Hamburgers for Christmas

Opening Our Presents, Part 1

Well, look what Santa left for Erin--a new headlight for her bicycle. No more worries about lights that won't work in the rain--we hope. Now John just needs to figure out how to install this thing. Apparently when we sent our change of address form to the North Pole, we forgot to specify that we don't speak Dutch. So, Santa only left us Dutch directions. We'll see if John is up to the challenge.

We continued our holiday tradition today by enjoying a dinner of hamburgers and french fries, complete with fancy sesame seed buns and John's secret seasoning mixture (it's really just a dash out of every bottle of seasoning we had in the cabinet).

That's not to say we didn't do any cooking today. Erin has all the meals planned out for the next week and half, and we continued in our advance preparation (this has really been going on all week). Today we made chili, sweet potatoes, and cider roasted chicken. For the first time, we've actually maxed out the space in our refrigerator and freezer.

We also found time to make it to church this morning. Erin sang in the choir so she had to be there at 8:15, which meant waking up around 6:30. This is in addition to the two services last night. Erin has had her fill of singing for the week, and while she was singing John had his fill of Christmas bread and cookies. The service was a unique and creative experience, and we're trying to figure out how to upload some video that John made. Until then, you can see the still pictures at our Flickr site.

We also managed to ride our bikes into the city centre this afternoon to check out the goings-on. To our surprise, there were several shops open in addition to a Christmas carnival complete with ice rink, merry-go-round, and Christmas shops.

In between these activities, we've been enjoying the almost-constant Christmas tunes playing on our Dutch radio (in English, for the most part). When they decide to play a non-Christmas song, we go to Plan B and download streaming audio from KLTY in Dallas.

It's beginning to feel like Christmas, and we're anticipating the arrival of John's family in the morning. They will begin their flight here about the time we go to bed, and we'll head for the airport shortly after we wake up. We'll then celebrate Second Christmas for as long as we can keep them awake. That's right, Second Christmas is a national holiday here (kind of like Second Breakfast in the Lord of the Rings). This is one tradition we are hoping will come to the United States someday. So, we're only halfway through Christmas now. Stay tuned for more of the celebration...

A Love-Hate Relationship

As we write this blog, we realize that a "love-hate" relationship could well describe much about our life here in Amsterdam. This particular post, however, is specifically aimed toward Erin's bicycle. Living in a place where a bike can get you almost anywhere you need to go has tremendous advantages. 1. It's much better exercise to cycle around town than it is to sit in a car. 2. Since we only have one car, normally used by John during the day for work, biking is a much faster alternative to walking. 3. In a city as crowded as Amsterdam, parking a bike saves both time and money over having to park a car. Usually to park a car takes 15 minutes of driving around in circles waiting for a spot to open up and anywhere from €1-5 per hour to park the car in the spot once said spot is found. A bike, on the other hand, can be parked almost anywhere for free. We say almost anywhere since Erin has been scolded by an older man, in Dutch of course, for parking her bike (ever so briefly while she runs into the green grocer for all of 2 minutes, really just 2 minutes, to buy a squash) too close to an apartment window. Apparently near windows is one of the only places one cannot park their bike. 4. With bike bags, we can go shopping and buy a whole lot more stuff than if we were having to walk or take public transport back to our apartment. 5. So far all the maintenance we have had done on our bikes has been absolutely free.

This brings us to the reasons Erin hates her bike. 1. Though maintenance is free, it is apparently not very effective. The headlight on Erin's bike continues to work only sporadically. After a tune-up the light will seem to work properly only to refuse to operate correctly the next time Erin has to ride her bike after the sun sets (which, by the way, is now as early as 4:30 or 4:45 in the afternoon). Erin can choose to continue riding her bike once the light stops working, but there is always the risk that the police will be out and hand her a €30 ticket for no headlight. Unfortunately the headlight seems to opt for a vacation when it's raining. And speaking of rain... 2. Riding a bike when it's raining is a miserable experience made all the less pleasant by cold temperatures. There is no way to avoid getting wet while riding in the rain. Legs become soaked to the bone, rain seems to pelt directly into the eyes, and the face is absolutely dripping with water during the entire ride.

