On Air at the Airport

Woohoo, thanks to my little friend EEE, and XS4ALL’s roaming, I am online at gate E07 of Amsterdam’s airport Schiphol.

So far everything went really smoothly. We got here 4 hours in advance, checked in our bags, changed our seats 20 rows more to the front (finally this automatic self service check in does what I want) and did some shopping both outside and inside customs. Then we made our way to the gate (yay,only the E-pier, not that far away), to find only 4 people in the waiting room.

Only drawback of Schiphol is: since the luggage scanning machine is right at the gate (not when you go through customs), you really have to either finish or throw away all your drinks before you enter the plane. Oh well.

Ready to go!

Last night was the last night in a comfy bed at my parents’ for the coming 3, almost 4 weeks. Gee, can’t remember when was the last time I had 3 whole weeks (even more) off. Maybe in 1994 after my MSc graduation?

For the record: my big blue suitcase weighs 18.9 kg, and my carry-on bag is 5.2 kg. This includes a bottle of water of 400g, which will be emptied before going thru customs. Wonderfully useless security measures… Much more useful will be the ASUS Eee PC I got especially for this trip, to avoid having to lug a normal laptop with me.

Write to you again from Shanghai, hopefully!