This is what I think to myself, without fail, upon first arriving in Europe…stepping bleary-eyed off that hour, marathon, overnight flight at Amsterdam Schiphol, or Paris CDG, or London Heathrow. International air travel is a highly specific constellation of frustrations, maneuvers, and indignities that sap the enthusiasm of anyone, old or young.
But one of them is this: The absolute worst few hours of any trip invariably take place on your day of arrival. This period of fitful adjustment starts around the time your plane begins its descent toward Europe: Peering out the window and through the clouds at tidy green farms hemmed in by canals, you wrap up your overnight marathon of watching movies that were too bad to see in the theater, and you begin assembling your personal items to deplane in a new continent.
Reaching passport control Ah, yes: passport check between flights! Why does this always catch me by surprise? The long row of about a dozen glass booths, like giant aquariums, could be churning through this line.
But nearly all of them are empty. The two that are staffed process new arrivals at a rate far, far slower than the flow of anxious travelers to the back of the line.
To their credit, the agents managing the passport line — who represent an extraordinarily thin line between this fast-growing scrum of antsy travelers, and utter anarchy — survey each case in turn and make reasonable exceptions.
