September 5, 2022 - Escape from Amsterdam
We bought “real” tickets on Norweigan Air for a flight from Amsterdam to Oslo. The flight was scheduled to depart at 9:40pm & arrive in Oslo around midnight (not perfect, but ok). We did a few touristy things in the morning & early afternoon & got to the airport around 4:15pm (over 5 hrs before departure). Amsterdam’s rule is that you cannot check in until 4 hours before departure, which we did. Then we were required to check our bags at only a certain counter. We were told that counter would open at 6:30pm (so we were there before 6pm). The agent didn’t show up until 7:35pm! After checking our bags, we immediately got into the security line. It turned out that AMS employees were staging a work slowdown & there were thousands of people in the security line. At 9pm (we were only halfway), Security then closed one door and the crowd of harried, upset people started yelling & swarming the checkpoint. It was VERY scary! If it was the US, there definitely would have been violence! Police arrived & we got out of there! Amazingly, our bags arrived around midnight (yay!). So, another night in an airport hotel :-(. We really needed to get out of Amsterdam & their airport, so we took a train to Bruges, Belgium the next day. It appears that the Travel Gods have decided the Canfields and Norway shall not be together on. this trip (again!).
The security line started outside the airport, down a long hallway and up some stairs. This is the mess we encountered after we climbed the stairs!!
Originally there were 3 doors open for the security checkpoint. For some reason, they closed 2 doors and started funneling people from those lines to the only open door. That led to chaos as the people who were in line for that security door started rushing the checkpoint. At this point, all lines broke down and we decided to leave.
