Living Dutchly

France Wins!!

2010-06-21T22:13:00.001+02:00

The results:

1st place: France

2nd place: Germany

3rd place: Netherlands

4th place: Belgium

What's this? World Cup? No way, it's the motorway challenge, my subjective ranking of national highways, freeways, motorways, autoroutes, autobahnen, autosnelwegs, whatever you want to call them... I've driven all of these multiple times in the past year, and let me tell you why they're quite different.

Bringing up the rear, in 4th place, is Belgium. Belgium takes fourth because there are only four contenders in the contest -- Belgian roads are actually in a different league, a horribly underfunded and frustrating league. They're potholey, trafficky, and worst of all, terribly marked. Even with a TomTom telling you where and when to turn, you can still pick the wrong exit ramp, sub-exit ramp, left-exit, unmarked split, whatever. Horrible. Belgian autosnelwegs kind of redeem themselves at night, however, when their abundance of lighting really makes them shine. I've heard it's because they have so much nuclear energy to burn, and that's the best thing they can think of to do with it. Maybe Google should build a server farm there (actually, that would help me a ton, because Google Maps is excruciatingly slow here!).

Next up, in 3rd place, is my current home, Nederland. The roads themselves are fabulous, so smooth and quiet, at least when they're not under construction. The trouble is, they're almost always under construction. Between the road work and the traffic, which is what you'd expect it to be in the most densely populated country in Europe, driving just takes unreasonably long around here. When you have extra time on your hands for delays, however, they're a pleasure, with good signage, consistent traffic patterns, local & express lanes, and excellent rest stop plazas. The speed limit is the same as Belgium's, 120 kilometers per hour.

Speed, of course, is the main thing going for Germany's autobahns. Speed-hungry Americans at home with their car magazines dream of a beautiful Bavarian day in an ungoverned Porsche Carrera GT. In reality, even a Volvo can be fun to open up for a stretch of no-speed limit driving, and I enjoy doing so on occasion when, for example, I have to pick someone up across the border at Dusseldorf Airport. I've had my V40 up past 160 km/h (100 mph) a few times, and it glides pretty nice. The interesting thing is, though, in the land of Porsche and BMW, that there's always someone faster than you -- no matter how fast you go, and how white-knuckled you feel, you ALWAYS have to keep your eyes on the rear-view mirror because some red or black streak is about to whiz by you. And, famously, they're not shy about flashing headlights and horn-honking if you're in the left lane when they reach your backside. The autobahn is not all speed and roses, however: Germany is a pretty busy country, and the no-limit sections are only out in the countryside between big cities. There are plenty of 120, 90, and even 70 (in construction) km/h speed limits, and it gets quite tiring to be constantly speeding up and slowing down when you're traversing the country. Traffic can get pretty snarly, too, and there's nothing like cresting a hill at 140 km/h to discover a sea of brake lights and hazard lights three lanes wide as you slam on the brakes. The autobahn has great rest stop plazas, and the slight annoyance of having to pay 50 cents to use the toilet is mostly quenched by the fact that you get your 50 cents back in discount form when you buy a drink or anything. Between Germany and the Netherlands, the roads themselves are similar, Dutch rest stops are a little better, but the optional speed limit (official rule is "130 km/h recommended") wins by a mile. Or a kilometer.

In first place, France takes the gateau, even though its autoroutes are the only ones in the group with tolls -- expensive tolls, at that, like 14 Euro for 2 hours of driving! French speed limits are 130 km/h, marginally higher than Dutch and Belgian, rest stops are fine, similar to Dutch ones, and the roads themselves are generally in good shape without many construction delays. This all sounds fine, though not outstanding, but somehow everything comes together to make a very pleasant driving experience. I've driven all the way out to Bretagne, and the near-constant 130 km/h just feels more productive than the start-stop annoyance of the autobhn. Traffic somehow is rarely a problem, except right around Paris -- maybe it's the abundance of lanes (3 lanes each way most of the Autoroute du Nord from Lille to Paris), maybe there are fewer trucks, or maybe the lack of tailgating Audis makes it seem more relaxed. It would be easy to argue either side of all-out speed vs. average speed & convenience in the Germany/France contest. But, on my last trip to France, they truly frosted their own cake. Surely you know how infamous the French are for their propensity to go on strike: "GREVE" signs, farm fields on Paris streets, walkouts in the Metro, etc. Well, it turns out when the toll collectors strike, there's nobody to collect the toll! They just wave you right through. Viva la France!

Verkiezingen!

2010-06-03T20:12:00.008+02:00

That's right, Verkiezingen (fair-KEYS-ing-n) -- Elections!

As you may have heard, the Dutch government dissolved in February over a disagreement about continued Dutch participation in the war in Afghanistan. This dissolution nonsense is foreign to American politics, but the basic idea is that the "government" is always a coalition of parties in Parliament who agree on a common platform and work together toward their shared goals. This is necessary because unlike the two-party system in the US, in which one is always a majority, there are a dozen political parties here so no party can have its way without cooperation. Apparently before the previous elections in 2006, the Labor party, PVdA (Partij voor de Arbeid) promised to pull out of Afghanistan once the present commitment expired. However, PVdA, as part of the governing coalition, did not get the other major party, CDA (Christen Democratisch Appèl, literally Christian Democratic Appeal, a centrist, conservative-leaning and actually not Bible-thumpingly Christian party), to agree to this pull out. In February, de poep sloeg de ventilator aan (the shit hit the fan) on the issue, no agreement could be made, and poof, the coalition dissolved.

The only solution to a dissolved coalition is a new election, after which a new pecking order is established among the parties, and they can negotiate new agreements to forge a better coalition. This election is coming next week, on June 9. And yes, that means that from February until now, the Netherlands has not had a functioning parliament. Apparently this is no problem?! As everywhere, voters are reactionary and have short memories, so in the current election CDA is expected to be punished, PVdA is likely to gain seats for standing up for the pull-out from an unpopular conflict, and various other parties will win or lose a bit. It will remain quite a mystery which (and how many -- it might require 4 parties this time) parties will join the first-place party to form a governing coalition.

I don't get to vote, of course, but if I did, the party best suited to me is Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals)! Surprised? Me too, but that was the result of an interesting online election guide in which I had to agree or disagree with a bunch of issue questions. Go animals! Actually, as you can see below, my preference for the animals is really quite small. In fact, judging from this graph, there really isn't any party in the Netherlands for me. I suppose that means there's room in the political landscape for a new party - the Grumpy Americans Party (and we'll shop at the GAP).

Funkadelic Philatelic

2009-10-27T20:46:00.004+01:00

A collection of interesting stamps, all on one envelope, which by the way was the vessel for the Master's thesis that a student I supervised mailed me. Cool, eh? Click the pic for the big version!

58 Miles Per Gallon

2009-10-22T21:42:00.000+02:00

That's right, I GET 58 MILES PER GALLON, consistently, in daily commuting, without fancy devices or expensive add-ons, and YOU CAN TOO!! I'll share the secret to my success with you, DEAR READER, not because I want your money, but because everyone deserves to benefit from such AMAZING FUEL ECONOMY!!

When I moved to Holland, I sold the two cars I owned in USA: a 1998 Acura Integra and a 2003 VW Jetta Wagon. The Acura averaged about 29 mpg, and the VW about 27. Not bad, compared to the average American's ride, but not stellar, either. Here, I bought a Volvo V40, same vintage as my previous VW -- however, with the exchange rate and the higher cost of cars here, the Volvo purchase depleted the sale value of both the previous cars! Bummer...

Luckily, the Volvo is a nice car. Comfy, quick, good for a growing family driving to Switzerland and such. When shopping for cars here, comfort and efficiency were of main importance, so I was immediately comparing tax costs and fuel economy. The tax (paid quarterly, more like a registration cost than a sales tax or such) on a car in the Netherlands is determined by its weight and fuel economy. The Volvo is middle of the road for both, but the fuel economy numbers were the interesting ones for me. How does 9.4 Liters/100 kilometers sound? Compared to what, you say? Inverting that figure and converting to English units, that means 25.5 miles per gallon (mpg). A little worse than our American cars. It is interesting to note that the average engine size in USA is 3.6 Liters. Here, it is 1.8 L: half! Ever the wiseguy, though, I'm countering these statistics. Both the VW and Acura in US were 1.8 L cars, and the Volvo here is a 2.0! The Volvo can roll with about 31 mpg on the motorway when driving long distances, but much of what we use it for is trafficky, low-speed driving in the local area, where it dips as low as 21. Surely, there is something better, right?

That's right. Now, I get 58 mpg.

The story of this amazing transformation begins with coffee, or koffie, as it's known here - sounds the same, though, except maybe a little more closed "o" sound for the first syllable, unlike the midwest/Rochester "flat-a" sound that you may be familiar with. Anyway, when I lived in America, I never drank coffee. Despite all the Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, and McDonald's, despite growing up near Seattle, despite engineering all nighters, I never picked up a coffee habit. But, my first week working in Holland, I was hooked. At work, coffee is free, and it's dispensed by a wonderful, shiny, touchscreen automat that is always ready to please. Coffee is a social thing -- several times a day, someone pops into my office, "Wil je koffie?" or "Becky?" (Becky -- my spelling -- is a shortening of the word "beker," or "bekertje," which is a coffee cup, though the word reminds me of a chem lab beaker.)

