Good Things

Every time I write an entry here of late, I freak out my mother-in-law, who worries that we’re not going to be happy here and have burned all of our bridges back to the US.

For that reason, I thought I should explicitly state some of the positives. Here goes.

Well, first of all, there’s the food. It’s so nice to be in a country that has bakeries again. Even Vroom & Dreesman has a great bakery these days. Then, there’s the supermarket. The local Albert Heijn is a small concern, but it still has boterkoekjes, gangmakers, gevulde koeken, stroopwafels, kwark, vla and other favourites. Plus, let’s not forget: bread. Yes, we can once again enjoy the gastronomic delight of tasty bread.

On the other hand, I don’t know where you’d go for a decent milkshake or Mexican food. Bollocks; why can’t you have everything in this life?

Walking is another advantage of living in Amsterdam. You can pretty much walk anywhere to reach your destination. You don’t need a car, you often don’t need a bike, and the same applies to public transport. We can just drop Wiesje into the sling, walk somewhere, do our business and leave again. No farting around with getting her in and out of a car seat. Furthermore, the walk is a pleasant one, too, along canals, narrow alleys and beautiful houses. It’s a far cry from traversing the car park of the bloody San Antonio shopping centre.

Television is not to be forgotten, either. BBC1 and BBC2 are back on our screens, plus all of the Dutch and Flemish channels. Lots of news background programmes, interesting documentaries, nature programmes, foreign films and what have you. It’s only television, but it’s a breath of fresh air after American television. If only we could get HBO, Sundance and IFC as well. And let’s not forget AT5, with its pleasingly amateur coverage of all things Amsterdam. AT5, how I have missed thee.

Good mobile phone coverage. Yes, it’s another minor point, but I don’t hit any dead spots with my new Nokia Communicator 9500. On the other hand, there’s no flat rate available for Internet access (you pay per Kb instead) and there are virtually no open WLANs in this city to use to grab my mail over 802.11b. It’s amazing to me, but virtually all WLANs in this city are at least trivially secured. In Silicon Valley, you can get WLAN access virtually anywhere.

Culture. There’s no much going on here. In the last two weeks alone, we’ve had SAIL 2005 and the Uitmarkt. Those are pretty unusual, but the city is simply teeming with galleries, museums, buildings of historic interest, cinemas, theatres, concert halls, etc. There are plays and concerts every evening of the week at multiple locations. Not much use to us without a babysitter, but there you go.

The relaxed pace of life. I’m not sure this one should be listed just yet. Essentially, it’s a positive, but it can also mask apathy, disinterest, lack of motivation, etc. We’ve run into some of those factors over the last couple of weeks and it has given me a strong reminder of how it was to work in many a Dutch office, where mediocre performance and poor results are good enough and few people are driven to extraordinary achievement. Yes, a little bit of American has creeped into my soul.

Life is a little easier now than it was a week ago. Things still feel strange, but not as strange as they did. Hopefully, this trend will continue and we’ll wake up one day and think, ‘Hey, I feel completely at home here (again).’ That will be a joyous day.