Continuing Misadventures in Holland

Just when you thought it was all settling down and you could relax - two new things in Holland happen:

1. I received an email from my former landlady/colleague - the one I had originally rented my first ill-fated apartment from - it turns out that the one utility bill that was in my name, the internet bill, was never completely turned off. Even though I sent a letter to them and tried to cancel it through their Dutch internet site - it's been on since August when I moved. And since they didn't hear from me, they just kept debiting it out of her bank account. She signed a years contract for the internet access starting in March, I will now have to pay for August - March internet access at an apartment I don't live in costing me about 200€. No way around it. Doesn't matter that I don't live there according to the sales company/accounting department at said internet company.

2. I got the light on my bike fixed about three weeks ago - its the type that has a little generator that rubs against your front tire and it powers the front and back light. I hit a big bump coming home one night and it just stopped working. Until I can get it fixed (when I have money and time to go to a bicycle shop in the middle of the day since they all close at 6pm), I wear my backpack with a little red light on the back and carry a detachable light inside it that I can stick on the handlebars. But sometimes, I don't bother snce most of the Amsterdammers are going light free and the streets are pretty brightly lit. Yesterday, I decided not to bring my heavy backpack since I was going out to dinner and just carry my purse.

Sure enough, I got caught in a traffic stop. The very cute Blonde police woman and men were standing near the Weteringschans traffic circle and pulling over bicyclists without lights on their bike. They listened politely as I apologized and tried to explain that the bike light had just stopped working and since all the bike shops close at 6pm, I hadn't been able to fix it. They smiled and said "Well, I just gave that man a ticket so it wouldn't really be fair to him if I let you go." and gave me a 20€ ticket and made me walk my bike to the restaurant.

Sigh...they have to be the nicest traffic cops I've ever met but I wonder when my "Foolish Foreigners Tax" will end?

The ant and the grasshopper

Are you familiar with the story of the ant and the grasshopper? How the ant spent all summer working to prepare for the winter and the grasshopper did nothing and eventually had to depend on the ant for help?

My best friend from college and I were always known as two grasshoppers - jumping around all summer singing and playing the fiddle thinking "fiddle dee dee - tomorrow is another day". (we were the Scarlett O'Hara of grasshoppers). I spent much of my life like that - not paying bills on time, jumping from job to job, house to house, boyfriend to boyfriend and pursuing happiness.

I got serious after my mother died. I decided to get a job with health insurance and develop a career. So I've spent the last ten years in love with the idea of the ant within me. I focused hard on my work and I spent a lot of time sacrificing things for my career. Now a grasshopper's habits die hard so I still struggled with my bills, I still struggled with committing, but not with my job. To my job I was faithful and true.

I saw my fellow grasshopper this week. She's married with two kids and happy and full of energy. She's not the grasshopper she was in the past either. But we drank our way around Amsterdam and laughed and gossiped like the good ole days. I went back to work reluctantly but still in love with the idea of trying to make it happen.

On Friday, I received news that a new colleague had died. I had met him several times. I'm new to this organization but it didn't take long to know about K. He was a loud, funny, smart Greek man who had gone from shipping engineer to Greenpeace organizer to Operational manager at MSF. He always had a cigarette in his hand, a big smile, and hug for everyone, and was always the life of the party. I saw him about two weeks ago in Berlin where I went for the annual planning session. He seemed tired, the sparkle faded. He seemed anxious, his hands were shaking, and he didn't look well. He confided to my colleague and I that he just wasn't himself. Another colleague told me that he though K needed to take a vacation - a long vacation to go home and see his wife and child.

On Friday, we heard that he died alone in the apartment he was living in Berlin. He had stayed home sick and when no one could get in touch with him, they had the police break the door down and found him. When the news was delivered on Friday afternoon, the entire office was shocked. Some of the most macho people there wept openly. No one could believe it was true. All I could think of was how stressed out he looked in Berlin and how sad it was that he died alone in a strange city far away from his loved ones.

I moved to Amsterdam, in a way, to get away from the very "Ant" friendly city of Washington DC. I had hoped that a move away would make it easier to go home early, pursue hobbies, meet a boyfriend, maybe start a family. But old habits die hard. The past six months have been amongst the most stressful months of my life. Rather than using that time to really break all the old modes, I've replicated them here. I don't want to die alone in five years (for K. was only five years older than me) in my apartment from work-induced stress. I think I need to make a change - retain some of the good of the ant but find some of the grasshopper from my twenties.

