Good Tidings

I like to think that John and I aren't hot dog people.  

Living in the Netherlands, where objects resembling hot dogs are sold in cans (!), has revealed the cold hard truth: we are, in fact, hot dog people.  

To be clear: I don't mean the kind of people who understand and appreciate the differences between frankfurters, bratwurst, knackwurst, and kielbasa.  

We're more the kind of hot dog people who want to have a reliable supply of Hebrew National All-beef Franks in the freezer and available for lunch emergencies.  At all times. 

I suspect that John has complained to his friends at work about the appalling dearth of quality hot dog options in the Netherlands.

You know, once or twice.  

Even so, we were not even remotely prepared for the small package that we received from one of said friends and tucked under our 3-foot tree until Christmas morning.  

(A 3-foot tree, incidentally, which may be the tackiest object ever made from green plastic, purchased at Walgreens for $8 on Black Friday, and brought to life with a $65 voltage transformer.) 

It's difficult to overstate the excitement and happiness with which John unwrapped the gift and discovered its message of great joy: 

An enormous, sparkly hot dog ornament.  

Solo in Oslo

Every once in a while, I like to spin the roulette wheel of airfare pricing and pick a more-or-less random destination purely because I can get there on the cheap.

Oslo was a pretty easy choice.

I've been to Sweden twice in the last two years, and I've really loved its quirky socialism-meets-Muppets-meets-old-Volvos-meets-cutting-edge-design aesthetic.  

(Um, just in case you missed it?  That was your cue to act surprised.) 

I was fairly confident that Norway would feel equally quirky, plus even more remote and even more socialist.    

I will admit that I was somewhat slow in comprehending the relationship between the price of plane tickets to Norway and the hours of daylight one can experience there in November.  

In planning my weekend on the cheap, I also failed to account for Oslo's status as one of the most expensive cities in Europe.  

As it turns out, Oslo is one of the most expensive cities in Europe!  

But aside from shelling out a breathtaking 440 Kroner for a one-way streetcar ticket — the equivalent of $7.50 or €6.50 — TWICE, I managed to be a pretty cheap date...  

...for myself.  

I was on my own for the weekend, as John is currently participating in his semi-annual Malbecapalooza — er, I mean important physics-experiment-building trip! — on the pampas of Argentina.  

I'm sure that long-term solo travel would get lonely, but I think it's fun to kick around a city by myself every once in a while.  

When I'm alone, I feel like I'm of the right age and clad in sufficiently androgynous clothing to go more or less unnoticed.  

I'm not young enough or old enough, or rich-looking enough or poor-looking enough, to attract attention for any of those qualities.  

(Also, this may cross the line into abject vanity, but I like to think that I don't fit the profile of clueless tourist.  I don't wear jewelry; I don't consult maps in public unless absolutely, desperately necessary; I am vehemently anti-rolly bag; and, I don't believe in cameras that aren't small enough to stuff in one's pocket.  Don't even get me started on fanny packs.)

If you are my female friends who wish that I would at least make an effort — or my Dutch coworkers, who say things like, "Autumn, you're a whole different woman!" when I wear a skirt to work — you might find all of this to be sort of depressing. 

But the reality is: I really like being able to wander freely and somewhat invisibly through the streets.  

I'm happy to report that my weekend in Oslo was a glorious, free-range, schedule-free, one-pair-of-jeans, one-pair-of-hiking-boots kind of an affair.  

My first love of Oslo was the main harbor, where the city opens up to the edge of the fjord.


Especially in the dusky November light, the fjord has a still, moody quality that made it hard to leave the water's edge.


Having an occasional Volvo 240 in the mix didn't hurt, either.

My second love was the Oslo Opera House, a stunning construction of white marble and granite that looks like an iceberg emerging from the water.

My third love was the funky neighborhood of Grünerløkka, which had lots of interesting little shops and second-hand markets.

I am now the proud owner of a 1960s-era metal pencil case from the Oslo Pencil Factory,  the inside of which — rather self-servingly, I feel — advises consumers to keep pencils protected from "moisture and uneven temperatures."  

(Which frankly begs the question: what kind of pansy-assed pencils were they making in Norway in the 1960s?!) 

Grünerløkka is also home to The Nighthawk Diner, which is by far the most beautiful American-style diner I have ever visited.  

I kept telling myself that I should try a Norwegian restaurant while I was in Oslo, and yet my boots just kept on walking, right on into the Nighthawk.

