More Shootings

Yeah, so there has been more gangland activity around our neighborhood lately. We think we're up to 5 now--a politician was shot Tuesday night by some dude on a bike. But, there is another incident that is getting quite a bit of press lately-- a poor little sparrow that knocked over a whole lot of dominoes. More than 100 people from 12 countries have been working for over a month to set up 4 million dominoes in an attempt to set a world record, and they weren't about to let this little bird get in the way. We have a feeling we haven't seen the end of this. A DJ and some Dutch website have offered rewards to anybody who knocks over the dominoes before Friday, and there have been death threats against the guy who shot the bird.

Aankondiging van beschikking

Loosely translated, this phrase means "aha! We caught you parking in the wrong spot! We're going to fine you 45 euros!" John walked out to his car in the rain this morning to find this yellow notice under the windshield wiper of his car. A secretary in the office helped translate the rest of the notice and found out that although he parked in the "parkway" area in the outside of the apartment, he must have been too close to the corner. Either that, or he crossed some invisible line between valid parking spaces and sidewalk. She thought this was unfair and called the Regiopolitie to explain the matter. Apparently we can choose between paying the fine or filing a dispute in writing (in Dutch).

Real Life

Amsterdam is becoming less like a vacation, or a bad dream depending on which day you're talking about, and more like real life. We live here. We know people here now. We have everyday activities to do here. We both have people who now expect us to be here doing certain things. Evening activities like watching movies, having dinner with friends, going to meetings at church, attending a small group and working out at the gym are now all parts of a relatively normal schedule. John is becoming accustomed to his job and the different people he works with. Erin is counseling again and may have a part-time job as head of the counseling ministry at church in just a few months.

We haven't written in several days because, well, sometimes life is boring. Boring is welcome here sometimes.

We can promise that "boring" will not always define life, so please stay tuned for more adventures. After all, we do live in Europe. We do have several trips coming up to other countries. And we've never really known life to be boring for very long.

Ijmuiden

This morning we awoke bright and early to drive out to the North Sea. Ijmuiden is a coastal town only about 20 miles away from our apartment, so we decided it would be fun, if cold and windy, to drive out early enough to see the sunrise and eat some breakfast. Just as we suspected, it was cold and windy, but the sunrise was gorgeous. By the way, Ijmuiden is practically impossible to pronounce correctly unless you are fluent in Dutch. We have asked several people to teach up how to pronounce the "ij" and "ui" sounds in this word correctly and have failed miserably.

Since it is November, we were two of only four people on the beach when we arrived. Even after walking along the shore for about an hour only four or five other people had joined us. We were, however, accompanied by 2,000 seagulls who stayed at a comfortable distance since we had no food with us on the beach. It was so beautiful to start the day outside by the water, hearing the ocean. We found a few lighthouses and watched several large boats come into dock. It would have been nice to eat out on the beach, but we decided it was much nicer on such a cold morning to eat the picnic we had packed inside the car with the heater on!

The only thing we might regret about this morning is waking up so early when we're still awake at midnight or 1 tomorrow morning visiting the city's museums, which are open from 7 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. tonight for a special event called N8. We think it might be a good idea to take a little nap right now!

Filing Cabinets and Sausage

There is a shortage of filing cabinets, both in our apartment and in the Netherlands.

Our shipment arrived sans filing cabinet and we desperately need one! We have been to nearly every furniture store we can think of, or that has been recommended to us, with no success. We attempted to visit a huge office-supply store, but apparently one has to obtain a special card from the Chamber of Commerce to even enter this store, let alone buy anything. We have found one-drawer filing cabinets that usually also come with another regular drawer for the insane price of around €200-€250! Apparently the Dutch do not prefer hanging files. We are now seriously considering converting all our files to what is obviously the Dutch method of paper organization: hole-punch every single piece of paper and store everything in giant three-ring binders on a shelf.

There is, however, an overabundance of sausage...in the Netherlands, not in our apartment.

The grocery stores, however small they may be, devote entire aisles to sausage. Erin is not quite sure how to decipher the labels or how many different kinds of sausage there could really be. She's sure there must be Italian sausage here somewhere; we just haven't found it yet among all the other piles of sausage. Even after buying some, she is still not entirely sure what kind it is.

Out of Favor with the Lunch Lady

In the U.S., John usually went out to a restaurant with the audit team every day for lunch. In the Netherlands, the custom is to go to the first floor of whatever office building he happens to be in and dine at the company cafeteria. He has come to expect quite a variety of quality in the food, depending on the cafeteria, and also depending on the day. There are always a few constants--plenty of bread, cheese, and lunch meats. Milk is always an option, and the cafeterias will usually have two choices of soup. Even the smallest cafeterias will offer kroket--a fried, roll-type snack containing a mixture of an unknown meat and gravy. It's actually quite good. It is fried, after all. Herring is something he hasn't tried yet, but it comes highly recommended by his Dutch colleagues. This is a Dutch delicacy and is eaten raw, sometimes with onions. You pick the fish up by the tail, let it slide gradually into your mouth, and swallow it whole. Wow. The one thing to always remember about the cafeteria, no matter which country you're in, is this: don't ever, ever mess with the lunch lady.

Today John was eating at the cafeteria of his current client, which is usually quite good. Today was no exception--they were offering something that resembled Hamburger Helper. When going through the hot line at this particular cafeteria, all you have to say is "small," "medium," or "large." There is a 30-35 cent difference in price between each size, and the medium and large meals come on a larger plate with a blue rim. This is where it starts getting confusing for the cashiers. Since the medium and large meals come on identical plates, they have to be specially trained to notice the difference between the four spoonfuls of Hamburger Helper you get with a medium meal and the five spoonfuls that come with a large.

Last week one of John's colleagues ordered a medium plate, and another ordered a large. They happened to be comparing receipts during the meal and noticed that both were charged for a medium. One of them (Carl) remembered this today and decided to opt for a large plate. As John ordered his large plate, he explained the pricing discrepancy to Brooke in what he thought was a quiet voice. After the lunch lady served up five heaping spoonfuls of Hamburger Helper, she starting running off at the mouth in Dutch. He replied with his usual response--"I'm sorry?" and she proceeded to say some other things in Dutch. His Dutch friends, and all of the other Dutch people in the vicinity, immediately understood that she was saying, "You should tell the cashier that you have a large plate." Apparently he wasn't talking as quietly as he thought.

Needless to say, John paid the full price for the large while Carl again got away with paying the medium price. But that's not the worst part. Now every time he goes through the line, John has to face the lunch lady and wonder how or when she will choose to retaliate.

Goings-on in the Hood

So today when John arrived at work his colleagues had some news for him about some happenings in our neighborhood last night. This was unusual, because John is usually the one that entertains his co-workers with bizarre apartment stories. They decided to fill him in on this one because they know that we don't have access to most of the local news, which is broadcast in Dutch.

Apparently yesterday evening around 6:00 there was a shooting less than a mile from our apartment involving a gunman with an automatic weapon of some sort firing at a lawyer who used to represent "underworld" criminals including "criminal godfather" Sam Klepper. We don't know who any of these people are, but it sounds like these guys weren't messing around. As far as we know we don't have any ties to the criminal underworld in Amsterdam, so we think we're safe.
Here is the full story we found on an expat website.