Last night Erin had the exciting experience of arriving at her bike (after waiting an hour for a client to show up who never arrived nor called to let Erin know he/she would not be coming for his/her appointment) just as it started raining. Then afte peddling a few feet Erin realized, not only was it raining, but the headlight on her bike, which slowly started flickering on, had decided to discontinueue its efforts and remain unlit altogether. Despite the threat of a ticket for having a nonfunctioning headlight, Erin decided to just keep riding in the rain so as to get home as soon as possible to change out of her soaking wet clothes. Yesterday was not Erin's best day.

Oh, another reason to hate the bicycle mode of transportation: 3. While bikes function well in the city, it is most difficult and time-consuming to go to places farther away, outside the city, by bicycle. Tomorrow night Erin has to join the choir she sings with in a city about 20 miles away at 6 p.m. Another choir member has offered Erin a ride and now it turns out that this choir member wants to leave Amsterdam at 4:30 in the afternoon to make it through the horrendous traffic to be in Almere by 6 p.m. Getting to and taking the train, followed by a bus, followed by walking to the appointed meeting destination barely takes less time.

What does Erin do during the day? Well, when it takes her an hour or more to get to some places by car or other public transport, you can bet she spends a good part of her day in transit. Oh well. No one can absolutely love everything.

Put on Your Thinking Caps

Just when we think most permits, forms, licenses and registrations have been taken care of and we're done having to deal with government bureaucracy and important documents sent to us in Dutch, we receive another e-mail explaining yet another complicated procedure we must go through. This time the instructions are for obtaining a driver's license and, fortunately, they are in English. We thought we would share with you the little game we call "Decipher what these instructions really mean and what we're supposed to do about it." Here is what we received from our relocation agent this week in response to our question about turning in our US driver's licenses for Dutch ones:

Below is the US driving license exchange procedure:
Step one:
At the Town Hall buy an Extract from the population register "Uitreksel GBA" ( costs Euro 11) and a Medical declaration "Eigen Verklaring" ( costs Euro 19). The medical declaration should be filled out, signed and sent to the CBR, the Town Hall will provide a pre-printed envelope with the address. You should bring your passport and a copy of US driving license. I can do the first step if I have a Power of attorney to obtain the extract from the population register on your behalf.

Within 10 days you will receive a letter from the CBR (bureau for driving license) returning your Extract and a grey card called "Verklaring van geschiktheid " stating you are allowed to drive in the Netherlands. Once you have that we have to go back to the Town Hall for the step 2 of the exchange with the following:
1. Residency card
2. passport
3. your ORIGINAL US driving license
4. 2 passport size photos
5. The card you get back from CBR " Verklaring van Geschiktheid"
6. copy of the letter from the Tax Office granting you 30% tax ruling
7. application form which you will receive at the Town Hall.
8. approx. Euro 52 (but I have to double check the price with the Town Hall )
It takes 4 weeks before you will have your Dutch license sent to your home address by registered mail. In the meantime you will have a letter from the Town Hall stating that your original driving license is being exchanged.Your ORIGINAL driving license will be sent to the issuing US state department, please try to find out if it is possible to request a duplicate US license prior to the exchange in your State as it depends on the State what they will do with the original US licenses sent to them. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Did you figure it out?

When we receive instructions like these we have to put our thinking caps on and usually read the instructions at least three times before we are almost sure we understand where we need to go, what we need to bring, and how much money it will cost us. In this case, for one of us to obtain a Dutch driving license it will cost approximately €82 and for some reason we must turn in a "medical declaration" in order to drive a car. Apparently Erin can still use her US driver's license since her residency card has not yet appeared (even though 3 weeks ago our HR contact at the office informed us that the Dutch letter we received meant everything went through OK and she should be receiving confirmation about when to pick up her residency card "shortly").

In the meantime, John will be the guinea pig in dutifully fulfilling all required steps and hopefully obtaining a Dutch driving license. No wonder many expats we have talked to simply forgo exchanging their US license for a Dutch one and take the chance that no one will ever ask to see their driver's license.

No Rain for Three Days!

We have survived our week apart. John's plane arrives back from California tomorrow morning.