Dutch coffees are tiny. Forget venti and grande, a Dutch coffee is smaller than short. It tops out at about 4 ounces, 118 mL, especially the Mokka I typically get from the office automat. So, when I tell you I now drink a couple, sometimes even four, coffees per day, I think I'm still consuming less than one Starbucks...

What does all this coffee have to do with miles per gallon? Simple. I put a cyclocomputer on my Gazelle commuting bike, reset to 0 kilometers on 21 September, 2009. I also started keeping track of my coffee consumption at work (which is why I know that, on average, I drink about 160 mL of coffee per workday). In two months, I have biked 304 km, mostly on my 8km daily commute, but also including some grocery runs and some rides through the woods with my fuzzy dog. In the same time, I have drunk a whopping 12.7 Liters of coffee! The result?
58.1 miles per gallon of coffee!

And, if you think that 12.7 Liters is a lot, consider that in the same period of time, I have consumed 106.5 L of water, just at work. At home, I regularly drink another liter or so per day. Oh, and also some tasty Belgian beer, but not every day... Mmmm, Trappist... topic for another day.

Hassle-Free Healthcare

2009-09-18T22:13:00.002+02:00

No one can avoid joining the debate about healthcare happening now in the USA. Not even me, safely healthy in Holland. In our stay here so far, my wife and I have made good use of the system, with sick and well visits to doctors and specialists as well as a complicated childbirth. I can say unambiguously that we are satisfied customers, and I really hope the US gets healthcare straightened out before I come back!

If you don't read anything further, read this: the Dutch healthcare system is better than the American one, costing less per person with better results and 100% coverage. It's not perfect, but the US could plagiarize it wholesale and everyone would be better off.

One important reason the Dutch system is good, if you ignore being cheaper and more effective, is that it is nearly entirely hassle-free. It is a semi-socialized system with obligatory private insurance. That means that everyone has to buy health insurance from a private insurer of their choice, and those who are unable to pay get subsidized premiums (and yes, that means that I am funding some less fortunate people's healthcare, but even so, overall I pay less than I did last year in the US). The result is simple: I go to whatever doctor I want to see, everything is covered, and there are no bills. The premium is deducted pre-tax from my paycheck, with no copays, no prescription costs, no receipts to save, no claim forms, no bills whatsoever. It is amazingly hassle-free! The only exception to this rule is care from non- or atypically-medical services, such as a reflexologist. They fall outside the system, so you pay out-of-pocket and request reimbursal.
Compared to the high-deductible insurance I had my last year in USA, with a Health Savings Account, endless online forms, and the IRS forcing me to save receipts to prove they were medical expenses, I am loving the lack of hassle. Really.

What's that? You don't buy the "cheaper and more effective" claim? If you'd like to have a look for yourself, the World Health Organization makes data freely available here. The database search takes a few steps to configure, so I've saved you the trouble, exporting a list of interesting statistics for a few relevant countries: USA and the Netherlands, of course, plus Canada and the UK, whose systems have been ridiculed by many in the current debate, and France, for some reason always treated as the antithesis to Americanism, whose system received the second-highest user satisfaction ratings in a recent poll. I put the entire data file online here for you, in case you're interested, but my summary is this:

First, cost: per capita total expenditure on healthcare, in 2006, in US$: UK leads with $3300, Holland is next at $3700, Canada & France are both about $4000, and the USA totals up to $6700. Pretty obvious comparison, eh?

Next, effectiveness, which of course is impossible to measure with one number. How about a few numbers, instead? Looking at life expectancy at birth, there is actually a pretty small range among these nations: Canada & France both expect 81 years, Holland and UK follow with 80 and 79, respectively, and USA is not far behind, with 78 years. Two statistics that show a clearer difference and were especially relevant to my wife and baby daughter this year are infant mortality and maternal mortality, in both of which the USA's rate is nearly two times that of the Netherlands. Again from 2006, France and the Netherlands have infant mortality rates of 4 per 1000 live births, Canada and UK 5, and USA posts a 7. From 2005 (the years chosen were "latest available data" for each statistic), the maternal mortality rate, which I assume means death via childbirth, in the Netherlands was 6 per 100,000 live births. In Canada, France, and the UK, the numbers were 7, 8, and 8, respectively, while in USA the rate is 11 maternal deaths per 100,000 births! Not exactly an effectiveness measure, but interesting for well-informed mamas to consider, is that the American c-section rate is 23%, while the Dutch is 14% (2000 and 2002, respectively, and I think the American rate is even higher now, perhaps 30%). This goes along with Holland's emphasis on natural childbirth, which obviously works well for both mothers and babies.

Stepping away from childbirth-related statistics, the American emphasis on oncology does seem to make a difference, because as of 2002, the US has the lowest of all five countries in cancer death rate with 134 per 100,000 population. The Netherlands is the highest at 155, and the other three are all at about 140. The US doesn't fare so well for cardiovascular death rate, possibly related to obesity rates, with 188 deaths per 100,000 population. The Netherlands is mid-pack with 171, and France somehow pulls off a 118. Maybe it's the wine!

Correlating more with effectiveness than cost are some infrastructure statistics. Notably, the USA, despite all the cost, has the fewest hospital beds of the five: 32 per 10,000 population. France leads with 73, and the Netherlands is next with 50. Also interesting, though aggregating data from different years, the Netherlands leads with 37 physicians per 10,000 population, while the USA is mid-pack with 26. Single-payer UK and Canada have 23 and 19, respectively.

Enough statistics for one blog. There's more to say, though, so stay tuned.

Gotta be In It to Win It

2009-08-10T20:22:00.004+02:00

Lottery! Everyone loves lotteries, right? Tonight's the drawing for the big jackpot of €27,500,000! At today's exchange rate, that's almost 39 MILLION DOLLARS!

Wow. Take a look at the little logo at the bottom of the Staatsloterij (State lottery) poster I saw in Maastricht this weekend:

A big fish eating a little fish. If you play the lottery, which fish do you suppose you are? The big, happy orange one or the naive little guy who's about to get chomped?

I think everyone knows -- despite the irrestistable, irrational appeal of the jackpot -- that on a rational level, lotteries are pretty much a scam. Not that they're rigged or whatever, but just that the odds are so severely against you that participating is simply throwing your money away. But most lotteries try to maintain the illusion that you're not getting hosed! They don't show you your fate in fish-pictogram form right on the advertisement!

Chalk it up to Dutch straightforward honesty.

Oh, and I didn't buy a ticket. As they say in New York, you've gotta be in it to win it. I'm out, so I'm absolutely sure I won't win. My colleague is in it, and I'm almost entirely absolutely sure he won't win. However, on the off chance that he does win, let me just put it here for the record that he's my best friend. Good luck, little fishy!

Wielersport na de Tour

2009-08-02T20:31:00.002+02:00

As I may have mentioned, I like biking. I have never been a bike racer, but over the past few years I have dabbled a bit in Tour de France watching. I know, I know, with all the doping scandals, it's been a bit off-putting, but it's a fascinating, hierarchical, political, team sport in a multi-stage event. I watched a few stages of the 2009 Tour on TV, and I too was rooting for Lance Armstrong and wondering what would happen with him on the same team as Alberto Contador.

What's that you say, dear [American] reader? You don't know/give a hoot about the Tour de France? Yeah, yeah, I know it's not real popular in the USA, but on the Continent it's a huge deal. In France more so, I assume, but even here in NL there's quite a buzz about it. In fact, there's an interesting tradition of holding post-Tour criteriums in small villages in Holland and Belgium featuring Tour winners and superstars. Most of the Dutch racers from the Tour participate, to bring home the spirit of the Tour, and the big names come also, to bring home the bacon. I hear that Contador and the brothers Schleck make 50,000-75,000 Euro for each of these events -- not bad for a couple of hours of riding around in circles in a small Dutch town. Did I mention that a criterium is just that? It's a bike race consisting of many laps around a short course, usually made up of city streets and therefore including sharp turns and fast straightaways. It looks like this:

By the way, Rochester, NY had a criterium for a few years, which expanded to a multi-day event and almost became a stage race tour of upstate NY, but alas, it was cancelled.

So I decided to check out one of these Wielersport (cycling) events. I had three local choices: Daags Na De Tour (Days after the Tour) in Boxmeer, Bavaria Profronde (Bavaria being the local beer, and main sponsor, profronde meaning something like "professional lap/round") in Stiphout,
and Acht van Chaam (8 of Chaam) in Chaam. I went to the Bavaria Profronde, which was a 100km race on a 2km roughly-rectangular course (see below my attempt to embed a "live" Google map).

I was quite impressed. These guys are super fast! Standing along the rail, when the peloton of 30+ riders goes by, you get the same wind you would get from a subway entering a station. By the way, the dude in yellow is Alberto Contador (1st place, 2009 Tour de France), the guy ahead of him in white is Andy Schleck (2nd place), and Andy's brother Frank is in the pack somewhere as well (5th place). Some of the best cyclists in the world, right in my backyard!

The guy below was a local favorite, Bram Tankink. He didn't ride in the Tour de France, but he's on Team Rabobank (big Dutch bank) and grew up near here somewhere. He was all smiles and handtekenings (autographs) before the race.

