[...where is this] ...where is this??

A hassle? Or a gift..
Feels almost as if I’ve had more cases of hectic and disrupted transportations than smooth ones. Trains and buses delayed, planes disappearing, bus taking my luggage but not my body. Maybe I’m just too used to managing my own transportation in LA, or using the uber efficient public transportation system in Tokyo. Even so, there must be something about my style of traveling or some kind of tendency, because not even other backpackers experience as much trouble..

Yesterday I took a flight from Larnaca Airport in Cyprus to Weeze Airport in Germany. It’s probably because Cyprus is so small and only limited airlines offers flight to/from there, because Weeze Airport is the smallest airport in Germany and it’s located in..Dussledorf. Not

Berlin, not Munich, not Frankfurt or Hamburg. Dussledorf. Where is it on the map? I’m still not quite sure because some maps don’t bother labeling it. That’s how random it is. For this exact reason, I booked a bus from the airport to Amsterdam, which only takes about an hour and is far closer than other German cities (thus cheaper). So at this point I became aware that I’m in west Germany, somewhere along the boarder of Netherland and Belgium. There’s only one bus that goes to Amsterdam, which was at 23:59, so I had no other choice than to wait at the airport for 6 hours. Wasn’t too bad, just read magazines and had coffee. I’m learning to utilize idle time.

I can live with vending machine coff. Not a starbucks fan anyway

Even managed to get a bit of sleep in as well. Woke up to my alarm at 23:59, drifted to the bus terminal, and waited.

And waited

…and waited, until finally around 00:20 a short, chunky German lady who had being standing there the whole time (who turns out to be an airport staff) decided to notify me: “Today, no bus”. Wth. Why didn’t she tell me before when I’m obviously waiting for a bus, and more importantly, why didn’t my bus come? The answer to the second question (forget the first) became clear later on for me, but in conclusion this is what happened.

- Each passenger for the bus pays 50 Euro to go to Amsterdam
- The driver is paid a flat rate of 200 Euro, so unless at least 4 passengers board the bus, the company’s in the red zone
- Number of passengers for the 6/24 23:59 bus: 1 (me)
- So now it makes sense. Except it still lacks explanation to justify why I was not notified..

So I had to call the company. AirExpress Bus. Though the service is far from express, and the vehicle they decided to send was definitely not a bus. More like a 2010 S-class Mercedes-Benz. “Why send a bus for a single person when it eats more gas?”, says the driver. True. So despite departing the airport 30 minutes late, I got to Amsterdam 15 minutes earlier than initially scheduled because the driver was having too much fun behind the wheel (apparently having less than 4 passenger is pretty rare, so seldom does he have the chance to drive a Mercedes) and the road was empty at 1am. Two cans of RedBull probably helped his foot settle on the gas pedal quite comfortably. He was a cool guy though. He ordered me not to sleep because he hates tourists who does that (it makes it boring on his part), which I respect. But half the time he was too busy with his gear-shifting and left me hanging. I could of slept for an hour..

So there I was finally at 2am: Red-Light, er...Amsterdam.