This weekend, Barcelona is our home away from home.
We're here for four days to binge on art museums, eat as much Spanish food as possible, and also reacquaint ourselves with the celestial object known outside of the Netherlands as "the Sun".
Getting here was something of a close call, as a fire at the Utrecht train station on Friday night shut down almost all train traffic in the Netherlands, including the trains that run to and from the airport.
An American I know once referred to Utrecht as the bunghole of the Netherlands.
He went on to explain that if something goes wrong with car or train traffic in Utrecht, everything in the entire country grinds to a screeching halt.
At the time, I thought that was a little harsh: Utrecht is a fine city, and I prefer to reserve the term "bunghole" for truly godforsaken places. The suburbs of Houston, for example.
After Friday, however, I'm beginning to see what he means.
One taxi from Nijmegen and €230 in taxi fare later, we arrived at Schiphol with just enough time to get through security, grab a sandwich, and make a beeline to our gate.
I'm trying not to fret about a taxi fare that was almost as expensive as two round-trip plane tickets to Barcelona.
One way of looking at it is this: getting screwed by the Dutch train system now and then is still much less costly than owning a car.
Another positive take on this incident is that my willingness to gripe about the trains feels like an indicator of how well I'm integrating into Dutch society.
Most Americans can't complain in good conscience about a train system that offers a convenient and viable alternative to going just about anywhere in a car.
Most Dutch people, on the other hand, complain bitterly about the trains at the slightest provocation.
I'm still grateful for the Dutch train system, but it is definitely in the doghouse until further notice.
But that's a long way to say that we made it to lovely Barcelona, where our only point of difficulty has been adhering to the Spanish custom of eating lunch around 2 and dinner around 10.
In addition to trying not to embarrass ourselves by walking into restaurants before 8:30 p.m., we've been wandering our way through crazy food markets...
Making a long-awaited pilgrimage to the Joan Miró museum...
Hanging around on sunny park benches...
And keeping a watchful eye out for chicken-themed street art:
In other words, it's pretty much the perfect weekend.
Tuesday night djembe lessons notwithstanding, the Netherlands isn't really known for its music scene.
That is not to say that it's not a country full of musical people: lots of people sing or play in bands of the amateur and semi-amateur variety.
There are also a surprising number of Black Gospel choirs in Holland.
To the point where Dutch high schools offer black gospel choir as an extracurricular activity, the same way that an American high school might have jazz band.
Intellectually, I know there is absolutely nothing wrong with a bunch of Dutch people singing American Black Gospel music. At a gut level, though, it gets me every time.
I can't help but feel that it's part of a larger, more interesting relationship that the Dutch have with race in general and black people in particular.
I wish I could articulate what that relationship was, exactly, but it's more than a little confounding to interpret or discuss.
It doesn't help that my Dutch vocabulary is really oriented toward things that are slightly more concrete than, say, racial identity and cultural fetishism.
For now, I can only offer my overwhelming feeling that the relationship is...complicated.
Which brings me, of course, to everyone's favorite holiday helper (and/or former slave): Zwarte Piet.
It feels like just last month that the streets were brimming with young people wearing velvety minstrel outfits, feathered caps, and blackface.
But really, time flies when you're having fun!
That carnival of political correctness took place a full year ago, and with the 2010 Sinterklaas holiday less than a month away, the Black Pete paraphernalia is out in full force once again.
Last week, on my bicycle commute from the train station to work, I rode by the City of Zeist's lone movie theater.
I nearly drove headfirst into the gutter when I saw the following movie poster out of the corner of my eye:
This heartwarming family movie called Sinterklaas and the Packages Mystery features a cast of not one but ten different Black Petes.
To get the full effect — and to see the Petes in all of their (vaguely) diverse glory — you really have to watch the trailer. And unlike most of the other dreck I post here, it actually is worth wasting the two minutes of your life.
Or at very least, the one minute and twenty second it takes until they get through all of the Petes.
And, I would add, it's a great opportunity to hear spoken Dutch, if you haven't experienced that particular auditory delight.
Here's the basic plot, in case you want to follow along at home:
One of the Black Petes assures Santa that the hangar where they store all of the presents is full, only to find that someone (namely, an evil villainess with an evil villainess laugh that doesn't require any translation) has taken them all.
Madness, villainy, and a happy ending ensue. And there are a few catchy musical numbers for good measure.
John's reaction to this trailer, which I sprung on him without warning while sitting on the couch on Sunday morning in our pajamas?