It was simply stunning, with gleaming formica tables and vinyl booths and restored Wurlitzers and and intricate tile work and shiny metalwork and a whole array of glass cabinets to display white-lettered menus on their lined black background.  

It was a little bit like walking into a dream, where waitresses with 1950s-style green dresses (you know the kind: with short sleeves and scalloped while collars) also wore crazy, Norwegian-style flowered leggings.  

I'm not sure which I liked more: luxuriating in so much old-school diner porn, or the fact that I could smother my scrambled eggs in ketchup that was already on the table.  

It was only after I got back to the Netherlands that I realized the alarming and unintended turn that my Oslo trip had taken.  

After lunch, I reluctantly said goodbye to the lunch counter and made my way back to the train station to take the extraordinarily luxurious and bracingly expensive express service to the airport. 

I had a little bit of Norwegian kroner left over, and I was pleased — delighted, actually — to find that the bookstore in the train station had both a 3-for-2 sale and a large, if eclectic, selection of English-language books.  

I stretched out my book shopping as long as I possibly could, but in the end, came home to the Netherlands with three novels: 

- A new printing of The Catcher in the Rye, which I had not read since high school and had been thinking about recently when trying to explain to my language buddy what a coming-of-age novel is.  

- Let The Great World Spin, by Colum McCann, which won the (U.S.) National Book Award in 2009 and is a gorgeous, heartbreaking story of intersecting lives in New York. (It also happens to be one of the best books I've read in the last decade!)

- Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, a story about (surprise!) a dysfunctional American family, set first in suburban Minneapolis and later New York. 

Which I inhaled, in that order, during my first 48 hours upon returning from Norway. 

The thing is, I never feel like I'm homesick.  

When people ask me if I miss the U.S., I usually shrug and think briefly about proper, functioning plastic wrap, and then say, no, not really.  

And yet: there I was in Norway, eating at a diner that had clearly been collected in parts in the U.S., then shipped across the ocean and lovingly reconstructed into something even more beautiful than the original.  

Followed by a shopping spree resulting in what might be the three most American novels one can find in any given bookstore at any given point in time.  

Not the three best American novels, but the three most American American novels.  

I mean, come on: The Catcher in the Rye?!

(For the record:

I did not attend the "Scandinavian Eagles Tribute" concert on the Saturday night I was in Oslo, but it's only because, in the words of my favorite slacker, I hate the fuckin' Eagles, man.) 

Somehow, without me even knowing it, my Oslo trip morphed into a strange, back-door, late-night pilgrimage to American culture.  

I feel a little bit like I should apologize: 

I'm really sorry I used you, Norway.

I didn't realize I was doing it at the time!

Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails

As much as I appreciate the existence of majestic churches, ornate temples, imposing parliament buildings, and other worthy bastions of modern civilization, my dream vacation is less Sistine Chapel and more tramping around in the weeds looking for lizards.  

By those standards, our recent visit to the island of Gozo, the smaller of Malta's two main islands, was pretty much the perfect week.  

Even the weather suited our plans: on our first day, it rained enough to coax at least half of the island's three million snails out of hiding. 

Later on, the sun came out in full force, which was more suitable for lizards and their brethren — and as an added bonus, kept the brisk waters of the Mediterranean from turning John and me into popsicles.  

I am fully aware, incidentally, that this whole vacation tableau makes us sound like 7-year-old boys.  

Inasmuch as two 7-year-old boys would tolerate a lovely, romantic, snail-filled Mediterranean holiday together.  

Despite the noise I've been making about my would-be guides to the Lesser Cities of Europe and Lesser Soft Drinks of the World, I don't often feel inspired to write actual travel advice.  

(Travel is such a personal thing, and I'm not sure I'm the best person to advise people who prefer spotless rooms over quirky 1970s decor.) 

But should you ever find yourself on Gozo — and can tear yourself away from its 22 churches, assorted neolithic temples, and single terrifying highway discotheque — I humbly submit the following list of tiny pleasures to be derived from this tiny pleasure of an island.  

(Most of which are only for loving, not for eating.)

1. Carpenter Bees

These hairy black bees hover on the "alarmingly large" end of the tiny spectrum — and the only reliable way to find them is to sit in a sunny garden with a cup of tea and wait for the sound of one shoehorning her way into an unsuspecting iris.  

I'm proud to say that we were prepared to go that extra mile.

