AA制之旅: Going Dutch Part 1

What do you do when you have the whole house all to yourself and you will have to cook for the entire month? Since a lot of eating out is expected when cooking is never my favorite pastime, I figure out I might just get the double whammy by eating out abroad. There I was, searching for a cheap flight and found a fare to Amsterdam that costs me only a low USD 500. So off I go for a five-day rendezvous in the land of wooden cloggs, windmills and of course weeds.

Flying , it is a low cost airline from Ireland that I have never heard of until this trip; naturally my flight had to connect at Dublin. There was a nearly four and a half hour wait for my connection, I have plenty of time to kill even after a breakfast, so I just did some Duty Free window shopping at Aerfort Bhaile Átha Cliath. One unusual service their Duty Free offers is hair salon:





I suppose that does make senses. There must be plenty of people who want to look their best after a long flight, when their hair just looks like a mess.

Because I felt I was ripped off in getting my Euro during my trip to Italy last November (which I still haven’t blogged yet), so this time I want to make sure I get the best deal by keeping track of the exchange rate at the airport, so here on the right is the rate at Schiphol Airport from ABN AMRO Bank, the biggest bank in Amsterdam, advertised in vs on the left the rate I got at Boston Logan Airport:



If I read it correctly, that means one USD will get me 0.64758 Euro in Amsterdam versus 0.639 Euro in Boston. In the end I didn't get my Euro in either places. Instead I get it through the ATM of my brokerage account at Schiphol airport since they don't charge any fee. After checking my brokerage account statement, I actually get 0.705408 Euro with one USD. So I guess that is a wise move but I must say either I have misunderstood the rates in kiosks at the airports or they are just high way robberies.

Two observations I have about Schiphol airport

1. It takes a long time go through the security checkpoint but the security checkpoint is done at the gate level instead of the restricted area level. Therefore, as long as you’ve checked in it is unlikely you would miss your flight because of delay in security checkpoint
   
2. A more difficult phenomenon to get used to is that like everywhere else, the janitors for public toilets (after living in US for more than 20 years, I needs a more deliberated effort to say toilet instead of bathroom) are held by women but unlike most of the places I have been to, the janitors do NOT shut down the toilet when they work, including men’s toilet. That means when you are using the toilet, don’t be surprised there is a woman standing next to you and it seems everyone is quite nonchalant about that. In fact that seems to extend to the entire Amsterdam where the general close proximity between public men’s and women’s toilets would allow you a few view of interior of either sex (Amsterdam is known to be a very tolerating city where prostitution and marijuana are not outlawed; I wonder what their attitude toward Peeping Toms is). So you might want to stick with the stall instead of urinal if you desperately need your privacy.
   

Amsterdam Airport Schiphol is about 19 km (roughly 10 miles) southwest of Amsterdam. If you don't know your way in Amsterdam, the best way to get to town from the airport is through the train service offered by GVB, the company that manages all the public transport of Amsterdam, including bus, tram and subway. The railway station conveniently located underneath the terminal complex of Schiphol and you can buy the train ticket in one of the yellow ticket vending machines that can be found at the terminal exit:



These machines supports multiple languages and are relatively easy to navigate but there are quite a few options to choose from: namely the one way or round trip, same day or open ticket, first class (which I suspect no one uses) or second class… Although the ticket vending machine has the capability to accept cash, this option happened to be unavailable in all the machines at the airport terminal when I was there. So I can only pay by credit card. However, credit cards purchase in Europe in general requires you to enter a PIN which does not exist in North American credit cards. I know there is a workaround if you want to use your American credit cards in Europe but that would require human intervention. So you would be out of luck with these machines when they are programmed to prompt you for your credit card PIN. In the end I had to buy my ticket with a live person at the ticket counters just outside of the terminal. The catch of this is the fare will cost you slightly more (maybe half a Euro) but that was my only option, or so I thought – after I paid my ticket I found that at the train station there are plenty more of these ticket vending machines and a few of them did have the pay by cash option available. One final word, there is an extra one Euro fee to pay by credit card, so if you are nickel and dime-ing with your traveling budget the cheapest option to reach downtown Amsterdam is to buy a second class train ticket on a vending machine by cash, for EUR 3.6 one way.

GVB offers a few different lines of train service and even within the same line they don’t always stop at every station. But since Centraal Station is the main hub of Amsterdam’s public transportation, almost every train will indicate whether or not it will stop there on the billboard. For instance, the 1:39 p.m. train below will not:



However, if you are unsure, don't be afraid to ask the people at the platform. The Dutch in general are very friendly people and everyone can speak English in the Netherlands, some are amazingly fluent even.

After years of enduring the subpar services of North American public transportation, it is always a pleasure to take the train in Europe. Notice the scheduled arrival time (left on the billboard) and the actual arrival time (on the right) of the train I was about to take in the clip below:



to be continue...