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

Rainy Day Muppets

I've been saving this particular piece of internet detritus for a slow week on Peanut Cheese.

By "slow", I mean a week without any glaring language humiliations, bizarro international trips, or delicious new Belgian beers to report.

It's not that I haven't humiliated myself in the last 168 hours while speaking the Dutch language.

It's just that the humiliation hasn't crossed the threshold of what might be interesting to strangers.

Somebody on the Internet has to have standards!

So instead, I present to you a Bert and Ernie classic: Bread and Peanut Butter, in which Bert and Ernie learn the critical life skill of cooperating.

Only it's overdubbed in Dutch, so instead of Bread and Peanut Butter, it's Brood and Pindakaas.

You can see why this has a special place in my heart.

But before you click the button, I need to deploy a viewer advisory.

If you've never learned Dutch and don't plan to, go ahead and dive in.

In addition to brood and pindakaas, you'll hear Bert talk about samenwerking, which means working together, and lekker, which means all kinds of things in addition to delicious.

You may also be interested to observe the clipped Dutch way that Ernie pronounces "Bert" and the downright freaky way that Bert says around the 10-second mark: O, ik ben dol op Pindakaas. Dank je Ernie! / O! I am fond of peanut butter! Thank you, Ernie!

(Even if you hate it when people resort to YouTube crapola instead of writing a proper blog entry, it's worth making it to the O Ernie! I am fond of pindakaas part.)

But it you're like me, and you've learned Dutch after growing up on the original 1970s version of Sesame Street, I don't really recommend watching this.

It's going to ruin your childhood.

For one thing, the men doing the voiceovers for Bert and Ernie are — without question — Dutch beet farmers who were plucked out of some rainy polder for a 1970s version of Holland's Got Talent.

Here's the original, fellow Muppet fans, just in case you need to get that beet farmer taste out of your mouth:

Fris en Fruitig

As I keep explaining to my colleagues at work, my sister and her husband are visiting Nijmegen this week, and then we're spending a few jam-packed days in the U.S.

Which means that my upcoming absence from work is not technically a summer holiday.

At least in the Dutch sense of summer holiday, which involves choosing the entire month of July or August and using it in its entirety to abscond to France.

(Where I hear that one can rent a nice campsite with a full hook-up and spend a gezellig month with a whole campground's worth of Dutch people.)

I know it sounds like I'm generalizing about the Dutch, but in this case, I'm going to stand my ground.

The question from my colleagues is not "Are you going on holiday this summer?" but "When are you going on holiday this summer?"

In late June, it shifts ever so slightly to "Are you going on holiday soon?" and in August it drifts more in the direction of "When did you get back from holiday?"

But to be fair, this hasn't exactly been a holiday for my sister or her husband, either.

Through a grievous error in judgement, they decided to spend a chunk of their honeymoon with us.

Through a second grievous error in judgment, they let me choose the daily activity roster.

In my quest to share only the most quintessential Dutch experiences, we spent the first day — in its entirety — on bicycles.

To deepen their understanding of the Dutch experience, we spent the second day — in its entirety — hiking around in the rain.

On the plus side, we were geocaching.

On the down side, an overenthusiastic tour director who shall remain unnamed picked a 20-stage search that led us into the forest and through the fields, looking for numbers on information boards, counting the number of window panes in farm cottages, and learning the difference between a plank, which is a plank, and a balk, which is a square plank.

Our quest took an entire afternoon, in which the only variation in weather was whether it was raining hard or raining really hard.

Even I felt a little guilty for dragging my poor sister and her poor husband so far outside of Nijmegen on bike and foot that they were overcome with joy and exhaustion upon returning to city limits each day.

Don't get me wrong: I didn't feel that guilty.

But definitely a tiny little smidgen of guilty.

So today I took them to Nijmegen's Sanadome, which is one of the most unfortunately named spas I've had the pleasure of visiting.

I even let them take the bus!

Which brings me (loosely) to my new favorite Dutch-language discovery: fris en fruitig.

According to my Dutch sources, it's just another way to describe someone who is feeling fresh and alert in the morning.

As in, I should write these meeting minutes this morning, while I'm feeling fresh.

But the expression fris and fruitig translates literally to fresh and fruity.

As in, I should write these meeting minutes this morning, while I'm feeling fresh and fruity.

Just for the record?

Having spent the better part of the day in an eucalyptus steam room, we're basically recovered from my two-day Dutch hazing ritual.

But we might need another day on the couch before we feel fresh and fruity again.

If It Looks Like A Duck...

Now that I have some language basics firmly, as the Dutch like to say, under my knee, I really enjoy learning new words.

This week, I learned that there is at least one unqualified exception to this rule.

I would have happily lived my entire life in a state of ignorant bliss, free from knowing that the Dutch word for speculum is eendenbek.

Which translates literally to?

Duck's beak. (THEY CALL IT A DUCK'S BEAK!!!)

P.S. Photo credit for this creature for whom my feelings have changed irrevocably can be found here.

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.