rock on!

Off to Belgium with the boys in a few hours (the girls have meetings today and will join us tomorrow). Not sure if the weather will co-operate, but since we'll be camping for four nights, and rocking out four four days, my fingers are crossed for the best. Otherwise, it's going to smell like a wet dog in my tent.

Monday morning, after packing up, Matt and I are heading to Antwerp to review some proof prints at the offices of one of the agencies that we work with. We'll probably be wet and stinky, but we've warned everyone beforehand.

déjà vu

Went apartment hunting with my real estate agent yesterday. Of the four properties he showed me, two I had seen when I was here in February. One was the exact same apartment, only the tennant that was there at the time had moved out and it was now empty. The other was a different unit in the same building. Slim pickings. The two properties in the photograph above are potentials, but I want to see a few more possibilities before I sign a contract.

d-day

After work this evening, a few of us gathered at the pub to celebrate our friend's divorce. The papers were signed, and everything became official today. Some people wonder whether the end of a marriage is cause for celebration. At the end of the day, I think it really is a glass half-empty/glass half-full debate. You either celebrate the end of a partnership (11 years in total, seven of them as man and wife), or you celebrate new beginnings. In this case, we raised our glasses to new beginnings and being surrounded by good friends.

hell and gore

Still in the Midsummer spirit, especially after going through photos from last night's festivities. I was curious about the drinking songs that are sung when you do snaps, so I did a bit of internet research. One song in particular is called Helan Går which pretty much means, "Drink it up!" The verse warns, if you don't drink this one, you're not going to get the next one (halvan). The second verse warns that if you don't finish halvan, you're not going to get the third snaps (tersen).

Helan går!
Helan går, sjung "hoppfadirallanlallanlej"
helan går, sjung "hoppfadirallanlej."
Den som inte helan tar,
han heller inte halvan får,
helan gååååååååååår,
*klunk* *klunk* *klunk* (Drink here!)
sjung "hoppfadirallanlej".

It seems each snaps has a name referring to the order in which it's drunk: helan, halvan, tersen, quarten, quinten, sixten, septen, etc. (eventually there's a smuttan which makes me giggle a little.



The Swedes were nice enough to print out sheets with lyrics, as well as including the phonetic sounds of the lyrics so we could sing along. Once I reached "all handsome in the hell and tar" I couldn't stop laughing.

A phonetic "translation" for non-Swedes
Hell and gore
Chungkhapp fallerallan lallan-lay
Hell and gore
Chungkhapp fallerallan lallan-lay
Oh handsome in the hell and tar
And hell are in the half and four.
Hell and gore
Chungkhapp fallerallan lallan-lay.

After a night of drinking, I think it's somehow appropriate that the song reads phonetically in English, "hell and gore."

midsummer

Yesterday, I enjoyed my very first 'real' Swedish Midsummer celebration in Delftse Hout, along the water. After working for a Swedish company for over five years, it's funny that it's taken this long. Not that I haven't had diluted versions of Midsummer in the past, but prior to this, I had never danced around a Maypole, let along poke flowers into the cross, sloshed back so much aquavit, or had real Swedes (instead of Canadians in blond wigs) leading the drinking songs before exclaiming a boisterous, "Sköl!"


Despite the on-again, off-again rain showers, the Swedes decided to have the party outdoors, and thankfully, we were blessed with sunshine, even if there was some running around in the muddy grass during the course of the afternoon and evening. Everyone toting their picnic baskets, we enjoyed quite the spread of food (yes, there were Swedish meatballs in the buffet, along with reindeer wraps, gravadlax, shrimp salad, boiled potatoes with dill, breads, several types of cheeses, knäckebröd, fruit, strawberry cheesecake, brownies, and all sorts of other goodies). Lots of rosés, vodka and aquavit. Lots of flowers. Lots of fun.

Linking hands in a circle around the maypole, mumbling along in butchered Swedish while the Swedes sang louder to compensate for our inability to enunciate, much less comprehend what the hell we were singing along to, we probably looked to onlookers like a motley crew of cult members enacting some sort of pagan ritual. Kind of a surreal experience, but a great time!



I ended the evening by hopping on my bike and heading home, but as I turned around to wave farewell to some of the walkers who shouted goodbye, I lost my balance and fell into a bunch of stinging nettle. As some friends came over to give me a hand up, Peter laughed and shook his head, watching the rescue effort from his bike, "And I promised to make sure you didn't get completely sloshed during your first Midsummer...look how well that turned out!"

tents and train stations

Woke up bright and early yesterday, braved the torrential downpour, and took the train to Amsterdam to meet up with Mags to go shopping for a tent, sleeping bag, and mattress pad. After testing out a few different tents, we both opted for the seconds tent in bright lime green. The beauty of the tent is that you take it out of the disc-shaped carrying case (with shoulder straps for ease of portability) and essentially fling it open.

