Saturday Night
There are many hotels close to Schiphol airport, ranging from the budget to the luxury. It made no difference to me though, because they were all full. It was starting to look as though I would need to head back to the city center when to my delight; I found one that did have room. Not only that, it had a free shuttle “Leaving in three minutes! You go to gate NOW!” barked the eastern-European sounding woman on the other end of the line.
Go to gate now, I did and in less time than it takes to tell, was sitting in the passenger seat of a mini-van, bowling my way through the snow covered fields to dinner and a warm bed. At least that’s what I thought. Oh, how the gods must laugh.
On and on we drove, me and the driver in almost total silence. I learned he was from Moscow but as his English was on a par with my Russian, the conversation didn’t exactly sparkle. After a while I began to wonder if he was driving me all the way to Moscow. Holland isn’t this big is it?
Finally, we pulled into a courtyard of a small hotel, on a residential street, in what appeared to be a hamlet consisting only of residential streets, and I learned that this was where I was to be spending the night. In the proper light, my driver turned out to be a large muscular guy, with a black leather jacket over a black wool polo-neck. Yeah, I’ve seen enough crappy movies to recognize a mobster when I see one. What was a Russian Mafioso doing working for an obscure hotel in the Dutch countryside? My imagination was working overtime. Then it jumped way past union scale when I met his business partner at the front desk. Seriously, if I’d been looking for actors to play two stereotypical Russian gangsters, this pair would have been the ones I’d pick. Mobster # 2 had an angry looking scar running from his close-cropped hairline to his chin and if that bulge under his armpit wasn’t a gun, then...OK, there was no bulge under his armpit, but dammit, it wouldn’t have seemed out of place if there was one.
After checking me into the room, he handed me the key and a TV remote. “You return in morning” he ordered, as if I would dare to forget. I suspect the TV remote had some purpose, but I never figured out what it was. It had nothing to do with the TV, I’m sure because that wasn’t working. Neither was the clock. One thing that was working was the toilet. In fact, I had to turn off the valve at the wall to get it to stop working.
So…no TV, no dinner (the cheerless restaurant had closed hours ago, and there was nowhere else in town), still no Internet access, despite the apparent “good” connection and nothing much about which to be chirpy. Although I had a seat booked on the train for tomorrow, I had heard that the weather had forced many trains to be cancelled too, so this was no guarantee of anything. Not only that, I still had nothing concrete as far as getting from London to Glasgow. And if the British transport network was as paralyzed as everyone was saying it was, well, completing that last leg might be a challenge too.
One of my room’s few working amenities was the telephone, and with this I was able to rouse a co-worker, fortuitously at home on his Saturday afternoon and he was able to look up a number by which the Corporate Travel Agency could be reached from Europe. In no time I was chatting to a delightful Texan lady (“delightful” and “Texan”, now there are two words I don’t often use in the same sentence) who set me up with a flight from London City Airport to Glasgow for Monday morning. If that arrived on time, it would allow me a whole afternoon with my family before heading home. If it arrived on time. And if someone was able to meet me there. And if I even made it to London by Monday. And if my American Express card is working. And if, and if, and if.
Tired, hungry and thoroughly fed up, I climbed between the icy sheets and wondered if I would get any sleep at all.
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