Usually when arriving on an international flight, I've been routed through the bowels of the airports. Down long white corridors with fluorescent lights far away from the glittering shops and restaurants above, up this escalator, sharp right turns with no other options, like sheep to slaughter, until you open into a grand hall where scores of airplanes have released their exhausted unwashed passengers into miles of cordons wrapped back and forth... EU citizens this line, all other passports that line. After the wait and the scrutiny you bust through a set of double doors right into the baggage area. If you're connecting you have go back through check in and TSA ... what a pain! If you're not connecting, you just missed a trip through perhaps the most beautiful shopping center in the city -- and the shopping center missed an opportunity to make a sale.
But at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, they've found a way to maintain security while allowing the shopping experience.
Our KLM flight disembarked into the normal gate area. Then each of us chose our exit path. I needed to connect to a "domestic" KLM flight Amsterdam > Madrid. Gate C8. So I followed the signs for Gates C1-20. Through the glittering shops, past the restaurants and bars, past the artwork every airport must have these days, and then I made a slight turn and voila, Border Control. In order to get from the International section of the Terminal, to the Domestic section of the Terminal, you had to pass through Border Control. The line was very long until they realized how many EU citizens were mixed in... So they called all EU to a newly opened section, and the "All Others" line started moving fast.
The Officer was really friendly. Tall with blue eyes. Chatty and smiling and excellent English. Two questions, take off your mask and shield. OK, thanks a lot, enjoy your visit. Through the double doors and back into the glittering shopping center. Easy peasy, right? So easy, in fact, that I assumed this was Border Control Junior and I'd need to do it again once in Madrid.
I have no idea what happened to the people who weren't making domestic connections... Is there a separate Border Control station before the baggage area? Who knows?