Finally, a parting shot of Contador (who indeed won the criterium) as the darkness grows. I happened to catch the flash of another photographer as I was panning, which was a lucky break.

I think I shot 300 photos that night and yielded maybe 6 decent ones. Fast bikes in low light = lots of blurry photos!

Grocery Bike (& Friends)

2009-07-24T22:50:00.000+02:00

The Dutch have bikes for every occasion. One of my favorites the moederfiets (mother bike) for on-the-go moms (or dads!). A bakfiets (carrier bike) takes the place of the American pickup truck. The standard omafiets (Grandma bike), preferably old and beaten-up, is the bike of choice for urban errands and parking outside the pub (so you don't have to worry about it!). There are cargo bikes and tandem bikes and even a backseat-driver tandem bike that lets your kid think he's in charge by riding up front, while you steer from behind! Folding bikes are for hybrid commuters who must take them on the train (bringing a real bike requires a ticket for the bike, but a foldy is free!). The fietscafe is a bike that's also a bar (yeah, yeah, it has four wheels, so "bike" isn't quite the right word, but it does have a pair of pedals for each of its 12 barstools -- luckily the bartender gets to steer!). I've seen one of these and they look really entertaining.

I once saw an entire brass band on a bike in front of city hall in Eindhoven:

These guys are rad; check out their website.

Sadly, I don't have all these special bikes (although I am "average" by Dutch standards as the owner of 2.5 bikes: my commuter bike, mountain bike, and my half of the tandem my wife and I used to ride before we had a baby!), but my trusty Gazelle does great work as a boodschappenfiets (grocery bike). I affixed the milk-crate with some old climbing webbing, and it works great. This particular outing, I packed the crate FULL of heavy stuff (note the stiff canvas bags, wonderful, thanks to my Ma), hung another bag off the handlebars, and I even was able to tuck the stems of some lilies into the crannies. Did I mention that flowers are cheap in the Netherlands? Each bunch was €3.

Hoera! Lekker fietsen!

Home again, home again...

2009-07-19T09:40:00.006+02:00

...jiggety jig. Phew, I'm back home -- in Eindhoven -- from a nice, long vacation home -- to USA.

Before I get into that, however, I must acknowledge the dearth of blog posts over the past 4 months. One word: baby! My wife and I are oh-so-pleased to welcome our daughter into the world, and oh-so-tired all the time from lovingly taking care of her. This recent trip with her was wonderful and difficult: amazingly good on the airplanes, flustered by the timezone difference, great to share her with her grandparents, cousins, and friends, hard on her because of all the new people, and nice to have someone else eager to hold her when she insists on waking up at 5am. Now we're back, adjusting our clocks back the other way, reestablishing our routines, becoming self-sufficient once again. We miss everyone!

Right, so "home." Where is home again? I must say it was a bit weird to be a visitor to America. I'm sure this won't be news to anyone, but there are a ton of little differences between here and there that stand out all the more readily when they're "new" again, as they were after 8 months abroad. We flew from Amsterdam to Washington Dulles, then after customs on to Rochester. Arriving at IAD, two things smacked me immediately -- first, the heavy, serious, security presence; and second, my ability to understand all of the conversations around me! Once in Rochester, I was back at the wheel on the American highways.

Security and customs at airports is serious and necessary business, and I've seen it countless times. However, I must have really gotten used to the Dutch style of hands-off, nearly invisible policing, where if you walk through the door marked "Nothing to Declare" at customs, a guard gives you maybe a look, maybe a smile, and out you go. At Dulles, I realized the mistake of cleaning out the fresh fruit from my fridge and bringing it in my carry-on: I declared it on my blue form like a good traveler, then got directed to a secondary line for the inquisition.

"What kind of fruit do you have?"
"Apricots, an apple, and a banana."
"Apricots are not allowed." Okay, so I hand them over.
"Neither are apples." Okay, have that too.
"Nor bananas." Fine! Just put up a sign that says "PUT YOUR FRUIT IN THIS TRASH CAN!" and don't waste everyone's time!

Linguistically, I was surprised at how apparent the myriad overheard conversations suddenly became. Most Dutch people do indeed speak English, but of course when they're talking to Dutch people, they're talking Dutch. I understand maybe half of what they say when I'm listening carefully and there's not much ambient noise. I've learned to simply ignore overheard conversation, mostly because it's usually an obstacle to the conversation I'm trying to participate in. The concourse at Dulles was suddenly cacophony -- so many conversations at once, all of which I could hear and understand! It was nice, but strange, relieving, yet loud. Interestingly, this awareness of the clarity of English lasted about half an hour, then it was gone.

Finally, when I started driving from the Rochester airport, in a minivan -- one I've driven many times before, mind you -- it felt huge! And the road -- the Thruway -- was huge as well! Such big lanes, so much space along each side and in the median. Wow, there's a lot of space in USA (newsflash!). Curious to quantify this, I looked it up. According to the US Interstate Highway specs, lanes are 12 feet wide, minimum. The NYS Thruway was designed to have 12-13' lanes. Dutch highways (autosnelwegen) have lanes in the range of 2.75 to 3.5 meters, or that is 9.0-11.5 feet. Yikes! No wonder the roads feel tight here in a Volvo V40 and comfy in USA in a minivan. The real wonder is that, after driving in the Netherlands for a few months, the narrow Dutch roads feel fine, and the US ones huge -- amazing how fast we adapt to everything!

Why Biking to Work is Better Than Driving

2009-03-19T20:14:00.009+01:00

There are a whole pile of reasons why biking to work is better than driving. Here are some visual reminders of some of them...

Traffic sucks. Sitting in stop-and-go traffic makes me crazy. Having to drive to and from work during rush hour is like a punch in the mouth. However, passing cars in the wide-open bike lane makes me quite happy.

Gas is expensive. Below is the sign at the local BP. Don't shrug off the seemingly-low price for Euro 95 (standard unleaded) -- that's in Euros per liter. Today, a Euro is worth about $1.30, and there are 3.8 liters in a gallon. Factor those conversions in, and gas here costs just over $6 per gallon. No wonder this is the land of the Smart car. What's that 51-cent price, you ask, for "Autogas?" Autogas is LPG, liquified petroleum gas, some sort of mix of methane, propane, and similar stuff. Apparently many cars here have been retrofitted to burn LPG rather than gasoline (benzine, in Dutch). I looked into it when I bought my car, but I guess that while LPG is ubiquitous within the Netherlands, elsewhere in Europe it is tougher to find. But, luckily, I don't need any of this nonsense to bike to work!

Biking puts a smile on my face because it's simply pleasant! Check out the bike paths I get to use every day, which are way nicer than even the quaintest European roads:

Nice, eh? Of course, it's not always sunshine and roses... Sometimes other "traffic" in the bike lane leaves its mark:

The Silent Crane and the Singing Mason

2009-03-12T21:04:00.002+01:00

Construction... a necessity everywhere, a general inconvenience, a way to manifest humanity's desire to build higher, faster, more. While stuck in traffic when I'm forced to drive the Aalsterweg under a half-built overpass of the long-under-construction A2 motorway, it's easy to be annoyed by the general concept. However, this fall, when taking my time, riding my bike, walking my dog along the quieter streets, I discovered some nicer, more civilized, more craftsmanlike kinds of construction.

One early morning, I was walking Lacey the doodle dog near my apartment, and I heard a baritone voice singing operatic phrases. Overhead, a crane was moving large sheets of cement into a hole, where they were taking shape to create the foundation for a new house. As I approached, I realized that the singer was one of the masons in the hole, guiding the cement blocks into his ready lines of mortar. Cranes like this are way more common here than in the U.S., for residential construction at least, probably because the materials here are all heavy cement and steel, not wood that a carpenter can carry up a ladder...

Cool, I thought, that the mason sings while he works -- but wait, why was it quiet enough for me to hear him? Every construction site I've seen is reverberating with diesel noise, from generators, compressors, not to mention heavy equipment. This one was totally silent, save the singing, even as the crane toiled! The crane's winches and rotation hummed and clicked a little, but quietly like an electric motor rather than a rattling diesel. I went back one evening to scope the crane, and it was indeed plugged in to the grid via a big temporary electrical junction box. Very nice, very civilized. Quiet in use, and pollution-free (at least at the construction site). A picture of the folded crane can be found on the manufacturer's site.

Speaking of masons, if I were to ever become a mason, I would want to apprentice in Holland. The Dutch love bricks: virtually every house is brick (I heard that wood construction for a dwelling is simply illegal), garden walls and fences are brick, and streets and sidewalks are brick. Of course, many major roads are asphalt, but most residential streets, mine included, are indeed brick, laid in tidy herringbone patterns and set into compressed sand.

How are these brick streets built? Well, for the first couple weeks I was in the Netherlands, I was staying on a road that was being rebuilt due to plumbing changes or something. The process was this: dig a hole, play with the pipes, fill it with sand, compress and grade the sand, lay the bricks, then fill the gaps with more sand. Move 20 meters down the street, and repeat... I took pictures, natuurlijk. Here, road in progress (to the right is the perfectly-smoothed sand):

Check out the two kinds of special edge-bricks, perfectly shaped to blend the herringbone pattern into the edge course and curb. Very nice, I think.

