Day 319 - Honestly, this country....

.... never ceases to amaze me.

Yesterday I sat in the sun in the garden out the back of our guesthouse flat studying. The mercury hit 30C at some point during the day (truly amazing for the Netherlands and about bloody time!). At some points I even broke a sweat (although I wasn't quite to the point of wanting air-conditioning like some of the other foreigners here!). Nonetheless, the point was it was hot... Today I wake up ... and it's RAINING! and I mean really raining. So far the maximum temp has been 14C and I got absolutely drenched cycling home.

                              
Felt like this was me on the way home today! 


<= Me yesterday in the garden (happy snap by the housemate Emma)


I honestly can't believe it - a 16C turnaround in less than 24 hours. And we're not talking a 'cool change' like we get back home. This was literally "Netherlands: summer one day, winter the next". And remember this is one day from the official start of Summer. It did get me thinking though about other things that surprise/amaze/dumbfound/disappoint/confuse me about the Netherlands, so here's a few:

• People here walk their dogs ALL the time - seriously, day or night - and in whatever weather. So of course I saw people in ponchos walking their dogs today as I was cycling home against gale force rain. And the other night Emma (my housemate, Sydney) and I came home from the pub about 1.30am and a young girl was walking her dog!
• No fly-screens on the windows: even though they have just as many bugs as the next country here it seems the Dutch haven't heard of fly-screens :( which means no opening windows on muggy nights (its MUCH more humid here than back home) or playing mozzie hunter before bed
• Non-poisonous spiders: even if they get inside, apparently none of the insects here are poisonous. I really found this hard to believe when I was first told - that their spiders aren't poisonous. But enough people have told me now that I suppose I have to believe it. Coming from Oz though it just doesn't seem possible!
• Pre-cut food: it seems the Dutch are as time-poor as any other western nation but what really gets me is the staggering variety of pre-cut, pre-washed, pre-flavoured food you can get at the supermarket. In addition to the usual freezer pre-cut chips or pizza, there is a literal WALL of refrigerated peeled, cut potatoes at our supermarket in EVERY shape, size, flavour and filling.Our Dutch teacher said most Dutch families don't like to spend a lot of time cooking during the week. "Choose and cook" fridges like this are common:
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• Dairy products: there's also about a bajillion types of yoghurt/drinking youghurt/cream/milk etc variations in the dairy section. Lot's i've never heard of obviously, like Vla, Slagroom, just plain Room or Kwark... (whatever that is)!
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• Missing words: language-wise, one of the funniest things is the missing words. For example an English speaker would say "I play tennis" or "I use the computer", but in an effort, perhaps, to be efficient the Dutch simply turn the activity into a verb. So, one "tennisses" or "computers", or my favourite, "I internet" - sounds like Apple's next venture.
• Mutant words: the Dutch also have the LONGEST words I've ever seen (except maybe in German). Apparently, in many cases it is okay to join a number of words together in the Dutch language to describe something, and there's really no limit to the length of the combination. Perhaps they were the true inventors of 'supercalafrajilisticexpialadocious' (or however you spell it!)
• One word for too many words!: one last thing about language, it seems the English have a lot more words for things compared to the Dutch. There are a number of little words in Dutch that cover so many meanings, depending on context, which can make it really hard to make sense of a sentence. For example, the word 'nog' can mean yet, still, besides, further etc etc.

And this brings me to a brief piece of other news - my narrowly passed Dutch course. I'm sure I complained to a number of you that I was surely going to fail my Dutch course... but I managed to scrape through. While I now feel after 28 weeks of lessons once a week (and admittedly VERY little homework in between) I can understand about 60/70% of everything I read and hear (ie. government letters, announcements at the train station, speaking to the lady at the supermarket counter) my speaking and writing is not so flash. My grammar in particularly is atrocious, which was pretty embarrassing to discover given my profession of choice! The problem is I tend to think in English and then put Dutch words into the English grammatical structre - which is COMPLETELY different to Dutch. For example, the verb always comes at the end so when in English you say "I went to the beach with my friends", in Dutch you would say "I to the beach with my friends went". Hence I messed it up a lot!

However I saw the classes as much as a cultural experience as anything else - a chance to ask our Dutch teacher questions about the country and lifestyle as well as the language, and figure out some of the oddities of this place. As a result I feel a little bit more like a resident and less like a tourist. It's also a humbling experience to realise how hard it is to learn another language, let alone become fluent - and therefore makes me appreciate the across-the-board English skills of almost Dutch person!

