On Community

I'm stuck at home sick with the flu today, which is so frustrating, because Saturday is the only day that most of the shops are open on the weekends, and it's actually sunny. I consider it a great sacrifice to stay at home, because now that I found out my friend has Sudafed and is willing to deliver it, I could go out and get my errands done without anyone realizing that I am secretly infecting them with my germs. Ugh. But no, I'll be a good citizen, stay indoors, and write in my blog.

Anyway, today I have been thinking about community. Yes. Community.

I'm someone whose mother is Japanese and whose father is Taiwanese, but who was born in the United States and thus grew up mostly only knowing English. I'm someone who went to high school with kids who were predominantly black, Jewish, and Korean. I'm someone who has changed addresses at least 20 times in her life, lived in 8 different states, and now in 2 different countries. I'm someone who has never belonged to any church. In other words, for most of my life, I have never experienced real community. In fact, for most of my life, I've been an outsider, a tourist, an observer, a visitor.

That is one reason I appreciated snowboarding so much. Previously I had only experienced community in small doses -- during freshman year in college, a fall internship in D.C., the summer after college, in graduate school, and during a 4-month internship in Atlanta. Though I made some good friends during these years, these communities were built mostly on proximity and dissolved quickly once its members moved to different locations.

Snowboarding was my first taste of real community after 4 years of living in California (I lived there 8 years in total), and the only time I've experienced community based on a shared passion. Every season a group of us would rent a house in South Lake Tahoe, buy season passes, and then spend most weekends from December through April in the Sierras. It's not as luxe as it sounds. The whole season usually cost me about 1500 dollars, which is not that much more than a week's holiday here in Zermatt. The fun usually began ahead of the season, with gatherings to meet new house members, and with excursions to the latest Warren Miller film, pre-season sales, and Icer Air. Then during the season, there were carpools, group meals, parties, and of course, snowboarding and skiing together on the slopes. You get to know people really well when you spend 4-12 hours in a car with them, and all day riding the lifts with them. There's lots of time for conversation, and you also become familiar with their various little quirks when you share a home with them, just as you become familiar with the quirks of your housemates or live-in significant other. We were all usually quite different from one another, but because we shared a passion for winter sports, often that was enough to bridge our differences. And year after year, the circle of friends and acquaintances grew wider and wider, until spending a day on the mountain was a bit like taking a stroll down Main Street in a small town with all its plusses and minuses, where you are constantly bumping into people you know and where conversations revolve around the latest doings of other people you know.

I didn't really think I would ever experience a similar sense of community here. It's not that I don't appreciate the great things about Amsterdam, such as the pretty canals, the centuries-old buildings, the bike culture, and the legality of a lot of things that I feel should also be legal everywhere in the U.S. I just don't have a strong sense of connection with the majority of people here, however nice they are. We are too different, or maybe I've just lived in California too long. I think there's some truth to the idea that nature can shape your personality. Here, the elements are so harsh. There have been days with hail, rain, snow, and sun appearing in sequence and then starting all over again, the wind blowing each of the weather patterns through the city faster than you can say "mijn godverdomme paraplu is kapot" (my damn umbrella is broken). We're closer to the North Pole than I've ever been in my life, which means that on the longest day of the year (fast approaching on the 21st of December), the sun will rise at 8:48am and set at 4:29pm. By comparison, on the same date, the sun will rise over the Berkeley hills at 7:22am and will set over the Golden Gate Bridge at 4:55pm. Daily life here occurs 5-18 feet below sea level, depending on which internet site you would choose to believe, with most Dutch aware that if the dikes holding back the North Sea were to break, then we would all be swimming in ice cold water and rusted bicycles. And many of the Dutch have also seen Al Gore's movie "The Inconvenient Truth", as it aired on television here a few weeks ago, which showed that if current global warming trends were to continue, many Germans would have beachfront property and most of the Netherlands would be no more. On top of it all, the Netherlands is among the 25 countries with the highest population density in the world; and of those 25 countries, only South Korea and Bangladesh are larger in size.