So what does brick road construction sound like? Well, when the backhoes are at work, it sounds as noisy as any other, but when the bricks are being laid, it's quiet and craftsmanlike, rubber mallets thump-thump-thumping each brick into place, with the occasional high metallic ching-ching-ching as a brick is trimmed with a chisel. Real, manual work, patiently done, day after day, until the road is complete. Here's a more complicated bit, where the herringbone is interrupted and the bricks need trimming:

This general thread dates from the fall, and the photos were taken then, when I noticed these things, but before I had a car. Apologies for waiting so long to post, but I think my appreciation for the quiet, civilized construction projects has grown with the time I've spent in the car on crowded, ever-unfinished motorways...

Learning the Meaning of Snelheid

2009-02-08T17:26:00.003+01:00

Despite his appearance in our driveway every day on his bike with bright orange "TNT Post" panniers, the mailman still receives a savage set of warning barks from my watchful and cute doodle dog. Yesterday, however, he brought something worth barking at: a Beschikking, or judgement, from the Centraal Justitieel Incasso Bureau, which is essentially the Judicial Collection Bureau. And guess what, they judged that I owe them money! Let me explain, and please mind the tangents...

Turns out I got a speeding ticket, via mail, from one of the ubiquitous traffic cameras (known elsewhere in the world as Lazy Policemen -- I'm not sure if there's an equivalent Dutch epithet). Dutch speed cameras (flitscameras) look something like this (not my photo: thanks to Gebba1). Note that the Christmas decoration is strictly seasonal:

The beschikking found me guilty of "overschrijding maximum snelheid:" exceeding maximum speed. By 4 km/h.

Tangent 1: FOUR KM PER HOUR!?? I did 54 km/h in a 50. In American terms, I got a ticket for going 33 1/2 in a 31! No wonder they mailed me a ticket, because what self-respecting policeman would pull me over and look me in the eye for such a minor infraction?? Come to think of it, I've seen more cop cars on a single drive down the New York State Thruway than I have in three months of living in the Netherlands. Cops really don't make a big presence here, on the roads or anywhere else... so I suppose that's why I've heard lots of warnings about traffic cameras. This is my first real encounter with one.

And yes, I verified that it was me who earned the ticket, not my wife; based on the date and time, I was heading north through town, alone, on a quiet Sunday morning on the way to IKEA. The quietness of that Sunday morning is actually crucial to the ticket, because the normal volume of traffic here quite effectively prevents speeding. I got the ticket on the Aalsterweg, which is the artery joining my town (Aalst) with the bigger portion of Eindhoven. During rush-hour, it can be bumper-to-bumper for several kilometers and take 25 minutes to get through. On a normal afternoon, practical speed is something like 20 km/h, and there are plenty of stoplights, buses, and left-turners to keep everyone from driving a reasonable pace. I suppose I've never had to actually pay attention to speed on that stretch... until now.

Tangent 2: Why so quiet? Sundays, in general, mean absolutely everything is closed, including grocery stores, drug stores, any-kind-of-store, etc. This fact is a real blow to the American "open 24 hours" ethic that, while if I stop and think about it, is kind of silly, but nonetheless is dang convenient. Fact is, here you HAVE to stop and think about it, plan ahead for your weekend groceries, and not run out of toilet paper on a Sunday. Lest you think the Netherlands is universally anti-Sunday, there is a thing here called Koopzondag, or "shopping sunday," during which stores are open. Apparently there's a council somewhere that doles out Koopzondagen to all the locales of the Netherlands, and it's so unpredictable and autocratic that there's even a website to bring word to the masses about where and when you can shop your Sunday socks off: http://www.koopzondagen.net Typically, the Eindhoven city center is open for business on the first Sunday of the month. Occasionally, a big business like IKEA manages to get a Koopzondag waiver, and that was indeed the case this particular Sunday.

Anyway, the beschikking I received explained my infraction, where and when, and even listed the "fotofilmnummer," which I have to believe is a relic of older times. Mmmm, the heydey of Kodak -- wasn't it nice? The letter is of course in Dutch, and unfortunately my Dutch skills have not kept up with my driving skills.

Tangent 3: I finally got my scanner configured to scan a given letter in Dutch (of which we get several per week that require action of some kind) and do optical character recognition (OCR) in Dutch. I then pipe that through Google Translate, and voila, no unpaid speeding tickets! I have a Canon MP540 all-in-one, which I think is a Europe-only model, but it works pretty well. I'm using Canon's MPNavigator software for the text recognition, which is not flawless, but gets me 90% of the way there...

I learned some sweet new Dutch words with this beschikking:
verkeersvoorschrift = traffic regulation
waarschuwing = warning
sanctie = penalty
beroep = appeal
verhoging = increase

Tangent 4: Snelheid means "speed" in Dutch. It's related to snel, which means fast. I see a pattern here with the word gezond, which means healthy, and gezondheid, which means health. I translate the "heid" as something like "-ness," so fastness means speed, and healthiness means health. Funny that in English we start with a noun (health or speed) and make it an adjective with the addition of "y" (healthy or speedy). In Dutch it's the opposite, at least for these examples...

So how big is the fine for 33 1/2 in a 31? €19. First reaction: not too steep. Finally! Something that's cheaper in the Netherlands than in the US (besides tulips). Second thought: wait a minute, that's more than €10/ kilometer per hour! And for a ticket that you would never ever get in USA! Dang it again!

Thank you, Mr. TNT Postman... this was a real hit! I know, I'll pay the fine online and -- HA! -- no letter for you to deliver!

Twelve after half eleven

2009-01-23T22:42:00.003+01:00

It's twelve after half eleven, and I'm bloggin. Wait, when?

Dutch timekeeping is a real head-scratcher. We English-speakers are used to referring to the time as something before or after the hour. Nederlanders also refer to the half-hour!

This means that 10:42 = twaalf over half elf.

Learn by example:

5:00 = vijf uur, or five hours -- thankfully there's no "o'clock" nonsense.
6:25 = vijf voor half zeven, literally five before half of seven.
2:15 = kwart over twee, of course, quarter after two.
16:59 = één voor vijf, or one before five; and yes, military time is how we roll -- when written, at least -- nobody would ever speak "één voor zeventien."
8:30 = half negen, literally, half of nine.

Or, in case a diagram helps, this one is from my Dutch language textbook:

Okay, fine; I can learn a new system. Referring to the half-hour half the time is no big deal -- it just takes me twice as long to tell someone what time it is! To paraphrase TMBG, "it's later than you think it is and now it's even later. And now it's even later..."

But really, the "half" bit is confusing, because when I hear "half negen," I think "half past nine," but I'm wrong: it's "half-way 'til nine!" Extrapolating, when a Dutch colleague says "half oktober," they mean mid-September? Uh, nope! Half October means halfway through October, just like our English-speaking intuition would tell us. So much for the new system. I've asked several Dutch colleagues about the seemingly glaring flaw in their sense of date and time, and it's funny -- they don't seem to notice!

Now I'm not sure what time it is, but I know it's time to get to bed.

Bike Stairs

2009-01-17T22:09:00.003+01:00

It continues to amaze me how well bicycling fits into daily life here, thanks to numerous little details in infrastructure. For instance, above is an image of the stairs accessing a pedestrian bridge. How to ascend and descend stairs with your bike? With a little tire-groove ramp at the edge of the treads, of course! You just roll the bike up or down the ramp while you walk the stairs.

I've seen this little detail in a few places, including at the mall, where the stairs lead down to the free, underground bike parking lot. Way better than any American mall I've been to! They give you a little claim check when you drop off the bike, and someone's there to make sure nobody takes it while you shop.

Schaatsen

2009-01-11T21:14:00.007+01:00

Ice skating (schaatsen) is super popular in Nederland. When I say super popular, I mean that Nederlanders get deliriously amped up when there's ice to carve. Let me show you. Here is where I work, High Tech Campus Eindhoven:

Not a bad sunny-Friday lunch hour, skating on the pond, eh? Somebody scraped the snow off of a nice winding loop around the pond, creating a schaatsbaan for everyone to enjoy! There was music pumping and hot-chocolate (warme chocolade) for sale outside. By the way, the tall building in the background holds my office.

To me, the ice frenzy appears somewhat like the "powder day" in the Rocky Mountain states -- where it's sort of assumed that you can have the morning off to go skiing if there's a big dump of snow. However, skating this week wasn't just Friday, and it wasn't just a fair-skies fascination. This was Thursday, same scene, in the freezing fog:

Me? After discovering the schaatsbaan on Wednesday, I forgot to bring my skates to work both Thursday and Friday. D'oh! However, the weekend was gorgeous, so I strapped my skates to my bike and rode down to a pond not far from my house to see if there was any skating happening there. Wow, was there ever!

Timeless family fun. The scene on the local pond was not that different from this one, painted in Holland in the 17th century:

Schaatsen has a long history in the Netherlands, for sure. Leisure skating, speed skating, even hockey, to a lesser extent (most Dutch think of hockey has a summer grass-field sport -- played by men and women, by the way). The nation holds an impressive number of records in speed skating competitions, and, historically, skating on the vast network of Dutch canals was a favorite wintertime activity. Unfortunately, in recent years, winters have rarely been cold enough for skating! I think that a big part of the reason for the hullabaloo around skating here and now is because it has become so rare.