So before I go, some funny Dutch words or phrases from our last few classes:

• Kater = hangover (NB: overgeven = vomit!)
• de voedselvergifiging (yes, that's a real word!! an example of those combination-long-as-you-like words) = food poisoning
• magnetron = microwave (i just love this one cos it sounds so futuristic :P)
• Jeetje = aw geez! or oh gosh!
• borsten = breasts!, or elleboog = elbow, or billen = bottom :P
• Trouwens = "by the way"
• handschoenen = gloves (literally, handshoes)
• beha = bra
• ontzettende = very, very, very, very, very, very, very .... you get the point, it's a very emphatic word!
• ging = going, which isn't anything very interesting but I just think its a cute dutch word, only missing one letter and it could be English
• zadelpijn = saddle pain, as in when one rides one's bike !!!
• zonde van de tijd = "waste of time"
• paars = purple & geel = yellow

So, a very random selection, but some of the quirkier things that came up in class in the last few weeks.
For now though, it's back to the study of "theorising terrorism" - the course that got me excited about coming to UCM in the first place. Only about one and a half months til I'm home now! I hope the weather gets its act together - I need to get a tan to make you all jealous on my return!

Day 274 - Bloomin' Holland

If there’s one thing the Netherlands is known for among people who know pretty much nothing about the Netherlands its tulips. So spending a year here I’d feel like a bit of a failure if I came home without visiting the infamous Keukenhof flower garden. Just as some background, the privately run park boasts 4.5 million tulips in 100 varieties, lovingly landscaped (and planted by hand) around 15km of footpaths over 32 hectares of land! It is literally a horticulturalist’s Disneyland.

It took us about 3 hours by train/bus to reach the park, near the town Lisse, south-west of Amsterdam. From the moment we entered the gates our eyes were bombarded with an explosion of colour and our noses with a waft of flower perfume. The red tulips first caught my attention, but as we wandered in and out of pathways, through garden mazes, up lookouts and around fountains I discovered so many colours and varieties I never knew existed. Some of the more interesting variety names included “Night Club”, “Teletubbies” and my personal favourite “Erupties” – these weird spikey lookin’ flowers with bunches of tulips hanging underneath a kind of crown of leaves much like a pineapple. What a name!

Erupties!!!

Generally, the landscaping was so impressive, with grouping of flowers either meant to startle by contrast (think blue, red and yellow all in a bunch) or to please the eye in shades of one colour (ie. purples, magenta’s, pinks and maroons). I was also impressed by the depth of the displays, with flowers of all different shapes and heights they seemed almost 3D.


  

It’s peak tourist season for the park at the moment (it’s open from march 24 to may 20, but the annual centrepiece parade was held yesterday) however the crowds weren’t too overwhelming and the place had quite a peaceful feel to it (even with the small children running around everywhere) courtesy of all the water features and the pleasant smell in the air. My only gripe was with the tourists who decided to completely ignore the copious “please do not touch the grass” signs and tromp all over it in search of the perfect photo op. Now, don’t get me wrong, we took our fair share of snaps (in fact, embarrassingly, all of us left with either a flat camera battery or a full memory card) but we were generally as respectful as possible. In contrast, there were grown women forcing their children out into the middle of big bunches of expensive, hand-planted flowers and lovingly manicured grass to get their photos. I felt sorry for the grass in a way, it gave the perfect uniform backdrop to the bursts of colour from the flowers but was pretty much taken for granted.

   


After about five hours in the park we decided to venture out into the actual tulip fields (commercial growing) for a squiz before heading home. This was the one time we may have ignored the signs… We were very gentle and light-footed but it was worth it actually be able to walk out amongst those rows and rows of brilliant flowers.

 




By then we’d had our fill of all things Dutch and touristy (if you count cycling to the station in the morning, eating ham rolls and poffejes in the park and drinking Heineken, taking photos of the fake windmill in the park, and of course all the flowers) we called it a day and made the 3 hour trek home. So it was more than 6 hours travel for about 6 hours of tulips. But as I said, it had to be done. Now all we have to check off the list are some heritage listed windmills and a spot of cheese rolling! Stay tuned…

Day 254 - Hup HOLLAND Hup!