So it's no wonder that the Dutch are generally stoic, practical, and cynical. They believe in honesty and hard work. Given their lack of natural resources and especially space, they are gifted at making the most of what they have. They, more than any other group I've met, seem to prize the virtue of "keeping it real", and I'm not just saying that because they are generally credited with (or blamed for) inventing reality television. Among their most commonly used expressions are "doe maar gewoon" (just do it in the usual way) or "doe normaal" (be normal). This is quite different from the California way of life, which encourages weirdness...(cough, cough)...I mean, individuality. Great dreamers, entrepreneurs, and inventors come from California. Everyone I knew there had ideas under development, if only in their brain; everyone had a plan for early retirement, even if they were too busy snowboarding, rock climbing, creating puzzle hunts (ex-boyfriend), challenge square dancing (ex-coworker), building an airplane in their garage (ex-housemate) and otherwise indulging in their grand passions, to put it into action. On the other hand, great designers, engineers, and financial wizards (making money from money is probably bred into the population when you come from a small country)come from Amsterdam. To put it in Myers-Briggs terms, I've arrived in a land of mostly ISTJs and I've come from a land of mostly ENTPs.

But back to the idea of community. As I sit here typing and coughing away, I await my friend who has offered to drop off some NyQuil from the other side of town (NyQuil, DayQuil Sudafed, and Extra-Strength Tylenol are all hard-to-get commodities here). Last night, I ordered in some Thai food from www.thuisbezorgd.nl, which I discovered via a tip from another expat friend. The expats here are unbelievably supportive of one another, and there are a lot of us (almost one-third of Amsterdam residents were born outside of the Netherlands). We notify each other when we'll be in the States, so that we can place special orders for things expensive or hard-to-find in the Netherlands (last time, I brought back Halloween costumes and Trader Joe's chai latte powder mix). We care for each other's pets. We lend our couches to other expats in need of temporary housing or to visiting friends of friends. We give each other tips on where to find English-language books and American-style pancakes with crispy bacon and real maple syrup. Via the expat grapevine, I found out how to register to vote overseas and even how to check whether my registration actually went through. On November 4, I went to an all-night election party, where the singing of the American anthem actually brought tears to my eyes for the first time in my life, because I really wished I was back in the States to see Obama elected, but at least I was with fellow Americans who felt the same way. Again, I feel as though I'm part of a close community, held together by our shared experience of being foreigners in a country that let us in, but keeps us at a distance.

So, these are some conclusions after almost 2 years of living here. I've made some sweeping generalities throughout this post, so feel free to comment if your experience was different. And now, maybe I'll take a NyQuil-enhanced nap. It's 3:56pm, the streetlamps will soon be lit, and this ENTP is hoping that she will be well enough to enjoy seeing the Gotan Project tomorrow night.

Boarding and Biking, Part 2

So let’s get to #5 on the list.

This past weekend, my friend had a birthday, and I had the good fortune to be invited along on his birthday weekend. (We later told him that he should celebrate his birthday at least 4 times every year -- that’s how good it was!)

His brilliant idea was to check out Snowworld, which is the biggest of the 4 indoor snowboarding hills in the Netherlands. Did I say ‘hill’? Compared to Snowplanet, it was a resort! (In fact, I found out later that Snowworld is the largest indoor snowboarding center in the world. By contrast, Dubai is third.) We had ski-in, ski-out accommodations right on the ‘mountain’. Once inside, you really could pretend you were in the Alps. The lodge was packed with skiers and snowboarders, bundled up and bootstomping around, because it was still cool in the reception area. There was a fireplace, with a gas fire in it, and comfy chairs around. The wooden beams were decorated with Christmas lights and there were a few Christmas trees scattered here and there as well. The winter sporting goods store was the biggest one I’ve seen so far in Europe. Through the windows overlooking the slopes, you could see people lining up for the 6-person chair lift. On the left-most slope, ski racers were speeding down the slalom run, which was marked with bright orange and blue flags. There was even a mid-mountain ski hut, with a bar and a DJ on Friday nights.

We checked into our 4-star hotel rooms (though my equally snowboard-crazy Dutch colleague later scoffed: “do you know what it takes to get 4 stars in Holland? You get 1 star if you have a swimming pool, 2 stars if there’s a mini-bar...”). Rooms were 75 euros per night for a double, and 100 euros per night for a double with the sofa bed unfolded to squeeze in a third person. The rooms were right out of a design magazine. There was a marble sink, fancy bathroom fixtures, and a sliding glass door that served as the door to the shower if you pushed it to one side and served as the door for the toilet if you pushed it to the other. A giant photo of snow-covered woods was wallpapered above the beds. The comforter was so nice that I may have to buy one for myself. The freebies arranged attractively on the shelf above the sink included q-tips in a fancy box and “Snowworld”-branded shampoo, body lotion, and shower gel.