"You know, sometimes, I think I'm used to everything here, and then something like this comes along."
This is not to say that Black Pete and Black Gospel choirs made up of Dutch people are in the same category.
As cringe-inducing as it may be to the naked eye, my sense is that the latter are a genuine celebration of African-American music and culture.
You know, in an imitation is the sincerest form of flattery sort of way.
But going back to my original thought about the Netherlands not having a huge music scene...
Even though one doesn't often hear about world-famous Dutch composers or cutting-edge musical groups (or, God help us, Dutch rock stars), we're discovering that there are a number of smaller concert halls in the Netherlands that are surprisingly broad and sophisticated in their musical offerings.
We recently found, for example, that the Toonzaal in Den Bosch offers a huge array of jazz and pretty exciting (at least to us) contemporary classical music — despite a concert hall that only seats about 50 people and its location in a city of only about 130,000.
To me, the Toonzaal is an example of what Europe, in general, gets right: through the glory of generous arts funding and a fondness for art for art's sake, they manage to support an entire season of festivals, concert series and other performances full of not-very-mainstream music.
And on Friday, we went to a Tin Hat concert at a world culture center in Utrecht called RASA.
Like the Toonzaal, RASA is an unassuming building tucked away on a side street.
It's the kind of place that you might miss, if, hypothetically speaking, it was dark and raining on a Friday night in Utrecht, especially if you were in a blissful, mildly catatonic state from an unexpectedly good sushi dinner down the street.
Ecstatic mini-rant alert!
Tin Hat is just amazing. Their work is sort of like the klezmer-flavored love child of Bill Frisell and Joseph Schwanter and Victor Piazzolla.
Just one piece doesn't really cut it, but here's at least a small sample:
They're one of those crazy genre-defying groups that keep coming up with new, brave, scary things. Their latest project, for example, is a series of compositions in which they set the poems of E.E. Cummings to music.
The concert was fantastic, and we were in heaven. Part of the reason for the heaven is that the music was just so damned good.
But we realized that another reason for being in heaven is that — in stark contrast to what happens when we're trying to navigate in a Dutch cultural context — we totally got it.
And by "it", I mean that we got the references to Bill Monroe and Bill Frisell. We got the mix of klezmer and blues guitar. And we got the E.E. Cummings poems.
Not because of any special knowledge on our part, but because those poems are part of our own culture, and we have a sense — more intuitive than intellectual — of who E.E. Cummings was, and how to understand his work, and how those poems affected us when we were younger than we are now.
It might sound a little weird, but we felt sort of proud, too.
As gaudy and embarrassing as American culture can be, there can also be an unmistakable freshness and creativity to it.
As John put it, it's hard not to feel like, "E.E. Cummings is awesome. Go America!"
I'm fairly certain that no one, in the history of human language, has uttered that particular phrase before.
But it really captures the way in which we sometimes experience these weird and largely unexpected flashes of patriotism.
As of last Monday, I had officially lost that lovin' feeling with respect to the Dutch language.
This was mostly because I had spent a very long day trying desperately to communicate enough to my new Dutch co-worker about her new job that I could reasonably justify abandoning her for a short trip to the U.S. this week.
For the record, I feel more than a little guilty about throwing her to the lions in just her second week of work. Then I remind myself that unlike me, she can actually understand what everyone around her is saying.
With that in mind, it seems less like lions and more like hostile housecats.
But I've rekindled the Dutch flame at least a little bit, thanks to two happy developments in my cozy and largely narcissistic world of language learning.
One is that my new co-worker has a great sense of humor and is full of interesting new expressions.
Even as I flail about in Dutch, trying to explain the finer points of receiving visitors and date-stamping mail, our conversations are dotted with delightful, quirky moments of language learning.
On Wednesday, for example, she suggested gently that we een einde aan de dag breien, or knit an end to the day.
Compared to the expressions I use when it's quitting time — I'm outta here! is one that immediately comes to mind — knitting an end to the day just seems so charming and civilized.
The second development was an unexpected comment about holes in the ice from an alert Peanut Cheese reader named Gerben.
As you may remember, I wrote a few months ago about the Dutch expressionvreemde eend in de bijt, an extremely relevant (for me) way to describe a duck who doesn't fit in with the other ducks in that particular hole in the ice.
What I didn't know is that the Dutch have not one but TWO words that mean hole in the ice:
We actually have two words for a hole in the ice. A bijt is made on purpose, for example because you want to go fishing or make sure the ducks have something to drink.
