The G10 Procedure

This week I was again travelling for work, and again it was to a country that is fairly paranoid about safety and security. In hindsight it is easy to laugh about, but as usual, only in hindsight. I call it the G10 procedure, and it went something like this:

For most International flights you can get away with booking in an hour and a half (or maybe even an hour) before the flight, but for this particular country, and especially this particular airline, you need to use every minute of the three hours that they allow for. The process starts with you, the passenger, arriving at the airlines’ specially demarcated check-in area. The check –in area is surrounded with bullet proof glass and there are a number of guards all carrying semi-automatic rifles. Having arrived at the check-in area you are then approached by, what can only be termed, a Profiler. The Profiler’s job is to scrutinize your passport and look for anything that might be considered suspicious. This may be the fact that you are a resident of a country other than the two you are flying between. It could be the brightly coloured stamps of a country that you visited in the past that is not on talking terms with the country you are hoping to visit now. Or maybe it has something to do with the fact that you were born in Polokwane, or worse yet, you have more facial hair than what your passport photo shows. In my case there were multiple reasons for the ‘Profiler’ to get excited. This then results in even more bizarre questions being asked, like “Why did you decide to fly today?” and “Do you have to go on this trip?”. What is the correct answer??

Having decided that I qualified as suspicious, and having had this confirmed by the head Profiler, I was then informed that I would have to proceed to Gate G10, and that I would have to be there one and a half hours before scheduled take-off.

Gate G10. She made it sound so simple. Surely it is the gate after gate G9? No. You see gate G10 is not a real gate. It is a room located below all the other gates and it is not sign posted as “This way to G10”. It is only by asking the heavily armed security guards for directions that you will ever find gate G10. Once you are in G10 the G10 procedure starts. It starts with a Department of Home Affairs type of wait. Take a seat and wait for your number to be called. I was number three in the queue. Once your number is called the process starts all over again. The passport is scrutinized, your hand luggage (and checked in luggage if you are unlucky) is turned inside out and the barrage of questions starts all over again. Having finally decided that I could proceed to the next ‘stage’, I was given a personal escort to the security check. At the security check I was taken straight to the front of the queue where the lady operating the x-ray machine was informed that I was “one of the people from G10”. This got the lady and her colleagues all very excited. They spent the next few minutes double checking that the x-ray machine was working properly (what were they using it for up until now?) and that any other machine that was supposed to make a noise and flash with red lights did as it was supposed to. Great fun, as long as you are not the guy at the front of the queue that has caused all this fuss to be made.

Eventually, after having had my bag scanned, and having done the standard belt and shoe strip, and having gone through the metal detector, and having had the obligatory security pat down (even though the metal detector never actually went off), I was clear to go. Now I could proceed with my trip looking forward to the return trip…

Having spent all this time in the airport, I managed to encounter a few other funny moments:

1)    Whilst standing in the check-in queue (the one where you are given your boarding pass in exchange for handing over your suitcase), two girls in front of me decided to unpack their suitcase on to the scale at the check-in desk. Apparently they were 14 pounds over weight and had to “make a plan”. This was all working out fine for them for the first five or so minutes until the check-in clerk realized that her check-in desk was starting to look like a flea market. Needless to say the girls were asked to take their stuff and weigh it somewhere else.

2)    On the way back I had bought some small presents for Bron. I had originally intended to send the presents with my checked in baggage. This plan was foiled. The security check (yip, bag gets x-rayed before you even check-in) decided that these presents need to be packaged separately. So these two little gifts, each the size of a fist, would need to be boxed separately. The box that was eventually brought for these two little packages looked like it could be used to ship two pairs of shoes, a drum, half a cow and still have some space left over. And then I am supposed to take the airline seriously when they measure the size of my baggage.

Anyway, tomorrow we are off to the south of Spain for our end of year break. Here’s hoping we don’t encounter another G10 procedure.

Merry Christmas all and we will be back and blogging in January. 

Some end of year photos

Celebrating Sinterklaas with some friends (the meal is Stamppot and sausages - a traditional Dutch meal)

Playing a gift swap game at Sinterklaas

The Oliebollen (think sweet vetkoek) seller

A hot oliebollen sprinkled with sugar

Our christmas tree

Some of the festive lights in Rotterdam

The National Architecture Institute (Rotterdam)

Sunset in Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv coastline

Coastal engineering in action: an offshore breakwater and the resulting salient

Ice-skating with Bron's department

Note from the editor: 

Despite best intentions I have as yet not put together another blog on life in Rotterdam which I am quite bleak about. As you can see from the above photo's we have been pretty busy these last few weeks with some social activities but also trying to get things finished at work before we go on leave. But watch this space!! There will be more blogging next year and there will definitely be more posts on living in Europe. As Justin said we are off to Spain tomorrow, yay! Looking forward very muchly. Things will probably be quiet on the blog front while we are away but watch out for Marph and stoires from Spain in January =)

Wishing you all a Blessed Christmas and a very Happy New Year! 

x

Hint van de Sint

Hoor de windt waait door de bomen!