Day 254 (Tues) My Euro 'football' experience

Now I’m more of an AFL girl than a soccer fanatic. At home I really only go to the soccer if the tickets are free! And I regularly put Brett and my mother to shame with my complete lack of knowledge or interest in the players or the rules. BUT this was not going to stop me from experiencing a real European ‘football’ match. And so, with the excited encouragement of Nakita (Sydney ) (who has been desperate to see a match since we landed on foreign soil) it came to be that I found myself on a coach, with her and Andra (Canada), headed for Amsterdam’s Ajax stadium to watch none other than our new adopted ‘home’ team (and almost world champions, need I remind you) take on Hungary. Apparently it was some sort of ‘qualifiying’ match for some European competition next year, but it didn’t really matter to me…

The bus ride there was an interesting experience in itself as we quickly realised it was full of vocal American students (vocal about being American that is) and the rest mostly Canadians and one or two other stray Aussies. It was a three hour ride but the driver only turned some music on about half an hour out from the stadium. So in the meantime we were serenaded by the American ‘choir’ sitting in the back half of the bus and their trusty portable speakers. We were all decked out in orange – such a flattering colour that we had to buy most of our gear as, really, who OWNS orange clothing – while the finishing touches (think faces covered in dutch-flag-coloured face paint) were added on the way.

  

on the bus - pre face painting

We arrived at the stadium about 7pm for 8.30pm kick off. There were already hordes of Dutchies streaming into the stadium complex, dressed head to toe in their national colour. They’re much more creative than us Aussies who usually just chuck on an Australia jersey or a flag around the shoulders and maybe a fake tattoo on a bicep or two or some sort of zinc-face paint design if we’re particularly feeling it. Instead, the Dutchies were walking around in DIY costumes made of fake orange fur, hats with lions heads on top (the team symbol… I think!) or full body lion suits, one guy even had this crazy hat/wig on made of these wobbly organge jelly spikes!! So needless to say it was an entertaining atmosphere as we made our way to our ticket gate – stopping for  Grolsch on the way. And its lucky we did because Ajax Stadium is 100 per cent alcohol free inside. Now this is probably not such a bad idea given the propensity of European soccer fans to beat each other to a pulp over the slightest disagreement(!). But what we found really odd was the stadium operator’s decision to offer alcohol free beer inside instead! (which by the way apparently tatsted awful).

the stadium

crazy Dutch supporters who crashed our photo

the Grolsch!!

Regardless, alcohol was not necessary to enjoy the night – the on-field action was far more engaging than expected and I probably would have just spilled anything I was drinking over the guy in front of me (who happened to be a Hungary supporter). Our group was RIGHT up in the nose-bleed section, sort of behind one of the goals but in the corner. And our two rows of English speaking, flag waving, over-excited student-tourists certainly drew a bit of attention from the rows of Dutchies behind us.

As for the match itself, Holland scored about 13 minutes into the first half and the Oranje crowd went nuts. The paper flags we found on our seats were out and the Dutch songs were sung (we just kind of yelled). Unfortunately though that was as much excitement as we were treated to in the first half – while the inaction led to a lot of Mexican waves, clapping to various beats and more Dutch singing (and some abuse!) The second half was a complete turn around. True to form, I missed the first goal of the half (by Hungary!) because I looked away for a split second. And then before we knew it Hungary scored again! Nakita was going nuts because she had decided Hungary needed to score to get the Dutchies fired up so we would actually have a game on our hands. And was she right or what? All up there were seven goals scored in the second half, quite a few in quick succession. We were up and down constantly, jumping around, waving our orange flags and yelling "Oh Ja, Oh Ja" and “Hup Holland Hup” cause apparently that’s what you do...

lining up for the national anthems - first time we'd actually heard the Dutch one I think!

some of the action

At the end of the game the final score was 5-3, we’d all lost our voices and even the three Hungary fans in front of us seemed to be satisfied with an exciting game (keeping in mind Holland thumped Hungary 4-0 the week before). Getting out of the stadium seemed to take a while but really it was all very well organised. No time for a celebratory beer on the way out though as it was back to the bus to get home. The game finished about 11pm so we didn’t make it back to Maastricht until about 2am (needless to say the bus was much quieter on the way home) and then we still had to cycle home from where the bus dropped us off!

NB: Ironically, Australia also played just over the border in Germany that night and they won too. So it seems both my ‘home’ countries did alright :D