A famous Dutch skating marathon, the Elfstedentocht, or, literally, Journey of Eleven Cities, has become almost a mythical tradition. It was last held in 1997 because the ice has not been consistently good enough to hold a 200 km race since! It's interesting right now, because it has been unusually cold for nearly two weeks and everyone is talking about whether it will be possible to hold the Elfstedentocht. I sure hope so, maybe I'll make the trek up north to see it!

€8,50 in Amsterdam

2009-01-05T22:08:00.010+01:00

What can eight and a half Euro buy you in Amsterdam? Nevermind what it might get you in the red light district; at the Bloemenmarkt (flower market), in December, it will buy you 50 fresh tulips:

The bloemenmarkt sits on a series of boats in the Singel canal, and despite being an unabashed tourist trap, it boasts an amazing array of fresh flowers and ready-to-plant bulbs. It's open zeven dagen per week, even in the middle of winter. Here is a typical scene from one of the vendors' boats:

By the way, eight and a half Euro, or acht Euro vijftig, is written €8,50 (not €8.50). When writing numbers, these clever Europeans swap the comma and the dot compared to Americans. Convenient, eh? Luckily, it's rarely ambiguous, as you probably wouldn't mistake €8,50 and €8.500,00. Though eighty-five hundred Euro would buy you a whole lot of tulips. Veel tulpen!

When you then bring home 50 tulips to your smiling wife, stuff them into the largest vase you own, then wait a day for them to relax and open their little faces, you get something like this:

Not bad for December flowers, bought outdoors in the cold, carried halfway across town, and then home under a seat on the train, eh? And yes, they were purple to begin with, not red like the ones in the top photo!

Discovering America

2009-01-01T22:02:00.004+01:00

A few weeks ago, I discovered America on a map of the Netherlands. Located in Limburg province, close to Germany, it beckoned to me softly, but didn't quite justify a special trip. So, while on the way home from driving my parents to the Düsseldorf airport, I detoured briefly off the A67 motorway to take a look.

America? Land of opportunity? Maybe in name only... there definitely wasn't much happening here on this frosty morning. According to Wikipedia, it has 397 residences. I didn't audit their figure.

If you're curious about the sign, the "gem. Horst a/d Maas" means America is not big enough for its own gemeente, or city government. It is part of the gemeente of Horst aan de Maas, which has about 30,000 residents.

One fun thing about named places here is that they not only announce your arrival, but also your departure, which of course means this photo (disclaimer for the Department of Homeland Security: no need to bug my phone; it's just a Dutch road sign):

Why bother with the "no more America" sign? Partly because of speed limits, I think. In general, speed limits are not posted on roads. The limits are posted on a big sign when you enter the country and (for the benefit of international arrivals, like me) at the exit of Amsterdam Schiphol airport. The sign looks like this (photo by celesteh):

Isn't the little windmill in the city silhouette cute? The sign means that in towns, or "built-up areas," including named places like America, the speed limit is 50. Outside of built-up areas, such as just beyond the "no more America" sign, it is 80. On highways, the limit is 100, and on motorways, the limit is 120. Don't forget! Of course, anywhere, such as on residential streets, these signs can be overridden by red-circle speed limit signs.

So yeah, I stopped by America on my drive home from Germany. Nice morning drive, eh?

Kleine TeePee

2009-01-01T16:33:00.002+01:00

Okay, so it's been a while since I posted. But, dear reader, lest you think I don't give a cr@p about you anymore, here's proof that I do.

As I've written already, I am experiencing many little differences in customs, attitudes, and consumer products here in Nederland. One interesting tidbit from the necessary room (called the toilet here, by the way -- a bathroom must have a bath, and in many houses does not have a toilet, the toilet being a separate room off the hall) is the typical roll of Dutch toilet papier. See the following comparison, between a Dutch roll and an American roll:

They say "things are bigger in America," and this is definitely true of toilet paper rolls. What does this say about the, um, output of Americans? Perhaps they're more "full of sh!t" than the Dutch? I dunno.

Anyway, I am amused at the difference in content between these products. As you can see in this end-view photo, the Dutch roll has an outside diameter smaller than the American roll, and an inner diameter larger!

I know, I know, the American roll is the so-called "Double Roll," but I argue that this, while initially a marketing gimmick, has become the de-facto standard size. This is similar to how sometime between when I was a child and now, the McDonald's soda size previously known as large became a medium. Then value meals became the standard, and Starbucks had to abscond non-volumetric descriptors for their cups. All the while, by the way, Dutch coffees stayed the same size -- decidedly small, to my eye, at just about 4 fluid ounces.

Double rolls don't exist here, which means more-frequent roll-swapping for me...

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

2008-11-29T19:38:00.003+01:00

Here are some of the pavements I've biked over lately:

Cyclobrûlée

2008-11-25T18:00:00.006+01:00

"Crunch, crunch."
The satisfying sound of cracking the freshly-torched sugar surface of a crème brûlée. I heard it this morning on my commute to work, not from a spoon, but from my bike. As I may have mentioned, I thoroughly enjoy my morning rides to work, taking a winding route through Genneper Parken, a park with varied forest and farm terrain. Part of this morning's path is traced below:

The map was made with GPS Visualizer using data from my little GPS logger that I tend to take with me most places I go.

Parts of the path through the park are unpaved, and this morning's frosty temperature induced an icy topping on each of the pothole puddles along the way. The first one I zipped over made the same "crunch, crunch" as a crème brûlée being broken with a spoon when my tires sequentially cracked its surface. Smiling, I broke as many more little frozen crème brûlée puddles as I could before I exited the park. What fun.

Dutch? English? Sometimes it's just spelling...

2008-11-19T20:17:00.001+01:00

I've been in Holland now for almost six weeks. I still haven't started my Dutch langauge classes, which is disappointing but unfortunately out of my hands... I have, however, been trying to decode what I can of the local language, Nederlands.

Spoken Dutch is, for the most part, unintelligible to me. That being said, a man asked me this evening, "Spreekt je Nederlands?" to which I sheepishly replied, "nee." I suppose that answering negatively, in the tongue in question, is ironic, given that he wanted to know if I spoke Dutch. Well, not enough Dutch for whatever he was going to say next! And, the only reason I know "Spreekt je..." is because I usually say it, followed by "Engels," to find out if people speak English. By and large, they do. Very well, as I've said before.

Written Dutch, or at least parts of it, can be quite readable, given some simple pronunciation hints and familiarity with letter-combinations. Some words look a lot like English, slightly misspelled -- think like a text-messager, and they're clear. For example, melk = milk, nieuw = new, het = the, and seizoen = season.

Once I determined that the letter combination "ui" sounds like "ow," a whole list of words opened up for me... Exit signs here say "UIT," which doesn't follow French rules and rhyme with wheat, but is pronounced exactly like the English "OUT." Very clear! Similarly, huis=house, and throw a little German vocabulary in there and stadhuis is suddenly City Hall.

In Dutch, the letter v sounds like an English f. So, vriend is obviously friend, and vriendlijk, thanks to the letter combination "ij" which sounds like "eye," is friend-like, or, simply, "friendly." People end their emails here with "met vriendlijk groeten," which, knowing the German "mit" is with, means "with friendly greetings." Nice, eh?

The Dutch don't have a sound like the English "th," neither hard like "though," nor soft, like "through." They use a "d" instead, as for example in the name of the nation, Nederland, which we call The Netherlands. I addressed the peculiar article and plural in an earlier post, not that it makes a ton of sense. Anyway, the word "fiets" looks nothing like its English equivalent, "bicycle." Bear with me. I have a nice fiets that I ride to work every day, and doing so is very Dutch, very fun, and very environmentally friendly. I like it. Riding a bike here, you often see a sign that says "fietspad." Remembering d=th, it's a bike path! And, a nice shortcut through the park, to boot. Sweet.

My new favorite Dutch word is one that I found cast into the lids of manhole covers throughout the city. VUILWATER. Reviewing, vuil sounds like foul, and foul-water? Well, that's the sewer, right? Yeah, this took me six weeks to figure out. Give me a break. Just getting a bank account took 2 weeks...

Oh, and did I mention that Google knows I'm in Nederland? All the ads I see are now in Dutch, which makes them even easier to ignore. However, this one I found amusing, and very readable in a mispelled-English sense:

What do you think? Yes? No? Maybe?

Ride Between the Raindrops

2008-11-15T16:42:00.001+01:00

Tuesday morning was horribly rainy. Well, it was horribly rainy until after I biked to work, got soaked, and got to my desk. Right then, the clouds blew past, and a gorgeous blue sky opened up. Nice, eh? At least my office has a nice window...

While riding in the rain, which, by the way, is not as bad as it sounds thanks to really effective fenders on my bike, I was watching the other cyclists dealing with the weather. I believe there are three types of foul-weather cyclists. The largest group, like me, simply deals with the rain, although we're not happy about it. I have a nice rain jacket, and biked with my hood up, although some others didn't have or bother with a hood. Regardless of our garb, we simply grit our teeth, bow our heads to the wind, and go. We get wet, and we deal with it. The second group, a minority group maybe half the size of the teeth-gritters, is made up of ultra-prepared foul-weather cyclists, with things like fancy rain suits, waterproof shoe-covers, waterproof panniers, etc. These bikers laugh in the face of rain because they are simply impervious to it.

