Frozen party ideas

As you may have noticed.  I'm no longer posting to my Netherlands blog.  I moved home to the UK a year ago, February 2014, after 8 years in the Netherlands.

My new hobby, based on the things my kids love, is all about Frozen Party ideas.  I have a website, pinterest, twitter, blog and facebook page which you can follow at the following addresses.  Hope to see you there!

www.frozenpartyideas.co.uk
www.facebook.com/frozenpartyideas
https://www.pinterest.com/frozenpartyidea/
https://twitter.com/frozen_party

Christmassy Day out in the Netherlands

As a quick follow up to my last post, and with Christmas just 1 month away...

If you are looking for a Christmassy day out with the kids in the Netherlands, the closest thing I've found to visiting Santa's grotto, is a trip to Intratuin (Garden centre).  They have a really great, big and beautiful Kerstmarkt (Christmas market), with a Christmas village my kids loved!

Days out with kids in the Netherlands

There are just a few days out in the Netherlands which stick in my mind as really, truly, memorable.  With the kids in tow, you need to find somewhere where there's enough to keep them entertained all day with activities for kids, there's good facilities and catering to keep them fed and clean, and as an adult you're not bored out of your mind.

There are several such places I could list, but just a few which had that little extra touch of magic.  Here's a list of my top five best days out in the Netherlands, with kids.

(Warning: none of these places are cheap and most have a cut off point of 3 years old before they start charging child (or even adult) entry prices!)

TOP 5 PLACES FOR DAYS OUT WITH THE KIDS - NETHERLANDS

1. Dolfinarium - Harderwijk

I had it in my mind that is was a sort of Dolphin rescue centre, something to do with the Dutch sea defences.  I was very wrong. It turns out, that this place is a mini SeaWorld, based around fun and exciting shows, activities, interactions and experiences.  We spent a whole day there this summer, my 3-year old absolutely loved it and as adults we were also glued to the amazing shows starring Dolphins, Sealions, mini-Whale type creatures and pirates! All four adults in our group left the park with reusable coffee mugs (stainless steel mugs with a cartoon dolphin on the side) - fantastic!

2. Safari Park Beekse Bergen - Hilvarenbeek

A huge expanse of Africa, which can be experienced by car, bus, boat or foot (although we didn't go near the buses as there was always a big queue). This place has all five of the "big five game" and many other exciting animals from around the world.  We started out the day with the car safari, the highlight of which was a Giraffe eating the autumn leaves out of our windscreen gutter.  We then took the river boat, through the centre of the park, along the quite realistic attempt at recreating the Zambezi, and then we walked back through the park to the exit.  It took us around five hours.  While eating our lunch at a large picnic spot, we also had another treat.  One of the lionesses, who had been lying lazily on the other side of a wide moat from where we sat, suddenly smelt the whiff of a small dog, on our side of the moat.  It must have been 20 metres away, but that Lioness would not take her eyes off that little dog for the next 10 minutes.  It was hilarious!


3. Thomas weekend at the railway museum - Utrecht

This weekend event happens only once a year, this year it was in May.  Thomas the tank engine and friends travel all the way over from Sodor to spend the weekend at the Nederlandse Spoorweg Museum (Dutch railway museum) in Utrecht.  Of course Thomas is the star and he makes a grand entrance into the museum every 20 minutes or so, but there's also lots of other fun activities for kids, including face painting, train-based lunch boxes, a miniature train, a giant train play mat and a Thomas shop.  According to the website, the 2014 Thomas weekend is 29th May - 1st June.


4. Speelpark Oude Valkeveen

This is a theme park, with rides, for small children.  It's also a full day out.  It's located on the banks of the Gooimeer and so it has a beach and large playgrounds in the sand.  But it also has lots of other kids activities, such as bumper cars, a beautiful carousel, a mini-rollercoaster (warning: this was too scarey for my 3-year old daughter), an "old-timers" vintage car ride and a huge inflatable climbing wall cum-slide construction.  We had pancakes for lunch, in the pannenkoekenhuis right outside and there's free parking at the entrance (the only one of these 5 'best places' which does have free parking).


5.  Amersfoort Zoo - Amersfoort

I love this place because it's local to us, it's not too big or too small, and it has a miniature train running around and though it, which the kids absolutely love.  We've been a few times, but the all time highlight was 5 minutes watching a baby elephant trying to push over his mother, and failing quite miserably.

These are my top 5 place to visit in the Netherlands with children.  I'd love to hear from other parents on their favourite attractions for kids.

Oh the bells - they give me a headache

It's Sunday morning. Until about an hour ago, I was trying to have a nice, lazy, lie-in. At 09:27 I got out out of bed for two minutes to make a cup of tea (with milk) and open the window to let in some air. That was my mistake - the open window. It was 09:30 when I opened the window, the exact time when, once a week, on Sunday, a prisoner escapes from the county jail. Or at least, that's what it sounds like to me.

This blog post, and I'm sorry it's a long time coming, is about the difference between Dutch and English church bells.

First, I'll start with a review of English church bells. I'm not anywhere near an expert in English church bells, infact I know almost nothing about them. But, at least, if I start by introducing you to the English bells, you'll be in the same place as me when I hit you with the Dutch ones.

