Attitude of Gratitude

Canal in Amsterdam in October
[Don’t let the picture above fool you! Even thought it is only October it is already really cold. When I woke up today it was 1 degree Celsius! Yowza! I froze while riding my bike to work this morning.]

When first moving here, you make all kinds of little mistakes when shopping because you aren’t quite sure what things are. I had almost forgotten this phenomenon until my parents recently visited and bought all sorts of random things while at the local grocery store. The memories flooded back of me almost adding baby peas into a recipe that called for capers.

When my mom said she had bought some hot chocolate, I naturally assumed it was chocomel, a very lekker (tasty) and popular Dutch chocolate milk. She disappeared into the kitchen and came back a few minutes later and asked me if the carton she had purchased was hot chocolate, because she didn’t think so. She had purchased vla , a thick pudding-ish type of dessert that is popular in the Netherlands. Never fear – she was determined she could thin it out with milk to make a tasty hot chocolate.

She returned a few minutes later with steaming mugs of hot cocoa for my dad and her. They both took one sip and quickly realized it was decidedly not enticing enough to drink. Come to find out that she mixed it with karnemelke. Karnemelke is a very popular type of milk that the Dutch like to drink at lunchtime, and is served at all lunch events. To Americans, it is better known as buttermilk and not fit for consumption. It is no wonder the hot cocoa did not taste right!

These types of mistakes are not uncommon for folks who don’t read Dutch. For my birthday earlier this year, some German friends of mine (Marcell, Irka, & Markus from earlier posts) came to visit. They went to the store to buy milk and came back with geitenmelk. I am not sure why they thought this was normal milk, but I think they thought that “geit” sounded like cow. Whatever the case, it was goat’s milk that we were then forced to drink over the upcoming days.

I think any expat living here has a million stories like this that they have encountered. Let’s hear about yours!

This weekend one of my American friends accused me of disliking all things Dutch. He based this on me not wanting to eat two slices of bread with one slab of dry cheese for lunch every day, which is a typical noontime Dutch meal. I told him that really was not a fair assessment and that there were only a few special habits that really irk me about some of the Dutch.

The first is the Dutch service, or rather, lack of service. It is definitely not their forte, as they will rightly admit. Right after accusing me, we walked to a café for a coffee and low and behold sat there unnoticed for at least 10 minutes in a nearly empty room. Only after signaling a waiter did we actually get served. And would it hurt too much to crack an occasional smile and be friendly? Sometimes they look at you like it is a huge inconvenience to have to deal with the likes of me and my coffee. God forbid I order something custom off the menu! This doesn't seem to be an unusual occurrence because the Dutch get paid a normal wage for service oriented jobs and therefore have no incentive to put in any extra effort and work for a tip.

Another annoying tendency, which I find downright rude, is that sometimes they push past you on the street or in a shop without saying “excuse me”. That drives me absolutely insane. And the shocking thing is that it doesn’t just happen with people on foot. Just this weekend I was hit TWICE walking down the street, minding my own business, by people riding their bikes down the road. Now tell me, how is that even possible??? I find the lack of acknowledgement for slamming into someone totally inexcusable.

At a high level those two items - sometimes coming across unfriendly or rude - really cover what bothers me.

So, since my goal is to have gratitude in all I do, I thought I could adjust my attitude and view these differently to sound more positive. :-)

Therefore regarding Dutch service, I chalk it all up to a different culture and not meant to come across as rude. Or, perhaps they are having a bad day, don’t speak great English, or hate Americans (I'm kidding!). The funny thing is that Americans are often considered rude because of how they request things and expect American quality service in a restaurant!

The flip side to only being helped when asked in restaurants is that you can literally sit at a restaurant all day and never feel rushed and like they are trying to turn a table. And on top of that you don’t have to tip the extra 20% you do in the USA. Now, that is wonderful!

As for those people hitting me on their bikes, well… I have a special treat for them! I have a long stick waiting for the next time it happens that will slip directly into the spokes of their front wheel and we’ll see what kind of excitement happens next! Oh wait, that isn’t very positive, is it?