The final group, least in number but not in style, appears to blithely ride between the raindrops. These cyclists, mainly highschool-age girls, by their appearance, were completely unprepared for rain, wearing jeans, cotton jackets, and otherwise normal clothes, and with hair done and streaming behind them, smiling and laughing with their friends on the way to school as if totally unaware of the deluge I was fighting. They didn't appear to even be getting wet -- although I thought I saw one girl unconsciously brush a droplet off of her cheek. Amazing, I tell you. I truly wish I had a photograph, but I was too busy gritting my teeth and trying to ride faster than the water could saturate my pants. Actually, I think that a photo would not be effective, as it would minimize the appearance of the rain and just look like girls biking to school on a normal day. Maybe if I showed a photograph while dowsing the viewer with a glass of water, that would convey what I saw...

Migrant Worker & Amerikaans Burger

2008-11-10T19:22:00.006+01:00

I'm officially a migrant worker -- a legal one, too!

I got my residence permit today, one month to the day after touching down in the Netherlands. Not bad, eh? It says VERBLIJFSDOCUMENT, a convenient Dutch single-word for "residence permit." It also says I'm here as a kennismigrant, or knowledge migrant (sometimes translated as highly skilled migrant).

Which reminds me of one of my first days in the Netherlands. Perhaps still bleary-eyed with jetlag, I misread this sign:

Seeing instead "Dead Migrant," I was a little concerned for my future. On second glance, I was much relieved.

As I understand the knowledge migrant designation, most large companies can sponsor kennismigrants. However, certain professions are explicitly not allowed: soccer players, spiritual leaders, and prostitutes. Lucky for me, my skills don't align with any of these! My nationality (nationaliteit) is listed as "Amerikaans Burger." So I'm a burger, too. And yes, burger means citizen.

Dutch immigration policy, like that of most countries, is interesting and inconsistent. From the rest of the EU, of course, things are fairly simple, but for everyone else, it depends both on skill set and on country of citizenship. Coming from USA, Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand, immigrants and migrant workers get a big break: they don't need an MVV, or Machtiging tot Voorlopig Verblijf, which is an entrance visa and temporary work permit, before they arrive; and, more importantly, they don't need to pass the Dutch language and culture test once they're here. This test is arguably to help people learn about and assimilate into Dutch culture, although the exception made for a few lucky nations is viewed by some as discriminatory against the many applicants from African and Middle-Eastern countries.

Coming from the United States, a nation of great diversity, where strict political correctness makes taboo anything even remotely discriminatory, I have been keeping my eye out for such things here. Despite the Netherlands' well-known spirit of openness and tolerance, I have several times heard a murmur of prejudice here toward immigrant minorities from Morocco and Turkey. Interestingly, I think the attitude is something like disappointment that these immigrants don't behave more Dutchly: that they are simply not adopting enough Dutch culture to fit in. Toward myself, I have observed nothing like this -- perhaps because I come from a culture that is, relative to the entire world, quite similar, and perhaps also because I have consistently expressed my interest in Dutch language and culture. Whatever the reason, I have felt quite welcome here, and now my shiny new residence permit makes me feel, well, right at home.

Foggy Bike Day

2008-11-06T20:58:00.001+01:00

Tuesday was a foggy day. Fog in the morning; fog all day; fog in the evening. From my office window, I could sometimes not see the nearest buildings through the white haze.

In the morning, thanks to this fiasco, I rode the bus to work. As I waited at the bus stop, I took pictures of the happy cycling commuters rolling by. (Click the photos to embiggen)

Biking home in the foggy twilight, I shot a bunch of photos from the saddle. The air looks brighter in the pictures than it did in the drawing twilight, but I overexposed them a bit to show the white fog and to enhance the motion blur.

It was a gorgeous, still evening, and the silence in Genneper Parken was as thick as the misty air. The bike paths (fietspads) were empty.

Looking into the fields beside the path, the distant trees faded to vapor.

Leaving the park, finally, another cyclist appeared, her weak headlamp preceding her squeaking bike.

Back in the hustlebustle of the city streets, this garrulous pair was chatting and hand-waving for blocks. I took pictures instead of ringing my bell to pass.

There was no rain, yet I arrived home feeling wet, my wool coat covered with tiny spheres of water. I was in a cloud.

Not Im-Presta

2008-11-04T23:22:00.001+01:00

I had an interesting bicycling adventure yesterday. Let's call it a tire pressure malfunction, otherwise known as a flat tire. Sadly, this particular flat tire wasn't caused by a stray thumbtack or a pinched tube or any other accidental mishap -- this one was pure operator error. I learned something, though!

It turns out there is a third type of tire valve in addition to the two I'm familiar with. American bikes generally have either Schrader valves, which are exactly the same as valves on car tires, with the little spring-loaded pin in the center, or Presta valves, which are a little more minimalistic, without the spring, and with a screw-lock to keep them closed. I Googled up this photo to show these two types (Presta on the left, Schrader on the right):

I've had bikes with both types, and while I have heard that there are major wars between proponents of each, much like Nikon vs. Canon or Ford vs. Chevy, I've never really cared too much one way or the other.

My commuter bike, which I bought used about a week ago, was feeling a little soft on the rear end. Before riding home from work last night, I decided to add a little air to the rear tire. Conveniently, in the wonderful locked, covered bike parking lot at work (!), there's a bike pump chained to the fence for all to use. I rolled my iron steed over to it, unscrewed the presumably-Presta valve, and BAM! the valve shot off and the tire went totally flat. Ack! It looked like this:

An open chimney from my tire tube to the atmosphere -- not a good way to hold in air. I was stuck. It was 6pm, it was dark, and the valve top was nowhere to be found. I searched and searched with my little LED flashlight my Grandma Jean gave me, but nothing. I'm pretty sure it launched right into orbit.

I guess it wasn't a Presta valve after all. Google now tells me (too late, of course) it's a Dunlop valve, aka Dutch valve...

After a bus ride home and a return this morning, I took my broken bike to the bike repair guy who works at the High Tech Campus (isn't that great?), and he replaced the part and pumped it up in about 3 minutes. He charged me nothing (isn't that amazing?). It now looks like this, and I'm back to biking happily:

Happy Election Day, USA!

2008-11-03T20:15:00.001+01:00

On the eve of Election Day, I urge all Americans to get out and vote! I don't care whom you vote for -- well, okay, I do, but I'm not going to push -- as long as you put some thought into it and do what you think is right. My wife and I already voted, nearly a month ago, before we left the US to come to the Netherlands. We filled in advance absentee ballots, declaring that we would be out of the country on Election Day, and sealing them into official envelopes to wait for the big day.

I've spoken quite a bit to my Dutch and non-Dutch colleagues about the US election, and it really is amazing how much they know about US politics and the US political and government systems. It is humbling, really, because while I suppose I know the prime ministers of a few nations that are often in the American news, such as the UK, Russia, Italy, Israel, and the Netherlands (and the latter only because I just moved here!), I honestly don't know a whole lot about opposition parties, the various coalition governments, and such. I doubt that many Americans do. Granted, US policy has more effect on the Netherlands than vice-versa, but their awareness still seems humbling, in the same way that everyone's excellent English language skills make me feel both lucky and embarrassed that English is my only language, not counting my classroom-level Spanish.

Currently, there is strong support for Barack Obama here. It is well-documented that the European community has been quite critical of George W. Bush's policies, especially the Iraq war. Remember Freedom Fries, the American response to France's reticence to participate? Now, it is clear that Europeans by and large want change, and it is also clear which of the change-proclaiming candidates they believe. The following table shows the result of one recent survey of sentiments in France, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain, and USA. Coincidentally, lest you fear that this was biased in some way, the poll was done by Harris Interactive, a well-respected market research company from Rochester, NY! The entire poll report can be found here.

Look closely at the numbers. In France, 78% favor of Obama, which sounds pretty impressive, but when you see that only 1% support McCain, that's a serious landslide! France is the most extreme example, but Germany, Italy, and Spain show a similar trend, and even in the UK, where Obama's number falls below 50%, McCain's is merely 11. Unfortunately, the Netherlands was not included in this poll, but I can report that my personal discussions with people gives me the impression that the attitude here is much like that in France: serious support for Obama and the change he promises.

Today at work, I was chatting about Election Day with two colleagues: one Dutch, and one Macedonian. They asked me to explain the basic differences between McCain and Obama, so I listed taxes, health care, and the Iraq war, and tried to put the candidate's platforms (and vague proposals) into the context of what is typical of Republican and Democrat positions. Interestingly, they both see the Republican pro-business, unbridled capitalism as characteristically American, and see the Democratic ideals of tax-funded social programs and regulated economics as less "American," in fact trending more toward Socialism. It seems that the USA is viewed as somewhat of a young, brash, frontier-oriented nation, one that may dig itself a pretty big hole (for example, via financial crisis) if it's not careful. Interesting insight, eh?

So as I said, I already voted, and yes, I'll say it -- I voted for the one who starts with "O" and ends with "bama" -- much to the relief of my Dutch friends! Because of a timing quirk in when I voted in Monroe County, an absentee ballot had already been mailed, so now I have it at work to show to my colleagues. We discussed the sad hilarity of the "hanging chads" fiasco (and this poor guy) and the many different voting machines and methods in use across the United States. In defense of many confused-in-2000 American voters, my workmates did agree that the ballot layout, with candidates in a column and some offices allowing multiple votes across two adjacent columns, pretty un-intuitive. But alas, they won't be voting tomorrow, nor the hordes of Obamaphilic French... So, if you have the right to vote in the USA, get out and do it. Don't let the opportunity pass you by. And really, vote for whomever yOu think is Best, no mAtter which Man it mAy be!