So, here's the English church bells I was used to back home:



Important things to note:

1. More than one bell is ringing, therefore, more than one note being played.
2. People are enjoying themselves - actually bell ringing is a team activity, a fun team activity
3. The bells sound pretty.

Okay, you get the idea I hope. Now imagine that's the sound of church bells you've grown up with, you're used to and then...

...imagine it's Sunday morning in Holland, the window is ajar and you're trying to relax in bed.....:




I don't know about you, but here are some thoughts that run through my mind:

1. Has a prisoner escaped? Are there snipers preparing to shoot from the tower?
2. Should I get quickly dressed up in my Sunday best and leave for church now? Any second, some deathly-ghost may knock on my door rounding up the congregration. They know I'm not there, but sinning by enjoying my Sunday?
3. Has this got anything to do with those monthly sirens (see blog post: "Testing times")? Have all those tests counted for nothing, and now, when we need them most because the sea-level is rising, or mexican flu is taking the Netherlands, the Government is resorting to medieval signaling instead?

You get the idea.

Anyway, my Sunday morning lie-in is ruined once again. I'm now not dozing off with my cup of tea (with milk) by my side, but wide-awake and writing my first blog post for more than a year. So, perhaps, the bells have gone against themselves? Most likely, they were trying to entice me to Sunday service this morning followed by a day of rest. I was resting, but now I'm sinning by "working" on my laptop on the Sabbath.

Dutch advertisements

It's a terrible thing to admit, but one thing I miss about the UK is the consistently high quality of product advertisements. I noticed it again this weekend while listening to Dutch radio. Every other radio advertisement I heard was based on a cringe-worthy rhyme around "punt NL" (the Dutch version of .co.uk / .com), for example:

Kopen makkelijk en snel
op wehkamp.nl

Boek flieggen snel
op fliegticket.nl

Obviously Dutch Radio advertising is suffering from a total lack of creativity.

The same goes for Dutch TV ads. I saw a news item on the BBC UK news this week about a Ryanair campaign which played on the sexual allure of women dressed in school girls uniforms. There had been numerous complaints to the UK Advertising Board and calls for the ad to be banned. This was one bad advert and the industry jumped on it to wipe it out! Well I can tell you that every tenth TV / poster advert in the Netherlands is based on female nudity. One TV station's buffer ads (their own intro slots/5 second slots before/after breaks for adverts) are nothing more than women strutting about in bikinis. For me, it's the worse form of advertising.

The only advert that has ever caught my attention as a high-quality Dutch advert was in the Heineken "Biertje?" series. (Biertje? is the Dutch way of offering a friend a beer). I think this was designed for use in NL, but may well have had a worldwide audience.

Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neoUi4poCXI

Dutch cooking today - A nice Dutch recipe book

Over the Holiday season I found a really nice book: Dutch cooking today. Written in English, this book includes many great colour photos and a lot of the old favourite Dutch recipes, including:

• Dutch apple pie
• Speculaas cookies
• Hutspots
• Uitsmijter
• Dutch pea soup

I think this recipe book was written for two types of readers:

1. Expats living in the Netherlands, who want to learn how to cook some traditional Dutch recipes while they live here and want to find things to do with the limited range of food available in supermarkets.
2. Someone considering moving to the Netherlands who wants to know what "traditional Dutch food" really is.

I can't find the book on Amazon, but here's a comparison page for other online book stores:

http://boeken.beslist.nl/boeken/d0000476667/Dutch_cooking_today.html

My Dutch assessment turns into an assessment of the Dutch

The Dutch course is over now, and I'm please to say I passed. I'm afraid to say however that this blog post is mainly going to be a moan about the way the school grades exam results.

The UvA grades Dutch language course exam results on the following scale:

• good
• satisfactory
• weak
• very poor

This seems very strange to me. All the grades are on the bad side of good, there's no "excellent" grade achievable, the best you can achieve regardless of your performance is "good". Personally I'd rather ditch this assessment scheme and use numbers instead, at least you know where you are with numbers. These terms are so open to interpretation and cultural differences. One American peer of mine at school really found the lack of an "excellent" mark unbelievable, and I am always very disappointed to get a "satisfactory" grade. Satisfactory for me is "only just enough to pass, but a close call", but this is the second best mark you can get at UvA.

After 72 hours of Dutch practice in only 6 weeks, this scheme seems a little unfair but this scoring scheme turns out to be typically Dutch.

To be "excellent" in the Netherlands is to be "uitstekend", literally translated into "sticking out", or in other words "freakish". To be different from everyone else, surprisingly, is frowned upon here. I'm amazed by the contradiction in Dutch society which is supposedly one of the most liberal and open-minded in the world, but yet hates to see people achieving above the norm. Doing just enough to pass has become the accepted way to be in the Netherlands. And I worry for the nation I really do. Don't they realise that the rest of the world, especially the developing world, is trying very hard to be outstanding (a.k.a competitive). I can see the Netherlands slipping down a well greased slope unless they pull their socks up, try harder and forget their inhibitions about being uitstekend.

Learning Dutch

I’ve been learning Dutch (properly putting in big effort) for nearly a year now. But it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done.