Okay then, the only thing I can think is that when you have 17 million people squashed into a country approximately the size of Maryland (10th smallest US state) you treasure your privacy and personal space and don’t necessarily feel the need to apologize for every small infraction. That fact makes the Netherlands one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Not that this is a great excuse, but it is the only thing I can imagine.

But I gotta to tell you, these minor irritations fade away when you take a look at the magnificence that surrounds you. When I travel other places, I often think how much more gorgeous Amsterdam is by comparison. And that, ladies and gentlemen, makes all right in the world. And now, I will go back to my stroopwafels and muntthee. Lekker!

Indian Bry and Pilgrim Dawn - 2006

Thanksgiving in Holland does not exist. For expats who want to celebrate, you typically must go to an event organized by an expat organization or get together with friends and plan a feast of your own. But turkeys are not readily available in the Netherlands so what do you do? Well, some butchers here will sell turkeys but you must order them well in advance. Apparently they only fatten up and sell turkeys to the expats, specifically for the holidays! This year we ordered a 4.5 kilo turkey for a group of 10 American friends.

Of course, you can’t get things like stuffing mix, pie crusts, pumpkin filling, or cranberries in the shops here either. We therefore have to go to the incredibly overpriced expat shop and purchase them. Again, you have to do this in advance or you won’t be able to find them anywhere in the city.

When I first moved here I made a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving – having purchase pumpkin pie filling and the graham cracker pie crust at the wildly expensive expat specialty store – and my friend Steph dropped by to pick it up. I had just closed the door when I heard a monstrous thump outside. Apparently as Steph was carefully maneuvering down my curved and deathly steep stairs she tripped and dropped the pie on the floor. After checking to see if she was okay, I started scooping the pie up to throw away and cleaning up.

If the same thing happened today, I would be down on my hands and knees figuring out a way to carefully save that pie! After living here for years, you begin to miss the things from home and a pie splattered all over the bottom of the stairs will not stop you from somehow finding a way to salvage the good parts at all costs!

Ho hum… I didn’t realize until I started writing this that I’m feeling a little homesick. I’m reminded about how my entire family – parents, sister, brother, nieces and nephews – will all be out on 50 acres of land enjoying a big dinner with mom’s terrible stuffing, riding motorcycles/three-wheelers, tractors, and fishing. And how Thanksgiving really kicks off the beginning of the holiday season in the USA. All of that makes me feel a bit lonely here today. I don’t think anyone from back home can really relate to how it feels to be so far away during the holidays. :-( It ain’t all glitzy travel and glamour!

But, I’m reminded that Thanksgiving is a time to feeling gratitude for all you have. And today I’m thankful for this: I have the world’s greatest friends here to share the good times (and the lonely times) on this Thanksgiving! Happy Turkey Day to everyone out there!

Aaron and I at Fifteen Amsterdam (taken on cell phone)

As many of you know I have a great passion for fine food and last week I had the opportunity to taste test another place owned by a chef many of you have probably heard of – Jamie Oliver (aka The Naked Chef)! I have been watching Jamie grow up on the small screen over the years and had no idea that he even had a restaurant in A’dam until earlier this year when he promoted his restaurant by having a free dinner for people who had dual passports with the UK. I tried to get in on it but seems like the entire country knew about it before I did and it sold out within minutes.

I mistakenly thought that the restaurant had just opened, when actually it opened in 2004. It is named Fifteen and is the second in a series of four same named restaurants of Jamie’s. They are built based on an interesting concept – and one I admire – which is to take in disadvantaged youths and train them to work in world class restaurants. I watched a program on it and saw Jamie’s frustrations with trying to motivate them to have a passion for cooking, but never though I’d actually be eating at one of the establishments myself. The kids are trained for 16 months in the restaurant where they get to work with some world class chefs from famous restaurants in Holland, like Vermeer, a Michelin star restaurant in A'dam. Now they are training their 3rd group of trainees.

They have a set 4 course menu for €46 and in addition we added the wine paring for each course. The menu was:

To get you started…
Antipasti Jamie's favourites
Primi…
A dish of risotto with seafood treasures
Secondi …
Roasted Pheasant with red cabbage ragout and sautéed fresh vegetables
Dolci…
Luscious parfait

Overall I thought it was a very nice meal, however I was not at all impressed with the pasta course. I did not find them to be "treasures" at all, but more like chewy, hard, tasteless nuggets. I told them so and they delighted us by bringing the vegetarian pasta selection instead – a perfectly al dente pumpkin (just in time for Thanksgiving) ravioli that was… simply to. die. for. Absolutely excellent. And on top of that, they also brought the wine paring as well. All free of charge, which is practically unheard of in a Dutch restaurant.