Amazingly enough it has been sunny here in Amsterdam for the past three days! That's right, three entire days and nights with no rain. God must have known Erin needed something to boost her spirits a little bit this week, and sunshine was just the thing. For most of you, especially those of you in Texas, this is probably not a very amazing or exciting event. We have definitely come to appreciate sun more in this country where wintertime means the sun moves low across the sky and can be seen (when not obscured by clouds and rain) for only about 8 hours a day. Yeah, sun for only 8 hours a day unfortunately means John rarely sees daylight during the work week. He's hoping he got a good enough dose of sunshine while in California to last him a while.

Christmas is only 15 days away! Can you believe it? After Sinter Klaus Day last week all the stores and flower stands started putting out their Christmas trees for sale. We have always bought a real Christmas tree so we hate to not get one this year, especially since we do have family coming to visit right after Christmas, but our apartment is quite tiny. As Erin has been riding her bike around this week, she's been trying to figure out how small of a tree one can purchase. There are some pretty small ones out there so we'll have to be sure and take a picture of our "Charlie Brown" Christmas tree when we get it, hopefully next weekend.

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire

On Saturday we saw chestnuts roasting on an open fire, browsed through stall upon little stall of Christmas crafts, walked along narrow streets bedecked with Christmas lights, and enjoyed our fill of bratwurst. After a two-hour drive with relatively no traffic problems we arrived late in the morning in Düsseldorf, Germany to discover the Christmas markets there. Germany, especially, is famous for its Christmas markets. Although there are towns with more elaborate set-ups and many more tourists, Düsseldorf was the closest town in Germany suitable for a day trip…and there were a good number of tourists. We heard lots of people speaking English from the UK, the US, and Australia as well as some French, Spanish, and of course Dutch. Spending a day at the Christmas markets will really put you in the Christmas spirit! We came home all ready to buy our Christmas tree, put up decorations, and get all of our remaining Christmas shopping done.

We also visited a pink palace near Düsseldorf called Benrath Palace. We are much smarter now and did not bother to pay to go inside with a tour group as all the tours are in German. We did walk around the grounds though, which were pretty and are probably even more beautiful when the weather is warmer and there are actually leaves on the trees. We could have walked around a bit longer, but we couldn’t figure out where to park the car. The last think we needed was for our car to be towed leaving us stranded in another country the day before John had to leave the continent for a business trip! We just parked on the street in a very fancy neighborhood next to the palace that did not seem to have any signs indicating restrictions on parking. (However, experience in the Netherlands proves that just because there are no signs posting the speed limit or dictating how far away from a curb you must park does not mean it is OK to do what everyone else seems to be doing without severe consequences.) When we returned after our walk around the palace grounds our car was, fortunately, right where we left it with no tickets plastered on the windshield. The day was a success!

Just before heading out of town (which was quite a feat as we really had no map of Düsseldorf, just some Mapquest directions and at atlas with a map of Germany in it) we had to pay a visit to the Wal-Mart Supercenter! Yes, Wal-Mart is taking over the world – except in the Netherlands, where, as John points out either there are laws in place against such huge commercial enterprises or there is sufficient bureaucracy, to the point of being ridiculous, that Wal-Mart refuses to waste its time operating in this country. Apparently Wal-Mart has many stores in Germany, so we decided to stop and remember what it is like to shop in a place where you can get underwear, motor oil, and bananas under the same roof. Of course, Wal-Mart in Germany caters to the culture and needs of Europeans, so we did not find the things we would normally buy at Wal-Mart in the US. We did purchase some super glue to glue the handle back on our dishwasher. (Gotta love IKEA appliances!)

By the way, John is in California this week, our trip to Munich next weekend has been cancelled, and Erin is finally driving the car (it’s a manual transmission and Erin has never had to drive one before) with much trepidation and lots of prayer!

Sunny Spain

Last Friday, after an eventful Thanksgiving, we headed out of the country once again. Barcelona turned out to be a beautiful and interesting vacation weekend. After enduring near-freezing temperatures, constant cloudiness, and continual rain almost all last week we were looking forward to the warm weather and sunshine Spain promised. While we were blessed with three days of sunshine and cloudless skies, we didn't experience the typical warmth of Barcleona. Even the locals were complaining about the unseasonably cold weather they had last weekend! Instead of daytime temperatures in the upper 60's, it was more like low 50's, which was still considerably warmer than in Berlin, London, or Amsterdam. Overall, we were extremely pleased with the weather. It's amazing the difference being in the sun for a few days makes!

John did not exactly print out the hotel itinerary for our weekend, but he remembered the name of the hotel. When the taxi picked us up Friday evening (after being delayed, delayed, and delayed some more because of the fog in Amsterdam), John found the hotel name in our travel guide and showed the address to our driver. Since our flight was late, we got to Barcelona just in time for rush hour. After spending 45 minutes in the taxi, our driver dropped us at our apparent destination. However, it seems the driver decided to let us off at a side door of the hotel. After wandering around aimlessly for 15 minutes, we finally found the front lobby and reception desk. By this time, Erin was so tired of traveling, she just wanted to get to the room to take a shower a little nap before dinner at 9. To our dismay, the hotel we arrived at did not have reservations for us. Hmmm. Apparently there are three different hotels in Barcelona owned by this hotel chain. Who knew? The hotel was kind enough to call the other hotels to help us figure out to which one we really belonged and then hailed a cab for us. (The doorman took forever to hail a cab, so Erin had a good long cry wondering if we would ever reach our destination after traveling far too long that day.) This taxi ride was only about 5 minutes, and ended happily. To our surprise the hotel we were staying in was nicer than any hotel we have ever stayed in, or probably ever will stay in again.

We both had to try out the super fancy shower in our hotel room and got to rest a little before meeting some other people for dinner at 9. We ate with a group both Friday and Saturday nights at extremely nice restaraunts, though we are not completely sure we would choose to eat octopus or duck liver if we had our choice. It is indeed true that the Spanish people eat pretty late and enjoy their meals over a long time period. Our reservations at 9 were about an hour early than most people start eating, but we're glad we started at 9 since meals both nights lasted about 4 hours! Besides the octopus and foie gras, the food was really excellent!

Saturday we took a van tour with the group we were in Barcelona with. During a few hours we saw everything on our list to see in Barcelona and learned all the history and interesting facts there are to know about those sights. It turned out to be a good thing we saw so much on Saturday because after dinner Saturday night John started a fit of throwing up everything he'd eaten in the past two days, which was to last all night Saturday and through the day Sunday. We don't know quite what the food poisoning was from, but we're guessing the shellfish salads that we ate as appetizers on Saturday evening. Needless to say, neither of us got much sleep Saturday night. Erin was feeling fine, just tired, when she woke up Sunday, so she went downstairs to eat breakfast and returned to take another nap. Sunday afternoon Erin wanted to take a walk to the big park nearby the hotel and also go out onto the beach. John insisted he felt better and went along too. He only got sick once, in the Parc de la Ciutadella, which Erin will now always remember as the park where John threw up in the bushes. Fortunately after sitting with Erin at dinner that evening John felt completely better. We say fortunate because Erin started feeling pains in her stomach after dinner Sunday. She never lost any of her food, but she sure didn't sleep well Sunday night.

Ah yes, Saturday afternoon. This was the afternoon at the spa. We do not know how to "spa." Erin has had massages before, but never full spa treatment. It turns out the package Erin got at the spa included time in the steam/sauna/ice fountain/jacuzzi room, a massage, a manicure, and a facial. This was too many hours of sitting for Erin so she cut out the facial at the end. When the woman left her in the changing room she was not quite sure what to do. She had not brought a bathing suit with her since it is obviously not swimming weather right now. So, wearing the cotton bathrobe provided, she stood around in the sauna/steam/ice fountain/jacuzzi room wondering what to do. The sauna and steam room were just too hot to stay in. She still has no idea what to do with an ice fountain. Yikes! Fortunately soon after the masseuse came in to get her for her massage. Even John got a manicure and massage! While Erin enjoyed her manicure lying down, eyes covered, with a hand and arm massage, John had his manicure while getting his hair cut. John also enjoyed his very first massage. It was a unique experience, but we are definitely not "spa" people.

In summary, Barcelona is absolutely beautiful and sunny. In fact, Spain is so beautiful we would really love to travel back there sometime, hopefully without any illness to disturb our vacation. Our trip was stressful, fun, relaxing, and miserable all rolled up into three days. It is good to be home. If you go to Barcelona watch out for the shellfish.