I’ve mainly been learning at the INTT at the University of Amsterdam, which I highly recommend. They have really good courses, but they are really very intense. The evening courses consist of 3 hours of classes, two nights a week (Monday and Thursday) and then at least 6 hours homework every week for six weeks. I’ve just entered the next level, I started an Intermediate course on Monday, and I’m already exhausted. Last night I was doing homework until 9:30pm about the exciting and upbeat subject of uitvaart / begraven (basically funerals, cremation and death).

I much prefer to learn Dutch in upbeat fun ways, my teacher that gave me private lessons over the summer managed to do this by helping me to learn by listening to good Dutch music (yes, I too was amazed that it actually exists, but my teacher have managed to find some nice tunes). My favourites so far are:

Acda & de munnik - Groeten uit maaiveld
Wim Sonneveld - Aan De Amsterdamse Grachten

The book that we used this summer, and in the classes at the INTT in general is also really good, but it’s also incredibly expensive at about 70 Euros. It’s called CODE. For the absolute beginner and beginner courses we used CODE 1, for pre-intermediate course and the course I’m on now, Intermediate, we are using CODE 2. It’s a good book because it covers some many different subject areas and it comes with a CD-ROM which is really interactive. It has, per chapter, at least two videos or sound tracks, which help me to listen and understand different Dutch voices. The only area I think the book lacks in sophistication is its explanation of Dutch grammar, which is very complex compared to English.

For instance, here’s a crazy grammatical rule if ever I heard one….there are two words for “because” in Dutch, these are “want” and “omdat”. Your selection of one of these two words has a huge impact on the sentence structure and the position of the words in the sentence. Here’s an example:

Ik neem paracetamol, want ik heb hoofdpijn
I take paracetamol, because I have a headache

Ik neem paracetamol, omdat ik hoofdpijn heb
I take paracetamol, because I a headache have.

No-one, Dutch or otherwise, can explain why this is so or why if you use the two words incorrectly you are speaking complete gobble-de-gook. It’s just the way it is. And there are about 7 different words (that I have learnt so far) that have this effect.

One really nice thing about learning Dutch, however, is the simplicity of some of the words. If you have a basic vocabulary, like me, you can often guess at the meaning of other words, for example:

If you know the word god = god, and dienst= service, then you can guest godsdienst = religion
If you know the word ver = far, and kijk = look, then you can guess that verrekijkers = binoculars (far lookers!!)

Anyway, all the effort I’m making is helping with life here in general. I can mostly understand the announcements at train platforms (even if they are lacking any useful information on why the trains are delayed) and the news headlines are not as totally baffling as they once were. But still, I have a long, long way to go and it’s still exhausting trying to learn.

I've got a new job in Amsterdam!

It’s about time I wrote to update all my fellow job seekers that I’ve got a job in Amsterdam! I’ve been sorted for about 4 weeks now and I’m going to be working at Philips from the 24th September. In the end I didn’t find the role through a recruitment agency but managed to sort it out all by myself. Originally, I’d applied for a different job at Philips and had interviews at the beginning of the summer. I was disappointed that they turned me down for that role, but they later came back to me with a different role, which is more suited to me anyway.

So my recommendation, after limited success using recruitment agencies, is to trawl through company sites and apply directly for everything. By all means meet with the agencies, and go to any interviews they do get for you (I had about 5 through agencies) but in the end I was better off on my own.

For a head start on finding international jobs/companies in Amsterdam, don’t forget my useful list of companies, check out their vacancy boards and apply today!:
http://sdemul.blogspot.com/2007/06/international-companies-based-in.html


Good luck to anyone else out there that is searching!

Summer of storms

In one of my previous blogs (about climate change) I wrote that I thought there had been a lot of thunderstorms this summer.

I was right:
“Meteorological Institute KNMI in De Bilt (that place again) counted 25 days with thunderstorms in June, July and August... A normal summer usually has about 14 days with thunderstorms”

Source:
http://www.expatica.com/actual/article.asp?subchannel_id=19&story_id=43285

Slow or not?

I’m not sure whether this is a typically Dutch thing or not and I’m interested in other people opinions...

One of my Dutch teachers mentioned that another one of her students had pointed out to her that Dutch washing machine programmes are far too long. As soon as she said it I had to agree: the standard wash on my Zanussi Rubino II 1200 lasts about one and a half hours and for the past few months I’ve been choosing the “Quick” programme, as I’m fed up waiting for the damn thing to finish. The quick programme is still about an hour long.

However, I’ve just checked it out on the internet and it may not actually be a Dutch thing:
“These days washing machines are much more energy efficient, this is because they use a lot less water. This does mean that they wash for much longer though and it is not unusual for a machine to wash for 2 hours. So if you like your clothes in a hurry, check how long the fastest wash takes.” (http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/ba/14/Washing-Machine-buying-guide)

Has anyone else noticed that washing programmes are excessively long here? Is this a typically Dutch thing, or just a new washing machine thing? I’d like to clean this up!

A land of giants

It’s a known fact that the Dutch are the tallest nation on earth. In 2004 Dutch men averaged 6 foot 1 inches (that’s 1.85 metres) and women 5 foot 8 inches (1.72 metres). Freakishly tall people are to be found everywhere in Holland, usually bending down trying to avoid bridges and roof beams that I couldn’t even touch with my best high jump attempt.