I also found the wine sommelier to be well educated about the wines and very friendly in addition. He was fairly ambitious in his parings, giving us a selection of Moroccan, Australian and Argentinean wines, which all worked surprisingly well. But tell me, who has ever even heard of drinking Moroccan wines?

I got his card, though, and might give him a call about doing a wine tasting at the restaurant. I think that sounds like an absolutely lovely way to spend an evening and experience some more Jamie...

Sinterklaas arriving in A'dam

Today is Sinterklaas in Amsterdam. Apparently, in the Netherlands Saint Nicolaas comes on December 5th in a boat from Spain with his black "helpers" called Black Pete's (Zwarte Piet’s). He then gets on his white horse and travels from rooftop to rooftop and the Black Pete's come down the chimney and give you presents in your shoes. You set your shoes near the chimney with a carrot in them for the horse (nothing for the black Pete's) and go to bed waking up with the presents if you are good, twigs in the shoes if you are bad. Now, the most interesting thing about this whole tradition is that the Black Pete's are supposed to be black people, but in the Netherlands, they are actually white people painted black. Interesting Dutch tradition...

Sexy Zwarte Piet

The bad kids are threatened that if they aren’t good they will be sent back to Spain with Sinterklaas and the zwarte piet’s. Doesn’t sound like such a bad deal to me! Better weather, that’s for sure!

And tonight I went out with a Dutch friend to dinner and then we went to a local Dutch bar for a drink to look at his pictures from a recent trip to Japan and Korea on the computer. In true Dutch spirit, and in the uplifting spirit of Sinterklaas, when we got to up to pay the owner told us that we could not come back into the bar again with a computer because “it was not that type of place”. Gotta love ‘em!

Nigella's John Hancock

One could say that I saw Nigella speak tonight, but in all actuality I experienced a master a work. There was no food or TV cameras involved, just gorgeous and glamorous Nigella and a microphone (and one terrible Dutch moderator who would not stop interrupting). She was truly amazing and inspiring and for one hour I was on the edge of my seat hanging off her every word.

And how could you not? She carries herself with so much dignity that she commands your full attention, almost unknowingly. And she deserves it! I have never heard such a natural and gifted speaker who is obviously well educated and knowledgeable about every subject. After each question, there was no pause, no thought needed… her answers flowed as if it were a perfectly choreographed ballet.

For a woman who has had so much pain in her life, you would expect some bitterness, some anger… but she is such a gracious and eloquent woman, without an ounce of any resentment. She is patient and made every person seem as if they were the only one in the room. There is just something about her…

And she’s lovely! Her natural beauty shines through even more in person than on television (and you cannot say that for most people!). That, and she oozes sensuality. No surprise there! Her husband is lucky! Plus she has the most incredible ta tas!!

It was a marvelous time. Now, I gotta go. I have some potato cakes with smoked salmon to make!!!

Dan on New Year's Day with remnants of fireworks and the recently extinguished microwave

When my old boss and good friend Dan who lives in Australia said he would be visiting Amsterdam for New Year’s I couldn’t think of a better way to spend it than here with him. And that is how I came to experience my first New Year’s Eve outside of the USA and in Amsterdam, with all the excitement it had in store.

It started off innocent enough, with some friends stopping by to hang out and swap stories, drink champagne, and eat olieballen (fried donuts) and appelflappen (battered apple rings), both being traditional Dutch treats served on New Year’s Eve. In the background the sounds of fireworks exploding in the street reverberated throughout the apartment.

Dan and I then headed out to a friend’s party on a rooftop terrace to watch all the fireworks at midnight. Not knowing exactly where we were going, we rang doorbells until someone buzzed us up and ended up at a Dutch party where we hung out like old friends even though we didn’t know a soul. Priceless.

