Words on a Wire

John and I took full advantage of our three-day Pentecost weekend by absconding to Trieste, Italy.

Because nothing says "birth of Christianity" like gorging oneself on red wine and pizza!

Trieste falls into the category of somewhat-off-the-beaten-path places where we might not normally visit, except that John is a physicist, and as it turns out, physicists like to hold meetings in unexpected locations.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not complaining.

At least not about the meetings in unexpected locations.

We've very happily taken the Good Ship Physics Conference to India and to Capetown, for example, and it's also inspired our recent travel to Lodz and Stockholm.

I can't say with absolute certainty that we would not have planned a vacation in Lodz without a physics conference to lure us there, but it is definitely within the realm of possibility.

Lodz is a really interesting city and I'm glad I spent time there, but as a phrase, vacation in Lodz doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.

In some ways, Trieste is in a similar category.

Lovely? Yes.

Interesting? Largely.

Popular with the tourists? Not counting the hordes of Austrians who blaze through Slovenia to don Speedos in the Adriatic, I mean?

Not so much.

Again, I'm not complaining.

Trieste is the kind of place, for example, where one can buy 1985-era postcards that have actually been for sale since 1985.

I love that.

Another thing I love?

There's a glorious what-I-think-of-as-1950s-Italian aesthetic to many of the streetcars and buildings and signs and fonts.

Last but not least: when it comes to block letters floating in space, resistance for me is absolutely futile.

Trieste is full of them.

I love them even more than I love anachronistic postcards.

Which is saying a lot.

Easter Surprise!

As it turns out, the Dutch take Easter seriously. Really seriously.

Almost everyone gets a four-day weekend to celebrate Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, and the following Monday, which is described quite cleverly as "Second Easter Day."

It's also a major commercial holiday, in the sense that the stores have been flooded with Easter candy and Easter flowers and Easter cookies and Easter decorations and Easter toys and 29 different kinds of ham.

As an American for whom Easter is sort of a non-entity, it's a striking phenomenon. And in a basically secular country, I don't really understand what makes Easter so hot.

Maybe the Dutch just find the concept of resurrection to be a marketable one.

Or maybe Dutch consumers are less depressed in the spring and as a result, quite willing to spend their money on chicken decor.

Don't get me wrong: I'm very pro-chicken decor.

I just don't get why Holy Week unleashes a tsunami of it.

Commercialism or not, I'm grateful for the four-day weekend, especially since we're enjoying a freakish string of perfect, sunny days in which I honestly cannot remember the last time it rained.

I should be enjoying said freakishness without reservation, but I have to admit that it also fills me with a unshakable sense of dread.

As in, sure, we're getting two weeks of beautiful sunshine now, but I am convinced that it is going to end soon and then rain ALL SUMMER LONG.

Coincidentally, an American friend of mine in Nijmegen described having the exact same feeling — so while all of the Dutch people I know are giddy with delight about the unusual weather, there's something about the expat experience that makes us suspicious of Mother Nature's trickery.

But all of this is a long way to say that John and I needed a four-day weekend to recover after discovering in our mailbox last week the following advertising circular from one of the Netherlands' largest department stores.

What, you may reluctantly ask, is the Dutch tag line for this tableau featuring a terrifying Easter Bunny and an unsuspecting little girl?

EASTER SURPRISE!

Laundry Gravity

I will be the first to admit that John and I are a little bit manic when it comes to weekends.

On any given Saturday and Sunday, we're either gorging ourselves in Barcelona, trolling New York's second-hand shops, sailing on the North Sea, absconding to Beijing — OR, we're hunkered down in Nijmegen, leaving our apartment only when absolutely necessary.

Which generally means one trip on Saturday afternoon to Albert Heijn

for groceries, with grudging auxiliary trips to the Turkish market or the Asian food store as needed.

And, because there is no voice of reason in our mildly OCD household, we often spend these weekends cooking in extremis.

This weekend, for example, we're making bagels, scones, Chinese beef noodle soup, and kimchi.

...in addition to our regular meals: cheese quesadillas and homemade guacamole, rosemary-garlic lamb with tsatziki and greek salad, and caprese sandwiches.

I'm not sure why we're not like normal people, who are able to eat frozen pizza for lunch while blending at-home activities with out-of-the-home activities in the span of a single weekend.

I think it has something to do with the gravitational field from the mountain of dirty laundry in our closet.

It also has something to do with Chinese beef noodle soup being impossible to find in Nijmegen, so if we want a slice of that particular deliciousness, we have to spend all day making it ourselves.

But mostly, I think it's just a habit we've gotten into: some weekends, we head into the great blue yonder to do something adventurous and fun, and other weekends, we stay home to restock our fridge and wash our clothes and catch up on sleep and luxuriate in doing nothing.

Which is also fun, but it's a very different kind of fun.

Speaking of the great blue yonder, our latest adventure (fermenting kimchi notwithstanding) was the final weekend of our so-called "Competent Crew" sailing course.

