Home, at Last
We arrived home yesterday at around 10PM or so. Our flight from Amsterdam to Atlanta was pretty uneventful. We took the train from Centraal Station to Schiphol Airport, which turned out to be a great, easy and efficient move on our part. Trains leave from the station every fifteen minutes, and the fare was only e4/person. The trip to the airport was about 20 minutes. Our train was mostly double-decked cars, though it was pretty empty this early in the morning. The train continues from Schiphol down to The Hague (Den Haag). The train station itself was quite busy, even for as early as it was, but getting to our train was easy. Arrival at the airport was easy, too. We had to locate our correct check-in area and gate, but that was pretty easy with the good information screens that they had.
The trans-Atlantic flight (Delta) was nice. Jenny and I actually had seats next to each other on this one, and this plane had Delta’s new entertainment system. This was a neat gadget with a video screen in the back of every seat. The video screen was a touchscreen that allowed one to watch all sorts of different visual content, including the trip progress information, shows from HBO, general TV shows, and a decent selection of full-length movies. In addition to that, it had a decent selection of full-length albums with a playlist organizer that would allow one to add tracks from different albums to a playlist. It also had the standard music channel selections, all available through the touchscreen. Finally (and this may have been my favorite part, since I can rarely get to these controls easily), all of the volume controls, reading light control and call button are on the touchscreen, too. I watched two movies and listened to a bunch of music on a nine-hour flight without draining the battery on my ipod, which was cool.
Arrival in Atlanta was a bit crazy. We had to fill out a form on the plane to declare what we were bringing into the country. We weren’t souvenir shopping on this trip (especially with the exchange rate the way it is), so we didn’t have a whole lot to declare. We took this form and our passports to “passport control”, where our passports were checked and the form was stamped. Then we had to claim our checked luggage, which was an adventure. First, we were told it would be coming in on carousel six. We were waiting for a long time before any bags started to come up to that carousel. Then, while waiting there, we heard an announcement that our bags were going to be on carousel three, so we all wandered over en masse to carousel three. While waiting there, we heard anouther announcement stating that bags from our flight could be on carousel three OR carousel six. Argh. I was getting ready to find Jenny (she had gone to visit the restroom while I was waiting at carousel six) to ask her to watch three while I watched six. I spotted her standing at another section of three, pulling one of her bags off of the carousel. I was just about to walk over to six when I spotted our other bag, so I grabbed that one. Meanwhile, as we were walking away, there was yet another announcement stating that only a few bags were put onto carousel three, and that most bags would be at carousel six, so anyone from our flight still at three should go back over to six. Craziness.
We took our bags and went to customs. We were directed into the shorter line, which unfortunately had a guy in front of us who had no idea what this declaration form was, and didn’t have one. He kept trying to look for it, but he didn’t know what it looked like. Argh. They finally pulled him out of line so that he could look for his form (which had to be stamped by this point, so he must have had it somewhere), and we were able to go through. Expecting to have to take our luggage through some further checks because of what we were bringing back, we were surprised when they took our form and said, “Have a nice day!” Then we had to re-check our luggage for our connecting flight to Pittsburgh, then go through TSA security so that we could get into the airport again to get on our flight to Pittsburgh. What a zoo that was.
The plane that was to carry us to Pittsburgh was delayed getting into Atlanta due to weather, so we were delayed taking off by about an hour and a half. We finally arrived in Pittsburgh a little after 7PM. By the time we got our luggage (which actually arrived pretty quickly–maybe because it wasn’t USAir, and maybe because it was a smaller plane), waited for the parking shuttle, and finally got to our car, it was about 8:15PM. We stopped for some good American-style food at Fatheads in the South Side, then went home. It felt good to be back on home turf again, even though we had been up for almost 24 hours.
We arrived home to a clean kitchen and bathroom (with clean towels and all–thanks Mom and Babcia!), and two cats who were almost immediately happy to have us back inside the house. Sometimes it takes them a little while to warm-up to us, but they warmed-up quickly and spent the rest of the night nestled around us wherever we went.
It was a good trip. We’re happy to be back. We had a good time. Overall, they have some stuff figured out “over there” that we still can’t seem to get right here. We managed to not see anyone with their pants hanging down their arses, people were quite polite to us and those around them while we were there, and things generally worked well. On the other hand, we were happy to come back and order iced tea where it was actually brewed tea (not from a can), and there was ice in it. Today, we had lunch at Pizza Hut, and we had diet coke with ice in it (!!!iceiceiceiceice!!!), and at no time yesterday or today did we have to wait for bloody hours to get our check. On top of all that, we had refills on our drinks, and we didn’t have to pay $3.50 for each one–in fact, we didn’t have to pay anything at all for a refill. We laughed at lunch, too, as our bill was $14, and we remarked that was about the equivalent of e8 (okay, actually, more like e9, but still).
We’re happy to be back in the US.
Random thought from the trip: I had to laugh when I told someone while we were there that my wife and I are working on our old house. When asked to say how old it was, I had to stop and laugh. For some of these folks, their “old houses” were built in the 16th and 17th centuries, if not before. Our little late-19th century dwelling is probably new-fangled for them. 🙂
jonathan