Me with our new Dutch friends

Finally, nearing midnight, we did find our rooftop party and the fireworks started in full force in all directions, and continued nonstop for over an hour filling the entire sky with smoke and the streets with litter. I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was an incredible thing to experience. The Dutch definitely know how to ring in the new year.

Even though the fireworks hadn’t slowed down, I had and needed to go home because I was jetlagged having just arrived from the USA that morning. Once home, I began my nightly ritual of lighting candles all around the apartment, including in my bedroom. When I finally did make it to bed in the wee early hours of the morning, I was getting ready for bed when I shifted my pillow over just a wee bit too close to the candle and in a split second it was up in flames. My bedroom is still filled with tiny burnt feathers and smells like a campfire days later.

The next morning, when I finally rolled out of bed I was making toast in my microwave/oven. In the Netherlands, many people don’t have stoves/ovens, so they purchase a small microwave that can also act as an oven. I put in the bread and let it cook for a few minutes and reached in to test it when I realized nothing was happening. I checked the settings and started it back up and looked inside when I noticed flames. Not from the toast, but from the oven itself. Seems I was destined to have an explosive day.

As the smoke began to fill my apartment (again!), Dan and I moved it outside, still burning, to avoid further damage. We doused it with water to make sure the fire was out and left it out on the curb. Within minutes, it was taken from the street. No doubt, it has now burned down someone’s house, if not from the problem with the oven then from the water which shorted out all the wires inside.

I’m not one for lighting fires, especially unintentional ones (well, except the time I accidentally lit my friend’s house on fire with her hairdryer, but that’s another story), but I must admit that I found all this very exciting, especially since it all occurred within 12 hours on New Year’s Day. Some people might feel like this was bad luck and proof that the year was off to a bad start. I, however, am not one of those people. I instead see it as a good thing, and a promise of many more extraordinary things to come in 2008. May everyone have as adventurous, electrifying, and eventful a year as I expect to have!

Queen's Day 2007

April 28th, 2008 would have been my 3 year anniversary of living in Amsterdam. I missed it by exactly one month. My move to A’dam was strategically timed two days before Queen’s Day in 2005. When I told my friends in the USA I was moving to A’dam I got all kinds of advice on living there, the best being that I should make sure and be there for Queen’s Day. Once I arrived, I understood why.

Queen’s Day, otherwise known as Koninginnedag takes place on April 30th and is the biggest party of the year for the Dutch. The city of Amsterdam which stays a pretty consistent population of 800k swells to well over 1 million people for the day, and every single person wears orange, the Dutch color. Because of the number of people, the roads close, most public transportation stops, and the streets are one big party. And the celebration is not just in A’dam but all over Holland, with each city holding its own celebration.

Historically it is a celebration of the queen’s birthday, but now it is a Dutch holiday and a reason to hold a party. It does not take place on the birthday of the current queen, Beatrix, but instead on her mother, Juliana's, birthday, whom the country appears to have dearly loved.

Ali Beatrix

And what an introduction to a new country! I expected every day to be like Queen’s Day with people milling about everywhere in great spirits, starting the night before on koninginnenacht (Queen’s Night). But alas, it only lasts for one short day. One of my Dutch friends says that there are two days a year that the Dutch are nice – New Years and Queen’s Day.

It was a great way to kick of my move to a new country, and this year I am very sad that I missed it and seeing all my friends. In my opinion, this is one of the events that people should visit within a lifetime. It gives you excellent insight into the lives of people from a country so small that has achieved so much.

My three years of Queen’s Day experiences:

Queen's Day 2007

The four musketeers in 2006

Two days after I arrived in 2005 - before I knew to wear orange

Busy A'dam Streets

And busy canals - 2007

Canal in 2006

Canal in 2005

I think I’m allergic to Amsterdam. When living there for three years I got sick more often, for much longer, and more intensely than during the other thirty something years I’ve been on this earth. It should have been no surprise that when I came here for two weeks it would happen again.

It started as a cough and general achiness last Thursday - yes, over a week ago! I didn’t think too much of it at first, but it continued to get worse to the point that I could not attend practically any of the meetings I was here for this week. I became intimately familiar with my hotel room instead. I spent my time eating Dutch room service (which consisted of a watery vegetable broth which oddly reminded me of Cup-a-Soup) watching reruns of Knight Rider, and counting sheep.

