20 Passport processing booths on 8/22/26. Kastrup KNOWS it will take a full 60 to 120 seconds per…read moreperson to process incoming passengers entering the European passport-free travel zone - officially known as the Schengen Area, a territory where 29 European countries function as a single region with no internal border checks. they do nothing except take your picture once or twice to get it right and then have you pressure fingers down on the pad to get fingerprints. They don't even stamp your passport anymore so there's even less work for these wonderful go-getters. Oh, they also asked me why I was in Denmark and for how long.
So what does this airport do?
Staff ONLY two - that's one then two booths so the elderly, the jet lagged and the aggravated can stand FOR NEARLY THREE HOURS while they have to put up with Danish Bureaucratic INEFFICIENCY. No one minds a well ordered society. However, blinkered pig ignorance is quite another thing.
BONUS THIEVERY: when you go outside to the taxi stand, there's some smiling Dane invite you into a taxi van that sees 8 to 12 people and then offers to take you into Copenhagen just on your own, don't fall for it. I'm shocked. I fell for it. I trust Danes. Apparently that is no longer an option. When I checked my bill after he had driven me the 15 minutes into the hotel in Midtown Copenhagen, what should have been about a $50 taxi ride was $75. Never mind that I was ignorant enough to tip him. Do not get into a van alone - you figure we learned this from the days of Ted Bundy.
Bonus fact: figured that on the return flight nine days later, my photo and fingerprints were the system and it would be a breeze getting through Pasco control. But apparently not. The wise Danish flight authority still decided to only Man three of 15 to 20 booze. And there we were again waiting for an hour and a half maybe closer to an hour because they needed to take the photograph again. Apparently my facial features had changed greatly in nine days and they want to make sure that the person leaving their beloved nation was not some guy that looked like me and just had the same fingerprints as me and had all the other information like me. No reason was given while they needed another photograph and I didn't make a big deal of it or I would've been eaten a lie by the people behind me were frothing from standing online for hours. Or an hour. Get your stuff together, airport.