2. Maltese Wall Snails

The only problem with being on an island covered in snails is that it's not possible to take photos of all of them.  

Please believe me when I say that we tried. 

3. Maltese Wall Lizards

One of the painful things about loving snails so much is that when it rains and the snails come out in force, one's hiking boots can becomes weapons of mass destruction.  

Even if one has a very high level of snaildar.  

With lizards, we had the opposite problem.  

Even in the height of the afternoon, when all lizards should be fulfilling their destiny by being sluggish and photographically cooperative while lazing around in the sun.  

We saw a lot of lizard-shaped blurs during our week on Gozo.  

Before we found this relatively relaxed little cutie, the lizard hunt was a little frustrating for those of us who like to get nose-to-nose with the subject at hand.  

For those of us who only like looking for critters and have no patience whatsoever for the precision of macro photography, it wasn't a big deal at all.

4. Maltese sausage  

We're not really sure what's in this, and really, it's probably better not to think about it.  

But it was unlike any other sausage we've ever eaten, and like most all preserved pork products, it was absolutely delicious.  

5. Black beetles

To my mind, black beetles are pretty much everything one could ask for in an insect.  

They're shiny and beautiful, plus they're outrageously round and crawly.  

We're not sure what kind of beetle-y mission this little guy was on, but it was pretty clear that he didn't have a lot of extra time for John's beetle photography.  

6. Qaghaq ta’ l-Ghasel

Gesundheit!  

Known in English as "honey rings", these might be the largest tiny pleasure on my list.  

It was getting to be snack time in the capital city of Victoria (population: 6,000), and so we bought a pair at a little grocery store without knowing exactly what they were.  

Further fieldwork revealed that honey rings are a) a magical and topologically interesting construction of pastry and spiced treacle paste, and b) a screamingly sweet dessert for which coffee accompaniment is a physiological requirement.   

We, as innocent tourists, sat on a park bench and ate about half of each honey roll — minus any such beverage — before lapsing into sugar comas.   
It's kind of miracle that I'm even alive to write this today.  

7. Bats

Gozo may be a tiny island, but its 25 square miles are dense with caves and old stone buildings and crumbling forts and belfries.  

In short: bat heaven!  

One night, after we had tried all four restaurants in the village where we were staying, we walked down to Gozo's main harbor for dinner.  

In the process, we discovered a shortcut — aka, a rotting staircase that took us into labyrinthine, overgrown, unfinished municipal garden between the main road and the marina.  

At dusk, the whole thing was — what's the word I'm looking for here...? — oh right: terrifying.  

Absolutely terrifying.   

But, after confirming that there weren't any dead bodies in the undergrowth, we discovered that the park was nothing short of a bat spectacle, with tiny, bat-shaped cuties circling and swooping and swarming just over our heads.  

As a side note, everyone's favorite Peanut Cheese photographer was mildly put out — perhaps rightly so — when I suggested that catching this bat in flight (and in focus) was luck and not necessarily photographic mastery.  

8. Olive

We knew that chameleons held a prominent place on the Maltese reptile list, but the end of our vacation was nearing, and we were starting to feel less than optimistic about finding one in the wild.  

Gozitan herpetologists were even more elusive, so we screwed up our courage to ask the charming, mildly eccentric Swedish woman who runs the bed and breakfast where we stayed if she had any tips for our chameleon quest.  

Much to our surprise, her eyes lit up and she reported that they had seen one in the garden just the other day.  

We confirmed that she didn't mind us skulking around all in of the nooks and crannies of their property, and she warned us that they were really hard to find.  

Really hard to find. 

Then we got to work.  

While John alternated between snail photos and lizard blurs, I spent about an hour examining the garden walls, the palm tress, the cacti, the rubble, the lawn chairs.    

I had nearly given up when I spotted a medium-sized olive tree next to the gazebo.  

I had my head stuck in the tree, and had been trying to think like a chameleon for a good five minutes when, out of nowhere, all of a sudden, one of the branches moved!  

And lo and behold: there was our chameleon, about 8 inches from my nose. 

I'm sorry to report that said chameleon — whom we named Olive after finding her each day in a different part of a different olive tree — was far less interested in us than we were in her.  

But in some cases, unrequited love is better than no love at all. 

Groeten Uit Malta

Greetings from the tiny island country of Malta! 

