i gotta bring up redwings question again.
they asked you to contact ground in the air???? and then the ground had a go at you for not getting a landing clearance from them?? well first of all ground doesnt ever give landing clearance, not there job, at airports where there is no ground controller the tower deals with all requests, but schipol is a large airport with both, as for contacting ground in the air, only ever to get your runway turn off point and to get your gate(which is usually done by the gate agent) so thats rather strange
the procedures usually go, approach will set you up for the runway, then approach hands you off to tower after giving you final approach clearance, next you will contact the TOWER:) inform them you are with them on approach for whatever runway and how far out you are, they will then acknowledge and either give you landing clearance or a further instruction,
once you are on the ground and off the runway you will goto the ground who will expect you to give them a gate number or ramp, and will give you clearance Via said taxi-ways,
there was an incident in america where a united A320 had been given one instruction by the tower and then a differant one by the ground, it was foggy they got lost, and went down the wrong taxiway, this lead onto an active runway, they were less than 10 feet from the runway when a 767 shot by, they hit full brakes and asked what was going on, the ground remained adiment that they were on a closed runway despite a 767 shooting by on take off roll, the next 5 minutes were really nerve racking with an inrate ground controller yelling at the united to continue while also giving clearance to planes to take off, luckaly the planes waiting to depart refused, no matter how much the controller yelled at them to:) eventually said united crossed the runway found a sign that told them where they were and continued on, while getting chewed out, this is what happens when a ground controller tries to take on the job of a tower controller when they shouldnt.
http://www.ntsb.gov/events/2000/incursi ... cursion.rmthis is an animation of it in real media format, its pretty big at 6.3MB but well worth a watch, and its a 757 not a320 my bad:)