Before Mags left me at Den Haag Centraal station, we bumped into our friend Juanita, and of course, we had to show off our new tents...at the train station.




Four more days until Werchter!

matchmaker

So, one of the receptionists has apparently been scheming to hook me up with one of her friends. This morning, she sent an e-mail to Caroline, who sits directly across from me, and asked if she thought I'd be interested.

I looked at the e-mail on her screen, saw the attachment with a photo of three people happily smiling and asked, "am I supposed to date all three of them?"

Caroline fired off a reply:

He says he will have them all! Whilst walking away laughing and confused… Come by and explain.

deluxe

I spoke with my realtor today to make an appointment to view some properties next week. Prior to this, I had sent him an e-mail with an overview of the type of place I'm looking for.

Since he had already shown me some properties in February, I have a vague idea of what I want in a flat in terms of price range, amenities, location, etc. One of the things I listed was a full-sized kitchen, since I do like to cook and entertain.

As he was going down the list, clarifying the points I had listed, he stopped at this one and asked, "You want a deluxe kitchen?"

"A regular kitchen will be fine. But a full-sized one." I responded, uncertain of what he meant by a deluxe kitchen, and envisioning state of the art appliances with 16 burners and a walk-in freezer.

"So, a deluxe, then."

"Well, my kitchen right now is a closet converted into a kitchen, and the microwave is housed on a bookshelf under the television, so if by deluxe, you mean something bigger than a closet, then yes, I want a deluxe kitchen. But if by deluxe, you mean fancy and overpriced, then I can do with just a standard 10'x10' kitchen"

Laughing, he says, "Yes, this is Holland, If you actually want to cook in your kitchen, then you want what we call a deluxe kitchen."

hello & shit

I woke up this morning, flipped over, grabbed my laptop and checked my e-mail before hopping in the shower and heading for work. Waiting in my inbox was an e-mail from my friend Lizzo with the subject: "hello & shit". Lizzo is one of the most random, crazy-fun people I've met, and can literally talk without taking breaths in between sentences. The conversations I've had with her are very steam-of-consciousness sort of ramblings, and I'm pleased that her e-mails are as well.

In her e-mail, which seriously took me ten minutes to read (it was that long!), she writes about moving from Boston and living in Southern California:

back to me
i am loving summer and have the crazy white person with pink skin burn look to prove it
last weekend i laid in a raft in the pool at my apartment all day saturday
and sunday ryan and i went to this beach down the street
it is where they filmed the best movie ever, beaches
which makes me break out into "the wind beneath my wing" whenever i go
so i packed a picnic and we swam and layed around and shit
and there were dolphins
and i had a little moment where i thought," i can't believe i live here, this is where people come to vacation, i don't have to wait for a beach day or ever make plans, every day is a beach day" and i was happy

Which is kind of how I feel about living in Europe...

it's like learning to ride a bike again

....and that's exactly what I've been doing. It's been years since I've cycled around, and now that I've sold my car, I need to think about buying a bike. I've been holding back from making an immediate purchase since I don't really know what I want or need. A folding bike that I found on craigslist was briefly in consideration, but then when I decided that the likelihood of me folding up my bike to take it on the train is pretty much zilch, I began to think about a basic omafiets (literally translated: granny bike).

My plan is to get comfortable with being on a bike again, and then figure out how much I want to spend. Especially since bicycle theft is very common here in The Netherlands, there really is no point in buying a new one. Except for the fact that I like nice things. (Cue the whiny voice...) So, my co-worker offered me the use of her bike, which has been sitting in the shed at work for a few months while I contemplate my decision. All I would have to do is pump up the flat. So, after work today, I did just that. Borrowed a bike pump, went to pump up the deflated tires, and wouldn't you know it, there are leaks everywhere. So, Plan A didn't work out so well.

On to Plan B. At work, there are a few bicycles that are available to borrow. Usually they are all lent out and there aren't any left. Luckily, I've sort of made friends with one of the receptionists, and she found one for me. Unfortunately, it's built for Dutch people who are extremely tall, so I had a difficult time manoeuvering it. The minute I hopped on (and I literally had to jump to get on the damn seat!) I almost fell on my face.

I'm such a klutz.

