Sitting in Amsterdam

I thought I'd take a few moments while waiting on my connection in Amsterdam to detail my ordeals from last night and this morning.

After I wrote my blog entry last night, I was getting ready for bed and waiting on my coworker to show up to take my luggage. He showed up about 9:45 (I wanted to be in bed by 9) and I took my luggage down to his apartment. I got back to my apartment and realized that I forgot to give him the food from my kitchen, so he came up to get that. I was then brushing my teeth and I realized that I needed to take my toothpaste down to his room to leave behind as well (it is larger than 3oz and cost 4 euro and I wasn't planning on checking any luggage). I grabbed my key and went down to his room. When going back up to my room (2 stories up and a tower over) I went up the wrong stairs (the towers are totally isolated except for the floor that my friend is on. So I went back down the stairs, walked over to the correct ones and walked back up. I get back to my room and the key doesn't work.

I knew exactly what the problem was. I grabbed the old keycard (identical) from my previous hotel room. Funny thing is, in all the moving about I knew that I was going to do something stupid like that. So I make the 5 minute trek to the front desk and get a new keycard, then 5 min. back to my room. By the time I get back to my room it is much closer to 11pm than 10pm. Of course I try to go to bed but can't because I'm too worked up. I finally get to bed at about 12:30 or 1am, to wake up at 4:15!

When I check in at the Hamburg airport at the KLM counter I learn that the baggage allowance is different than in the US. Click here if you're really interested. So apparently if your flying from Europe, you can only have one bag PERIOD. If you're flying from the US, you can have one bag and a 'personal item' (laptop in my case). Needless to say, they made me check my carryon suitcase. This makes me a little upset, as my connection is only an hour and a half, and I now need to wait on my baggage to clear customs. I wasn't worried before, but I'm a little concerned now. I don't think customs is too bad in Detroit though, so hopefully I won't have any problems. We'll see. If these are the worst travel stories I have from this trip, I'll be happy.

Ken