schiphol - amsterdam international airport

my flight from manila, philippines back to düsseldorf, germany i had a stopover to amsterdam schiphol international airport.

as a non holder of eu passport, and in deep winter last december 2008, was a horrible experience for me. the schengen police made us wait for an hour in the freezing cold checking one by one the passports of the passengers, and we had almost 500 passengers in the aircraft!

it was a pain in the ass because all of us were freezing completely in the skybridge, when it was my turn, they asked me blah blah blah and of course i answered in german which wasnt easy with my teeth claterring.

so these are the advices from passengers not coming from the schengen states.

i was already in schiphol with friends waiting for a train to düsseldorf, but not used it for internatonal flights, as usual, the airport is not different from any other major western european airports, spacious, clean, lots of cafes, boutique and restaurants.

When I went backpacking to Europe I arrived to Amsterdam, to the Schiphol airport. My first impression was that this airport was HUGE, as they say an Airport City.

I really like this airport and here are a few reasons:
-This is a BIG airport, but so well organized, that you will always find what you are looking for.
-If you have a long layover, there's no way you'd get bored. They have a huge shopping area, which includes nice stores besides the duty free, and also a supermarket open 24hrs!
-But this is not all, you can also find a museum (when I was there, they had a Rembrandt exhibition), massages, a casino and relax chairs!!!
-Also there are numerous restaurants, bars and cafés.
-They also offer the baggage lockers. So you don't have to carry it with you if you want to leave the airport for a short visit to the city. Your things can be stored here for up 168 hours.
-There are also free trolleys to transport your luggage.
-I found the people working here helpful and friendly.
-They are aware the airport is huge, so they offer free mini AirportCity guides, which are handy.
-Reaching it by public transportation is really easy. Schiphol station is situated directly below the airport. You can pick up a free baggage trolley and walk straight to the departure or arrival hall.
-They are so shopping friendly. Sometimes when you arrive to somewhere you see something you like, but don't buy it because you don't want to carry it around. Well, here you can purchase it and they will storage it until you are flying back through the airport.

These are some personal experiences:
-Since I was entering to the Schengen territory, I had to clear customs here. Clearing customs was really easy. I had to make a connection and I had more than enough time to catch my flight to Hamburg. I have read, this could be difficult, but I was lucky it wasn't hard for me.
-I spent one night at this airport. I was with a friend -well we just met, but since there were some places open 24hrs, we could get something to eat and shops open really early, so I could take a walk around before checking in. But weren't the only ones spending the night here, also the chairs were comfortable, haha.

Schiphol Airport, a city itself, a nice one ;)

Amsterdam’s Airport Schiphol is the Netherlands main airport and a hub for KLM airlines which is what we flew in on. It is located about 20 minutes southwest of Amsterdam in the city of Haarlemmermeer. You have no idea upon landing her just how large this airport is and how very busy it is. We found our way from the plane to the baggage and customs area and used a very nice push cart for our luggage without too much of a delay. I mentioned how big it is but there are so many things here, shopping, eating, museum, etc. We did have a rather difficult time finding the proper place to meet our tour guide. After re-reading our tour instructions for the umpteenth time we finally noted that there was a checked column and had just located it when our tour guide found us. A little embarrassing, but I don’t think we held up the tour.

As Yadi says , Schiphol is a really big airport but also is so organized, NEW AND CLEAN (the opposite than Heathrow), have a lot of things to do for spending your time, I didn't know that have a museum, but I never have been there more than 3 hours.

The train station is under the station and it's a lil bit complicate to take the train ticket on the automatic machines, so...DON'T PAY IT! ;)

There are 1 train to Amsterdam each 15 minutes or so