Homepage
Dagboek
From Eindhoven to Los Angeles
The alarm clock woke us at 5 AM and we proceded to wash and get dressed. Julia had ordered a taxi to pick us up at 6 and take us to the railway station. Everything was well-prepared, so we even had some spare time. We knew there would be little opportunity to smoke during our travel, so we were glad we had time for a cigarette.
We were standing in the hallway at 6 AM, ready for the cab… But it did not come! At 6:05 I took another cigarette. Experience has learned me, that usually the bus will come around the corner as soon as you have lit one up. But this time it did not work. Even when Julia lit up a cigarette too, there was still no taxi coming. Was our journey about to fail even before it had begun?? Julia called the “Eindhovense Taxicentrale”… The phone was answered by the same guy she had spoken to the day before to order our taxi, but he pretended he had never heard of us. And he never drove at this time of day anyway, he said. So Julia called Cibatax and soon everything was fixed. We reached the railway station in time.
Once we were on the train, we could relax: We had made all the arrangements for this trip, now all we had to do is transfer from one transportation to the next and we would reach our destination in Auckland automatically. Julia immediately started reading her first book.
Check-in at Schiphol Airport went quickly and easily. And passport control was no problem either. It is so nice all my personal records now match again with my appearance: My passport and my ticket both have my female name on them. For most people this is nothing special, but I have had to travel with documents that still had my male name on them for years.
Once we were in the transit area, it was shopping time of course. As usual we got our maximum allowance of tax-free liquor and cigarettes. We got 700 ml Grand Marnier Rouge for 24,00 Euros and 10 packets of Dunhill for 30,25 Euros. It is a lot of money, but still it is about half the usual price.
Liquor is, of course, a liquid and liquids are not allowed in airplanes nowadays, but the bottles are neatly packed into sealed bags in the tax-free shop and those are allowed on board.
Speaking of cigarettes… Is there still a smoking area at Schiphol Airport? Yes there is! It was a bit difficult to find, but a bartender gave us directions in Amsterdam dialect. Understandably this smoking area is very popular amongst the passengers and it was very crowded: There was so much smoke in the air, you did not really need to smoke your own cigarette to get the needed amount of nicotine!
Then we were ready to get on the plane, but our flight was delayed again and again. We had to wait for hours so we had clearly gotten out of bed way too early. The first part of our flight would be to London Heathrow but we heard they had very heavy fog there, so they could not accept any incoming flights. KLM offered us vouchers for drinks and telephone to make ourselves comfortable and to make any necessary arrangements. So we returned to our new friend, the Amsterdam bartender. He not only spoke in Amsterdam dialect, but he also had the informal style of conversation that is typical of an Amsterdam pub owner.
He overheard our conversation about what to drink and immediately reacted to it. After all this coffee, maybe we should have a beer now? I was not so sure: Alcohol at this hour of the day? It was not even noon yet! Julia did not have any doubt: She wanted a Hoegaarden white beer. And I took one too: We will not likely find that in New Zealand!
Then, after several more hours, flight KL1009 was finally ready to go. A KLM Boeing 737 took us to Heathrow in little more than one hour. It was very fortunate it went so quickly, because all the slack we had for changing planes in London had been taken up by the delay!
People say Heathrow has been completely modernised, but we didn’t see that at all. Just like in past years we had to cover a great distance on foot and by bus to get from one gate to the other. And we were running out of time. The signs were indicating they were about to close the gate for our connecting flight. All we could do was walk as fast as possible: Maybe we could still make it in time?
I also started to worry about our suitcase: Would that be able to make the transfer as fast as we did? In my fantasy I saw our suitcase had grown a pair of legs and it was running along with us…
But we did make it in time. We were able to queue up at the end of the queue for the security check. This time we even had to take off our shoes. Isn’t that rediculous? I told them there was no metal in them, so there should be no problem to keep them on when passing the metal detector, but that did not help. Ow well, let them have it their way. “Whatever you want“, I snapped as I threw my shoes onto the conveyor belt along with our hand luggage.
Of course the security check did not find any weapons or explosives on us. We had no intention of blowing up the plane and neither had the other passengers. But what about our suitcase? Did that make it to this flight on time? “I very much doubt it“, said the ground stewardess. Well, so did I, we would have to wait and see what had happened when we would get off in Auckland.
This second part of the journey we made in a New Zealand Airways Boeing 777. The distance from London to Los Angeles is almost 6000 miles, so the flight takes ten hours and that is not fun at all! Fortunately the Boeing 777 features an in-flight information and entertainment system with an interactive screen for every passenger, so we could monitor the progress and watch all kinds of entertainment and even some educational material.
Finally, finally we arrived in Los Angeles. It was now 8 PM local time, but to us about 24 hours had passed since we got out of bed. And the Americans had some “entertainment” planned for us: We all had to get off the plane and queue up for the American immigration office.
But… but… We did not have any intention to enter the USA?? All we wanted was to get out as soon as possible! Of course burocracy does not listen to reason. We had to fill out the well-known, green I-94W forms, queue up for an officer and talk to him. They also took everybody’s fingerprints and pictures of their irises! I really wonder if they have any right to do this, but what can we do about it? We had no lawyer specialized in interna
tional legislation with us, so we could only let them do to us what they wanted like a herd of sheep.
Everything was handled in a typical USA way, with lots of stamps and formality and in the end we ended up just where we started in the same plane we had arrived in. Needless to say there was no smoking area anywhere…
Related posts: