Amsterbeth’s blog

I took Michael to Maastricht for his birthday. Maastricht is a town in the south of Holland that is heavily influenced by its surroundings, that is to say, Belgium.   We stayed at an amazing hotel, the Herenkruis hotel, which was once a church and a convent.  You walk through a shiny-penny copper tunnel which opens into what was once the main processional church area. Below is a red velvet bar, above is the restaurant. The ceilings paintings are preserved .There are these sort of jelly-fish/white-blood-cell looking lighting fixtures hanging from the ceiling. The woman who checked us in also escorted us personally to our room to make sure it was to our liking. The rooms are where the nuns used to live. You still feel there presence there. However, I don't think the nuns got to enjoy double thick frosted glass sliding japanese-style doors or the exquisite bedding or rain shower.

We went to dinner at Au Coins des Bon Enfant  and chose the six course option.  Every course, every flavor, was surprising, exquisite, bright, artful.  It was one of those experiences in life that you'll remember forever right along with your first crush, a big promotion, those rare and indelible moments. The service was precise, attentive, formal, but not hovering.  We ate outside like everyone else else that night. It was one of the top five best meals of my life and even with wine one of the most reasonably priced.   

We were on a high for several days after that dinner and not just from the calorie intake. We discussed and wrote down every ingredient we could identify in every course. Maastricht is a two hour drive from Amsterdam and just to know it is there saves me from getting depressed about dining experiences of ALL price ranges in Amsterdam, where sushi is served buried under mayonnaise, that water you asked for is never remembered, and where restaurants like the lovely Siempre in de Pijp employ waitresses that need to be chased down where you ask ever so timidly if you might finally order, where an order for flan is recorded, but runny creme brulee is presented instead (when this is brought to the waitresses attention, she claims she was "confused", that they don't actually have flan, and will not care to admit that she truly, utterly, and thoroughly does not give a shit, and that any egg-based dessert at all should be good enough...), and where you feel grateful that the bread was finally brought to the table after having to ask for it only three times, not four.

Anyway.....

Michael and I went through these caves created from quarrying stone. It's a 25 kilometer labyrinth, completely dark, and filled with stories and  charcoal artwork on the walls.  A guide takes you through with lanterns. It was a hide out during WWII where a system of was created for water and food sources, as well as a system to find the other people in your tiny village within the complex maze.   We ended our weekend at the top of a foothill overlooking the gentle waves of meadows and countryside.

I was making conversation over lunch with some colleauges including someone working from our corporate offices whose mother had recently passed away.  We were discussing the merits of cremation vs .burial.  One of my colleagues mentioned that she intends to be buried and already bought her plot outright . She's in her early 30s. She explained that by far she is the youngest in her family and she bought her own plot to ensure in the future she would not be dug up by strangers .

Naturally, we asked for an explantion.

She told us that in Holland, if you choose to bury someone, you can rent the space out for a limited amount of time, or buy it as a permantent space. That way, if the family would like to visit  departed oma  resting comfortably her six-foot under accommodations, they may do so during the grieving period, perhaps a year or ten years...there are options.  Then after the time is up or no one cares to renew, the casket will be exhumed, cremated or perhaps otherwise disposed of, and a new tenant moves in. 

This is yet another example of the Dutch's relationship with the land. It is something to be utilized, manipulated, and shared. It is also an example of Dutch practicality. It's nice to be able to visit a dead relative at a grave site but let's face it, it's a tiny country with a dense population. You can't keep dredging water just to produce more below-sealevel graveyards.  And when no one who knows you is still around to lay a tulip on your tombstone...time to vacate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/magazine/03european-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=5&em

In his article comparing the Netherlands to the United States, Russell Shorto compares the two countries' approaches to social welfare and taxation with accuracy.

After living here for over two years, most of my apprehensions regarding the downside to living in Holland have really come up short. Most of those apprehensions stemmed from my fear of the healthcare system here, which the Dutch themselves seems to enjoy complaining about. Every time I have had to go to the doctor or a dentist the experience has always been more positive than any experience I had in the U.S., yes, perhaps a bit more rustic, but but holistically better.

To balance the tone of his article he talks about the ubiquitous sameness  that is pervasive throughout Dutch society. "Normal is crazy enough."  It is a lifestyle you cannot remain blind to--even geographically there are no mountains, hills, or many trees to obscure your view to this fact. But this approach works and if it is a stifling downside, perhaps to leave it is something that this bilingual and highly educated people always has available to them as an option, and that is just one more freedom bestowed upon the Dutch.

He also mentions the annoyance of shops closing too early in the day. That is indeed an annoyance, as is the lack of availability and diversity of product (especially culinary): sometimes you really have to search for something that would be abundant in the U.S. But I'll bet if the stores stayed open until 9:00 or longer like they do in the U.S. most people wouldn't take advantage of it, and the fact that most shops in the center of Amsterdam are located below residences mean that people can enjoy a quiet evening at home without people filtering in and out of the shops below. And besides, the cafes don't close at 6:00. Nor do the clubs and restaurants which makes for a highly social, exciting, and delightful lifestyle. Shops closing early is an annoyance to Americans because shopping is part of our instant gratification culture. 

He also refers to conversations with Geert Mak, Dutch historian and excellent writer. Geert mentions that all-too-annoying motto that Americans love to toss about: " The U.S. is the best country in the world."   Most people I know who love to say that have never been to any other country. These same people will also say that the U.S. is the most free country in the world. I will not take the time here to list out all the reasons why that statement is laughable and rooted in embarrassing isolationist ignorance.

So yeah, I am feeling cantankerous and antagonistic today. I'll make a sweeping generalization and I'll stand by it. No society is perfect, but at the end of the day, life is better in the Netherlands and I feel incredibly lucky that I get to live here, hard water, rudeness, lousy restaurants and all. The statistics speak for themselves. Dutch adults and their children are happier than Americans, and happiness is sought for nothing higher than itself.  And dutch people, you have no idea how good you've got it.

Flame and lambaste me all you want. I'll publish all comments posted to this entry.  

A few weeks ago a colleague of mine mentioned that he'd been feeling a bit off. Not depressed, just felt sort of stuck.  My mother used the phrase "rat race" to describe how she was feeling around the same time.

It is the seasonal dark before the seasoal dawn.  The tail end of these long winters miserly dispensing such short days. Those of us who live pretty far north are just about exhausted by lack of sunlight. Around the middle of March, quite suddenly, the daylight in the afternoon starts to strech out and soon thereafter the mornings begin earlier. It happens over a short period of time. The plants respond within two days, and so too the humans.  I don't mean to get all Emily Dickenson writing about nature and spring and Seasonal Affective Disorder...well maybe I do.

I woke up at my usual ungodly early hour this Sunday and only had to wait about an hour for the light to come. I am on my balcony now--coat and scarf on top of my pajamas, cup of coffee keeping me company. Michael is upstairs putting the last coat of paint in the bathroom before we'll take a walk in the Vondelpark this morning and watch the dogs out and about on their first run of the day.  Across the courtyard are these 20-somethings in the hotel annex from across the street. They are huddled on the balcony smoking cigs. They've been up all night. It is almost 8:00 a.m. and they are still going strong, making jokes and conversation. One boy is talking in English about how he gets up at 5:30 every morning to go running. One girl is giggling nervously at everything she hears. The crowd retreated inside save for two who sneaked a first kiss--runner boy and giggle girl. I was peeking at them through a shrub on my balcony. 

Those days for me seem so long ago but the memories are vivid. It's so nice to witness it happening to someone else. The endless energy people in their early 20s have. How cool and grown up they feel..renting hotel rooms and staying up all night smoking cigs and drinking cheap alcohol. Fabulous.

I remember being 19 or 20 and going to Chicago with a girlfriend for the weekend. It was summer. We stayed in an aparmtent rented by a few guys who were recent college graduates. They somehow scored quite a nice place on South Shore Drive. They had a party. We spent the night. In the morning when I woke up, I stepped outside on the fire escape and dreamed that I would live a life in the city, where I would hear faint conversations, radios...smell breakfast, all this life surrounding me.  It gave me such a calm feeling and to live that dream today gives me the same sense of calm. I love these hours where the night owls and the early birds converge; where babies are being fed their first meal at the same time the party people are having their last.

Michael just came outside to tell me how ridiculous I look in my winter coat and PJs and to suggest maybe I am too optimistic regarding the arrival of spring. But it's not the temperature, it's the light. And the state of mind it perpetuates.

"Designing Woman" starring Lauren Bacall and Gregory Peck was on the TV yesterday afternoon. I spent most of the day in my bathrobe, either in bed, or on the couch where Michael and I finished off a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and ate the remnants of the broccoli soup left in the fridge from a few days ago. The movie was directed by Vincente Minnelli and it is really funny. I'm always surprised when I enjoy movies from that era because I can never get past the colorization--the orange/tan make up and the sickly pastels.  After the movie's opening plot set up, we are brought into Gregory Peck's hangover, expressed through hyperbolic color and sound. It's hilarious.

Speaking of hangovers, I was wondering if it would be possible to just be a champagne alcoholic. If yes, I think enlist voluntarily.

We also watched "In Brugge" starring Colin Farrell.  It's a clever, ilkish movie, however I was devastated when one scene failed to capitalize on an obvious but effective punchline. One of the lead characters is counting out coins to pay the entry fee into a museum in the center of this medieval Belgian town. The fee is 5 euros but the coins in his pocket add up to only 4.90.   He asks the fastidious clerk if he can just be let in anyway. The questions is addressed with a curt and unnegotiable retort, "The entry fee is FIVE EUROS."  So, the character slaps down a 50-euro bill and sweeps the coins off the counter and back into his hand.  

What should have happened was this: He presents the 50-euro bill and then the guy behind the counter would have asked, "Do you have anything smaller?"

There is this constant struggle in this largely cash-only society between ATMs that rarely dispance anything other than 20s and 50s, and clerks and shopkeepers who hate making change . One of my many one-woman crusades here involves being impolite in my response to the question "Do you have anything smaller?"  I never ever take back my 20s and 50s even if I could.   I don't have a til in my purse to make change like the girl at the grocery store does now do? If anyone deserves to have a more varied range of bills in my pocket it is me, not the national department store.

Many times I've been involved in conversations about what makes a website successful. Features, features, features. Bells and whistles. This and that. But what has never changed in the 12 years I've worked on websites as a merchandising professional, the one thing that never changes is the basics.  

Amazon.com is not perfect in many ways especially for those who know the site well. But that is only because what it offers or what it can do is so far beyond any website in the world, what it needs to work on respectively to what it does right is merely edge case in comparison.

Today I ordered a bunch of things that I will ask my mom to bring from the U.S.: running shoes, cosmetics, saran wrap and aluminum foil, powdered water flavoring, and facial wash. The site had everything I wanted and when I entered my credit card, the order pipeline recognized it as a foreing card and immediately converted the summary to euros.   It also was very easy to change my billing address and the order went through fine. The order confirmation was detailed and easy to read. If I have to change my order that will be easy to do too.

I performed the simplest of transactions and it was still a delight. It was a delight because no other website can match the basic experience of ordering something at Amazon.  No other site can touch the basics.  Most retail websites are still a complete disaster in comparison. 

I will also give praise to Orbitz as I believe it is the best travel site in terms of UX as well as price and selection.

I will also give praise to Overstock.com where I buy all my super luxurious sheets for next to nothing.

This story is intended to bear witness to my beloved and sweet friend, and the friend of so many others, Rickey Wright, who died yesterday.

I met Rickey in the late ‘90s. It was his first day on this job at Amazon. He was brought in from Virginia to join our little tribe of music editors who would launch the music store. There was quite a bit of buzz around him. How knowledgeable he was about music and what a good writer he was. He lived with Susan and Eric Benson for a while until he was set up in his own apartment, where he would live for the rest of his life. He always talked about how great Eric and Susan were for taking him in. Rickey was always talking about how great other people were and never forgot or took for granted any kindness or generosity that was bestowed upon him.

I remember the very first moment I saw Rickey. He had a different look about him. We sat on a door desk in the hallway outside the elevators that opened to our floor. We had our first talk about music and I think we sat there for an hour. Rickey would often refer back to that day saying that I made him feel welcomed when he was so nervous and unsure. I would also refer back to that day, telling him how compelled I felt to jump right into him and get to know him.

In those early days, Rickey used to swear a lot. Fuckin’ this and fuckin’ that. One time I just burst out, “For chrissakes Rickey, pull back a little will ya??” He did.

I remember noticing very early on that Rickey could really put the Guinness away and would never turn down an invitation to a visit to the FAO Schwarz bulk candy aisle.

Rickey used to literally rock and roll. He never stopped moving. Either his leg was always tapping or he’d rock back and forth in his chair like a baby trying to comfort himself. He had a repertoire of postures. Always leaning forward with his hand on his thigh, fingers pointed in and elbow pointed out. He used his hands when he talked, flipping his palms upward in a gesture of offering.

Rickey always looked cool. He was a rock critic and looked the part. He always had a good haircut. He always wore the cool black ankle boots with the pointed toes. He knew how to wear a suit. He walked on his toes a bit which sort of accentuated his little belly. He always had just the right rock ‘n’ roll button on his bag or his jacket.

Rickey loved his cats, Chet and Kettle. When Chet was sick, he went through tremendous lengths and expense to try to keep him alive. When Kettle ran away, he consulted a pet psychic to find her, and found her. He used to talk about what a good soul Chet had and how you could see it in the little cat’s big eyes.

Rickey was funny and he had a distinctive voice. His vowels were long and rounded, came from the back of his throat, and were softened by his Virginia upbringing. He consistently pronounced our friend and coworker, Marc Greilsamer’s last name wrong…”Greeelshammer”. It made me grin.

One time Rickey was going through a radio junket being interviewed for the Grammys. I borrowed the tape so that I could use it to help me prepare when I’d have to do the same thing. I still have the tape. I never wanted to give it back to be filed in some dusty archive.

If you needed to know something about popular music, you could consult a book or go online, or you could talk to Rickey. A book or a website can provide you whatever infinite data you need: the cross references; the sidebars; the trivia, the discographies, track listings, and reviews. What a website or a book couldn’t give you was all that plus the passion, the conversation, the excitement, the joy, the love. That’s what Rickey gave in addition to his exceptional knowledge.

Rickey won the Rhino Records Geekus Maximus contest pitting music geek against music geek in a showdown of music minutiae. It was a nice little PR coup for Amazon and we were proud of him.

When we worked at Amazon in the early days, sometimes Rickey would come into work around 11:00 a.m. and leave at 4:00. He’d drink three or four diet cokes and would try to eat odd things for lunch. Sometimes he’d bring in a green or red pepper and try to eat them like you would an apple. Sometimes Rickey missed deadlines and sometimes the tools we used never quite worked for him. Sometimes Rickey would come into my office and he would stay too long. He often commented on how many long hours I put in and I wondered, with some resentment, why he wasn’t doing the same. Sometimes Rickey’s vices interfered with his work.

Amazon could be a brutal and unforgivable place and some of us had our identity wrapped up in it too much. Some of us took it too seriously. I was one of those people. I had so much to prove and to learn and I could only do it through my job, or so I thought. My relationship with Rickey at work was completely separated from our friendship outside. I was concerned for him and I went to our managers to express my concerns. As a result, Rickey was put on a performance plan and when it was time to lay people off, one day, Rickey found himself one of those people. On the day Rickey was fired, I told him I would meet him after work at a bar nearby. When I did, he was already, understandably, pretty well into the sauce. I was very honest with him about why I thought this happened. He rejected my theories. I’ll never forget the conversation but that is between Rickey and me.

I never confessed to Rickey that I was the little insipid mastermind behind his performance review. He would lay out his assumptions as to why it happened, who he thought had it out for him. Throughout our friendship he always used to thank me for my honesty. I would feel bad that he never knew, and wonder if he did actually know, and was just giving me an opportunity to come clean. He never would have confronted me directly because he was too kind for that. I always told him I strongly disagreed with his assumptions but I never told him why. I truly thought that it just wasn’t the right environment for Rickey.

And indeed it wasn’t. But now that I am older, and now that I am a bigger person, my attitude is different. Rickey was extraordinary. And extraordinary people need to be protected. They need to be preserved. They need license. Why couldn’t we have seen that? Why couldn’t we have *created* the environment for someone like Rickey? Why couldn’t we have nurtured, helped, compromised? Where was the effort in finding out how to do that but not cross the line into enabling? Why can’t we do that for all people? Maybe we did to some extent just by forcing the circumstance upon him. Maybe Rickey should always have been a freelancer. There were other permanent gigs he was passed over for after Amazon. But knowing Rickey made me come to this conclusion that all gifts of all people we know need to be celebrated and accommodated, not shoved aside to fit into the lane we’ve been assigned to on the track of our little daily rat races.

Rickey and I didn’t just talk about music. We talked a lot about love and relationships. Rickey loved his women. Kate and Jill and Becca and Carol and Julie and Bobbi and the other Bobbie and his mother and his friend in Florida and so many others whom I will think of later or never knew or met. He loved his niece and I heard stories about her since she was 13. How cool she was and, of course, what music she was interested in. We all felt tremendous affection for him too. I never had a conversation with Rickey that didn’t last for hours. I never had a conversation *about* Rickey that didn’t last for hours. Everyone else will say the same. Rickey always made you feel special and loved.

“Beth, you’re so great. I really love you.”

“I really love you too Rickey.”

