Day 85- (Mon) Yes, Adelaide is a proper city!
Had a meeting at Maastricht town hall this morning to officially apply to live here (bit late now right?! but that's how the system goes). I had to register within a couple of weeks of getting here, then they set you up with this meeting. You have to show your passport, rental agreement, uni forms etc, they even wanted my birth certificate but let it slide given the hassle it would be for just 10 months here (but if I ever come back I must bring it, the lady tells me in an ominous tone!). So we fill out the forms and she gets to the bit that says "Adelaide" and queries "Is this a place?" HA! I nearly burst out laughing ... all anyone knows about Australia is Sydney!! Where's Norman from Eindhoven immigration and his recognition of the Adelaide Crows when I need him!!?? Anywho, I'm now (after more than 2 months here) officially allowed to live here (even if I come frm Adelaide :P). To celebrate this status I went and bought Milo ... yes MILO!! found it in, of all places, an Asian supermarket. Has what appears to be a Chinese Olympic swimmer on the can instead of Kieran Perkin's look-a-like like at home but has that same 'just like Nesquik only crunchy' taste :) mmmmm
Also, on my way out of he town hall to buy said Milo, I passed a bridal party and was aghast to seethe bride wearing ... BLACK!!! (And no Jess, just cos a European does it does not mean its acceptable!!!)
Day 86 (tues) - Totally a Dutch student
Went to a Dutch girl's house for dinner tonight after class (although we ate tortellini, not anything particularly dutch). Then I went to my first hippy student open-mic night. The uni holds free-for-all performance nights for arty students in the common room. Cheap vego food on sale, cool kids with guitars, make-shift drums, AMAZING voices and even a girl who did fire twirling (and almost set her stockings on fire in the proces!). Made me annoyed at myself for giving up the piano... :(
Day 87 (wed) - Cashing in on the student life
Scored a multitude of old-school kitchen goods from an op-shop this avo for the miserly sum of 6 euro! then scrounged back 1.50 euro from the supermarket by returning plastic and beer bottles - e-YES! Returned for (i think) the third Zumba class this evening - we're totally pros now, we gots da mooooves LOL
Day 88 (thurs) - Telling times
Tackled the overwhelming topic of financial crises in history class today, presenting me with an opportunity to brag about Australia being the "only country to avoid recession"! Later, in Dutch class we handed in our first written assignment - a whole 50 words! (I later received a grade of 4 and was DEVASTATED ... until I found out the score was out of 5, not 10!) We also learned to tell the time in this class but its so weird in Dutch ... if its for example 8.30, we say half past 8 (as in how many minutes it is past the turning of the current hour) but the Dutch say its half 9... (as in there's half an hour to go until it turns to the next hour) SO confusing!!! although its fun and knowing these little bits of Dutch is helping out day-to-day, I've come to the conclusion that if I ever want to have a proper conversation with a Dutch person I'm going to have to put a lot more effort into studying the language ... like grammar for example, I hardly know how to describe grammar processes in English, let alone Dutch! But after a day of bragging about Oz and all things Dutch, I ended this 24hour period at an international student dinner. Basically everyone brings a plate from their homeland and we share (again with the communism!) I made ANZAC biscuits (but with stroopwaffle syrup bc I couldn't find Golden Syryp, so they were kind of Dutchy ANZAC biscuits!), some other Aussie girls cut up sponge cake and dipped it in choc and coconut to make lamingtons (YUM), but the craziest thing was this blood pudding from Sweden. It was really, really dark red, almost brown, sliced thinly and baked or fried or something (and obviously is made from, among other things, animal blood). Its a bit of a Swedish specialty apparently, tastes really bland and floury but they put this kind of tart jam on it... (I tried a small bite... :S) Unfortunately it totally looked like chocolate cake ... and this meant more than one person was duped to "try some chocolate cake for dessert" and took a BIG mouthful... eep! To round off my multicultural education I learned two swedish words tonight - "tjnixen" (or something like that) means "howdy" and "schkrinkly" (totally not the spelling but roughly how it sounds) means "crinkly" as in a crinkly shirt ... useful hey?!
Day 89 (fri) - Rookie mistakes
So I got ripped off at the market this morning ... found this awesome dip store and asked for a small amount of dip and some stuffed baby capsicums, but there were no price signs and the language barrier prevented verbal clarification so I was left with a 12 euro bill (about 18 aussie dollars!!!). Later on that night, we went to a new little beer bar and (rookie mistake no. 2) asked the bar tender to just bring us some nice beers... we ended up with one that tasted like a mix of rocket fuel and anniseed, two that were 10+ % alcohol and another that was like sweet/sour cherry medicine!!! on the upside the place had the cutest bathroom, with rubber ducky patter on the bright blue toilet seat! In between mistake one and two I managed to pop over to Belgium for dinner - yes that's right, ANOTHER COUNTRY for dinner (really we just cycled up the road to the house of a German girl I met in introduction, who lives just over the border). Had to stop in at my place between cycling from there to the bar to meet other friends bc it had rained while we were in having dinner and I'd sat on a wet bicycle seat... (I may spent 10 or so minutes blowdrying my butt! don't judge!!) And then, I am proud to report, I cycled all the way to town holding an umbrella over my head ... doing about 2km an hour! As the title of this post says, I'm a real Dutchy now!
Observations: Brie cheese is especially smelly in Europe! And supermarket-brand wine for like $4AU is actually drinkable, as chocolate for 50cAU is edible.
Also, I've realised cycling time is like "loo time"... gives you time to think. Unlike catching the bus at home where I can read the paper or do uni work, and unlike the car bc there's no radio, you just have time to think (and watch the road of course) but I come up with some of my best (if I can call it that) blog material on two wheels.
Mistakes: See above!
Mini victories: Cycling with an umbrella ringing a bell...?
Dutch I've learned: "laat maar" = "never mind"
"Ja, ik wil" = literally translated means "yes, I want" but is apparently the Dutch version of "I do"!
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