Having such height is all well and good for the Dutch women, with their long legs and slender necks, but it has led to some problems for me while I’m living here in the land of giants. Ninety-nine percent of trousers I buy here are much too long for me and I’m forced to cut off a couple of inches and re-stitch the hems. My chair at work is too high, even when adjusted to the lowest possible level my legs dangle. The same goes for the mini-bench type things at train stations, which I find impossible to perch on (and ashamedly I have the same problem with most toilets here as well). Of course, every conversation I have now involves looking up towards the sky, risking a crick in my neck. At cinemas, it’s almost impossible not to be stuck behind a tall person, but worst of all is music concerts where I’m on tip-toes all evening to get a glimpse of the stage.

The Dutch mistakenly say they are “long”, bless their cotton socks (cotton socks which are the size of pillow cases). It’s a forgivable error but even-so the question “How long are you?” still makes me laugh. “Why are the Dutch so long?” is a question that puzzles me however. Most Dutchies will maintain that it’s because they drink a lot of milk and eat lots of dark-brown bread, but can this really lead to such elongated people?

Anyway, although I sometimes feel insignificant and dumpy living here I also wonder whether it’s really that good to have giraffe-like proportions. According to a New Yorker essay in 2004, Dutch ambulances have even had to keep their back doors open on many occasions to allow for the extreme length of their patients' legs.

Foreigner in my home land

I went back to England this weekend, for the first time since February and it felt wierd. I was surprised by:

New twenty pound notes, which have been introduced since I was away and look like fake money. They are bigger notes, with a lot of "designery" white space, purple pictures and something about the industrial process of pin manufacturing on them.

Pubs, restaurants, airports, train stations and bus shelters (all businesses) are now all completely smoke free. The no-smoking laws came into the UK on 1st July and already the restaurants are cleaner, fresher and more enjoyable.

Friday night was the 9th eviction night on Big Brother, and I hadn't seen or heard anything about this series at all. That would have been totally impossible to avoid if I were in the UK, but without any Channel 4 or E4 TV channels, I'm BB-less.

The English football season started again yesterday - 11th August - Crazy!!

Next (clothes shop) has become really really cheap and nasty. I was looking at suits for work in there this afternoon, and there wasn't a suit in there that cost more than 100 pounds. Five years ago that would have been the other way round. Next obviously facing tough competition and is heading towards the prices (and quality) of Primark and New Look.


Things change fast.

Top 10 things to see in Amsterdam

I’ve had quite a few friends and family visits now and I’m starting to realize that I have a few favourite places to take these tourists when they are here in Amsterdam. I thought I’d share these, in my blog, for anyone thinking of visiting soon. I’m not going to pretend to know any important dates, designers, architects or historical facts, but I can tell you what I know without ripping-off a rough guide. If you are in Amsterdam and you want these details you’ll just need to buy a proper guidebook.

So here is Sarah de Mul’s Top 10 places to see in Amsterdam (shown in an exciting top 10 count down type way):

10. Bicycles at Centraal Station
If you are arriving in the Netherlands for the first time, and you haven’t yet realized how much the Dutch rely on this cheap, environmentally-sound mode of transport, you’ll be shocked, amazed and astonished to see the multi-storey bike park located next door to Amsterdam’s central station. For many people, the Centraal Station is the starting point to their weekend in the city, so it’s a quick and easy little side-trip to go and marvel at this really very Dutch sight. Central station would itself be interesting if it wasn’t in a constant state of repair. I first came to Amsterdam nearly 5 years ago, and I’ve never been to the station at a time when at least one quarter of the station hasn’t been covered in scaffolding and plastic sheeting.

9. Tuschinski Theater
This is the cinema where all the big premieres open in Amsterdam (I’m very excited to write that I saw Rowan Atkinson outside there when Mr Bean the movie opened last year). Anyway, the cinema is amazing, it’s a frighteningly extreme example of 1920s art-deco Amsterdam with twin, evil-looking, towers on the outside, and opulent red carpets and brightly painted ceilings inside. The best way to see the theater is of course to see a film, but if there isn’t anything on that you want to see, don’t be afraid to poke your head inside the foyer to see the ceiling which magically changes colour every 20 seconds.

8. The van Gogh museum I like this museum because it is not a gigantic maze of artists you’ve never heard of or art you’ve never seen before and will never see again. This is a small, single artist gallery, nicely designed, and packed with famous paintings I just wish I could take home with me. The van Gogh museum is in the middle of the Museumplein, a vast, flat grassy area, surrounded by museums (such as the Rijksmuseum), the classical music hall, and one of the only Albert Heijns open on Sundays!

7. Rembrandtplein
I guess this is the equivalent of Leicester Square in London, although the cinemas are not on the square but on a street that runs of the square (Reguliersbreestraat). The most interesting parts of Rembrandtplein are the 3D version of Rembrant’s “Nightwatch” which was created by a couple of Russian artists and placed here about 2 years ago, the large light screen (think Piccadilly Circus) and a couple of nice restaurants/bars: De Kroon (funked-up gentleman’s club) and Café Schiller, an art-deco bar next to the Hotel of the same name.

