After 34 hours of travel, I have arrived safely in South Africa.

I waas in the Netherlands for a total of foour hours yesterday (thus the straange doouble vowels). I have three observations about my experience in Schiphol Airport.

First, for someone who speaks a little German, Dutch sounds very strange. My Austrian friend put it well: "It’s like they can’t decide whether they want to speak German or English, so it’s somewhere in the middle."

Second, there are these awesome little handcarts for luggage distributed about the airport–all for free. It’s so much better than US airports, where you have to pay $2-$4 to use a cart. When I stopped at the little art museum in the airport, I just left my cart outside–and when I came out a half-hour later, someone else had left one and I took it. It’s great–they’re everywhere.

Third, they will address you by name on the paging system and call you out for being late to your flight. Several times I heard in various languages successively: "Passengers Jan and Maria Kees, on flight KL0123 to Dubai: you are delaying your flight’s departure. Please proceed to Gate F5 immediately." Now EVERYONE in the airport knows about your little troubles on the toilet…

Stay tuned for more on my Cape Town experience…