I traveled to our office in Capelle yesterday. The flight to Amsterdam was delayed by 50 minutes, which was announced after boarding, the plane could use some fresh paint on the outside and the interiour has seen better days as well, but the flight itself was surprisingly smooth, even though we had to pass several thunderstorms. The Fokker 70 is my favourite plane for regional flights now... :-)
Arriving at Amsterdam I learned about the joys of Dutch railroading. The trains were on time and quite comfortable, but I had to pay 50 cent surcharge for buying the tickets at the counter, as the ticket machines require a PIN for credit cards (WTF?!) and didn't accept my Maestro debit card. Great, I can get cash with the debit card almost everywhere in the world, including the US of A, but I cannot buy a train ticket in the Netherlands with it. (I later discovered that they do have machines which accept Maestro, but I didn't see them at Schiphol.) Oh, and they could have told me that Duivendrecht is a two-level station. With only four minutes time to switch trains this was a bit confusing.
The hotel is okay, but quite expensive. As I've arrived late at night, I got the last available room. It could have been the storage room, but fortunately it is one of their executive class rooms. Well, it is a fairly standard queen bed room. Unfortunately, the restroom does not have an own outlet for the air and the only mirrors are in that room. Additionally, I could expect free wireless form a 105 EUR per night room in a hotel in the middle of nowhere, couldn't I? Well, it is EUR 10 per hour with a limit to 150 MB of total traffic. Thanks, but no, thanks.
On the positive side, there is a gas station at the corner of the street, so no need to pay for overpriced beverages from the mini bar, yay!
Comments
lynard-.livejournal.com 16 years, 10 months ago
Repeat after me: not the us standards, not the us standards
See it this way: the german bahn announces free wireless on their big train stations - well the usage of the wireless lan is free, but if you want to see more than www.bahn.de you have to pay the big T or other phone companys to get entry to the net (so much for service)
Link | Replyzefirodragon.livejournal.com 16 years, 10 months ago
reminds me of the good ol' days where you were happy to have a flatrate - from your ISP, never thinking of getting one from your phone company, too.
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