An Irish Holiday

Earlier this week Erin took a holiday with a couple other Ernst & Young expat wives to Dublin. Since it is now busy season for accountants, the three of them decided it would be a perfect time to go out of town since they wouldn't be seeing their husbands much anyway! Dublin was the chosen city mostly because it's not too far away, discount airlines fly there from the Netherlands, and plane tickets were cheap. The trip started with everyone meeting in Rotterdam, where one of the wives and her husband lives and where the flight was scheduled to depart on Monday. We ate dinner with a group of expats Sunday night in Rotterdam at a restaurant over-looking the water. Imagine that: a water-side view in Holland! We sometimes take for granted all the water we get to see around here. It is really pretty.

The trip started at the Rotterdam airport late Monday morning. This was everyone's first experience with the Rotterdam airport, which, by the way, is tiny. Unlike flying out of Amsterdam, there is absolutely no need to be there 2 hours before your flight. When the three wives arrived, about 1 1/2 hours before departure, they were the only people in the airport, checked in within 5 minutes, then sat around for what seemed like forever! Erin has to admit she did absolutely none of the planning for this trip; airline tickets, hotel room, travel guide, transport to and from airports, and the schedule were all taken care of by the other two wives. So the long wait in the airport gave Erin time to at least read a little bit about Dublin in the travel guide. The incoming plane arrived in Dublin around 1:30 Monday, and the outgoing plane departed Dublin on Wednesday afternoon.

The hotel room in Dublin was much larger than expected, complete with three twin-size beds! If the heater had only worked at night the hotel would have been perfect. As it was, Erin is used to sleeping without the heater on at night and a down comforter is plenty to keep her warm. The short time we were in Dublin, about two days altogether, was quite enough time to see all the important tourist attractions in the city. Erin got to see the Book of Kells, the oldest manuscript of the four gospels that has been found. She also saw Christ Church Cathedral, St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin Castle, Dublin Port, the River Liffey, a live Celtic band one night at a pub, several parks, and Dublinia - an exhibit featuring the history of Dublin City with sights, sounds, and smells of the different time periods. The problem with traveling in Europe, especially in the winter when tourism is not at it's peak and the sun goes down early, is that most things close by 5, so the only options left for the evening are eating and drinking. This is quite OK with Erin, but there are only so many hours of eating and drinking night after night that one can handle. After having your dinner with at least three different kinds of potatoes there's little room for continued eating after that! One night the evening was well-spent at the movie theater across from the hotel. Erin can now say she has seen a movie, Just Like Heaven to be exact, in Dublin, Ireland.

Though it was cold and cloudy the entire time Erin was in Dublin, it never rained on her and in this part of Europe one can count that as a blessing! The Irish people are so friendly, and one of the greatest joys for Erin was traveling in a country where everyone speaks English (although sometimes it takes a great deal of concentration to make out what an Irish person is saying)!

All in all it was a nice trip. We're glad to be back together once again and enjoyed our day today traveling together - by way of bike to the Maritime Museum in the Centrum - not quite as far as Ireland but fun, and free thanks to our Museumkart.

Resident Status

Erin received a letter just after Christmas from a Dutch government office. She finally decided to decipher the letter this week using Babel Fish. To our surprise we discovered the letter meant Erin's residence card had been approved...finally! After a 30 minute bike ride in the cold and a 20 minute wait, Erin is now officially a Dutch resident. We have now both successfully gone through all the hoops and both have residence cards!

As if life isn't already complicated enough, we are now "residents" in two different countries at the same time. This, of course, is not physically possible, but apparently it is possible on paper as far as the governments are concerned. We still own a house in Texas and just this morning we were filling out forms to get our duplicate driver's licenses from the state of Texas and had to fill in our "residence" address in Texas. (Yes, after many weeks of procrastination we decided to go ahead with the complicated process of attempting to get a driving license in the Netherlands. Since the Netherlands government confiscates and destroys our U.S. driver's license, it is best for us to order a duplicate copy now so we will still have a U.S. driver's license upon our return to the States.) In case you don't understand any of this, don't feel too stupid. We don't really understand it either. On top of being residents in two countries, we also have a third address, our mailing address, at a PO Box in New Jersey. We have bank accounts in dollars and euros, credit cards based in the U.S. and in Europe and entire chaotic files of originals and copies of pieces of important documents that usually takes about 20 minutes to look through everytime we need something.

(As a side note, while digging through the aforementioned chaotic file of important documents this morning, Erin discovered an information sheet, in English, describing the process of getting a "highly skilled worker" sticker in your passport and obtaining a residence card. She soon realized, however, this information would have been of no use when she read that "after obtaining the sticker in your passport, your residence permit application will be reviewed and should be approved within two weeks." Two weeks? Ha! It took John two months to get his residence card - four and a half months for Erin. This information sheet is obviously fictional in nature.)

If you are now confused as to how on earth to contact us best, stick with e-mail. E-mail is universal, free, and can be accessed on any computer anywhere.

Several times this week Erin has had conversations with Dutch people who tell her that living abroad seems like it must be exciting. She responds that "exciting" is the perfect word. According to several different dictionaries, excitement can be "an emotional state characterized by its potential for impulsive or poorly controlled activity," "the state of being emotionally aroused and worked up," "something that agitates," "lively and cheerful joy," or "a disturbance usually in protest." All quite accurate.

Family, Fun, and Fireworks

John's parents and sister arrived at the airport late Monday morning; that's 2nd Christmas Day in Amsterdam. The weather appeared to be very pleasant when we got to the apartment so we all went over to Amstel Park in Amsterdam to walk around and see the famous chickens and roosters that reside in the park. Halfway through the park the weather changed drastically. It suddenly got very windy and much colder. Then it started to rain. We did get to see a beautiful rainbow, but then decided to head back to the car since everyone was soaking and freezing. John gave everyone a driving tour of the city, though we're not sure how much his family saw as they were nodding off to sleep every once in a while. By the time we arrived back home the rain had ceased and John's dad thought it would be nice to go have coffee somewhere. John's sister declined the offer in favor of a shower, so the four of us started off in search of coffee. It would have been nice to get coffee somewhere, however, it was 2nd Christmas Day. We found that everything was closed. Soooo, we ended up heading back to the apartment to enjoy some coffee at the Cafe Rogers.

After dinner we opened Christmas presents, the most memorable of which was probably the Mr. Rogers book (Mr. Rogers as in the "Land of Make-believe" and cardigan sweaters) John's mom bought for him. Earlier in the day she had removed a gift from under the tree after perusing our bookshelf. It came out that she had apparently bought a Mr. Rogers book for John that she gave him last Christmas! Everyone had a good laugh, but then we were opening gifts that night and John opened the second Mr. Rogers book in the series. We all decided his mom really wanted him to have the Mr. Rogers books and that next year he just might get the same books again since she is so intent on this gift!

We all visited Madurodam near Den Haag while the Rogers were in town. It is an outdoor park displaying all the famous landmarks and buildings around the Netherlands built on 1/25 miniature scale with amazing detail. John sacrificed 20 cents to make one of the displays, a fair, start moving so that the rides spun, people walked around, and the roller coaster came to life. As we watched a large crowd gather around and saw all the kids' faces light up John decided it was the best 20 cents spent that day! The Rogers experienced their first full day outdoors in the really cold winter temperatures and wind. If only we had known it was to get so much colder the next day when we arrived in Paris...

Thankfully a coworker of John's lent us her minivan to use for our trip to Paris since she was visiting family in the U.S. There is no way all 5 of us and our baggage would have fit in our tiny car! No way! Although the back seat was still a bit cramped in the minivan, the trip was much more enjoyable. We left Wednesday morning and went straight into Paris. After fighting traffic and driving around for what seemed like hours, we finally found a parking garage and headed off to see Notre Dame before going to our hotel. Now, we stayed in the same hotel this time as we did the last time we were in Paris: the one it took us 3 hours to find last time, involving a lot of driving around in the middle of nowhere in the pitch dark and trying to get directions from a convenience store cashier who only spoke French. We were confident we would find it much quicker this time around. We were wrong.

Erin printed out directions to the hotel from Paris, but after looking at the map she thought the directions might be leading us in the wrong direction. However, some of the roads mentioned in the directions were not visible on the map, so she figured those roads might be leading us in the right direction. How wrong she was! After driving for an hour we were reaching the end of the directions with absolutely nothing in sight. We were basically driving along a country road in the middle of farmland in the dark. Sooooo, we turned back around and, sure enough, Erin found the city on the map that a road-side sign claimed we were near. We were going in the opposite direction we should have been driving. This time at least we knew the hotel was right next to Disneyland and Disneyland advertises everywhere, you know. We found Disneyland on our map, made our way back in that direction, then just followed all the signs with Mickey Mouse and Cinderella's Castle on them until we got close enough to recognize where we were.