During our first two weekends of becoming competent, we stuck to the gentle waters of the Ijsselmeer, a man-crafted lake surrounded by excruciatingly quaint Dutch villages.

For our third and final weekend, we needed to learn how to wrestle with tides, so we headed along Amsterdam's main shipping channel in the other direction, into the North Sea.

On Friday evening, it took the better part of two hours to motor all the way to Ijmuiden, the port at the mouth of the North Sea Canal.

On the way, in the darkness, we experienced a version of Holland that stands in stark contrast to the quiet, pastoral landscape that makes up 90 percent of the country.

We navigated through Amsterdam's industrial quarter, past enormous cranes and thousands of shipping containers, around huge tunnel-digging operations with machinery that resembles something out of City of Lost Children.

The most striking image, though, was the steel foundry at Ijmuiden, captured here by our friend Jan, a German whose Dutch is so flawless, I am tempted every few hours to throw myself off the boat in a fit of envy.

I acknowledge that from an environmental perspective, the flaming chimneys and ominous smoke are not really that great.

Even so: there was something about it that I loved.

Maybe I just like moody, dystopian landscapes.

Maybe it's because I grew up (at least partly) in the rust-belt town of Fulton, New York, which was home to a Miller plant and an Alcan plant and a Birds Eye plant and a Sealright plant — and a Nestlé plant that made the whole town smell like chocolate before it was about to rain.

(As a side note, the Sealright plant was taken over some time ago by a Finnish paper company called Huhtamaki, which happens to manufacture the lids to the paper coffee cups sold at Dutch train stations. Every time I buy a cup of tea and pick up a lid that says Huhtamaki on it, I get a strange, small pang of homesickness.)

Or maybe it's just that after a while, the Netherlands' endless pattern of lovely fields and sheep and lovely fields and sheep starts to seem a little bit...endless.

Either way, it was strangely refreshing to see such a messy, imperfect, industrial side of Dutch life.

The Big Pear

Unlike my recent trip to Peru and Argentina — where I was overwhelmed with relief at being able to speak Dutch after nearly three weeks of limping along on extremely primitive Spanish — I was slightly less enthusiastic about my triumphant return to the Netherlands today after a long weekend in New York City.

This is hard to believe, I know.

To be fair, comparing New York to anywhere other than, say, Singapore, is comparing apples and oranges.

Or, as the Dutch say instead, apples and pears.

As a side note, comparing the comparison of apples to oranges with the comparison of apples to pears pretty much sums up my entire experience in the Netherlands.

As far as I'm concerned, apples and pears are just minor variations on the exact same same fruit, so the Dutch version of this expression makes no sense whatsoever.

But it's still hard not to compare and contrast — and then to feel giddy about five days in New York in all of its messy, imperfect, exquisitely quirky variety.

Which includes (but is by no means limited to) bicycle polo and letterpress stationery boutiques and Sri Lankan groceries and tranny bingo and martini bars and Naked Boys Singing and Economy Candy and Sunday morning Chinatown soccer league scrimmage and scary George Condo portraiture and brunch places where you can get a scramble made with pico de gallo and fried matzo.

This list, incidentally, makes me wonder where the Dutch get their fast-held idea that all Americans are irredeemable prudes.

I mean, come on, people: we have places where you can buy letterpress stationery!

(On second thought, I confess that I feel somewhat anxious to note here on the Internets that we did not actually attend Naked Boys Singing. But we could have if we had wanted to.)

True to form, I also spent a little bit of our time on the Lower East Side shopping for staple items like Q-tips and deodorant.

Plus two highly coveted boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

Because nothing says "shopping in New York City" like powdered cheese mix.

At one point during this hamster spree, my friend looked in my shopping bag and asked, "So how much of that are you able to get in the Netherlands?"

I tried to keep the vein from popping out of my forehead while answering, "None of it!!!"

My bliss lasted right up until the very end of the trip, when I snagged the last Sunday New York Times on the stands and ordered a giant cup of tea from Peet's Coffee at JFK.

I curled up in a corner of the departure lounge at B20 to enjoy my delicious hot beverage and an actual, physical copy of my favorite newspaper.

The only distraction from my happy place was four Dutch ladies chatting it up a few seats away.

I'm ashamed to admit that I considered in all seriousness whether there was a nice or even remotely justifiable way to ask them to PLEASE STOP SPEAKING IN DUTCH — but in the end, I concluded that no, there really was not.

But luckily for me, they (eventually) returned to their romance novels and I was able to enjoy my last few moments on American soil in peace, quiet and total denial.

Buenas Nardes

As it turns out, I learned a lot of helpful things during my time in Argentina and Peru.

For one thing, my extremely latent Spanish vocabulary — meaning the fifteen words of Spanish I learned by watching Sesame Street from 1978 to 1984 — emerged more or less unscathed by the ravages of time.

This method of language acquisition has plusses and minuses.