Broek in Waterland

I just found this post from my trip in October up to broek in Waterland - a lovely little village about a 40 minute cycle north of Holland... enjoy!

Another side of Holland

Because I live in Amsterdam, famed licentious city of prostitutes and marijuana, its easy to forget as an outsider that there is a whole other side of Holland... one where strictly religious people frown on "sinning" and where Calvinism reigns supreme. I was just looking at the International Herald Tribune and there was an interesting article there called Small Town of Urk exemplifies pious heart of the Dutch Christian Right. It was quite enlightening to see that there was also a Christian right here.

I was talking to two new friends of mine, she's American and he's Dutch. He's from the South and we were talking about visiting family. He mentioned that where he grew up, you could never see your friends or hang out with them on Sundays. "Sunday is the day for family"he said - "in Holland, your house is your church and you keep it clean like a religion. The man cleans the garden and the car and the woman cleans the house. On Sundays you visit your parents and you all sit together and talk - no tv, no fooling around." This would explain why most of the shops, except around Centraal Station are closed on Sundays.

I've also heard that the Dutch take their mealtimes VERY SERIOUSLY. Most of the people in my office take off at 5pm. From what I have been told, dinner is at 6pm with the whole family around the table. Now, not everyone is like this - I do live in Amsterdam after all. But I'm also an expat so I tend to hang out more with either expats or Dutch people who have had an expat experience. But because the country is so small, we have people commuting in from Utrecht, the Hague, and other countries. A lovely woman that I work closely with commutes 2 hours each way on the train through the countryside to come to work and she has four children!

I've slowly been acclimatizing to the Dutch life but I still feel like there will be a side that I will never know. While friendly, open, and fun - the Dutch are also extremely close with their friends from university and childhood - the hierarchy is family, those friends, work events, and if there is any time left over - perhaps some strange expats. But maybe its not so different from the US after all... I remember thinking how difficult it was to assimilate to North Carolina when I moved there - trying to find someone who wasn't married with kids to befriend me and in the end, my close friends became other transplants looking for the same.

Just bring your beret and some perfume!

I'm heading off to Paris next weekend with my friends Carolyn and Corinne. Carolyn and I have both just turned 40 and have writer-ly aspirations. We were both a bit bummed about our 40th birthdays- mostly because we had envisioned creating some huge extravaganza and I couldn't because I was broke and depressed (see housing woes) and she couldn't because her daughter has a birthday at the same time as her and, well, you know, kids steal the show. Plus, neither of us were able to get it together to plan a big event.

We decided to treat ourselves to a weekend away. So where do two American expat women with writerly ambitions go for a weekend away? Paris of course!

Her sweet husband (and my friend) Vinz agreed to watch after the kids for a weekend. (He also made some half hearted remark about booking us a suite at the Ritz but I'm still waiting for the reservation!) Corinne has had a trying summer as well, so we decided to make it a girls weekend away. Corinne's a photographer so she can follow her muse as well...

Here's the itinerary for next weekend:
Arrive in Paris. Drink wine, drink coffee, sit in cafes, write in journals, walk around and look at beautiful paris. Eat in fabulous restaurants. Drink wine. Shop for cheese and pate. Listen to jazz in nightclubs. Drink wine. Eat in fabulous restaurants. Hang out in cafes and write. Reluctantly return to Amsterdam.

We are entertaining suggestions for restaurants and cafes that we must see! Please feel free to send advice!

Funky music scene in Amsterdam

Thursday night, I was invited by my friend Celeste's husband, Eoghan, to go to Paradiso and see "The Ex" and Getachew, a Dutch punk rock band playing with an Ethiopian saxophonist from the 60s. Paradiso is an amazing club set in an old church. There are stained glass windows behind the stage and balconies lining the theatre. They have excellent acoustics and beer is 2 euro 20 cents (much cheaper than a similar US venue, I think).

It was a great evening but the band ended at 10:30pm. After the show, Eoghan took off with his friends and my friend Jen and I decided to hang out see what the next band was like.
The dj was spinning some very cool Indian lounge music and mixing it up with some really great Arabic music. We had heard that the next band was Shantel and his Bucovar Orkestar. I really like Balkan beat music and we had already paid to see The Ex and enjoyed it so why the hell not?

As Shantel hit the stage in his trackie suit and knit hop hop hat, he started noodling around on the keyborad. Then the Drummer took the stage with slicked back long thin hair, a red sateen vest reminiscent of the ones I wore in "Show choir" and a cheesy goatee. The trombone player, accordionist, and the rest of the horns took the stage and suddenly BAM! the party started... and what a party it was. At one point as Shantel poured vodka over us and we jumped up and down in the air chanting "Disco Disco something something" "Hup Hup Hup!" - Jen screamed in my ear - "THIS IS LIKE BEING AT THE FUNKIEST FUNNEST WEDDING EVER!"

For your enjoyment, I paste the review of his latest album and I encourage you to get out there and see this band if you ever get a chance!

Crazy eclectic mix of mutant funk, Romanian ballads, Balkan brass and freestyle electronica: Shanelt and the Bucovina Orkestar.

Follow up to the hugely successfull "Bucovina Club" - curated and hosted by Frankfurter Shantel - who's forsaken his old downtempo weedhop stylings for the manic music of the Balkans. The record's a sort of imaginary soundtrack to a defunct but amazing, vodka-fuelled, gypsy-rave all-nighter club, the Bucovina, that used to take place under the portals of an elegant old Frankfurt theatre.The album transports the mood of the Bucovina Club nights, which gives the audience the right feeling for a sweatdriven dancenight. These featured 15 tracks are the ultimate drenching floorfillers in the small hours when hundreds of dance-hungry people are still going strong.

On Bucovina Club 2, 5 of the 15 tracks are exclusive original recordings and 5 are exclusive mixes. SHANTEL’s own tracks featuring stars of the Gypsy and Balkan music scene: BOBAN MARKOVIC and his son MARKO, JONY ILIEV, VESNA PETKOVIC, the all-star line-up BUCOVINA CLUB ORKESTAR, the exclusive remixes feature MAHALA RAI BANDA, FANFARE CIOCARLIA, SANDY LOPICIC ORKESTAR & French-Romanian actress RONA HARTNER (of TONY GATLIF’s movie Gadjo Dilo) while the other tracks present a host of famous artists and some newcomers such as: DR. NELLE KARAJLIC, BALKAN BEAT BOX, SLONOVSKI BAL and GORAN BREGOVIC. SHANTEL’s crazily eclectic mix of Clubsounds, Future Funk, Roma Ballads, Balkan Brass and Freestyle Electronica is already legendary across the dancefloors of Europe. Digital teams up with analogue, beat embraces melody, tango goes lyrical – and it ain’t over til even the samovar sings. There’s no denying SHANTEL’s former life as a producer of Downtempo and Electronica – it’s an experience that has taught him to fly in the face of convention by treating local Eastern European and Balkan music in the same way as HipHop or all kinds of club music and making them just as much an integral part of today’s youth and pop culture.

There’s nothing clichéd about this new wave of music – and not a bobble-hatted world music purist in sight. Bucovina Club is pure, naked euphoria and brings together all ages and nationalities. Not in a politically correct, happy-clappy multiculturalists way – but by placing a direct and visceral punch that really gets people moving. The parties take up where the ecstatic raves of the House and Techno generation left off. This atmosphere is transferred into the second BUCOVINA CLUB CD. SHANTEL and his Bucovina Club is in great demand, not only at European festivals and Clubs. The big names of the Gypsy music scene jamed with him or have had their recordings produced by him or remixed by him: TARAF DE HAIDOUKS, MAHALA RAI BANDA, KOCANI ORKESTAR, ZDOB SI ZDUB, BOBAN MARKOVIC ORKESTAR, FRANK LONDON’S KLEZMER BRASS ALLSTARS, SANDY LOPICIC ORKESTAR, just to name a few.

On the Electric Gypsyland tour he played 30 festivals from France to Morocco and La Reunion, and he has taken his Bucovina Club to such in-clubs as the Nouveau Casino and Favela Chic (Paris), Futuro Flamenco/Nottinghill Arts Club (London), P.P.C. (Graz), the MTV Festival in Bucharest's biggest disco, the legendary Transmusicales in Rennes, to Tel-Aviv, the Balkan Fever Festival (Vienna) and even to such temples of high culture as the State Theatres of Vienna, Hamburg and Stuttgart, the Hebbel Theater in Berlin and the Vienna Festival. A large number of cities have now regular Club evenings like Zurich (Xtra), Nuremberg (K 4) and, of course, hometown Frankfurt (Schauspiel). Even vast crowds have been drawn into the world of the Bucovina Club: as the closing act of the Station-to-Station-Festivals in Florence, on the biggest square in Czernowitz (Bucovina) and at the summer open air events in Frankfurt. SHANTEL’s Bucovina Club has put the Balkans firmly on the map of contemporary pop culture, throwing overboard the stereotypes and clichés, putting a whole new slant on the way we think about the “wild east” and Gypsy culture. Bucovina Club is a heady mix of electronic club music and vibrant Roma music.

The show!

The show last night was wonderful! It was an interesting experience going to a Dutch rock concert... people openly smoke marijuana and get wasted on beer and noone cares. I haven't smelled so much pot since my last grateful dead show! Anyway, I had to sit alone but I still had a fabulous time. I splurged and bought tickets as close to the stage as I could find. They had some fabulous video screens so you could see closeups and Sting was as beautiful as ever.

Sadly, after the show was over, I went to the bar in the arena to get a drink and they were playing their final concert in 1984 and you could tell how much they had aged. But they sounded good if not as tight and falsetto-y as the 80s.

Here's the play list:

Message in a bottle
Synchronicity 2
Walking on the moon
Voices/World is Running Down
Don't stand so close to me
Driven to Tears
Hole in my life
Truth hits everybody
Every little thing she does is magic
De Doo Doo Doo
Invisible sun
Walking in their footsteps
One World
Can't Stand Losing You
Roxanne
Encore: King of Pain
So Lonely
Every Breath You take
Next To You

My 40th birthday with Sting and the Police

My 40th birthday happened in August. Unfortunately for me, it occurred simultaneously with my giant housing disaster. I was panicked and anxiety ridden about trying to find a new place to live and the fact that I had to come up with more than a months salary to put down a deposit to live and was losing my deposit from the apartment I was currently in. Instead of renting the beer bike with my good Dutch friends here and having a riotous day of drunken debauchery, I had a small gathering with a few people in my apartment where I drank a bit too much wine on an empty stomach and tried to keep the anxiety at bay. My dream party - flying to New York City, partying with Brian and Kevin, Bernice, Alec, my sister, and other assorted friends and then going to see the Police on their reunion tour was not to happen.

So tonight, I'm going to do what I really really wanted to do - I'm going to go see the Police in concert. Unfortunately, I'm basically going alone because noone I knew wanted to go with me and another friend bought tickets to the event and never called to see if I was interested. But I don't mind. It'll be me and Sting singing to each other, making eye contact, and falling in love all over again like we did when I was 15.

Yes, I'm still bitter that my parents never let me go to the Police's final concert tour in Greensboro, NC because I was too young! I've seen Sting in concert a number of times but Sting's solo persona is a bit too blandly romantic for me. I prefer the sunbleached punk rock bassist with the sexy mouth from Zenyatta Mondatta, Outlandos d'Amour, and Regatta de Blanc. Synchronicity and Ghosts in the Machine are not my favorite albums but my favorite song comes from Ghosts in the Machine --"Every Little Thing She does is Magic" - coincidentally, those lyrics were presented to me by Gene Matthews my freshman year in high school when he attempted to tell me that he was in love with me.

I still remember listening to the first album of their's I ever bought - "Regatta de Blanc". I had to do a poetry project for my Junior year's advanced English class. I chose the song "Message in a bottle"and I attempted to paste photos that reflected my lonely outcast teenage angst feelings onto a wine bottle. In particular, I clearly remember photos from Iceland of a man that looked like Sting sitting in a lonely thermal pool in the mountains.

I sang "So Lonely" into my college boyfriend, Nick Leoncavallo's answering machine when he was away on a trip. I have consoled myself with "Can't Stand Losing" when life hasn't gone my way and cried to "the Bed's too big without you" when I have been heart broken. I analyzed "Wrapped around your finger" and told everyone it was written in Iambic Pentameter like the pretentious English major to be I was. I listened to "King of Pain" late at night in my bedroom. I danced riotously to "De doo doo doo, de daa daa daa" and wanted to be the subject of "Don't stand so close to me" with my English professor in college.

I can't imagine my life without the Police so here's to my 40th and here's to tonight.

This always happens when I walk down the street here.

My horoscope today

You are riding the career train to success. You have sufficient energy and determination, but today something can muck it all up. A coworker, perhaps, has unwittingly interfered by tampering with the tracks causing you to derail. Don't worry if you are thrown off course; it's not permanent. But then again, nothing is.

For those of you who know my current difficulties with my job... this is ironic.

Furry Happy Monsters!

Sunday Lovely Sunday

Now that the “Housing Drama” is over, my life in Amsterdam has changed for the better! I love my new apartment – its big, airy, sunny, and beautiful. Simon is happy although he misses the little balcony we had off the kitchen where he could stare at the pigeons and lie in the sun. He’ll find something new, I think – he seems to be enjoying the large sunny windowsills. I also bought him some cute turquoise cat food bowls with little fish on them to cheer him up.

Most places in Amsterdam are closed on Sundays but down on Kalverstraat in the tourist district, most of the stores are open. Since I actually have an apartment now and don’t have to worry, I can settle into normality and run errands! Saturdays are when I go to the market so Sunday, I headed down there this morning to pick up some rain pants. Winter is coming and although I have moved closer to the office – I will still have to cycle through several months of cold rain to get to work. Someone recommended the Hema to me so I stopped in. I discovered the Dutch version of Target – the HEMA!

I walked out of the store with the aforementioned rain pants, but also a photo frame, a tank top, some hair clips, some lights for my bike, a few organizer shelves for my new home office, and a bottle of wine! All for about 20 euros! I am hooked! There are some super cute duvet covers for sale there and I can pick up a feather duvet and they have an excellent bath goods section! Anyway, I think I’ve found a new favorite store to make errands running more exciting!

And even more exciting – there is a pretty decent thai takeaway one block from my new apartment! Sundays have never seemed so normal.

New Apartment Pics!

The Bedroom (love that Orange)

The Study off the living room:

View from the Kitchen into the living room and out into the balcony:

The Kitchen:

Other amenities - a lovely bathroom with a large tub that looks out onto a garden. No waterheater above the bed to disturb my sleep! A small balcony that looks out onto the street (not ideal) but big enough for flower boxes and maybe a tree! A much larger toilet than the 'marble tomb' from my current place. A small sunroom off the bedroom that looks out onto the garden.

Home sweet home.

Housing Woes

Oh the housing woes I've had.

• May 15: Found an apartment through a woman who was moving away from Amsterdam. Took the apartment.
• May 25: Cable tv that is included in rent is turned off for lack of payment.
• May 26: Called Housing Agency, they said call Housing Management Service, Called them. "We'll take care of it."
• For the next five weeks, call housing agencies periodically to find out why cable tv not working - told that its taken care of, not their responsibility, can't turn it back on, not their responsibility, taken care of, etc. Every call gets a different answer. Finally, it turns out that the cable company won't turn it back on because the owner has been delinquent in paying the bill before.
• July 1: Get notice from owner of apartment that the "makelaar"needs to come look at it.
• July 9: Makelaar informs me that the apartment is going up for auction in October because owner hasn't paid the mortgage.
• July 10: Contact owner who tells me not to worry. I worry.
• July 17: Get notice that the bank/tax man is coming to seize all the goods inside the apartment. Really start to freak out.
• July 18: Seek legal advice. Told that I can't stay there because he wasn't allowed to rent it in the first place.
• August 1: Contact owner who says - don't pay August rent and I'll reimburse September rent as the deposit.
• August 7: My current housing agency tries to tell me that there are NO apartments in my price range and that it is illegal for them to try to show me any because I make TOO MUCH MONEY (!!)
• August 7: Find a new apartment in my price range, thanks to networking with friends. Its cute, bigger than my current place, and with a MUCH nicer toilet but not a balcony on the back - balcony faces street.
• August 9: I try to put down the deposit - although I can't get the keys until August 14, if I want the apartment, I have to pay the rent from August 10 on.
• August 9: Realize I didn't inform them that I have a cat.
• August 9 - 12 worry that they will withdraw apartment, decide to be honest and tell them.
• August 13: All is well! I pick up the keys tomorrow and move in on the 15th.

I just thank my lucky stars and my fabulous friends and family who supported me through all this. If it weren't for you guys, I would have just shriveled up, moved back to Sumter, and got a job at the CVS next to my father's house. With the notable exception of one so-called friend who decided to kick me when I was down, I've been so amazed and thankful at the kindness I've received. Thank you all! Next up - photos of the new place.

Taking a Break

I've got the week off in Amsterdam which is nice because the weather has been spectacular. A few people have commented that i seem to be having a lot of ups and downs. That's definately true. In the relief world, we talk about the five lifesaving needs: food, water, shelter, hygiene, and healthcare. Some of those have been threatened in the past month making me extremely anxious. The coping mechanisms don't seem to be working like they used to. But having Alec, my bestest buddy and concrete wall of support, visit me for three days makes me feel renewed and in love with this city again.

While i don't want to bore with the particulars, here's the goods and the bads of three months in Amsterdam.

Goods:

• Exploring the city on my bike - remembering what it felt like in the pre-car days of zipping through the streets at night with the wind in your hair.
• Cool restaurants, bars, cafes, parks, museums, and galleries - definately a wonderful city
• Meeting new people - meeting my new Dutch friends and other expats
• Renewing friendships with old friends and their kids.
• Being challenged at work - meeting really dedicated people who are working under hard conditions to help others. feeling proud whenever I tell someone where I work and they react positively - I'm learning new things almost every day which is good.
• Losing some weight from exercising and feeling healthy
• Long summer evenings
• Riding small boats around on the canals drinking wine with friends
• Very good inexpensive wine in the grocery stores
• Great cheese everywhere
• Fabulous breads
• The option of taking a boat ferry for a commute!

Bads:

• Mosquitos - the Dutch mosquitos are the only ones in the world that have ever bitten me.
• Being awakened at 3am by my neighbors fighting, a mosquito buzzing in my ear, the water heater over my bed cycling on and off constantly, and simon chasing the mosquito - falling asleep at 5am and having to awaken at 5:3oam to ride to the train station in the pouring rain.
• 50 degrees and July.
• Learning that I will probably be evicted from my apartment in October so having to do the apartment hunt all over again but in August when everyone is on vacataion - fear of being tossed out on the street with my cat.
• The office politics of where I work - lots of french male egos and obscure regulations
• Dealing with new systems for the daily life (bank, travel, health care, shopping)
• Being in a whole different timezone from my family and friends
• Feeling like noone here really understands me yet - still constantly in small talk mode.
• Feeling anxious to prove myself at work and do something worthwhile but afraid of running afoul of all the egos and the obscure work regulations and inadvertently causing a negative reputation.

A bookworm's lament in a foreign country

So I'm living in a foreign country where English language books are extremely expensive, which means I am spending the summer with someone else's books - books bought on the cheap from the used bookstores and markets.

Whenever I enter a bookstore or stay at someone's house with an entirely new collection of books, I make a vow that I will branch out and read the kinds of things I don't usually read - intellectual books, memoirs, non-fiction. But I crave fiction - vast sweeping plot lines. My book club would describe these as "bawdy thrillers". But I love narrative - I get totally lost in a different world and I love it. As a child, I read memoirs written for young girls - my specialty was famous women. Amelia Earhadt, Florence Nightengale, Catherine the Great, Little House on the Prairie, Jane Addams, Clara Barton, Molly Pitcher, Dorothy Day, and Joan of Arc. They did inspire me and probably shaped me into what I am today but memoirs don't interest me that much anymore - I don't know why because I've loved "Don't lets go to the dogs tonight" and "The Liar's Club" and other memoirs that I've stumbled upon.


I read about an essay by a neurobiologist where he describes the phenomenon of going to a favorite restaurant and wanting to branch out from ordering the same dish on the menu each time--but, at the last minute, finding oneself unable to do so. The favorite dish always wins in the end--and this, he says, may be a kind of low-level epilepsy taking place in the brain. That seizing-up at the last minute is perhaps pathological, though very, very mildly so... Is the same thing true of books?


I try to read Stendahl's The Red and the Black, but wind up with Ian MacEwan and Graham Greene all over again, just the way I would do if I were at home. Maybe the point is that we use books to create model-homes for ourselves wherever we go. I remember traveling through Sri Lanka in 2005 by myself for a week before starting a mission. No matter how alien the environment, or how faraway I felt, my assortment of English novels in my backpack gave me a sense of being grounded, and of being home. This is when I grabbed Evelyn Waugh and the Forsyte Saga.


So what do I have on my bookshelf culled from the cheap used bookstores of Amsterdam? Check out the link on the left of this blog that leads you to a website called Good Reads... I met a woman who turned me onto it last night and its a great site. If you guys sign up for it and put your books up there, it'll be like book club never ended for me....

Dutch continue to suck at customer service

I have to go to London today for a meeting. My colleague in Brussels thought it would be productive if we both took the train and did some work on the way there. So I blithely go to book my tickets through our travel agency.

• It takes longer to take the train from Amsterdam to Brussels than from Brussels to London because there is no real high speed train service here.
• There is only 20 minutes to switch trains in Brussels and the Amsterdam train is "Usually late" according to the travel agent so she recommended I take the 4:42 am train (!!)
• The website would not allow me to use my credit card.
• I cycled in the rain at 8pm to pick up my tickets that had been purchased and ordered on line by the travel agency.
• Upon arriving at the overcrowded train ticket office, I was informed I would have to wait for 1 and 1/2 hours to pick up my tickets. No - you cannot pick them up directly. No it doesn't matter that I ordered them on line. No - there is no machine I can pick them up at. I have to arrive at 6am to hope to god that there is no line so I don't miss my 6:26am train to make my 1pm meeting in London
• I came back an hour later and there were still about 40 people ahead of me. The surly bitch who I asked if it was truly necessary to wait another hour JUST TO PICK UP SOME TICKETS told me she had no idea of how long the wait would be because that was not her job.

Once again - Dutch - famous for tolerance; Continue to suck at Customer service.

Lake Woebegon ie Amsterdam on a rainy day

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon in Amsterdam. Because of the way my apartment is designed, I get a lot of light even if it is raining. And I love having the windows open to smell the rain and the garden so I just bundle up in sweatshirts and socks and try to keep the house fresh smelling. Although I HATE riding into a headwind in this windy, seablown country - I am grateful that I am not hermetically sealed inside my apartment in Adams Morgan where if I opened the window, a blast of hot city air that smelled like Popeye's fried chicken or the thai restaurant downstairs would get me.

Yesterday, I went with some friends from work to the Hague. I'd never been there before and it was a cute little town. We rode a barge around the small canal that they have and received a historical lecture about the differences between the "people of the mud" vs "the people of the sand" - the two types of people in the Hague. I wonder what they call all the many expats who live there? The people of the sea? the air? Anyway, it was a sunny day which was nice and we spent from 10am to 3pm cruising the canal, eating a leisurely lunch in the Hague's historical center which is much more on the European "grand plaza" design than Amsterdam with its thousands of canals. It felt more open and the Palace there was lovely. While Amsterdam does have "the Dam" - the big central square, its my least favorite place in town. IT always seems grimy and the tacky strip of tourist shops that lead up from Central Station plus all the construction that is underway for the metro line make it not a nice place to leisurely linger. I much prefer the narrow canal streets with their sidewalk cafes and barges.

I got back around 4pm and made it to the last hour of the Noordmarkt, my favorite market near my house. I hit the Moroccan olive merchant for some juicy black kalamatas, the herb lady who makes her own pesto sauce and sells pre-bundled fresh bouquet garni, the fruit stand where I bought some cherries, and three of the flower stands where I bought gentian, freesia, and lilies for a grand total of 13 euros (the flowers that is). After gathering up my goodies, I had a beer in one of the many outdoor cafes and watched a very fluffy persian cat sleep in the broad window sill of a beautiful little narrow house in the Jordaan. I must get Simon a pillow to sleep in the window. Its the coziest sweetest sight and makes me feel content when I see it. After cycling home, I put on some music and sat on the balcony to read for a while before making dinner. The few people I know here were out of town or had plans for Saturday night so I concocted a dish while downloading French 60s pop on my computer.