A wak is one that is created by the wind or current, and is the kind that pops up unexpectedly and that you fall into when skating.
I can't even really explain why this thrills me so much.
Maybe it's just that I was already highly amused by the first Dutch word for hole in the ice.
A second Dutch word for hole in the ice is the kind of thing that pops up unexpectedly and makes me smile to myself for days.
In my book, picayune / call the tune / Cameroon / greasy spoon more or less makes up for the existence of Linked In.
Learning about ijsberen seriously made my month. But even so, today is not the day for a wandering soliloquy about the tiny thrills of learning a second language.
After months of eager anticipation, today was my first day with a Dutch co-worker we've hired to take on the telephone calls and other Dutch-language work that I've been butchering since mid-March.
The only problem is that first I need to provide a hefty amount of training and orientation. In Dutch.
For the record: my new coworker is delightful. And patient. And she doesn't grimace too much when I go off the rails in what many people call not a language but a throat disease.
But by about mid-afternoon today, my honeymoon with the Dutch language was officially over as I tried to explain in detail how the phones are supposed to work.
It's too bad someone didn't record the whole thing. A few decades from now, I might find it very funny to hear.
In the meantime, let's hope that she understands what I mean when I say, first these buttons is push then talk and if he present is can you button one more time push.
There's a glorious event that descends upon grocery stores throughout the Netherlands: Hamsterweek.
At first, it seemed mysterious and unpredictable. Now we've figured out that it rolls around every six months or so.
That's emblematic, by the way, of our general experience of life in the Netherlands: at first, things seem mysterious, unpredictable and/or incomprehensible.
Eventually — and in most cases, this means six months to a year later — we figure out how the thing actually works, and it starts to seem more manageable.
This was definitely true for Hamsterweek, but also for less interesting things like using the secured bike parking at the train station, or our ChipKnip debit cards, or deciphering European clothing sizes in order to buy pantyhose.
(If only I could write this in a squeaky, my-pants-are-too-tight voice: note that the pantyhose sizing is still something of a mystery!)
Hamsterweek is based on the Dutch verb hamsteren, which means "to hoard."
You know, like a hamster.
(Funnily enough, John and I also use the verb "to hamster", but it refers instead to lying awake at night thinking obsessively about work or other stressful things.
The only known antidote to hamstering in our household is thinking like a sea cucumber. Sadly, this activity does not have its own verb.)
For the Dutch, hamstering takes the form of stocking up on items when Albert Heijn offers two for the price of one.
Since we have no desire to own one can of beets, let alone two, we generally abstain from the hamster festivities.
However — and here I should freely acknowledge that I am most definitely a simple-pleasures-for-simple-minds kind of girl — I love the hamster paraphernalia. It's just too scary and weird to resist.
Unfortunately, I can't really think of a compelling American equivalent to the Albert Heijn hamsters.
But I guess this is sort of the same as if someone from the Netherlands came to the U.S. and became obsessed with the Keebler Elves in the middle of a giant cookie promotion at their local Price Chopper.
Sort of.
In any case, the Hamster gear last January was limited to grocery bags with giant hamster faces on them, and also an extremely lame take-home maze for the kids.
But this time around? We've hit Hamster paydirt.
In the form of a superspannende Hamsterspel available next to the checkout counters.
A super-exciting Hamster game indeed.
Let's just say that a little bit of hamstering happened with respect to these hilarious, brilliant pieces of grocery store marketing.
By which I mean that I snagged about 20 more Hamsterspels than the number of children I had waiting at home like little birds for the only known version of Hamster Concentration.
(Which, perhaps it goes without saying, is zero.)
My feeling is: screaming children with grubby fingers be damned.
These hamstered hamster games had a much more noble destiny: being cut and folded into slightly disturbed greeting cards for me to send to family and friends.
One paper cutter and 45 minutes (by which I mean 2 hours) later?
Voilà! A fine selection of small, medium and large hamster notecards and gift tags:
These feature a number of Albert Heijn products, including but not limited to:
Sweet and sour Dutch Yakitori mix;
Rodent-infested Chiquita bananas;
and our personal favorite: Rozijn Vriendjes, which translates (somehow) to Little Raisin Friends.
She just completed what might be the most meaningful event of her adult life, and all I felt compelled to write about last week was the outrageously large selection of energy bars at Wegman's.
On the other hand, has she lost her mind?
Does she really want her wedding at the center of my tome of cultural maladjustment and complaining?
Too late now!