If you had an opinion or passion about music, Rickey wanted to hear about it and was vested in it. His brain was so huge, it was like he had this never-ending capacity for listening, absorbing, processing, recording, and delivering a response that was totally in tune with whatever it was the other person wanted to say. The last conversation we had about music, we were discussing the self-titled debut by Robyn. He thought it was a great album. I thought it was too derivative and was carried too heavily by the single.

So, back to love (it is hard to talk about conversations with Rickey without digressing into conversations about music). Rickey really wanted to be in a relationship. We talked about it a lot. For all of his achievements and his friends and the love that surrounded him, I think that this is the one thing he really wanted that remained elusive throughout his life. We would talk about it for hours and hours, always on the phone. There were things I always wanted to say to him regarding this topic. Things that would be rather direct and hard to hear. My honesty with Rickey was always pure, but couched, cushioned. He was so incredibly gentle and sweet, how could anyone ever not be that way with him in return?

You know, over the last week, since we all got the news that Rickey had the stroke, music has seemed clearer. Sad songs feel sadder and happy songs feel happier. Air seems richer and hugging my husband or a friend feels more sensual. Rickey’s intense, single-minded, pure and bottomless love for music, and love for love, is what I will keep with me always every time I play a song. He gave that out into the world and what he gave will remain with us always, but it ends today, and I feel an enormous vacuum now in that regard. I write this and I can’t believe I will never again in my life have one of my marathon conversations with Rickey. I write this now and I worry it is too soon or too much or not enough, but I don’t know what else to do with these feelings that I have and I won’t know what to do with them when I finish writing this. I always felt very deeply that Rickey would not live a long life. But I realize today no matter how long he lived, it never would have been long enough for what he put out there….it’s enormous and irreplaceable.

Rickey and I only ever talked about two things: music and love. Our last conversation was about the latter. It occurred around the beginning of January. We hadn’t talked for a while and he found me on online and we had an online chat. Sometimes Rickey would feel anxious or depressed. I think this is well known to everyone who knew him. He was anxious about being in his mid-40s and not being in a relationship. I have always expressed myself better in writing than in speaking (I know you feel sorry for me now that you know this). As gently and as lovingly as I possibly could, I said to Rickey the things I had been wanting to say to him for so very many years, pulling no punches and being as direct as possible.

I’m not sure how much of that I want to reveal here because it was so private and it was about Rickey’s most private feelings. But I will say that the last conversation I had with Rickey was the most honest, and therefore the most loving, I had ever had with him.

I checked in on him a while later. This is the last correspondence we ever had:

Rickyfb

Life here, Rickey, is heavy without you, darling. I love you and I miss you so much. I know where ever you are now, it is all up and will never be down again.

After Michael found this article, and after two years of delicate and diplomatic searching for explanations, I feel ready now to write about this subject. 

http://www.radionetherlands.nl/news/zijlijn/6153992/Friesland-pupils-get-lessons-on-manners

 It isn't just Dutch children, who practically run wild and scream through their childhood, who need a lesson on how to interact with other people. The whole country could stand to sit in on a few sessions.

I have not permitted myself to write on this subject earlier because I am a foreigner. It did not feel appropriate to come into another country, another culture, and another lifestyle that for the most part, I enjoy thoroughly, and judge the behavior of a society I did not build and did not grow up in--a society that would take no notice if I came or went and has done quite fine for hundreds of years without my opinions.  It is a privilege. I will always be a guest and an outsider and am quite comfortable with that status; I feel very at home with it. 

I never felt entitled to publicly express my ire.  Dutch society is marred with inconsideration that I experience every day.  For such a long time now I have been looking for the answers. It can't be actual rudeness, right? There is just some sort of cultural paradigm here that I'm blind to. It will be just like how I first thought all the crappy Dutch bicycles were so ridiculous and now life without my crappy Dutch bike makes very little sense.

But as I have infiltrated Dutch society, I've worked up enough intimate relationships to ask the question, "Are you guys really so rude or is there just something I'm not getting?"  The answer, my Dutch friends, colleagues, and acquaintances will provide is always the same, and comes with an unsolicited addendum which will be the theme of this entry: "No, we *are* rude, we hate it, and you need to learn to claim your turf."

My theory is that Dutch rudeness stems from a combination of physical height, entitlement, egalitarianism, individualism, a disdain for authority, and bad habits.  It's all about space. What's yours, what's mine, what must be shared, oh relax already, who the hell do you think you are, you can't tell me what to do, and the fact that one of the tallest populations in the world resides in a country smaller than Indiana, enduring a density unrivaled in Western Europe. It's like living in a box of toothpicks around here.  