On the plus side, it's much less painful than starting a second language at the tender age of 33.

Also on the plus side? I can somewhat reliably count to ten in Spanish.

On the minus side: in order to remember which Spanish number is which, I have to count through the numbers on my fingers until I get to the right one. Even ones that are low in order and might seem obvious, like three.

And when it's 7, 8 or 9, it takes some time to count up to that number, which is sort of embarassing when someone who actually speaks Spanish is standing there, waiting for you to say something.

Also: depending on the currency and the inflation thereof, counting to ten was is only marginally helpful to me as a person with cash in my wallet and the desire to purchase things.

I did much better with telling time — though only in the sense that when paired with the handy word medio, which I picked up somewhere along the way, any of my ten numbers could be deployed to specify time, even down to the half hour.

However, I still don't know the Spanish words for eleven and twelve, which meant that I had to pretend like four hours of the day didn't exist relative to when I might want to take a taxi to an airport.

Another minus to the whole learning Spanish via Sesame Street approach is the strong temptation to say everything using the patois of a Muppet.

(You smirk, but I would be willing to bet that there are entire dissertations devoted to the patois of the Muppet.)

"Abieeerto..." "Cerrado!"

"Abieeerto..." "Cerrado!"

"Abieeerto..." "Cerrado!"

Fellow children of the 70s, you know what I'm talkin' about.

For the rest of you? There's YouTube:

I'm not saying that I could carry on any sort of conversation en español, but using a few key words, there were moments — especially when I was left to fend for myself — when I was able to accomplish something using a vocabulary of hello, good day, please, thank you, is it possible, more, good, half, water, totally, only, airport, goodbye and unodostrescuatrocincoseissieteochonuevediez.

(See how nicely they all fit together in my mind?)

But, there were also moments in which my faking-it Spanish failed me.

Such as when I permanently confused buenas noches (good night) and buenas tardes (good afternoon) and started wishing everyone after about 4 p.m. "buenas nardes".

I don't know what a narde is, but it's probably not the kind of thing you should go around wishing on people.

This may just be hubris on my part, but having survived on Spanish-baby-Muppet-talk, I now feel like I can and should learn Spanish.

It has the attractive feature of being spoken by more than 22 million people.

It is also not, in the paraphrased-because-I'm-too-lazy-to-go-hunting words of David Mitchell (author of Cloud Atlas and other outrageously good books) a language that resembles sucking on mud.

And maybe it's the Muppet factor creeping in again, but Spanish also seems significantly less complicated than Dutch.

But in addition to learning how much Spanish I didn't know I knew, I also learned that there's one positive side to my semi-tortured Dutch-speaking existence: I now feel a little more comfortable traipsing around and using only the barest skeleton of a language to get by.

I'm not saying this is a better strategy than, say, actually learning the language in a given country. But I do think it's kind of great that my newfound ability to basically not care when I sound like an idiot (emphasis here on basically) is more or less transferrable.

Another key learning from my recent in flagrante español-o is the overwhelming and unexpected sense of relief that washed over me the minute I came back to the Netherlands and started speaking Dutch again.

It's easy! I can understand what people are saying! I don't have to use my fingers to count!

Relatively speaking, speaking in het Nederlands is a total piece of cake.

As unbelievable as it sounds, I might even go so far as to call it appletje, eitje.

Se Habla Holandés

Have I mentioned that I'm on a work trip to Peru and Argentina, doing my best to survive on five words of Spanish?

The hardest part of the trip — by far — has been trying to keep myself from speaking Dutch to the many Spanish speakers I encounter.

It's totally horrifying to have the word "nee" come out of my mouth, for example, when the Spanish word for "no" is exactly the same as the English word for "no".

And yet there's a little part of my brain that divides the world — quite involuntarily — into English and Not English.

Whenever I find myself in the Not English version, I have the vocabulary of a Dutch 7-year-old on the tip of my tongue, just waiting to burst out.

Fortunately for me, any Spanish skills beyond ordering ridiculously large portions of Argentinian food are not in very high demand: after six very long days of staffing an international conference for leaders from values-based banks, my only goal from my current position in Malargüe is to sit in the sun by the pool and drink some nice Malbec.

Until next week, when we return to our regularly scheduled program, here are some of the people we met and sights we saw on a lovely walk through the local markets of Lima:

Musical Turbulence

If you've ever found yourself wondering, "I wonder what the music scene in Nijmegen is like?", boy do I have an answer for you:

Captain Jetlag and the Cityhoppers present Musical Turbulence.

As it turns out, the Cityhoppers have an extensive musical repertoire, including hits like "I Wanna Know", "Down Along the Cove", "Shake Your Butt", "Soul Dressing", and "Too Much Stuff."

But you don't have to take it from me.

According to Captain Jetlag's website, you can:

Turn your party into an unforgettable happening with these accident-prone pilots...this crew is a guaranteed turbo-charger for turbulent dancing, watching and listening pleasure.