6. Flower Market The flower market is quiet small, but you will never see so many bulbs in your life again. It floats along the bank of the Singel (canal), and consists of about 20 flower stalls in a row. The prices are reasonable as compared to the UK, but obviously rather more expensive than the rest of Holland as this is catering for the tourist trade. I have bought an Amaryllis from here and it was beautiful. The market runs parallel with Amsterdam gayest street, Reguliers Dwarsstraat, which has one of my favourite restaurants on it: Rosie’s Cantina (a Mexican restaurant).




5. Dam Square
Dam square isn’t really that exciting, but it’s the closest thing to Trafalgar Square in Amsterdam. To me it feels like the heart of Amsterdam, as it lies relatively centrally between Centraal station, the red light district, Joordan and Spui. The main attractions on the square are the Koninklijk Paleis (Royal Palace) where Queen Beatrix receives foreign dignitaries, the war memorial, and a tiny plaque dedicated to Saint Nicholaas (SintaKlaas) on the North side next between the Nieuwe Kerk (new church) and Nieuwendijk. Dam square plays host to concerts on New Years and other special days, but it more often than not is smothered with rather rubbish street performers (see "Invading Holland", Invader Stu’s blog, for more info on these guys).

4. The Red Light District Day or night, Amsterdam’s red light district is fascinating. The first time you see the ladies in the window’s you can’t quite believe it and everyone I’ve shown around this area of town has been totally intrigued, despite themselves. The most interesting parts of the Red Light District to me are: the areas around the Oude Kerk, which is the weirdest contradiction I’ve ever seen (prostitutes flaunting their wares right opposite a huge church), and the narrowest lanes which are wide enough to fit only one person, but still have windows on both sides.

3. Anne Frank’s House

This museum shook me up; I felt really melancholy for a whole week afterwards, and still feel differently about the city where I now live. I read Anne’s diary at school and this house brings all that to life in a very simple, respectful way. Inside the house you learn about the Frank’s lives before the war, the business they ran and the friends they had. Then you are taken behind the bookcase into the secret Annexe and you see the tiny rooms and space they occupied for two years during WWII, before they were found.

The area where I live in Amsterdam is the neighbourhood where Anne lived before she went into hiding. Her school is in the street parallel to mine, and she bought the books in which she wrote her diaries from the book shop on the corner, which I can see from my living room window. After the tour of the Annexe it took me days to stop picturing my street as it would have been during the war, with Nazi soldiers and tanks roaming where the cyclists, trams and cars roam freely today.

2. The Begijnhof
This is an amazing, secret, world hidden right in the shopping centre of Amsterdam. Behind Spui there are beautiful old house around a very well kept “village green” that are lived in by single women. The square was once a sanctuary for Catholic nuns, and it still has a very calm atmosphere, cut off from the hustle and bustle of city life. There are two churches within the square, one is a catholic chapel, the other an English Church. The square also protects Amsterdam oldest surviving wooden house. Tours are not allowed into the Begijnhof, and it feels like a privilege to be allowed to enter there at all, so if you do go, please treat the area and its occupants with respect and minimize the photos and noise you make.

1. Canal Boat Tour.
To round it all off, or better, as a starting point for a trip to Amsterdam you must take a Amsterdam canal boat tour. One of the best boat tours leaves from the Rokin (take Tram 4 to Spui or Tram 12 to Muntplein) and is called Rondvaart. This tour takes you all around Amsterdam, the Keizergracht, Prisengracht and Herengracht, you see the 7 bridges, the blue bridge, the Ijselmeer, and lots more. It lasts about one hour and I've taken this tour about 5 times now.

It’s best not to take a tour when it’s raining as the boat windows steam up, but if you don’t have any option and you’re in Amsterdam when it’s raining, bring lots of tissues with you to wipe the windows!

After the tour follow the small street behind the Rondvaart hut passed the Diamond shops and on the right there’s a really cute little pancake house, which you need to reach buy a near vertical staircase. There’s enough seating room for about 12 people inside and each pancake is made individually by a very interesting (very Dutch) old couple. The restaurant is called “Upstairs”.


For anyone looking for a good (and cheap) weekend guide book, this is one of the best available right now:

Dutch celebrities - who are they?

I just found a Dutch Celebrity Internet Quiz and I don't know anyone on the list: http://ifarm.nl/quiz/dutch.en.html

I don't watch much Dutch TV, just a little bit, the language practice exhausts me. The only Dutch celebs I know are:

• Robert Jensen
• Ruud van Nistelrooy (Footballer, in England)
• John de Mol
• Queen Beatrix and family
• Famke Janssen (from X-Men)

Who else should I know?

As far as I can tell Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsey are the most famous Celebrity Chefs here, except that bald fat guy, and I have no idea what his name is....

Things that don’t exist in Holland

This week I discovered two things, two totally different things, that just don’t exist in the Netherlands. They are:

Wedding anniversary cards to be sent within the married couple
It was my husband and my 1st wedding anniversary on Monday and I was devastated that I couldn’t buy him a “happy anniversary” card. In Holland you can only buy cards to send to the couple. To take this a few years into the future too, it seems that the Dutch don’t hold any significance for 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40 year anniversaries but choose to celebrate the all too metric 12.5 years (!), 25 year and 50 year anniversaries only!!