We were too late to eat dinner at Snowworld (nota bene: the website said ‘apres-ski’ facilities closed at 10pm, but they really closed at 9pm – if there’s any complaint I have about Snowworld, it’s that they were very disorganized when it came to information dissemination, with some employees giving us contradicting information). We ended up instead at a place in downtown Landgraaf called Mykonos Palace. Highly recommended. They serve you a glass of ouzo as soon as you sit down. What more can you ask for? Oh yeah, the food’s good too and reasonably priced. Just make sure you don’t order too much, as we did. The waitstaff were too shy to warn us, but they giggled as much as we did when we had to make room for yet another plate from the kitchen.

The next morning, we got off to a slow start – lingering over the huge buffet breakfast, which was included with our hotel stay -- but it hardly mattered. 4 hours at Snowworld is 25 euros and 8 hours is 30. If you get the package deal, like we did, then you only pay 39 euros for 8 hours plus an all-you-can eat barbeque lunch. The 8 hours is pure piste time. If you leave the piste to go to the restroom or get a snack, the clock stops. Given that the 39 euros also includes rentals, and I already brought all my snowboarding gear, I decided to ski – yes ski! -- for a few hours after lunch.

It was my first time on skis in more than 10 years. People told me that I would notice an immediate difference between shaped (i.e., parabolic) skis and the long straight skis I used when I was in my teens and 20s. But it was too long ago. I didn’t notice a difference. The first run was a bit scary, in fact, as I had to remember to keep my body facing downhill at all times. The opposite of snowboarding. I also didn’t quite remember what to do with my arms and poles, so the poles dragged like a useless set of appendages behind me. But by the fourth run, I was feeling comfortable.

But…I still spent the bulk of the day on my snowboard, because nothing beats that feeling of being one with my board and surfing the snow!

The piste seemed longer than it really was, because there is a bend in it and you can’t see the bottom from the top. There was enough snow that if you fell, it wouldn’t hurt that much. Also, the snow was piled up in some places and thinner in others, just like on a real piste. So it was easy and fun to do little hops and spins along the sides of the slope. The ski lift took you to the top of both a blue and a red slope (for North Americans, the colors in Europe equivalent to green-blue-black are blue-red-black), but unfortunately the red slope was closed for competition. From the lift, you could watch the competition or see the action in the park, which was a decent size, well-designed, and served by its own button lift. After 3 or 4 piste runs, I went to the park to session one of the smaller jumps and made some good progress.

We finished off with a delicious fondue dinner and plenty of wine. I was sad that we only had one day at Snowworld, but I was looking forward to the next day of biking…in a cave!

To be continued…

Boarding and Biking, Part I

I’ve mixed biking and snowboarding five times in my life. Once in France, where after snowboarding all morning on the glacier at the top of the mountain, a group of us rented mountain bikes and biked from the middle of the mountain to the bottom. Well, the others biked. I mostly fell…on…every…single…turn. The next day, I looked like I had fallen into a Willy Wonka factory machine, the one that makes Scrumptelicious Blueberry-Raspberry Delight.

The 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th times were all in the Netherlands. The 2nd time was when I biked from my flat to snowboard on the indoor conveyer belt (see earlier post). The 3rd and 4th times were when I biked from my flat to Snowplanet, which is the closet indoor snowboarding hill to Amsterdam. Even though it’s the closest, it’s still 2 ½ hours away by bike. Luckily, the bike ride is mostly pleasant. The path is one that a lot of people take when they are biking to Haarlem. Also, after snowboarding, we only had to bike a half hour from the hill to the train station and take the train back to Amsterdam.

The best thing about Snowplanet is the barbeque they have in the summer. If you get a combo-ticket, it only costs 12 euro. They prepare a generous assortment of meats for you, and you grill it yourself. They also bring you bread, fries, a mixed salad, potato salad, and cole slaw. It’s a real feast. It would almost be worth the drive even without the snowboarding thrown in.

Otherwise, it’s a lame little hill. In my opinion, not even that good for teaching beginners. The conditions are what we in Tahoe would have called ‘dust on crust’. Here it’s even more apt, because the indoor places have sawdust-y snow. Underneath it is – I’m guessing -- either ice or concrete. The temperature is colder than most people expect. They keep it below freezing (-5 or -6 degrees Celcius). There’s no music playing, and they haven’t bothered to do much with the walls and ceilings. So you don’t have the feeling that you are in anything other than a big rectangular freezer.