"Claim your turf."  Dutch rudeness is expressed in two ways:  through appalling customer service and shoving. If I am not being ignored or condescended to or outright abandoned by a customer service person, I am being jostled, cut off, shoved aside, or nudged. And when I say "I"-- of course I don't mean to represent myself as a lone victim.  My curiosity over Dutch rudeness has blossomed practically into sociological research. "I" represents the collective "we" but I do not think it is right to consider myself part of the "we" that represents Dutch society as a whole.    

I shall now provide anecdotal examples of Dutch rudeness.

1. Queuing.  Remember in Zoolander when he finally learns how to turn left? Learning to stand in line would be an achievement of equal significance to the Dutch.   Should a train roll in that is luxuriating in empty seats, the dutch will cram themselves into the entrance like pouring two overloaded handfuls of marbles into a small jar. Why not just drop the marbles into the jar one by one? It is probably just as fast, certainly more elegant, and there will be no risk of a marble slipping in her high heels and falling under the tracks. Plenty of seats for all, Dutchies. And the train conductor will not let the train take off while you're standing halfway on the platform. I promise.

 2. Eye Contact.  The Dutch have this keen ability to avoid eye contact with a deft ocular choreography. If I don't see you, I don't have to ask permission to walk in front of you. If I don't see you, I can cut right in front of you.  I am a 70 year old Dutch lady. I am sitting next to you on a KLM flight headed back to Amsterdam. I am on the window seat and you are in the aisle. I will not look at you so to infer a request for permission to stand in front of you in the aisle, which you most happily would offer out of common courtesy. No, even though only four centimeters have separated us in our seats for the last several hours, I will actually maneuver my fat little granny dutch foot, thigh and hip OVER your seat as soon as you have vacated it, plant my foot firmly in front of you, shoving you back into the person standing behind you, and immobilize myself, however uncomfortably, in that position for several minutes until the line in the aisle starts to move toward the exit.  I was once a sweet and quiet little old matron and now I am to you a horrible old hag who you want to shove into the overhead luggage compartment, slamming the lid on my little old dutch granny milk-fed face with that most satisfying click.

3. Murder is Illegal and I Will Use That To My Advantage.  You have just come back from Dusseldorf. There is a derailment ahead of you and you must abandon your train and deposit yourself at a metro station and take the subway back to your destination.  The platform will be so crowded there will be news anchors there covering the story.  You are one of the first people off the train and you have lined up, in your rightful place, as first on the platform to enter the train. The crowd of people behind you is about four deep. It is freezing cold. Several metro trains will need to come by to get everyone off the platform. You are carrying a bag of breakable christmas ornaments and are worried that the crush of people will shatter them so you hold the bag on top of your head. I am a Dutch teenager and I am accompanied by four of my nasty little teenage friends. I notice that you are a patsy who has left six inches between the tip of your shoes and the painted yellow line on the platform pavement indicating you should not cross it for risk of having your face sheared off by the incoming trains. I will have the brazen audacity to stand in front of you, on that line so to ensure myself as the first to get on the train, even though hoards of people have been waiting for the train to arrive.  My backpack is touching your chest. I will ignore the feeling of you stepping on my heels.  I will take advantage of your illiteracy; you do not know how to swear at, reprimand, or insult me in my native language without sounding like Borat. I have outraged you and if you try to push me, as I so richly deserve, onto the train tracks, you will be held accountable for my death.

4. Holding the Door Swings Both Ways.  You are about to leave the gym. You see me behind you at that awkward distance where it would seem rude not to hold the door for me, yet, you will have to wait longer than what seems natural for me to pass through it. Yours is therefore an outwardly kind and considerate gesture. I am a full grown dutch man. Let me repeat...I am a man. While you are standing in position for several seconds holding the door behind you and therefore open for me, not only do I not take the door from you, I walk right through it, passed you, in front of you, never looking at you, thanking you, or acknowledging you in anyway. You are a door stop.  

5. Customer Service Does Not Equal Customer Servant.  I am the lady slathering sauce on chicken at the butcher counter, never looking up,  while you stand there for five minutes waiting to be assisted before eventually just walking away. I am the girl who works behind the counter. I am the waitress. I am the waiter.  Don't you feel foolish coming into my establishment, sitting there like some helpless lump, and expecting me to attend to your every need? I have calls to make on my cell phone. I have this other customer to help so I will not acknowledge your presence  or ask if you would mind waiting, which of course you wouldn't.  I will never EVER remember to bring you the artificial sugar you asked for with your coffee. 