We finally pulled up the icy driveway to the hotel (this time closer to 8 p.m. than to 2 a.m.) and parked the minivan outside the lobby. We all piled out to stretch our legs while John checked in. After so much time in the car we were all ready to get to the townhouse. We all piled back in the car to drive around the corner to our townhouse. John turned the key to start the ignition and....nothing happened. Again and again he attempted to start the minivan which had made it all the way from Amsterdam to Paris, south of Paris to the middle of nowhere, and back to our hotel all in one day. Finally John decided the battery must be dead. We weren't really supposed to be parked where we were, right in front of the lobby, so John had to figure out how to get E&Y's service company to get someone out there that night to tow the car. The lady at the front desk was nice enough to cart our baggage to our townhouse in a golf cart. After calling the service company and waiting for a couple hours, someone finally showed up to take a look at the minivan. John returned to the hotel room around 11:30 and reported that a service man had come who only spoke French and he had finally towed the minivan away to a garage somewhere...John wasn't sure where. After a lot of sign language and some translation help from the front desk staff of the hotel, John figured they had to tow the car to look at it in the morning and that the weather was making the roads icy. (We're not sure what icy roads had to do with a dead battery.) Luckily we had a free shuttle from the hotel to the train station and could get pretty much anywhere we needed to go in Paris by public transportation.

Since John's sister had never been to Paris, or Europe for that matter, we did all the necessary first-time tourist attractions: the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, the Louvre, Champs Elysees, and the Arc de Triomphe. Each day seemed colder and more miserable than the last. After standing in line for the Eiffel Tower for an hour and a half none of us could feel our feet. We think Friday was the worst as it was raining rather than snowing (actually it was sleeting at Sacre Coeur and we saw more than one poor person slip on the steps up to the church) and the temperatures must have warmed up just enough to make the ice and snow into slush everywhere. However, the cold and snow were offset by the fact that we were in Paris! It was very fun. And we did finally get the minivan back in time to return to Amsterdam on New Year's Eve. John did a lot of calling the service company trying to figure out exactly when the battery was really fixed and exactly how he was supposed to get to a place in a foreign country that he had never heard of to pick up the vehicle. It turned out that the hotel shuttle took him to the garage and then John followed the shuttle back to the hotel, so he avoided getting lost yet again! The van worked all the way back to Amsterdam...and is still working as far as we know.

New Year's Eve in Amsterdam is a sight to behold! There weren't any big firework shows, but everyone in the city sets off as many fireworks as they can between midnight and 1 (legally), 2 or 3 in reality. We opted to stay in our part of town since we knew the Centrum would be wall to wall people setting off fireworks in your face, much like a war zone. We can't imagine how much people spend on fireworks here. There was a regular show going on near our street. We even looked out once to see a tree (right next to our car, by the way) go up in flames after someone set off a huge firework underneath a branch overhanging the street. It was quite a sight, but fortunately everything was damp enough that the fire soon put itself out. The aftermath pictures on the flickr site give a good illustration of what the evening was like!

The remainder of the Rogers visit was spent exploring Amsterdam: the Anne Frank Huis, the Van Gogh Museum, the Zaanse Schans typical Dutch village. The Rogers even went with Erin to the grocery store to experience shopping in the Netherlands. Much cheese and many wooden shoes were purchased and everyone declared the trip a success. There was just enough excitement to keep things interesting. After all, we did promise that a visit with us was sure to be anything buy uneventful!

Happy 2006! May your year be blessed with fun, joy, and excitement - though maybe not quite as much "excitement" as we've been experiencing!

Visitors Welcome!

We're still here for those of you who have continued to faithfully check our site the last several weeks with no sign of a new blog. We enjoyed a very different Christmas this year consisting of Erin singing in the church choir at both services Christmas Eve and again at both services Christmas morning followed by a nice Christmas dinner of hamburgers cooked on the George Foreman look-alike grill. We didn't end up opening Christmas gifts until around 8 p.m. Christmas evening but we enjoyed our unelaborate celebration very much! It proved much easier to focus on the real meaning of Christmas without all the parties, dinners, and shopping.

One reason we have not written is that the day after Christmas John's parents and sister came to visit us and only just left this past Wednesday. After this first experience of entertaining three people in our small apartment for an extended period of time we now know it can be done successfully, so visitors are welcome - as long as you call us first!

We had a great time with John's family, and John really enjoyed having so much time off work. We think being far away from family is helping us to appreciate them all the more. Erin is finally getting used to "regular" life again after the let down of not having people who speak English around all the time anymore and John being back at work (it's busy season now, to boot).

Just in case you are beginning to think John's family had an uneventful holiday in Europe, let us put your mind at ease. The trip was full of getting lost, trees catching on fire, broken down cars in France, and arctic temperatures in Paris. It was great and we'll be sure to write all about it. So stay tuned.

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.