I cooked fresh ginger, garlic, hot thai peppers in coconut milk and chicken broth and then add tons of cilantro and lemongrass to it. I used it to poach some monkfish with sweet red peppers and green onions and then used the remaining sauce to cook up with basmati rice. Delicious! I had a strong desire to go out dancing last night but I'm just not bold enough to go to a disco alone. I wish I were. Instead, I chatted via skype with a friend and watched a movie.

Today - it's rainy altough I see a small patch of blue sky on the horizon. I dont' have any plans (which is the ideal way to spend a Sunday, I think). So I'm going to read, relax, try not to worry about all the things I have to do this weeks (deal with the foreclosure of my apartment by the bank, get my residency permit, write a paper on Ethiopia, go to London to design a study, fly to berlin for a confrontation with my operational managers who are ignoring me, find a way to go shopping, and not think about my upcoming 40th birthday). I wish the markets were open on Sundays like they are in DC because the cupboard is bare. I have some left over rice from last night and a zucchini in there along with a can of tuna and some pasta in the pantry. And that's all the news there is to report in Amsterdam today. --

Things to do in Amsterdam when it rains

• Toast a baguette and eat it with butter and cherry jam purchased at the Noordmarket
• Do a load of laundry in the amazingly efficient European washing machines.
• Read the New York Times on line.
• Listen to John Coltrane and Django Reinhardt
• Make an omelet with zucchini and basil and eat it while watching the rain.
• Pet the cat and keep him from climbing on your computer as you try to blog.
• Wash the dishes from last nights Monkfish in cilantro-coconut sauce that you made on a whim.
• Rearrange the lilies that you bought at Noordmarkt yesterday
• Finish reading "Eat Pray Love" and hope you won't get jealous at the descriptions of falling in love in Bali.
• Iron linen skirts
• Read US weekly to make sure you don't lose your American edge.
• Listen to "This American Life" on the Ipod podcast.
• Wonder why you didn't buy rain paints for cycling in the rain on Saturday when the store was open.
• Take a nap.

Working for the Weekend

I had forgotten how hard it is to start a new job. And it becomes doubly hard when you're starting over a new life too. But for some reason, I suspect that starting a new job at my new organization is harder than most, for a number of reasons

1. The cliquishness: Everyone has to go through a 10day orientation session when they join and go to the field. They spend the days together and the nights together and get drunk and argue and share their fears about heading into the conflict zones. It's like boot camp for humanitarian workers. But headquarters staff do not need to do this. Add that missing experience to the fact that while you've been in the field - you haven't been in the field with them. There is an automatic forged bond that most have that I'm missing with them.

2. the Machisom: Everyone who works there is macho. From the women operational managers who stomp down the halls in their heavy boots, tight jeans, chunky jewelry, and wizened cigarette stained faces to the men in their casual "REI" fleece jackets, jeans, long sleeve tees, tevas, and their unshaven, rumpled style. All the women complain that noone cares about gender-based violence and the men parade their knowledge of the different armed groups. Hard drinking, hard smoking types. An emergency "bombardment" box of supplies contains a box of Marlboro lights and a bottle of Jack Daniels because noone under siege would want to have to deal with the others undergoing nicotine and alcohol withdrawal. And I work in the 'soft' girly section so I have strike two for being not macho.

3. the Dutch attitude: Very blunt. Outspokenness. argumentative even. Yet not really appreciative if you don't agree with them. Friendly enough but not outgoing. Curious but a bit aloof. Content to allow strangers to sit alone. Probably allowing them to have their own space in this overcrowded country where privacy is at a premium. So, if you are feeling tired or shy or intimidated by the macho cliquishness, don't expect any sympathy from them.

4. the Weather: overcast. a bit cool. Tendency to burst into thunderstorms at a moments notice. Yet when the sun comes out - everyone is transformed. But in general, you keep your head down. you do your work. And you dream of your warm cozy home where you can get away from work. So no need to linger for chats with new people. No long DC happy hours every week. the weather conspires to make you long for home.