Goals for our week-long vacation include:

- Photographing the island's considerable snail population
- Looking for elusive chameleons
- Diving in the not-really-that-balmy sea

Tune in next week, when we'll be back to our regularly scheduled program of complaining about the Netherlands! 

Quintessentialism

I've been traveling for work over the last six days, the last 48 hours of which have been spent under the scrim of a medicated-but-still-throbbing head cold. 

I really don't understand why I'm sick. 

I mean, it's not like I went sailing in a weekend-long rainstorm, stayed up until 12:30 on Sunday night baking cupcakes, kissed half of my coworkers on the cheek on Monday while serving said cupcakes, celebrated into the wee hours of that night with a fortifying mix of Kahlua, Stolichnaya and milk, and then flew to Washington DC for a lot of jetlag and three long days of meetings. 

What could possibly be unhealthy about that?! 

When I say we went sailing in a weekend-long rainstorm, I'm only exaggerating a little bit. 

It's hard to tell from the photos that we are completely soaked, but trust me: after eight hours in the driving rain, our waterproof clothing was anything but. 

It was at this point that our sailing teacher took pity on us and fed us tea and stroopwafels, a classic Dutch dessert made up of two thin, buttery waffle-like wafers held together with a sticky, caramel-like filling. 

Stroopwafels are certainly the country's culinary highlight.  

Some people might even argue that they're the Netherlands' greatest contribution to humanity.   

Either way, it felt like a quintessential Dutch experience to shiver from dampness while horking down a pair of stroopwafels with Armageddon looming on the horizon.

The Dude Abides

Today is my birthday, so technically, I'm taking the week off from Peanut Cheese.

But I think it's worth mentioning that we had some friends over tonight for a White Russian-fueled homage to one of my favorite movies of all time: The Big Lebowski. 

(Fans of the Coen Brothers may be amused to hear that the last time I mentioned this movie to my sister, she rolled her eyes and said, "Ugh! A bowling movie!" — which is a lot like complaining about Fargo being a police procedural.)  

The highlight of the evening — and possibly of the year — was when we ran out of milk for the aforementioned drinks.  

John had his shoes and jacket on and was searching for his bicycle lights when I looked around the room and saw eight people dressed in bathrobes (I wasn't joking when I said it was an homage) and asked "Why don't we all go?" 

Everyone looked around and shrugged and picked up their drinks and said, "Okay."  

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the Albert Heijn on Dalseweg in Nijmegen has never before been subjected to a posse of 8 bathrobe-clad physicist-types at 9:30 on a Monday night.

I'm not sure they really understood how awesome it was.   

The Half-Year Report

I try to maintain a healthy distance between my job and Peanut Cheese, as the former is what funds our weekend junkets and the latter is rife with possibilities for getting fired.   

But I do have a job at a bank in the Netherlands. 

As I've mentioned, it's at a sustainable bank, which means we try to use money as a force for doing good in the world.

We even have a company motto to that effect, which someone recites (out loud) at the end of our Monday morning all-hands meeting.

Motto notwithstanding, it is very much a bank, which means that I've learned more in the last 18 months about the banking industry than I ever thought possible.

But in addition to learning terms like "basis points" and "liquidity curves", I've come to appreciate one of the finer arts of the banking industry: the half-year report.

A lively compilation of results from the first two quarters of the year, in which one seeks to assure shareholders that we haven't absconded with their money to Suriname.

Though on most days, that is sorely tempting.

Inspired by this riveting exercise from my work, I present the first and probably only half-year report for Peanut Cheese.

In the interest of transparency, I will admit that the flat tire count and the beer bottle value are both wildly exaggerated.  

Though it feels like we've had 11 flat tires in the last 6 months and I wish that the giant pile of beer bottles in the basement would net us €34 in deposit money.

Everything else in this report has been determined by auditors to be the honest-to-god truth.

Key Figures (January 1, 2011 to June 30, 2011)
Primary travel indicators
Number of countries visited:	14
Nautical miles sailed:	217
Miles logged by bicycle:	1,395
Hours logged by train:	223
Adverse conditions
Total days with precipitation:	113
Number of flat tires:	11
Average number of incorrectly conjugated verbs per sentence:	0.8
Assets
Current household bicycle-to-person ratio:	2:1
Value of unclaimed deposits from beer bottles in basement:	€34
Extracurricular activities
Djembe performances given:	4
Danish crime thriller series binged upon:	1
Limpets wiggled while on vacation:	3