"the phone present have groans"

So, I'm trying to redeem some free PrePaid minutes for my mobile phone, and to do so, I have to fill out a survey. Everything is in Dutch, so I resort to online translation to figure out out to fill this damn thing in. Here's the translation result for one of the questions:

I have elected until prepaid, because:
* I the cost within the handshake wish keep
* I little bubble
* I within young one have been until one subscription
* the facile upon within supply is
* I the phone present have groans
* the reverse

I really need to learn to speak Dutch...

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I checked the "I little bubble" box.

honesty is the best policy

I was catching up on my Boston blogs this evening and read about Evan's budget hotel adventures in New York. Coincidentally, one of my colleagues had just showed me a fantastic series of advertising campaigns for a hotel chain in Amsterdam called Hans Brinker Budget Hotel.

Go to the History section and "take a walk down memory lane (watch out for the dog shit) and enjoy the advertising that helped make the Hnas Brinker a home from home for thousands of visitors to Amsterdam." This is perhaps the most truthful (and hilariously funny) advertising I've seen in a long time.

Perhaps this is where I should threaten to send unruly house guests when they come to visit me in The Netherlands...

"the community"

Week 2. Adjusting slowly...still not feeling at home yet, but I figure if I never shake the feeling of being a tourist, that can't be such a bad thing, can it?  The nice thing about living here in Delft is that there is sort of a built-in community of ex-pats from work here.  

This weekend, i went shopping in The Hague with one of the guys in IT, who needed to get some of those wheely shoes for his kids back in Sweden.  I ended up picking up a crappy prepaid phone since i can't sign up for a mobile contract without a residence permit.  I was all excited until I got back to the apartment, opened up the box and realized that all the instructions were in Dutch.  Oy!  

Later that evening, I was walking over to meet up with one of my colleagues, a fellow editor, when I ran into a girl from HR who was unloading some tables for some friends, another IT guy and his girlfriend (who used to work for the company as an architect, but has since left the fold) that they had picked up in Dusseldorf earlier that morning.  Helped them move tables up to their apartment, then went to go grab some food so we could all have dinner before going to the main market square around the corner to see a midnight show of the theatre festival (De Mooi Weer Spelen).  

At the festival, we ran into another girl who works in my department doing distribution, but lives in The Hague), as well as a graphic designer from iceland that I had met back in Tokyo last year, along with some other work folks.  So, just from one day in Delft, you can get an idea of how interconnected the ex-pat community is here.  The nice thing about it is that the organization is so big that you can hang out with all sorts of different people (I hung out with a completely different set of folks last weekend, including a girl from aruba who doesn't work for the company, but has sort of been 'adopted' into the clan).  And even though we all work in the same organization, we don't all work directly together, which makes avoiding 'shop talk' much easier...sometimes.  

The show itself was spectacular!  Kind of a Cirque du Soleil type show, with lots of fire, pyrotechnics, live music, and brilliant costumes.  The basic premise was a race where different countries test out their own flying machines, but fail.  Finally, the female racer is the only one to succeed, despite being denied a chance to test her flightcraft.






Today, I stayed away from work folks altogether (which is difficult, but still possible...I think) and checked out more of the festival with a new friend from The Hague, before grabbing some Turkish pizzas and lounging around one of the squares chatting.

small space living

Luckily, I got the keys to my temporary apartment this evening, so I'm no longer putting on shows for the tourists. I did have to lug all four pieces of luggage from the hotel to the apartment, tripping over cobblestones as I dragged everything over, but now that I'm here, I've been able to unpack and attempt to settle in a bit. The suite is compact, but comfortable.








When the landlady showed me the suite, I thought the place was pleasant and well-kept, but I wondered aloud where the bedroom was. "Oh, the sofa converts into a bed. Let me show you!" she said with great enthusisasm.

"And the kitchen?"
"Behind the folding doors that looks like it leads into a closet, right here!"

"The bathroom?"
"Beyond the pocket door, of course!"

"And if the kitchen is in what I thought what was the closet, where's the actual closet?"
"Tucked behind the door!"

Talk about small space living!

The church bells ring every hour from the steeple of NieuwKerk, just a few steps away and I've got a view of a waterlily strewn canal from my window, where red geraniums are spilling out from the window box, so it's making me feel like I'm in a postcard world.

As for work, the team here is great. I haven't gotten to spend a lot of time with them all yet since I've been at appointments with local authorities trying to sort out my paperwork, but they're a great bunch. And, get this – my first official day isn't until tomorrow, but I was in the office today, and I've already requested vacation. Before I've even started! I'm going to Rock Werchter, a four day music festival in Belgium . The line-up is pretty awesome, so I couldn't resist. I'll be spending some $300 USD for tickets and the campsite, and it'll probably be one big boozefest, but it should be fun.