In the summer, there’s a “fun” park in the middle with 3 or 4 rails and boxes. Useless to me, since I made a promise to myself to stay away from metal a few years ago. Being older now and working in a corporate environment, where I almost already have to whisper that I’m a snowboarder (versus being a skier, which is somehow considered as respectable as playing golf or tennis among upper management – it implies not only that you are strong and athletic, but also that you are an aggressive and powerful risk-taker; it does not imply that you are juvenile, reckless, and arrogant! But okay -- I won’t continue further along this slightly-bitter riff for the moment). In short, I feel as though I can no longer risk coming to work with black eye or a broken tooth.

My reservations about jibbing have not extended to jumping though. That’s something that I can’t give up just yet. Unfortunately, Snowplanet has just three jumps. A small one at the top, which is always un-jumpable because the landing is so icy. A giant one in the middle, which has a gap you could drive a car through and is obviously designed with competitive snowboarders and skiers in mind, and a medium-sized one at the very bottom, which theoretically I could jump, if only I could get enough damned speed. The only way to do that, apparently, is to either attach an engine to my board or jump the giant gap in the middle first, which generates just enough speed to do a pop off the bottom jump.

But I must continue this later this week, as I see now that it is 3:52am, and I shouldn’t continue to indulge my insomnia this way. I’m not sure I can blame it on jet lag anymore, since I came back from the U.S. on Wednesday. It won’t be easy getting Ambien on short notice, because I still haven’t signed up for a GP in Holland. I slept great over the weekend – 9 or 10 hours a night, both nights. Ugh, what happened? Maybe I’ll pick up some espresso beans on the way to the office…

Fiets-ing

I love that the Dutch word for bike is fiets (pronounced "feets"). It's like a cute way of saying "my bike is an extension of my body".

Ever since I moved here, I’ve been tempted to spend an afternoon in a café somewhere just to take photos of fietsers. But now I just found out that someone else has already gone and done it. His blog post is fantastic, as are the comments that follow it. Check it out: 82 Pictures of Bicycles Taken in 73 Minutes

There's still room for a sequel though, as he took his photos in a tourist area on a weekday, and I think there's more potential if you sit along Weteringschans on a Saturday afternoon. That's when everyone does their shopping by bike. I've seen people trying to bring home their new beanbag chairs, floor lamps, and houseplants. Most of the time, they seem to manage it with no problem at all (and anyway, I assume that the ones who are struggling are expats).

Just today, when I was biking home from work, I wished I had my camera around my neck to capture the guy biking in front of me. He was wearing a blue pinstriped suit and top hat and had the beard of a Hasidic jew. His bike panniers were crammed full, and he had a set of skis (or perhaps golf clubs? or pool cues?) slung across his back. There was also something very wide laid across his front wheel. As I got closer, I saw that it was a baby carriage basket. And as I passed him, I saw that the basket held a big brown droopy-faced dog.

It all confirms my belief that, if people-watching was a sport, then Amsterdam is the Olympic stadium.

Herring Hunt

I'm feeling guilty that I haven't posted anything in months, even though I must have thought at least a hundred times: "I should put that in my blog". So my new plan is to submit shorter posts more often.

This post is to announce that apparently both Hollandse nieuwe haring (i.e., "new herring") and Celine Dion will be arriving in Amsterdam this week. I can forgo Celine, but I will definitely be on the lookout for a herring stand.

Herring (usually salted and frozen, but not cooked) is considered a delicacy here. According to DutchAmsterdam.nl, the Hollandse Nieuwe is the "best herring" and is only available during a narrow time window (usually mid-May to the end of June). For 2008, no herring may be sold as Hollandse Nieuwe unless it was caught on or after June 3rd, has at least 16% fat, and was frozen for at least 2 days; those that break this law will be fined €10,800. So yep, the Dutch take their herring seriously.

You're supposed to hold the tail of the herring in one hand, tipping your head back to dangle it over your mouth, and then bite off the head first, before chewing towards the tail. Yum!

Also on the agenda for this week:

- Replace my mobile telephone which mysteriously expired last night

- Replace my computer speaker which is not quite dead yet but is emitting a static-heavy drone that will induce in me a nervous breakdown if I allow it to continue

- Go to a cocktail bar to try fancy Italian aperitivos

- Bike from Amsterdam to Haarlem

- Read further in my Dutch grammar book and the Namesake

- Make large batches of ginger lemonade

- Activate my first euro credit card

- Plan what to do with my remaining vacation days

- Cook something insanely delicious

Almost One Year in Amsterdam

February 20 is my one year anniversary in Amsterdam.

