Synopsis
Zurich Arrival. Our connecting flight from Schiphol is scheduled to arrive at Zurich Airport mid-afternoon. After collecting our luggage, we’ll take a tram or Uber to the Zurich Ambassador Hotel and check-in. Fairly ad-hoc rest of the day, perhaps some minor exploration and an early dinner, depending on how tired we are. I do want to visit the Zurich Hauptbahnhof to double-check logistics for our Day 2 train trip, the Treno Gottardo.
Commentary
And then things got weird.
Somewhere over the Atlantic, KLM emailed that, due to mechanical issues, they have rescheduled us from the 12:15 flight to the 3:20pm/15:20 flight. Huh, aren’t we rescheduled to the 9pm/21:00 flight? Attempts to connect KLM via text as I had Delta were fruitless: after waiting 35+ minutes waiting for any response, I decide visiting a Schiphol Transfer Desk offers the best chance to figure out when we fly to Zurich.
A helpful woman helps us to print out new boarding passes only to discover that our flight is boarding in 15 minutes and, in fact, is our original flight which has its own delays.
We quickly walked to immigrations, flashed our boarding passes to allow us to jump to the head of the line, cleared immigrations and continued on to our gate. End-to-end time: 20 minutes.
The desk agent seemed reasonably confident that are bags would be onboard, so we boarded the flight and settled in for a much needed nap. Our travel – and nightmare – should almost be over!
Assuming the worse, upon arrival we immediately checked our bags’ air tags and learn that our bags are still in Amsterdam. We complete the lost luggage process, the bags potential overnight delivery to our hotel unappealing, so we risked that the bags would arrive on the next KLM flight from Amsterdam: the air tags showed the bags at the departure gate for that flight, so how bad is another 2 hours? We watched planes on the observation deck, ate a much-needed meal, and returned to the baggage carousel to await whatever conclusion, either the bags or our disappointment. Air tags seem to indicate the the bags somewhere on the tarmac, so cautiously optimistic.
Happily – and to our relief and happiness – the bags did arrive on the hoped-for flight. We grabbed them, exchanged a celebratory kiss, and grabbed a taxi. Thirty minutes later we are checked into our hotel and have been complimentary upgraded! Our day of travel is now complete.
The room’s TV remote not functioning, in the grand scheme of things, is inconsequential. I manually turn it off and we finally get to sleep. And I completely forget that I planned to confirm Day 2 trains stuff. Oh well…
Image Credits
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- photos © 2025 Scott C Sosna, all rights reserved
