Purchases

I bought a omafiets (grandma's bike) and slaapbanken (sleeper couch) right before my mom's visit.

The bike has no gears and no hand brakes; you brake by cycling backwards -- a very weird concept, but surprisingly not that hard to ingrain. I bought the bike from a legitimate dealer, used, for 119 euro. I also bought two heavy-duty bike locks for 65 euro. I could have bought a bike from a junkie for 10 euro, but I decided that at least my first few bike purchases should not support the bike thief industry. People tell me that I might change my mind after I've had my bike stolen more than 4 times though.

Last week I biked to and from work for the first time. It took me 45 minutes vs. about 35 via public transport. The bike paths are great. I hardly have to cross any streets and my route is mostly along the Amstel River. I won't be truly Dutch until I can do it in a skirt and high heels, in the rain, balancing my umbrella in one hand and talking on my cell phone with the other.

Did I mention that no one wears a helmet here? And they would definitely laugh and point if you wore black cycling shorts with butt pads. I've seen people cycling with a friend sitting side saddle on the back tire, or a rolled up rug on the front handlebars, or a bass violin strapped to the back. Today I saw a guy slowly biking with three beautiful dogs leashed to his wrist and trotting along beside him. One of these days, I'm going to spend the whole day sipping coffee and just photographing the bicyclists as they ride by.

As for the couch, it's comfortable. Come visit!

Another Sort of Stereotype

Two things I neglected to mention in my last post about Austria:

1) When I entered the country, the train conductor asked for my passport and flipped through it. She also asked me if the snowboard above me on the luggage rack was mine. I said yes it was. She looked at the snowboard and then she looked at my Amsterdam work visa (inside my passport). Then she asked whether I smoked. I said no I didn't. "Do you smoke other things?" Hmmm...what "other things" might she be talking about? She didn't believe me, I could tell. The combination of snowboarder AND living in Amsterdam is just too evocative. This blog should really be about reviewing the coffee shops, shouldn't it?

2) It dumped the night before I arrived in Innsbruck, so there was 2 feet of fresh on Stubai Glacier -- and hardly anyone else interested in it.

Racism in Austria

At first I wasn't sure if it was real. Maybe I was just reacting to a cultural tendency not to smile or laugh. After all, you can't expect everyone to be like Californians who smile at everyone and everything. Then it morphed into more of an instinct, a feeling of being unwelcome. But then after two incidents with the old lady cashier at Stubai glacier (the first was when I said "Hallo" and got the complete silent treatment, she just waited until I saw the price on the cash register. The second time, there were other people around, so she said the price, but then became very impatient when I was hunting around for exact change -- and glaringly dropped the change into my tray), something clicked and I realized that I was (and had been for days) experiencing racism in a very institutionalized non-overt form. The only other time in my life that I've ever experienced the same sort of racism was in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Don't get me wrong. I've experienced overt racism before, and that's not fun either. But at least then it is very obvious that it's racism. This type of racism is much more uncomfortable because it is subtler. It is a lack of eye contact, or a mocking tone of voice, or a rolling of the eyes. At first, you doubt yourself. You wonder if you did or said something culturally offensive. And also because you doubt yourself, you don't react as quickly. You spend precious minutes going over the conversation in your head, trying to puzzle it out, and by the time you realize what it was, the person is gone or the moment is over and you would look silly trying to respond.

It wasn't just the cashier. It was also several of the ticket salespeople at the main railroad station in Innsbruck, the woman at the hotel counter, one of the waiters in the hotel restaurant. The latter actually said to me that Chinese eat in the other room and pointed to a side room away from the main part of the restaurant. I told him that I wasn't Chinese; I was American. This confused him. Of course I was Chinese. To him, it was like an elephant claiming to be a bear. I think he finally gave up because I was obviously stupid, and he said I could sit here, there, wherever I wanted. I was too stunned to confront him on the real question, which was "why do the Chinese have to eat in the other room?"

My experience was validated after I got back from my 9-hour train ride last night. I googled "racism" and "Austria" and got a number of hits. These are the most interesting of those:

Extremist Groups in Austria
Racism on "Wife Swap"

Clearly, the blacks, Muslims, and Jews who have immigrated to Austria have it even worse. The Japanese and Indian tourists who arrive by busloads in Innsbruck are tolerated because they spend a lot of money there, but I'm pretty sure that after they leave they are talked about derisively.

I will probably never return to Austria, which is a shame because the town was lovely and a few people were extraordinarily kind. For example, the harmonica player who had invited my mother to Austria picked her up and dropped her off every day from her hotel 20 minutes away in order to give her free harmonica lessons. Then he and his wife drove her to Innsbruck and gave her VIP tickets to the music festival where he had been invited as a judge. They were both warm and friendly to us throughout the weekend.

Another consolation of all this is that on the train ride back, I had the thought that I really couldn't wait to get home -- and for the first time, I felt that "home" meant Amsterdam. Today I reveled in smiling shopkeepers and public transportation employees and didn't mind the rain one bit!

Uitje

"Uitje" literally means "little out" in Dutch, or in other words, "an outing". Every year the head of our site plans an all-employee team building day. It's always a surprise. In previous years, they drummed, painted, did a scavenger hunt in the center of Amsterdam, and went to a shooting range.

This year, we all piled into a bus and ended up at a charming cottage restaurant in the woods. From there, we biked to the beach and built a bridge made out of bamboo rods and rubber bands. Then we split up into groups to learn how to power kite and compete with each other in sand sculpture building, volleyball, shotputting, and javelin throwing. I don't think this is really a "Dutch" thing. But I just find the photos kind of funny. So these are the sports alternatives I have available to me here in Holland! You know, I could possibly get into the power kiting. Once I've mastered that, I'll only be 4000 US dollars away from a kite boarding kit and the opportunity to injure myself on the water instead of snow.

Oh and I'll go ahead and answer the inevitable question now: sorry to disappoint, but there are no photos are available of me in the blue space suit.

Scary Bridge Crossing at Keukenhof

Click on the photo to view the web album.

My mom was just here visiting for 4 days (my first US visitor!) and on Saturday we took the train to Keukenhof, which is a huge flower-themed park in Lisse. It was much more fun than I expected. I thought we were just going to see some pretty flowers, but the park designers were creative. There's a windmill, funky sculptures, a giant chessboard, a kickass English garden maze, a petting zoo, and all kinds of other good family fun. We took about a hundred photos between the two of us, but my favorites are of each of us taking turns to cross a roller-coaster shaped bridge over a pond. Hmm...Mom's probably not going to like that I posted these on my blog!

Oh yeah, there were pretty flowers too -- so I threw in some photos of these at the end, in case anyone wants new wallpaper for their laptop.