The journey to takeoff

Last Tuesday was travel day. A day I would prefer to forget, but will live on in legend and cautionary tale until the end of time.

Pro tip -- don't fly KLM.

To be fair, KLM is a rule following airline. And we are nothing if not avid rule followers in this house. But I feel as though the rules become less important when a flight is taking off in one hour and there is a line of people waiting to check-in.

The line seemed to take ages and ages, and when finally it was our turn, it was 2:45, the flight was scheduled to take off at 4:00, and we were determined to be efficient. Paperwork out, ready to go.

Except that no one at the KLM counter spoke Dutch, which meant they weren't able to read the letter than gave us permission to move there. So we stood for what felt like 100 years (but perhaps was only 15 minutes) and waited for someone to call the Netherlands to make sure we had permission to move there. None of the goodbyes or the house selling drama was quite as destabilizing as the minutes we waited, unsure if we were even going to be allowed to get on the plane.

Then! After all that! They were incredible concerned about the weight of all of our bags. When we told them we were happy to just pay the over-weight fee and be done with it, the woman insisted that we rearrange everything right there in front of her and so while the seconds towards take off ticked by, we found ourselves moving things from bag to bag. This apparently was what had made the line crawl before we had made it to the front.

Pro tip for KLM - if 2 people have 4 bags, instead of weighing each one individually and making them move flip flips and granola bars from bag to bag, why not just weight them all at the same time and if they average the correct weight then we're done and no one wants to set fire to your counter.

By the by -- if we hadn't mentioned to this woman that we were flying with cats, she wouldn't have even noticed, so focused she was on the weight of all of our things. She gave the forms for the cats a cursory glance and then (finally) sent us on our way.  She was the only person to look at the cats forms. No one else ever even asked for them, so I'm glad we jumped through all those hoops when clearly, taking a cat to the Netherlands is no big deal.

After literally wrassling Miso through security (another pro-tip, don't bother wearing nice clothes when flying with a cat as there is a very real chance they will be destroyed before you make it to your destination) we made it to our gate with about 2 minutes to spare.

The flight itself was largely uneventful (except for Danny being seated in the same row as a woman who could not stand unassisted, which is incredibly dangerous and stupid -- again KLM is the worst --in addition to meaning that their "animals must be 10 rows apart" rule is totally bogus as we ended up being 3 rows apart) and then we landed.

When we went through customs the guy had zero questions -- he didn't care where we were going or how long we were staying, and the "stuff to declare" counter was closed (?!) so once again, no one gave our cats, their paperwork, or anything else we brought a second glance.

So now, we live in the Netherlands in very nice temporary housing, with all the things we thought we needed (that we actually don't) and none of the things we didn't bother to think about bringing.

When you move abroad and only have 4 suitcases for your first 30 days -- do not forget to pack a blanket, plastic bags for cat poop, a few pieces of tupperware, a blank notebook, and at least one of your own pillows.

Several lessons learned...more to come...