Mmmm... Old Cheese Sandwich...

2008-10-29T03:22:00.001+01:00

The Netherlands is well-known as a cheese-loving -- in fact, generally dairy-loving -- nation. People here drink milk at lunch just like Americans drink diet soda. Personally, I'm not excited about milk, but I do love cheese. Gouda and Edam are the Dutch cheeses that most Americans have heard of, and I came here with high hopes to discover the local nuances of these and others.

Admittedly, doing so at the local grocery store may not be the best way to get started. However, Albert Heijn, the local food genius, comparable in spirit at least, if not in execution, to Danny Wegman, does quite well, so that's where I began. I think that a full comparison of Wegman's and AH would be quite interesting, but I'll save that for a different day.

The refrigerated cheese shelf at AH looks something like this:
Lots of choices, lots of differently colored packages, therefore lots of new cheeses for me to explore -- right? Well, I pored over my choices here for quite some time, and as far as I can tell, it's all pretty much the same kind of cheese. And, the interesting bit is, they never say exactly what kind of cheese it is! I suppose it's something like when my aunt-in-law, who is Chinese, said, "when I cook, I don't make Chinese food, I just make food!" Here, it's all Dutch cheese, which I presume means Gouda, so there's no need to specify!

Great, so what do all the choices represent? I analyzed the packages and found three independent dimensions of variation. First, and most obvious, is the form factor of the cheese: whether it be sliced, block, diced, etc., and how many grams of cheese are involved. Second, a numbering system that includes values like "21+" and "48+." I asked my colleagues at work, and apparently these numbers correlate with fat content, but aren't simply percent fat -- I'll leave that semi-unanswered for now. Third, the only verbal description of the cheese, with monikers like "jong," "belegen," and "oude."

Which reminds me of a tangential story from my third day of work. I left work for an appointment over my lunch break, meaning I missed lunch in the cafeteria (known as the canteen, by the way). When I got back, starving, I dropped into the mini-Albert Heijn in the complex where I work to grab a snack. Conveniently, Albert had made me a selection of packaged sandwiches, and I found one labeled "Oude Kaas." I know just enough Dutch to recognize the literal translation of this as "Old Cheese." Instinctively, my mind's Homer-voice thought, "Mmmm... old cheese sandwich...," and I couldn't not buy it! It was quite tasty, on a multigrain bun, and turned out to be just the thing for my mid-afternoon hunger.

Faced with the cheese selection at the real AH, I recalled my oude kaas sandwich, and figured that the oude cheese was old, or aged, and in fact the edges of the oude kaas slices are often a little darker, looking a bit like cheese that's been sitting out for a while. This is a good thing, I assure you, as the flavor gets quite nice with a little time! Later, I did some Google research, and indeed jong, or young, cheese is the least ripe, mildest variety, belegen (and extra belegen) is medium, and oude is well-aged (over 10 months!) and sharpest. Correlated with this dimension is the hardness of the cheese, and I read that the most oude cheese is rock-hard and is shaved instead of sliced. Mmmmm...

Eet smakelijk!

Adventures in the Bus Lijn

2008-10-26T01:43:00.001+02:00

Traffic in Eindhoven, be it car (auto), bicycle (fiets), or bus (bus!) is extraordinarily organized. There are bike lanes, bus lanes, and regular lanes; there are stop lights for each individual lane, no right-on-red, stop lights for the bike lanes, pedestrian crossing lights, and bus-specific signals as well. Very organized, yes, but also potentially confusing -- I've found myself driving into both in the bus lane as well as the bike lane!

The traffic flow at each intersection is carefully choreographed in a way that is still unintelligible to me. I recall simple American intersections where the only uncertainty a driver has is whether the left-turn arrow turns green before the straight-ahead traffic or after... Here, you wait and watch a lane from somewhere allowed to go, then some pedestrians allowed, then something else to happen, maybe a bus goes by, and suddenly you get to go. It's easy to get distracted while waiting, and nearly impossible to "jump the gun" and go before your light is green, because you really have no idea whose turn is next. No chance of the common-in-Rochester "New York left-turn," which is the quick-off-the-line left before the regular traffic gets going.

Anyway, I have been meaning to write about my adventure in the Bus Lijn for more than a week, mostly because I wanted a good illustration of an Eindhoven intersection to show all this confusion clearly. Behold exhibit A, conveniently viewed from our temporary apartment on the 7th floor:
In this photo, you'll notice many lanes going many directions. In the center are the bus lanes, indicated by the large white letters spelling BUS as well as the actual bus. On either side of the bus lanes, normal auto lanes, and further out, bike lanes, which tend to have pinkish pavement and crossings marked with big white squares. Beyond those, pedestrian sidewalks, with crossings marked with little white dashes. The opposing street has all of these except bus lanes.

So the other weekend, when we still had our rental car, I managed to drive in the bus lane (bus lijn, pronounced like bus line) as well as the bike lane (fietspad)... The bike path was just a quick oops, kind of like cutting the corner too close. Later, I hung a left, and before I knew it, I was driving over the words BUS LIJN, with grassy medians on either side, and I couldn't do anything about it. Strangely, there was another car further down the block, also in the bus lane. I guess it happens!

Now I'm Really Living Dutchly

2008-10-18T04:59:00.001+02:00

I am more-or-less living in limbo: no apartment, no residence permit (it's pending, of course), no bank account (also pending), etc. I have health insurance, but the policy number is pending. I live in a hotel, which sounds posh and nice, but in reality is claustrophobic. I eat out for every meal, which also sounds great, but in reality is tiresome and heavy. All this feels like some kind of twisted vacation -- it's fun and interesting to be in a foreign country, but I'm spending all my time trying to remedy the aforementioned problems rather than enjoying the trip...

So, today I rented a bicycle from the hotel and rode it to work. That is the essence of living Dutchly! It was a gorgeous, chilly, sunny morning, and the bike paths were chockablock with scarfed Dutch commuters. I biked through the park; I biked by the big avenues without any worry about cars; I biked through intersections with the special bike-lane stoplights; I biked into the complex I work in and locked the bike in the ground floor of the parking garage. Very pleasant, a good way to get going in the morning, and much faster than the walk-bus-walk combination I've been doing until now. I'm sold!

Here are some action shots taken from the saddle. First, a typical Eindhoven intersection with the pink bike path, mini bike stoplights, pedestrian crosswalk to the right, and of course car lanes to the left. Very organized, and very safe for biking.

Next, the approach to the only hill on my commute, the little bridge over the Dommel River.

And finally, approaching the High Tech Campus (on the right, across the road).

As I mentioned, it was chilly this morning. Not cold by upstate New York standards, but cool enough that I wore gloves. I noticed that I was in the minority with regard to manual insulation. I saw quite a few cyclists with one hand on the handlebar and the other in their pocket! Makes sense, I guess -- warm one up for a few minutes, then switch! I was the only one with one hand on the handlebar and the other taking photos, though, for sure!

Bier Automaat

2008-10-17T03:37:00.001+02:00

No, this isn't your typical American Pepsi machine... this one serves Heineken! I discovered this in our hotel, and by golly, I was obligated to give it a try. Yep, it works! Heineken in a can for €1.50. Homer would definitely "woohoo!" about that.

And, speaking of bier, it turns out that Dutch restaurants serve ridiculously tiny beverages -- that is, unless you order beer. If you order soda, water, or sparkling water, you invariably get a glass 0.2L bottle and a tiny tumbler to pour it into. 0.2 liters is 6.8 ounces, meaning less than 1 cup! For €2! For reference, a typical American vending-machine soda, at 20 oz, is thus just about exactly 3 Dutch servings. What I find interesting is that in the same restaurant with the 0.2L sparkling water, ordering a beer gets you about twice that volume, always poured neatly in a glass meant for the exact brand of beer you're getting, and often with a little paper skirt at the bottom to absorb the condensation. I think this disparity clearly illustrates the priorities here! Also, if the tidy, normal-sized beer isn't enough, in some places you can order a grote bier, or large beer, that is just about a pint -- perfect for the Brits in the house, I guess. I haven't attempted to order a grote water, but I have successfully gotten a carafe of tap water.

Back to the vending... Automaat is my new favorite Dutch word which appears to be used for any kiosk/service/vending machine. The machine that dispenses parking passes is a parkeer automaat; an ATM is a geldautomaat or bankautomaat; a coffee dispenser is a koffieautomaat; etc. For an interesting assortment of verkoopautomaten, or "machines that sell stuff," see this page. Based on all my newfound knowledge of automaten, and the aforementioned pictorial examples, I assume that the Heineken-hawking Pepsi machine may be properly called a Bierautomaat -- my new favorite machine.

All's well in the 'hoven

2008-10-10T22:05:00.005+02:00

I'm not sure if "the 'hoven" is an established nickname for my new hometown, but if not, it should be. It's not unprecedented, either. The city just a bit north of here is known as "den Bosch," rather than its full name, 's-Hertogenbosch, but really, who would say all of that and start it with an apostrophe-ess, anyway?

