Resolution

For those interested, the laundry debacle has been resolved. Erin put the whole mess back into the dryer and checked on it 45 minutes later. Sure enough, the heat and tumbling worked to undo the twisted knot of laundry and life is back to normal. We use the term "normal" loosly.

Also, Erin found springform pans that can serve as cake pans. Surely there are regular cake pans in some store in this country somewhere, but Erin only found springform pans so that's what we have. Friday night we made a cake for a Saturday night dinner with some friends - mostly accountants from Ernst & Young. The cake turned out perfectly! It was fun to eat dinner with people from all over the world. The party included a woman from Ghana, a man from Brazil, us, and another couple from the U.S.

Erin walked to the store Saturday afternoon and on her return journey she noticed the Olympic Stadium tower, on which the Olympic flame burned during the games of 1928. There is a clear view of this tower, complete with lit up Olympic rings at night, from just outside our apartment. The 1928 Olympics made history in a couple ways. It was the first Olympics in which women were allowed to participate in gymnastics and athletics. It was also the first Olympics in which an Olympic flame was lit. Apparently Queen Wilhemine was against the Olympics because it was a "demonstration of paganism," so government funds were not given to support the event. The money for the games was raised by civilians who started the tradition of lighting the Olypmic flame to spite the queen's distaste for such paganistic ritual. We live right across from such a historical place. We live in a 75 year-old apartment building in a European city filled with canals, cathedrals, row houses, and bicycles.

Yet somehow the romantic, charming, exotic ideas we had in the U.S. of living in Europe are not quite true. No matter where you live, you work hard to get by...to maintain the necessities and pleasures of life. You spend your time figuring out how to get things done and how best to communicate with people. And somehow very quickly the charming, exotic surroundings become familiar. This European city seems so much like any city, only with more difficulties. Noticing a historic landmark or a field of sheep every once in a while brings back that feeling of romanticism, if only for a few minutes. In those few minutes we cannnot believe we actually live here - in a place Americans study in history class in school, in a place filled with buildings and monuments much, much older than the country we came from.

Then the moment passes and it's time to start thinking of what you need to make dinner or where to get starch to iron shirts or how to pump up your bicycle tires. Hmmm...what should we have for dinner?