Hier in huis zelfs waait de wind!

Zou de goede Sint wel komen als hij’t weer zo lelijk vind?

Als hij’t weer zo lelijk vindt.

Ja hij komt in donk’re naachten,

Op zijn paardje oh zo snel.

Als hij wijst hoe wij verwachten oh dan kwam hij zeker wel,

Oh dan kwam hij zeker wel.

Tomorrow is Sinterklaas in the Netherlands! This is one of the traditional Sinterklaas songs and it is spot on with the wind, it has been howling all week!

So, what is Sinterklaas? Sinterklaas is based on Saint Nicholas, the patron Saint of children, sailors and the city of Amsterdam. He had a reputation for secret gift-giving and leaving coins in shoes left out for him. Father Christmas or Santa Claus is also based on Saint Nicholas but Sinterklaas is not at all linked to religion here which is really nice. Other names for Sinterklaas include de Goedheiligman or just de Sint.

Sinterklaas is celebrated on the 5^th of December, on the eve of the birth of Saint Nicholas. Legend has it that the Sint arrives by steam boat from Spain three weeks earlier. Each year he arrives in a different city in the Netherlands, the only criteria being there must be a harbor. This year he arrived in Dordrecht. During the three weeks he visits children in many different cities in the Netherlands and also has ‘help’ Sints as one person can’t be everywhere at the same time, even if he is a Saint.

Sinterklaas ends on 5 December with children receiving gifts from the Sint. Traditional gifts include something hand-made, a well thought out poem about the person and a chocolate alphabet letter. But these days marketing has taken over and toys are also popular gifts. One of the stores motto at the moment is ‘Hint can de Sint’ as ideas for what to buy. Also traditional is leaving your shoe by the fireplace, or more creatively by the extractor fan in the kitchen if you don’t have a fireplace, for the Sint to come down the chimney and leave sweets in it.

In our experience most people celebrate Sinterklaas in some form but it is most popular with families with small children. We really like the fact that Sinterklaas and Christmas are kept very separate; it is a big no-no to confuse Sinterklaas with de Kerstman and even to put up a tree before Sinterklaas is over. It is also nice not to be all Christmased out by cheesy carols in the shops etc. before the beginning of December! But we have been warned that the day after Sinterklaas Christmas hits the shops big time. But I think Christmas is less commercial here than in SA since people mostly do gift giving at Sinterklaas and Christmas time is more for spending time with family.

Traditional treats for Sinterklaas include chocolate alphabet letters, spekulaas biscuits, gevulde spekulaas (a thick layer of amandelspijs, a type of marzipan, sandwiched between two spekulaas biscuits), kruidnoten (think mini ginger biscuits, too more-ish) and truffle kruidnoten (kruidnoten covered in chocolate and dusted in cocoa). Kruidnoten and truffle kruidnoten are definitely our favourites!

We had a lovely dinner and gift swop game last week Sunday with some friends from Justin’s work. We all brought a nice gift and a kitsch gift and swopped them around with a dice with rules for what to do for each number (1 = swop left, 2 = unwrap, 3 = swop right etc). It was really fun and we highly recommend it as an alternate to the ‘yankee swop’game.

Today we had some friends over and enjoyed some snacks and good wine whilst playing board games. It was really fun. It is really nice that we finally know some people over here that we can call friends and do fun stuff with.

Tomorrow, Sinterklaas, both our companies close at 3pm so people can have more time with their families. We are looking forward to an earlier day and a nice quiet dinner together =)

In other news it is two weeks until we leave for Spain! Woohoo!! So much of excited. Next weekend we have booked to go to the Batman Live show which we expect to be mostly acrobatics similar to Cirque du Soleil. And Justin flies to Israel again next Sunday for three nights. We are hoping his new beard gets him through airport security easier this time ‘~)

Finally, yay to Shell & Graham spending some time with our good friends Joan & Mayira in Santiago, Chile this weekend! Hope you guys had a great time together! Wish we could have been there too! Next time =)

Have a good week!!

x