An excercise in futility
Two weekends ago I tried to go to Madrid again, in hopes of making up the previous attempt that failed due to weather and a failed wake-up call. I left work on the early side to catch yet another train to Dusseldorf. Checked in all as normal, flight to Schiapol was a little late but it didn't seem like it would be a problem as I had a whole hour (sound familiar?) to make my connection to Madrid. Got to Schiapol and found out that I wouldn't be flying to Madrid because there was a sudden strike of all aircraft controllers in Spain.
Fuck.
This strike was apparently called in response to announcements from the government about austerity measures. I don't presume to speak coherently about Spanish politics but this was total bullshit. I am generally on the side of labor by default, but calling a sudden strike on a holiday weekend (as I understand it, as major a traveling holiday in Spain as Thanksgiving is in the US.) to paralyze the country for political reasons rather than to gain real improvements to your work situation, that is total horseshit. This strike showed no sign of lifting, so KLM sent me to a hotel for the night with a ticket for the 6am flight. Sound familiar? I even sat in the same seat at the terminal restaurant for my discounted meal. Unfortunately for my free hotel, everyone else who also wanted to go to Spain was also in line so it took about 90 minutes to get through the line, a 20 minute wait in the freezing snow for the bus, and then a short sleep and my own alarm to get up in the morning.
Next day the strike was still going on. There was no indication of when I could get to Madrid, but their best estimation was 4pm on Sunday. It was Saturday morning at this time. Forgive me if I didn't find this to be an acceptable compromise (Obama, on the other hand, would probably think that was very fair). I opted to go back to Koln. Unfortunately for that idea, there was a snowstorm over the western half of Germany that was blocking all flights. This same storm was also blanketing England. I would like to take a second to point out that this storm was an inch or less of snow. These countries are such goddamned poons that an inch of snow completely ruins one of their airports. I now declare that all airport workers should have to do a year in either Tromso, Winnipeg, or Irkutsk before they can be rotated to a cushy European gig. Seriously: one inch? Boston gets that on a summers day and the fucking flights still leave. It may sound like hyperbole, but I booked a flight back to Dusseldorf and had it cancel a minute later due to snow. I got another flight to Koln booked, 4 hours later, and sat around the airport for three hours until that got canceled as well. At this point the line to get as new flight was so long that I couldn't even capture it in one shot with my camera so instead of waiting in what looked to be at least a 3 hour line, I just went to the train station and bought a 60 EUR train ticket back to Koln. I almost missed this because the 1/2 inch of snow in Amsterdam was making the trains run late (Seriously???? The fucking green line, a ramshackle trolley that regularly goes off the rails, that can barely get up a gradual incline, that can't even go two minutes without stopping for some damned reason, can operate in 1/2" of snow and those cars are about 20 years old! This is new European high speed train technology we're talking about!) but I got to Amsterdam Central in time to find out that the snow had knocked out all of the info screens in the station. Picture this if you will: imagine being in the airport (and Amsterdam Central, despite being a train station, is as busy as any moderately sized regional airport. It's no JFK or anything, but it is easily as busy as an FLL or AUS.) and all of the screens that are supposed to show flight information, like delays, what gate to go to, etc, are completely blank. Also imagine that the one info desk where you can get this information, is staffed by two people whose usual job is to direct lost American tourists to their platform and is completely overwhelmed. Just imagine what that line was like! Also add, as a coup de gras, a thin layer of foul mud to ever single surface of the station ,tracked in by innumerable feet, the exact color, consistency, ans smell of rancid diarrhea. It was a lovely, stress-free experience, you can be sure. I got on a train that I wasn't even sure was the right one for almost an hour, just knowing that it was going to Germany in the rough vicinity of where I wanted to go, and wondering if I was going to get another 60 EUR fee for not having the right ticket the whole time. Two hours later I got back to Koln, expecting to see some sort of snow situation beggering At The Mountains Of Madness and instead seeing a thin, rapidly melting layer of slush that wouldn't be out of place on a Boston November evening. In other words, POOOOOOOOOOOOOOONS!