6. You Are In My Way and My Way Is Predetermined.  You are just standing there. I walk by you so fast that I knock the bottle of water right out of your hand. I never even turn around to recognize what I have done, let alone slow down or even stop to pick up the bottle and apologize.  How dare you not telepathically anticipate the path in which I intend to walk and get well out of my way ahead of time?  

7.  My Accoutrement Is Me. I will constantly bump into you with my bag, my luggage, my elbow, my purse.

8. We Are All In This Together...Except for You.    You are on an international train departing from Amsterdam headed to Paris. You are sitting across from two French men who are traveling together for work. To your right is a 6'5" tall Dutch man who has sprawled out across two seats struggling to situate his gangly body in a comfortable position. The position he chooses invites a full view of the span of his crotch.  You can hear American and British English, French, Italian, and German spoken in your compartment.   As the train travels from one country to another, announcements are delivered in three languages, the order determined by the country the train is currently passing through.  We are in Belgium.   The announcements are therefore made in the order of Dutch, French, and lastly English.  A train conductor gets on the intercom to tell us we are going to have to make a train transfer in Brussels due to a technical difficulty.   A few minutes before we roll into Brussels, the train conductor gets on the intercom once more to tell us which platform we need to go to. He announces it, again, first in Dutch, then French, then English.   The compartment is silent while he runs through the announcement in Dutch.   As soon as I, as well as all my Dutch compatriots on the train hear what we need to hear, we all start talking and babbling very loudly and excitedly through the last two announcements. The French man sitting across from you SHHHH's us with all the power he can muster through his lungs and behind his teeth.  We ignore him.   All the rest of the passengers on the train are looking at each other communicating their collective disbelief and exasperation over our lack of consideration.  As the train rolls to a stop in Brussels,  I will toss my backpack in front of you on the aisle to ensure I get off the train before you do.

9. The Thighs of My Jeans Double As A Napkin.  And the floor doubles as a crumb repository.

10.  How Dare You Not Buy What I Have to Sell. You are looking to buy a house.  I am a Dutch real estate agent trying to sell you a house. You go to the house with your American expat real estate agent. You notice that the only shower is on the top floor of the house and you need to climb a ladder to get to it. The water pressure is also very weak. When you point out these issues to the Dutch real estate agent, he looks down his eye glasses at you with an expression of outward hostility and says, "Well you can't get everything in life you want can you?"

I will ask for your forgiveness in using the following analogy, for analogies are cheap. But living in Holland, when it comes to manners, is like wearing a very beautiful dress with an itchy tag that bothers you so much it totally detracts from the enjoyment of the dress.  For as much as Dutch rudeness stings on a daily basis, the Dutch, and their children, are consistently rated as some of the happiest people on the planet. One of my closest Dutch friends once said to me "We come from the mud."   It would be so awful to compare this statement to the most grotesque expression "As happy as a pig in shit"   --but here I am doing it anyway.

An arsenal of disapproval cannot combat a society that is rude upon itself and others, yet  fortified by a barrier of happiness. You cannot penetrate an attitude of "we don't care."  And it goes again back to the thing I've mentioned before, the downside of Dutch tolerance.  I don't think the Dutch need to tolerate this behavior in each other .And indeed, it is an issue that can't seem to lie flat. It is talked about, it is famed, it is asked about in polls. Maybe it is the one thing (aside from really bad food) that keeps this life from being too perfect, too relaxed, fun, and easy going.   Every society and culture has its "stuff".    I get annoyed when people cut in front of me here.  In the US I get annoyed by celebrity media and being nickled and dimed.

 Is a daily pinprick better or worse than a constant vice grip?

This message breaks my heart every time. I wish our newly minted president could get the RIAA and the greedy bastards who guard their licensing, publishing, copyright properties like a mama bear to loosen their mits already. 

May we all take a moment to remember fondly when Napster was free.

WeApologize

Sometimes I forget that things just run out here. And then when I am reminded of it I refuse to accept defeat.  I had been asked by friends and colleagues, and those people who overlap both categories, if I was going to go skating. No, I have always replied. I hate the cold.  I have bad knees. I haven't skated since I was a little girl. But then the call of the wild, zooming around out on the ice, a pasttime that is taken most seriously by the natives of my new homeland, could not be drowned out.

Michael and I psyched ourselves up to go buy skates, watch a "how-to" video on YouTube, and then go hit the solidified ponds in the Vondelpark.

