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Newark via Munich
Thursday, November 13 2025
location: Room 108, Dikker & Thijs Hotel, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Today we would be returning to the United States, though our plane wouldn't be taking off until later this afternoon. After packing up our room and checking out of the hotel, we went to the lounge and I quickly drank some espresso from the free coffee machine. Then we began our walk northwestward, ultimately in the direction of a renown vegan bakery called St. Jean. When we made it to the Houseboat Museum, Gretchen wanted to take some pictures. But where was her phone? She couldn't find it. Come to think of it, where was her backpack? She'd somehow left it back at the hotel. So I sat down a stoop and waited for her to hike back and retrieve it. (Her phone had been in her bra the whole time.) When Gretchen got back, she seemed a little spooked, asking what was happening to her brain that we could be traveling to the airport (ultimately) and she wasn't carrying her backpack. I decided at that point I needed to be more vigilant. I should've noticed that she had no backpack, but I'd been too focused I'm making sure I had all my shit.
We walked passed Anne Frank's house past many picture-perfect Amsterdam scenes, ultimately ending up at one of two St. Jeans stores. The one we arrived at specialized in savory food, whereas the one across Lindengracht was more about sweets. I decided to settle down in the savory St. Jean with an oat milk cappuccino while a very enthusiastic Gretchen marched off to the other store. When she came back, she said she'd run into the Swissies at the other store (they'd be in Amsterdam for a few days), and they soon came over to give us a proper goodbye (though it was a second one for Gretchen). We snacked on various items for awhile until a flood of customers made us feel bad for occupying seat, so we gathered our things and left. The large box of baked goods and sandwiches I was carrying was a little bulky to be traveling with, but it didn't end up being too much of a problem carrying through airport security or even onto the two planes we'd be flying in today.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Gretchen had noted a little hour-sized hole in our schedule and decided to fill it with an hour-long riverboat tour of Amsterdam's canals on a boat belonging to a company called Lovers based near the main train station. Just before we set out, we hung out in Lovers' little café, though when we found it cost a euro to use the toilet, Gretchen just dove beneath the turnstile, and did I when she came back. This was easy to do, as the person working the front couldn't really see back to the turnstile.
The tour was narrated by a canned narration that could be heard in numerous different languages on an earphone. I wouldn't say the content of the tour was particularly interesting. But it was nice to be sitting down and watching the beautiful city scroll past. I was still carrying a sour-cherry kombucha we'd bought at that woo-woo vegan place back in Zürich, and it had been room temperature this whole time, so we'd thought maybe it would be bad by now. But no, it was still perfectly drinkable (if a little overly-carbonated).
After the boat tour, we hurried across the bridge to the train and then tried to figure out where the train to the airport was and how to get tickets for it. Some girls gave us some helpful information, telling us to be sure to go through a certain turnstile at the airport to avoid being charged for the longest possible train trip. But then when we went to enter the turnstile to get to the tracks, Gretchen used her credit card and then I couldn't use it because apparently two tickets cannot be put on one credit card simultaneously. Some woman tried to help us by letting us use the QR code on her phone, but that didn't work, and I ultimately had to slip in behind some gentlemen before the turnstile gate locked behind him. At the airport, we never actually went through another turnstile, so we thought maybe Gretchen would get a huge charge [but she ended up never being charged at all].
For some reason for our flight back to Newark, we had to go through Munich, which is diagonally all the way across Germany from Amsterdam, not far from Italy and in the completely opposite direction from Newark. But the flight was on time and security to get on that plane was not much of an ordeal. We found ourselves sitting next to a rando in a cluster of three seats, but the flight only took about an hour and there were a bunch of empty seats in the back that Gretchen took advantage of.
When we landed in Munich, there had been a little bit of a delay and we were a little concerned about whether we'd make the Newark flight, especially given how little control we had over our movement in the Munich airport. First we got off the plane onto the tarmac and loaded into a bus, and that had to be completely full before it started going. Then we had to run to a tram system and take that to another terminal, then climb up a bunch of stairs, go through European passport control (fortunately the German passport guy was very nice and insisted we had plenty of time to make our flight). I think this all would've been a lot less stressful had there not been another American who would be on our Newark flight hurrying along beside us, freaking out the whole time that maybe we'd miss the plane.
One perk of being a little late to a connecting flight is that you don't end up spending much time in the connecting airport. Before long we were in our seat, and when Gretchen asks one of the flight attendants if ours was a full flight, he said it wasn't, but that we would be having a rando with us in our three-seat cluster. But, he said, the three-seat cluster behind in the very back of the plane would be empty, so we went back and sat in those.
After I'd had a couple glasses of wine and our special vegan meal (it was some sort of pumpkin curry and surprisingly good), I let the ambien kick in while I watched A.I. Artificial Intelligence, a movie from 2001 that seems pretty dated now (both for its cultural mileau and the technology presented as futuristic). Back then, AI had to be embodied, and in this it took the form of a bratty little white kid.
Meanwhile I noticed a little baby in a mother's lap only three or four seats from Gretchen and I was sure that creature was going to make Gretchen's flight suck. But, amazingly, that baby was well-behaved for the whole flight. I credit the mother for this; I saw her keeping the baby constantly entertained by, for example, "flying" a stuffed-toy airplane over the in-flight flight map.
Because there was an empty seat between me and Gretchen, I set the screen for that seat mostly to play video from a camera pointing forward under the plane's belly.
I woke up after we'd crossed the Atlantic with only a couple hours of flying left to go. That went about as well as one can hope for in coach, and then, eventually, it was time to get off the plane, go through immigration, and be disgorged out of the Newark airport. While we'd been in Europe, the government shutdown had ended, and perhaps that played a role in why we sailed through all those gauntlets so easily. Immigration seemed especially well-staffed, and there was almost no line there at all.
The plan after we got out of the airport was for me to get the car from long-term parking and drive by myself back to Hurley, while Gretchen would somehow get into Manhattan to do a variety things, including meeting up with her long-time friend Mary from Washington State and doing organizing work for Wendy, her long-time clutter-busting client. The car parking service we'd used has its own shuttle that comes regularly enough that nobody needs to call for it. It was waiting for me when I arrived, and I climbed right in. I was sitting down in the Bolt fewer than ten minutes later. As I left the parking area, I had an additonal $5 charge that I think might've been for the service of having the Bolt charged up, a fee I was perfectly happy to pay.
When I got back home to Hurley, the house sitter was gone and there were only the dogs and cats to greet me. I've been greeted more enthusiastically, but I was perfectly happy with the greeting I received. Since I was home alone tonight, I obviously did some drinking and, since I was exhausted and jetlagged, not much else.
The Westerkerk, viewed from our boat tour in Amsterdam. Click to enlarge.
Inside our boat during our boat tour in Amsterdam. Click to enlarge.
The Munttoren during our boat tour in Amsterdam. Click to enlarge.
The Basilica of Saint Nicholas during our boat tour in Amsterdam. Click to enlarge.
Bridges beyond bridges during our boat tour in Amsterdam. Click to enlarge.
A draw-bridge viewed from our boat tour in Amsterdam. According to the narration, a scene from a James Bond movie was filmed here. Click to enlarge.
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