johannesburg, and then switch airlines again to fly to Cape Town.

All in all it isn’t so bad – I just want to get to Cape Town.

So here I sit, writing out of a random Amsterdam hotel.



And that’s all my news for now.



Shane

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