God save my from Spanish air traffic controllers, Dutch airline employees, and German snowplows.
Fuck.
This strike was apparently called in response to announcements from the government about austerity measures. I don't presume to speak coherently about Spanish politics but this was total bullshit. I am generally on the side of labor by default, but calling a sudden strike on a holiday weekend (as I understand it, as major a traveling holiday in Spain as Thanksgiving is in the US.) to paralyze the country for political reasons rather than to gain real improvements to your work situation, that is total horseshit. This strike showed no sign of lifting, so KLM sent me to a hotel for the night with a ticket for the 6am flight. Sound familiar? I even sat in the same seat at the terminal restaurant for my discounted meal. Unfortunately for my free hotel, everyone else who also wanted to go to Spain was also in line so it took about 90 minutes to get through the line, a 20 minute wait in the freezing snow for the bus, and then a short sleep and my own alarm to get up in the morning.
Next day the strike was still going on. There was no indication of when I could get to Madrid, but their best estimation was 4pm on Sunday. It was Saturday morning at this time. Forgive me if I didn't find this to be an acceptable compromise (Obama, on the other hand, would probably think that was very fair). I opted to go back to Koln. Unfortunately for that idea, there was a snowstorm over the western half of Germany that was blocking all flights. This same storm was also blanketing England. I would like to take a second to point out that this storm was an inch or less of snow. These countries are such goddamned poons that an inch of snow completely ruins one of their airports. I now declare that all airport workers should have to do a year in either Tromso, Winnipeg, or Irkutsk before they can be rotated to a cushy European gig. Seriously: one inch? Boston gets that on a summers day and the fucking flights still leave. It may sound like hyperbole, but I booked a flight back to Dusseldorf and had it cancel a minute later due to snow. I got another flight to Koln booked, 4 hours later, and sat around the airport for three hours until that got canceled as well. At this point the line to get as new flight was so long that I couldn't even capture it in one shot with my camera so instead of waiting in what looked to be at least a 3 hour line, I just went to the train station and bought a 60 EUR train ticket back to Koln. I almost missed this because the 1/2 inch of snow in Amsterdam was making the trains run late (Seriously???? The fucking green line, a ramshackle trolley that regularly goes off the rails, that can barely get up a gradual incline, that can't even go two minutes without stopping for some damned reason, can operate in 1/2" of snow and those cars are about 20 years old! This is new European high speed train technology we're talking about!) but I got to Amsterdam Central in time to find out that the snow had knocked out all of the info screens in the station. Picture this if you will: imagine being in the airport (and Amsterdam Central, despite being a train station, is as busy as any moderately sized regional airport. It's no JFK or anything, but it is easily as busy as an FLL or AUS.) and all of the screens that are supposed to show flight information, like delays, what gate to go to, etc, are completely blank. Also imagine that the one info desk where you can get this information, is staffed by two people whose usual job is to direct lost American tourists to their platform and is completely overwhelmed. Just imagine what that line was like! Also add, as a coup de gras, a thin layer of foul mud to ever single surface of the station ,tracked in by innumerable feet, the exact color, consistency, ans smell of rancid diarrhea. It was a lovely, stress-free experience, you can be sure. I got on a train that I wasn't even sure was the right one for almost an hour, just knowing that it was going to Germany in the rough vicinity of where I wanted to go, and wondering if I was going to get another 60 EUR fee for not having the right ticket the whole time. Two hours later I got back to Koln, expecting to see some sort of snow situation beggering At The Mountains Of Madness and instead seeing a thin, rapidly melting layer of slush that wouldn't be out of place on a Boston November evening. In other words, POOOOOOOOOOOOOOONS!
God save my from Spanish air traffic controllers, Dutch airline employees, and German snowplows.