“Cat eyes” on roads
I hadn’t noticed this before Monday when we were driving to the airport to return a hire-car in the torrential rain and thunder-storm and we could not see any of the road markings. It was then I realised that Dutch roads are all the more smoother because they don’t have cat eyes here. Someone needs to add cat-eyes to the parts-list of model building company in charge of Dutch roads.

Things that are typically Dutch

I was thinking this week about all the things, good and bad, that I’ve seen/found/used in the Netherlands and would never be able to see/find/use back home. Although you’d think that culturally the Netherlands and the UK aren’t that far apart, and that through the process of globalisation, everything is becoming the same anyway, there are still some things that are simply Dutch and you won’t find anywhere else. In my opinion, these are they:

Kaasschaaf (Cheese slice)
This is a really clever device the Dutch use everyday to ensure they get perfectly sliced thin layers of cheese for their lunch-time or breakfast bread rolls or sandwiches. It’s typically Dutch of course because it means that you take only the exact right amount of cheese, there is no room for greedily taking a slightly thicker slice of cheese, the only way to get more is to slice off a whole extra piece, but that is too obvious to people around you.

My only concern about Cheese Schaves (?) is that when you get to the end of a piece of cheese, and you’re working with just a centimetre or two of cheese before the rind, the cheese schaaf does become a bit dangerous. Many a time have I almost cheese schaafed my wrist open while trying to get that last remaining bit of cheese off the rind. This tool is in fact the ultimate suicide device.

Vla

There is no English translation for the word vla, it simply doesn’t exist in England and I have not seen it in any other country than Holland, although I expect the Belgians probably have it too. The only parallel I can draw with English stuff is to compare Vla to a slightly runny low-fat Ambrosia Devonshire custard (don’t tell my husband I said this, but it does actually taste exactly the same and I’ve just found a recipe for making it which uses custard powder as the base – he’ll be devastated http://www.typicaldutchstuff.com/vla.shtml ).

So vla has a “vague resemblance” to custard, but you can get away with eating a whole bowl of vla, by itself, for pudding and no-body will blink an eye-lid. Magic.

White Asparagus
This is another thing that I had never seen or heard of before I came to Holland (in fact everything in this list falls into that category). White asparagus is a delicacy in the Netherlands and Belgium, and when they are in season you can’t escape them in supermarkets and restaurants. They look similar to their green relatives but they are longer, much fatter and totally anaemic looking. They are white because they are deprived of sunlight when they are growing up, and from what I can tell are basically nurtured in the same way as mushrooms.

I have cooked them a couple of times and the hassle factor, compared to green asparagus, is considerable. First of all you have to peel them (I’ve actually used my cheese schaaf to do this), then you have to steam them on a bed made of their own peeled-off skins for about 15 minutes. All the recipes I’ve ever seen for these ghostly vegetables are based on, or totally limited to, butter and cheese. I still prefer the green ones.

Milk at lunch-time
This is less of a “thing” than a massive cultural difference between NL and, let’s face it, the rest of the world. In the UK you are given milk at lunch time as a child at primary school. You wouldn’t be seen dead drinking it at lunch time at secondary school. And, as an adult, milk simply isn’t available to you at a work canteen or in a restaurant. But in Holland, you are a weirdo if you don’t drink milk at lunch time, no matter what your age. My husband and his family always have a glass or mug of milk with their lunch time bread and cheese.

Even more amazing to me, however, was my first few experiences of lunch in an office canteen. The canteen sold 300ml plastic cups of milk (with foil caps) and these were the hottest selling items going. Every single (Dutch) person in the canteen bought a plastic cup of milk and it was so strange to me to see fully-grown men, often senior managers in smart suits, drinking milk in a way I had not seen since I was 11 years old. Every day I would buy a can of diet coke and for the first three weeks or so I was ridiculed for being “so American” and totally unhealthy, or asked “Don’t you drink milk? Don’t you like it?” To answer that question again: yes I do drink milk, but through eating my breakfast cereals every morning. It seems Dutch people don’t eat breakfast cereals, they normally eat bread so the first milk they get in a day is at lunch.

Hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles)
For all the English-speakers reading this blog, the next few lines are basically referring to the chocolate sprinkles, or hundreds-and-thousands, that are, in most countries, the reserve of cakes, pastries or donuts.

Who in their right mind would also sprinkle hundreds-and-thousands onto buttered bread?

…the Dutch that’s who.

Extraordinarily, there’s a whole food industry built up around these polished up little mouse poops. Unilever makes them, there’s a premium brand “De Ruijter” and all the supermarkets sell their own brands too. Unlike buying breakfast cereals, you can buy family-sized boxes of hagelslag, which last my two-person household at least six months. And you can even buy mini-boxes of De Ruijter hagelslag, which are just the right size to sprinkle on one slice of bread. These mini-versions are available in multi-packs in supermarkets and sold separately in work canteens and hotels.