In my official role as Maid-of-Honor-zilla, I present the short(ish) version of Prairie and Jeff's wedding.
My first order of business after setting foot in the sweet land of energy bars (and, as it turns out, outrageously high credit card bills) was to get my hair cut for the wedding.
Since one of my favorite Peanut Cheese topics is how much I hate getting my hair cut in the Netherlands, I will spare you — as one of my Dutch co-workers occasionally says, to my everlasting delight — the rehearsal of those ideas.
However, I will note that I find it vaguely creepy that all of my immediate family members go to the same hairdresser.
Don't get me wrong: it was lovely to get my hair cut exactly the way I wanted it, with no suffering save the time I spent gazing at the photos taped to her mirror depicting a large man with a mullet.
(Even that could be worse; my sister reports that the stylist in the next booth has a photo album dedicated to her pet weasel.)
But it's sort of a strange intimacy, this family hairdresser business. There's something about it that harkens back to the olden days, when all family members took a bath once a week in the same vat of water.
Unfortunately, my otherwise very satisfactory haircut did not spare me from the bride's demand that I wear my hair "UP!".
The bride: I want you to wear your hair UP!
The bridesmaid, scowling suspiciously: What do you mean, "UP!"?
The bride: You know. UP!
Note to any other friends or family members who may be thinking of marrying anytime in the foreseeable future: I will gladly write a large check for your dowry if it means that I don't have to do anything special to my hair.
After scultpting her own hair into place with an impressive pastiche of hair pins, Saran Wrap and white Elmer's Glue, my sister proceeded to get married at an old inn in the middle of nowhere in upstate New York.
As American weddings go, this was more reasonable than most, largely because it was limited to the bride and groom's immediate families, for a grand total of 19 people.
The ceremony itself was full of laughter, in part because it was full of warmth and humor, and in part because it was a comedy of errors.
As Maid of Honor, I was in charge of beginning the procession, which meant giving John the thumbs up to hit the Play button on the CD player, then marching out the door and down the stairs.
Without tugging at my strapless dress, tripping, crying, or smirking.
Or any combination of those things.
As I emerged from the doorway and tried to step in time to the peppy Pachelbel's Canon emanating from the porch, the groom gave me what seemed at the time to be an overly critical look.
Him: Where are the flowers?
Me: What flowers?
Rewind!
Someone rescued the flowers from the refrigerator in the kitchen, and we spent the next 10 minutes frantically pinning corsages on parents and grandparents sitting in the audience.
Meanwhile, my sister tried not to hyperventilate inside.
For the second processional, all of the bridesmaids had lovely bouquets, and most of the guests had beautiful if crookedly applied corsages.
The ceremony went swimmingly until the very end, when John stood up to do a short reading just before my sister and the groom exchanged their most serious, meaningful vow.
The reading was great, and my sister took her husband-to-be's hands and looked into his eyes, and said "John — I mean Jeff..!!!"
Fortunately for everyone, great hilarity ensued.
As she tried to regain her composure, her veil popped out of her hair, and then when I bent down to fetch it, I dropped all of the notecards she was supposed to be using to remember her vows.
The only downside of participating in such a small wedding was that the bride and groom didn't have 100 hungry guests waiting for them to hurry up and get to the reception already.
Instead, they had 17 hungry guests who were obligated by blood or marriage (or in John's case, just plain obligation) to participate in wedding photos with familial groupings that would make an eighth grade math teacher proud.
There are 524,287 different combinations of 19 wedding guests, and let me be clear: we have a photo of every single one of those.
But it was worth every single minute of photo taking.
Thank goodness, for example, that we have a photo featuring my great aunt, the bride, John, and Jeff's stepsister's husband!
All of this was orchestrated by Sue, who was a rock star when it came to the three hallmarks of successful wedding photography:
She was able through sheer force of will to keep all of the bridesmaids, flower girls, mothers and grandmothers trapped in the bridal suite for three hours of "getting ready" shots prior to the wedding.
She only referred to herself in the third person. ("Look at Sue!")
And perhaps most importantly, she was able to make a high-pitched trilling noise with her tongue, which is consistently effective in getting babies to toward her while she takes the photo.
That noise also been shown to be consistently effective in triggering murderous feelings in full-grown women who have shoveled themselves into a bridesmaids dress.
Having said all of that, one of my very favorite photos from the wedding is this one of me and John.
The instructions from Look at Sue! were to turn toward each other and gaze into each other's eyes, but the actual look we're giving each other clearly translates to, "This is total bullshit."