The real news behind all this name-chatter is that my wife, my dog, and me all made it safe and sound, if slightly overtired, to Eindhoven today. This involved a drive from Rochester to Toronto that took 4 instead of the usual 3 hours because of emergency road construction; a long, overnight, but thankfully direct, flight to Amsterdam; and then a sleepy, trafficky, 2-hour drive to Eindhoven. Meredith and I had a surprisingly comfortable trip in the immense coach cabin of our KLM 747, nicknamed "City of Nairobi" and really not much smaller than some cities. Somehow the seats didn't seem so cramped, and the duration so intolerable, as they have on other trans-Atlantic flights, . Maybe it was the thrill of actually doing this; maybe it was the great service from a huge team of flight attendants (truly, no irony here, despite the seeming impossibility in today's air-travel scene: they were numerous, polite, and super-efficient); or maybe it was that the seats were just a tiny bit more suited to my lumbar region than the last Airbus I rode. Sure, there was traffic, the plane left late (but landed early), the dog dropped a load in her kennel along the way somewhere and emerged scared and stinky, and the Amsterdam car-rental folks took a while to get a suitable substitute for the car I actually reserved... but in any case, we made it. And, most importantly, our hotel let us check in early so we could couch out for a bit before attempting to convince our bodies it was mid-day instead of 6am after a sleepless night.

Goedenavond, Cowboy

2008-09-17T03:32:00.004+02:00

This weekend we had a blowout garage sale in an attempt to shed some of our junk before making the big move across the Atlantic. Having a garage sale is always an interesting experience, once you get past the sheer work involved and the pitiful payoff, because of the variety of people you meet. Neighbors we'd waved to but never spoken to showed up and told us stories about people who owned our house 30 and 50 years ago; students new to Rochester came for cheap lamps and such; one father bought swords (real swords!) for his two sons; a really nice guy stopped in and chatted for a bit and was stoked to buy my Operating Systems textbook (and take my Mac OS 9: The Missing Manual from the "Free Books" bin). Lots of people asked about where we were moving, and we were happy to tell them, "the Netherlands." Most people seemed to think that sounded pretty cool, told us a random Amsterdam visit story, or mentioned a friend or relative that lives or had lived in Holland at some point.

One guy pulled up in a big, rusty pickup truck. He was pure cowboy, which is a somewhat rare sight up here in Yankee country, with beat-up jeans, a plaid shirt, and a dusty black cowboy hat. I think he had a mustache, but I don't really remember. With a nice cowboy drawl, he too asked where we were moving, and upon hearing my reply, he said, "Goedenavond." Double-taking, I said, "You speak Dutch?" He proceeded to say a bunch more in Dutch, which I didn't understand a word of, and seeing my blank stare (and surprised look), he scowled and said, "What are you doing moving to Holland if you don't even speak Dutch?" Embarrassed, I admitted that I was going there drastically unprepared, but that I hoped to start Dutch classes as soon as possible. He seemed to find this all quite amusing, and went on to explain that his ex-wife was Dutch, and that she never taught him Dutch, but expected him to understand when she spoke Dutch to him. With time, he did... So then he proceeded to teach me some Dutch swear words and insults appropriate for an ex-wife, all of which I have already forgotten. Oh well.

So the Dutch cowboy made quite an impression on me. But so did the dad who bought his sons swords. What dad buys his 8 year old a medieval broadsword?? And his 6 year old a Spanish épée??? Yikes! People never fail to surprise me... what a wonderful, wacky world!

Why Europe?

2008-09-11T03:24:00.000+02:00

It seems, as I go about telling friends and acquaintances that I'm moving to Europe, or specifically to the Netherlands, they typically have one of two questions. One is, "you can smoke pot there, right?" The other is, "why would you want to move to Europe?" I'll address marijuana in a later post after I do more - umm - research - on the subject. As for why Europe, well -- let's just say it was my destiny:
I got this in a fortune cookie maybe a week before discovering the job opening at Philips. Or, to be accurate, before my wife discovered it. I know, I know, this is just the Chinese vocabulary on the back of the actual fortune. But, the so-called fortune, like so many, is merely a saying, or in this case, a command: "Restrain yourself from intruding into other's businesses. [sic]" Obviously, as in all matters superstitious, I ignored the part I didn't like and focused on the bit I did want to hear. And then I finally found a way to live in Europe.

Europe has been a favorite place for my wife and me to visit over the past 10 years (since way before we were married, btw). We've been lucky enough to have friends to visit in France, Germany, and Switzerland, and to have experienced their weddings in a French chateau and on the lonely Italian coast of Cinque Terre. We have made at least a half-dozen trips, including one that touched the little ville of Upavon, in Wiltshire, UK, where I lived for two years as a young lad. I had a brilliant British accent then, but blimey, it's all gone to pot now.

Meredith and I have mused that when we visit Europe, we tend to visit "medieval Europe," spending our time wandering old, pedestrian city centers and touring castles. We have never visited suburban Paris, where real people live and work (no offense to our awesome Parisian friends who are definitely real and who live in the 15th). What I mean is that our visits tend to focus on sights and food rather than true modern culture -- hey, we're tourists, what can I say? So, we have been wanting to live in Europe, to mingle with the real people and their modern European culture. So, doggone it, we put our mind to it, and here we go! Expat Europe ahoy! My fortune is coming true!

Foosball, Dutch style (Klompenbal?)

2008-09-06T04:01:00.003+02:00

One of the many reasons I'm dying to move to the Netherlands:

I've been anxious to post this since I shot this picture in the Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven. It's a wry and insightful comment on what's important to people in the Netherlands. I think. In any case, I find it quite amusing! I didn't record the artist or any other details, forgive me...

Never-Neverland

2008-09-02T14:49:00.006+02:00

I've been meaning to comment on the name "the Netherlands," because of its peculiar plurality and definite article, and because of the confusing uses of "Holland" and "Dutch." Coincidentally, my wife's young cousin said something hilarious the other day that I have to include... Meredith said, "We're moving to the Netherlands." He replied, "Oh, I know about that -- it's like Never-neverland, right?" Um, yeah. Hopefully, at least, the Tinkerbell version and not the Michael Jackson version.

Anyway, "the Netherlands." As I understand it, this is a literal description of what may synonymously be described as "the low country." In French, the name of the nation is "Les Pays-Bas," which looks nothing like "the Netherlands," but which translates literally exactly the same, and which is also plural. In Dutch, the name of the nation is "Nederland." No plural, no article -- and, in my opinion, much tidier and easier to use. In fact, I may use "Nederland" in future posts, as well as the much more efficient abbreviation "NL," which is used in official capacities, on oval car stickers, as well as the end of URLs (e.g. http://www.philips.nl). Perhaps you saw the abbreviation "NED" used in the recent Olympic Games, or saw the Dutch swimmers' outfits with "Nederland" across the front in a really cool typeface.

So what about "Holland?" Though often used interchangeably with "the Netherlands," Holland actually is the name of a subregion of the Netherlands. The major cities of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, and the Hague (den Haag, another interesting use of definite article that is used in both English and Dutch) are all in Holland, while Eindhoven, where I'm moving, is not. For the most part, people here and there say Holland inclusively and get away with it, but I'm going to try to be a little careful about it if I can. I got caught once already -- I told a friend I was getting ready to move to Holland, told him a little about the job and the city of Eindhoven, and he replied, "wait, that's not really Holland, then, is it?" Wiseguy! Along these lines, the term "Hollanders" describes people from Holland, though is sometimes used to describe people from elsewhere in the Netherlands, but the term "Dutch" properly describes all people in the Netherlands.

I haven't determined the proper etymology and usage of "Hollandaise," but I will report back after seeking out some more eggs Benedict.

So I'm going to the Netherlands...

2008-08-28T21:52:00.009+02:00

After a lot of talk about wanting to live in Europe, things finally are falling into place, and I have a new job to take me and my wife to the Netherlands. Why the Netherlands? Well, for an American who doesn't speak a second language (not counting my classroom Spanish), the Netherlands is relatively easy: EVERYONE speaks English there, and they're humblingly accomodating to someone who has no idea about Dutch besides "spreekt u Engels?" (Do you speak English?) Plus, the job is with Philips, which is not only an amazing company, but one whose official language is indeed my mother tongue. Plus, the Dutch have nice arrangements with the USA for practical details like Social Security, and they make residence & work permits available for someone with technical education and skills. Plus, the Netherlands is full of bicycles and trains and compact, efficient cities. Plus, importantly for my tendency to travel, it is very well-connected to the rest of Europe!

This being the inaugural post of Living Dutchly, I should perhaps expound on my subtitle, "An American's Foray into Dutch Culture." I'm moving to the Netherlands because I want to experience it. I'd like to live, well, Dutchly, at least for a while. I expect to be thrilled, enlightened, confused, and occasionally annoyed with the nuances of Dutch culture, given my longtime familiarity with the details of American culture (both as a participant, read: pie eating; and as an observer, read: NASCAR). I hope to dive in to bicycle commuting, gray skies, tulip fields, and bier (yes, beer), and to explore places, people, and things I haven't discovered yet. Hopefully, through this blog, I can convey some of my experiences to the wired world, or, at the very least, record them for my own memory's sake.