But hagelslagen(/s) aren’t limited only to the chocolate, shiny mouse poo shaped variety. There must be getting on for about thirty variations on the theme, including:

• Bigger, flat, chocolate flakes
• Dark chocolate sprinkles (and flakes)
• Fruit sprinkles (pictured right - not sure how much actual fruit they contain)
• Aniseed sprinkles (which are white with little tails and called mice)
• Powered aniseed sprinkles (which are the mice, but ground and called stamped on mice)
• Pink mice (which are a special treat reserved only for the birth of a baby girl)
• Blue mice (reserved for the birth of a baby boy)
• Easter sprinkles (in spring-like colours)
• Etc, etc

Brand new motorways, major roads and sign posts
This is, again, less of a thing, than an observation and something I wondering whether any other expat in Holland has noticed too. All the motorways and major roads here look like they are no older than 10 years old. All the road surfaces are immaculate, all the paintwork is perfectly neat and still bright white. All the road signs are hung above the motorways in exactly the same way, throughout the entire country (the metal construction on which they are placed is identical where-ever you go). The road signs within cities, and those for bicyclists, are also placed on posts that are exactly the same where-ever you are in Holland. The signs for cars are hung on blue and white painted posts (immaculate as if they were painted yesterday) and for cyclist these post are red and white.

It is as if one single company has spent the last decade building all the roads, using an unlimited supply of exactly the same parts. The roads are built as if they were made by some model-building enthusiast playing with an entire country.

If you are an expat like me, look out for this and marvel at how it’s possible and the huge amount of money it must have taken. If you’re Dutch, open your eyes to this rather unique phenomenon and let me know if you think there is any other evidence that you have been living in a model country all your life (it reminds me of that film “the Truman show”). The only problem I can see it that in the next 10 years or so every major road in Holland is going need replacing. What a job. I’m not sure I want to be here then.

……………

There are other things that to me are “typically” Dutch, but I’ve been writing this post for about an hour and it’s getting too long. The other things include: Beschuit (cheapo breakfast biscuits used to celebrate birthdays), Slingers (cheapo party decorations, used on birthdays), front door signs (everyone has their name on their front door), clogs (need I go on)…

Flat as a pannenkoek - and in trouble

Okay, now this blog post may seem to be a reaction to yesterday’s big worldwide concerts “live earth” and I guess in a way it is, but I want to set it clear that I am genuinely concerned about the issue of human-induced climate change, it’s something that I’ve grown up being concerned about and I guess I know more about it that your average pop/rock star as I did a degree in Geography, where I studied exactly the problems that yesterday was all about (apparently).

I have to say that I have a great deal of respect for what Al Gore is trying to do. His film “An inconvenient truth” is indeed the best way I’ve seen so far at trying to educate the public at large about climate change. But what drove me mad last night, while watching the concert, was the way that celebrities such as the Pussycat Dolls (arrrghghg) repeatedly referred to this problem as a “worthy cause”. It simply isn’t a “worthy cause” it’s a f***ing huge crisis that we all have to deal with. We are not fighting for the safety of a few million people that we don’t know, we are fighting for the survival of our planet – at that involves all of us and our children.

The two quotes that hit me the hardest in Al Gore's movie are the following. Please read them and accept them for the power they hold. The first quote is taken from the part of the film when Gore is talking about balancing economic development versus human induced climate change:

"We have here a scales that balances two different things. On one side, we have *gold* bars! Mmmmmm, don't they look good? I'd just like to have some of those gold bars. Mmmmm. On the other side of the scales... um... THE ENTIRE PLANET! Hmmmm... "

But this second quote is one that should haunt people of my generation:

"Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now."

I urge everyone reading my blog to watch the film. It’s not an Al Gore promotional campaign, he knows his stuff, he studied it, still studies it and is doing what he can do (which is more than the average person can) to help create a tipping point of support in fighting the causes of human-induced climate change.

Anyway, I want to bring this issue back to the theme of my blog and focus in on what climate change means for my new home country, the Netherlands.

We all know that Holland is as flat as a pancake (pannenkoek) and that a huge percentage of the country is below sea-level. The Dutch, over their entire history fought a “war with the sea” (that’s actually how they refer to it!). That war is going to getting fiercer and fiercer if generally held scientific views come to fruition. If these predictions do come true then some of the more densely populated areas of the world will be underwater within my lifetime, we are talking about Manhattan, Florida, the delta plains of Bangladesh, Shanghai, and the Netherlands.

Here’s a link to what to me is a vastly over-dramatic American trailer for the film, but it shows the impact of the sea-level rise in the areas I mention above and the implications of this:

Link to movie trailer

It is scary stuff and human beings are to blame by pumping out ever increasing levels of greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide. The CO2 levels in our atmosphere are higher now than in any other point in the Earth’s long history. There are natural cycles of high and low CO2 levels, but we’ve gone way beyond those now. And the scariest thing of all is just how far we are going outside the normal levels. But what does all this extra CO2 mean? Well basically, the more CO2 in our atmosphere the hotter our planet becomes, that’s a fact. CO2 (and other greenhouse gases) basically trap the sun’s energy in the atmosphere. You can rest assured that if we keep increasing the amount of CO2 present in our delicate little atmosphere then it’s going to get a lot hotter. The heat melts the ice on the surface of our planet and the icecaps, and the less icecaps we have reflecting the sun’s energy (like mirrors) the more the sea receives this energy directly and heats up too. It’s a vicious circle which basically results in us having increasingly more water in our world than ice, and a lot more warm water, which leads to devastating events like hurricanes.