People had been telling us that it was probably too late for us and certainly all the skates have been sold out. It is still hard for me to get used to this concept. I couldn't believe I was too early, and then too late, to buy a swimsuit out of season last spring. And with a level of anxiety a typical American would find perplexing, I have started hording baking supplies when I find them...God knows when I am going to find juniper berries or organic Herb de Provence again.

I did not heed the warning that there would be no ice skates available for purchase in and around Amsterdam. We set out at a reasonable hour last Saturday morning. We decided to outsmart the average center-dwelling consumer and bike out to a retailer called "Waterman Sport"  which boasted online the largest selection of ice skates in the extended Amsterdam metropolitan area. I pictured an enormous retail complex lined floor-to-ceiling with iceskates.  We rode our bikes in the freezing cold for quite a distance to arrive at this place. We came upon some sort of sports complex. Where was the store?  We stood in line so to walk through a turnstile, and then found the store nestled within the complex. It was the size of my living room. And there were no skates available. All sold out save for the super high end ones.  The staff were very courteous and wished us good luck in finding any skates at all in Amsterdam. They asked where we were from. I said "Seattle."  An older gentleman working in the shop replied with an oft-heard response. "Oh...Boeing."  I said "Yes. That's right."

We left feeling really lousy. We weren't going to get our skates that day and would have to buy them online. I stopped by the enormous outdoor gear shop where a friend of mine works. He also said good luck finding anything. We walked across the street to the competitor sporting store...the skating shelves were empty like the Grinch had swept through.   

I was really disappointed. I was so excited to buy skates and try them out..to do something so very quintessentially Nederlands.  On our way out to the outskirts of the city, I saw a store on a main thoroughfare that sold skates but had a line out the door. Being the savvy consumer that I am, I assumed the line was for rentals, not for purchase. Michael and I stopped to thaw out in a neighborhood cafe. As my glass of red wine brought me to my senses, it occurred to me that the place with the line out the door wasn't anywhere near water. There was no way the people waiting in that line were there to rent skates. I asked Michael if he had it in him to brace against the cold one more time.  He did.

We went back to the store. The line was smaller and we made it longer. There was a security guard wearing a bullet-proof vest gate-keeping the front door. One person in, one person out. We made it through the doors after about a 20 minute wait and found ourself in a beehive of skates, purchasers, store staff....it was chaos. I grabbed a guy and asked him to at least point me toward the shelf of reasonably priced skates for a beginner. He sort of nodded in a direction indicating the back. I found a pair of skates my size, tried them on. They fit. The price was right. Done deal. Michael found a pair of skates that were also his size, fretted for several minutes if they were girls' skates, and committed to them after I reassured him that even tall dutch women don't have size 44 feet. We had found our skates.

We waited in the snake-ish line for a very long time, swiped my card at the counter and we were free. We went across the street to a place called "Wok Cuisine"  which is a Chinese restaurant offering a buffet in a luxurious setting (art deco decor and chandeliers).  You pile a plate with raw meats or fish and vegetables, present them to a chef behind a counter, who then prepares your compilation of meats and vegetables in a wok mixed with a sauce of your choosing. I found it to be quite the anecdote to the disappointing and expensive experience we had endured at Kaiko the night before.  A day of biking in the cold, an interlude of fresh and flavorful Chinese food, and an evening of skating to look forward to. This was a good Amsterdam day.

Michael strapped his box of skates to the backof his bike. I put mine in my basket in the front. We biked home. Michael suggested we try our skates out that night. He read my mind. We laced them up and then practiced just standing in them on towels in the living room. That was easy so I figured the actual skating part would be a breeze.

We made the 5 minute walk to the Vondelpark, walked across the frozen water and sat on the banks to put our skates on. I got mine on first and was already creeping across the ice for probably 20 minutes before Michael even got his laced up (he is such a perfectionist). I was remembering my instructions from the YouTube video. Bend your knees. Lean forward. Relax. Rock in motion with the skates. It was awkward. We need to get the blades sharpened. But slowly I was making progress. Every time I really felt like I was mastering the gliding motion and really skating I fell on my ass. Michael did too. We sort of went our own ways just learning to skate per our own distinctly exclusive temperments. Michael, deliberate, methodical, and scientific, taking each stroke of the blade as a step toward compiled progress. Me, a chaotic, blind, unencumbered riot of sliding, slipping, and falling until I finally started to feel the ice underneath me, developing a relationship with it. Neither one of us were really truly skating after our hour out there on the ice. I was surprised how little time had gone by when we came home. We decided to quit after we were getting tired and therefore falling too much. We'll be back out there again tonight.