That, and I coughed, hacked, and snotted my way through the week. My scratchy cough was continuous, keeping me and no doubt my neighbors at the hotel up all night long. Late at night as I would begin another coughing fit I would freeze in my tracks if I would hear their doors open, thinking perhaps they were going to come bang on my door and yell at me to shut up already!

And the congestion was a constant, with me feeling as if my head would explode at any moment. I was always under the impression that if you were blowing yellow goo out your nose that you were on the road to recovery. If that was the case then I should have been cured DAYS ago. Honestly, I’ve never seen one head produce so much snot. Mountains of tissues cover my floors each morning, and I have to carve a little footpath through them to get to my bathroom.

Last night I got an added bonus as well. After days and days of constant blowing, my raw nose decided it had had enough and I got a nose bleed in the middle of the night. It was sudden, right when I started another coughing fit, and it was like an overflowing volcano with nowhere to go but out because of the snot blockage. I could not get it to stop and finally had to take extreme measures and blow my nose to unclog everything, thus blowing blood all over the mirror and wall in the bathroom. Not pretty. But the blood then had somewhere to flow. Right down my throat.

I suppose I could have visited a doctor here, especially since you cannot get anything with antihistamines or decongestants over the counter. (That’s crazy! In what country are you not allowed to buy decongestants??) But I figured they would only tell me to “drink more fluids and take more rest” or eat more brown bread or something insane like that, so it would be a waste of money.

But my major regret of it all is that because of being so sick I did not get the chance to see many of my great friends in this wonderful city, and that makes the me the most sad. I feel like it was a wasted visit. But the good news is that I’m feeling much better finally. Just in time to leave.

Innerspace t-shirt

... and I'm so sad. Seems like things are really changing in the Netherlands these days. First, they want to shut down the red light district, and now they are making the use of Psilocybin mushrooms illegal. What will come next?

I am adamantly against both. I hate to tell you, but people aren’t flocking to Amsterdam for the beautiful architecture and quaint canals. Nope, it is because pf legal drugs and prostitution. And without these things to draw in tourists Amsterdam and the Netherlands it might just as well be under water, in my humble opinion. I do not think that people will bother to travel there as much.

According to Simply Amsterdam News, the Red Light District draws in 1.8 million tourists per year. That is more than NASA’s Cape Canaveral, which only brings in 1.4 million tourists per year. Clearly people are more interested in sex than in space! And given that the RLD only covers a few streets and canals, it draws quite a large number of tourists to the Amsterdam area, each of them exploring, eating, drinking and generally boasting the economy. Well…when they aren’t having sex with prostitutes, that is!

And now the mushrooms! What are they thinking?! Seriously, they are making it illegal because of a few people taking drugs irresponsibly and dying. I can guarantee you that more people die from alcohol (abuse, DWI, etc) than from mushrooms, and you don’t see them making that illegal.

These things are what gives Amsterdam its edge. They are an undercurrent of the society, and it will continue even if they make it illegal. And they have been a part of the history of Amsterdam and the Netherlands for centuries. On the flip side, they are such a small part of what A’dam is all about, so why get rid of it?

What happened to the NLer’s being so liberal?

Black Pete

Yesterday was the first time in 3 years that I did not put my carrot filled wooden clogs by the fireplace and wait for Sinterklaas and the Black Pete’s to come and give me gifts and candy. It was a sad day for me not being in A’dam to experience it (Sinterklaas unfortunately does not travel all the way over to the USA to deliver presents.)

My entry about Sinterklaas last year has gotten a lot of hits and comments regarding my insinuation that Black Pete’s were originally a racial thing. Even with that, I still believe it. It is kind of like Halloween in the US. Today it is just a fun holiday where you dress up and get candy in return, but originally it started out as a pagan holiday where the spirits of dead people came back to cause destruction. Clearly that is not what it is today, and I personally believe that could Sinterklaas have a somewhat darker history as well.

Whatever the case, Happy Sinterklaas to all your Netherlanders out there. I’m sitting here eating my fancy chocolate letter D that my good friend Steph gave to me. Yum. And I got a cute postcard from a Black Pete. I’m happy that even over the pond I can still experience it and take part in the traditions of my beloved Netherlands.