Now, this may all seem like abstract science (even though it’s all just off the top of my head as I had it drilled into me since I was eleven years old – my geography teachers were great), but I can see the changes happening all around me. I’ve seen and heard over the last four weeks more lightening and thunder storms than I’ve seen over the previous 5 years. They are happening nearly every other day. The Netherlands is a very humid place, but I never expected "tropical storms" like this. Every week our road floods, it looks like a river (or more like a typical Amsterdam canal), and this worries me. What if this river decides not to seep away through the drainage system, but the (already) high water table in Amsterdam rises? There will certainly be more mosquitoes to defend myself against, and I’m already struggling with them (they arrived in March this year). The trees in our street were in bloom with their blossom in January, and both last autumn and winter were the warmest since records began.

I’m telling you, it’s obvious to see all around us already. Everyone’s crazy about the weird, wet weather we’ve had over the last month, but is there not something behind this.

You could say I’m reading too much into it, you could ignore it, or laugh it off. But what if I’m not wrong? How would you feel in 25 years when your children ask the question I quoted above? Pretty sick I think. The most sensible thing the presenters of Live Earth said last night was to compare climate change to slavery. We now look back at the slave trade of previous centuries with sickness in our stomachs, sadness in our hearts and guilt of being cruel white men in our brains. But how will we feel in 25 years if we look back at ourselves in 2007 with the knowledge that we then could have made a difference, but now all the polar bears are extinct, our icecaps have disappeared and millions and millions of people, including many Dutch people, have been displaced from their homes.

Just think about everything you do today, and whether you can do it in a more energy conscious way. Small examples:

• Boil just enough water to make your cup of tea (kettles use huge amounts of energy)
• Turn of the lights, unless you really need them
• Don’t leave things on stand-by
• Don’t buy products in the supermarket that have had to been transported half way around the world (if no-one buys them, the supermarket won't stock them)
• Draw your curtains at night, especially in the winter, as this helps reduce the effort of your central heating
• Don't leave your mobile phone charger plugged-in to the wall. It uses energy even if your phone isn't attached to it. Feel the plug part of the charger, it's warm, because it's using (wasting) energy.

Here's a great website with more ideas, and it allows you to keep track too:

http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/

These are just such tiny easy actions, and there’s loads more of them. And they could make a big difference. You could make a big difference.

Enough said.

Raw onions, everywhere

One thing that surprises and disappoints me, almost daily, in Nederland is the huge quantities of raw onion to be found in food.

The best example of this is with the Dutch Haring, which is absolutely smothered in raw onions.

See if you can spot the fish in the image below:

I can’t understand this. When you eat raw onions, even the smallest snippet, the taste stays in your mouth for at least the next 5 hours, and worse other people can smell it on your breath for much longer. Very anti-social.

I don’t mind it so much with things like Haring, because I can easily avoid Haring, but when it comes to the ready-made salad meals, or even bags of salad, to be bought from the Albert Heijn, it’s very annoying. I now check each pack to make sure I’m not paying for a salad that is one quarter raw onions.

It’s the same in all restaurants, including the canteen at work. The salad bar has several bowls of different salads to choose from, but many of them contain large quantities of finely sliced onion the pieces of which are very tricky to pick out. The quantity of onion infiltrating the salad bar seems to get more and more towards the end of the work week, possibly because other, less offensive, ingredients are running low.

Of course onions are basically the same as Tulip bulbs, which the Dutch have plenty of. I don’t think I’m actually facing tulip bulbs in my salads, but during the “hunger winter” of 1944-1945, the Dutch did eat tulip bulbs as other food was confiscated and sent to Germany. Understandably, the Germans didn’t think the tulips were very tasty and so the Dutch were allowed to keep them. Apparently tulip bulbs are very sweet, they made you sick or give you a rash, so maybe “normal” onions are now a special treat for the Dutch?

IKEA, helping the needy...especially in Holland

The population of the Netherlands is 16,570,613, tiny compared to the UK which has 60,209,500 people. So if the population of Netherlands is 27.5% of the size of the UK, how come, HOW COME, the Netherlands has 12 IKEAs, but the UK only has 15?

Map source: IKEA.nl and IKEA.co.uk


Nothing is different about the stores. In both countries IKEA follows the exact same store format, which guides you through the different rooms of a house upstairs, and then kitchen ware, rugs, lighting, pictures and plants downstairs. In both stores you need to queue for half an hour to pay for your shopping, but in the Netherlands of course that's because only 10% of the available cash tills are in service at any one time.

The only reason I can think of that might explain why there is a greater availability of IKEAs in Holland per person is that it is in fact a Dutch owned organisation. IKEA is registered as a foundation in the Netherlands, which basically gives it similar rights to a charity organisation and better tax rates etc. I guess the idea is that IKEA is creating low-cost furniture for the needy. Perhaps the Dutch are just more needy than the British.