I was just thinking that tonight reflects how much Amsterdam has become a part of me in the past year. I biked home from work and met up with my apartment cleaner. He's from Brazil and doesn't speak any English, so we communicate in broken Spanish. Then I ordered some Thai food in my kindergarten Dutch, biked over to the restaurant to pick it up along with some flowers and chocolate from the night market down the street, and continued on to the hospital to visit my good friend from Australia, who just broke her leg in a bike accident.

A year ago, I didn't know anyone in Amsterdam. I didn't speak any other languages besides English. I didn't think I would ever ride a bike here, let alone ride across town at night dodging taxis, trams, and pedestrians with take-out dinner and a bouquet of flowers poking out of my saddlebags.

It hasn't been 100% easy, getting to this point.

There have been humiliations and frustrations galore. Work is more stressful. I have a longer -- and generally wetter, darker, and colder! -- commute to the office. The last time I remember 5 days in a row without rain was last spring (everyone still refers nostalgically to "those great two weeks in April"). And I still have yet to drive a car here, or drink a tall glass of whole milk at lunch, so I guess I'm still far from being Dutch-ified.

But do I have regrets about moving here? Sure, although they mostly center around things like not buying a multi-voltage food processor while I had the chance. The move itself, I'll never regret.

All managers at my company are put on a 5-phase management improvement program. Phases 2 and 4 involved intensive off-site training for 4 days in Noordvijk and 2 days in Siena respectively. It's the best training program I've ever attended, and along with the on-the-job experience I had this year managing a larger group in a different department, makes me feel that taking this position would have been worthwhile even if it had just been to a place down the street instead of a place in another country.

But since I did move to another country, I'm learning a lot outside of work too. My overall language skills have improved (although half the time I'm saying 'ja' when I mean 'si' or 'oui' or vice versa). In the past year, I've been to France three times, and am heading there again in a month. I've been to Italy and London twice. I spent two weeks in Spain, including Christmas, New Year's Eve, and my birthday. There were also visits to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and in next week I'm going to Portugal. While it doesn't compare (in my own twisted, snow-obsessed mind!) to a season of weekends in Tahoe, all this travel is still a nice consolation prize.

The travel did include some snowboarding of course -- 6 days in Cham, 2 days in Switzerland, 2 days in Austria, 6 days in Les Deux Alpes, 4 days in Sainte-Foy, 1 day at SnowPlanet, 1 day on the conveyer belt (see my previous post: "Snowboarding IN Amsterdam"), and I have an upcoming week in Cham. So that makes the count so far 25 days, compared to roughly 35-40 during a typical Tahoe season. Not too bad, except when you consider that only 5 of this year's days involved riding powder.

By the way, here are some things I learned about snowboarding in Europe:

1. Indoor snow is like cold sawdust.
2. You can only survive an avalanche if they find you within 15 minutes.
3. Glaciers have crevasses that are hidden under a layer of snow.
4. Drag lifts are appropriately named.
5. You must be aggressive in lift lines (NB: Unlike in the USA, the liftee is not there to organize the lines. He's there to help Americans get on the drag lift. Otherwise, he's in the booth smoking a cigarette).
6. You need to buy supplemental health insurance for snowboarding trips, or you won't be covered at all.
7. Health insurance is a good idea (see points 2, 3, and 4)
8. Guides are expensive (350 Euros/day to hire "Fred" in Sainte Foy), but worth it.
9. Helicopters are expensive (120 Euro/person for a 10-minute ride to the top in Switerland), but worth it.
10. When I'm pulling my snowboard bag around the airport, the person who asks "you got a body in there?" is invariably British.

Well enough about lessons learned...

Whenever someone asks me how long I'm staying, I say another year or so, maybe a little longer. It's never once crossed my mind to actually live here. Then again, right now, it's hard to imagine going back to my old life too. It's hard to imagine owning a car and having to fill it up with gas, and not being able to bike anywhere in town within 15 minutes. It's hard to imagine not walking on cobblestones and not seeing canals every day. It's entirely possible that someday I'll miss Amsterdam as much as I miss San Francisco now.

Luckily, I still have at least one more year to figure out my next move and it should go by fast, with more travel and lots of visitors (at least 8 already confirmed from Feb-May). Once I quit my job, I'll probably put off looking for another job right away. What the hell. 2 years has always been about my limit for being a corporate slave. And then maybe by the time I actually make it back home, I'll be able to afford to buy more than a shack in the Bay Area.

I bought a Lonely Planet book called "A Year of Adventures", hoping it might inspire me. So far, it's convinced me that I should look into airfares to Corsica and the Sinai Peninsula. But the book is a bit too hardcore for me. For instance, I've already decided that I'm NOT going to do the Ironman Triathalon (p. 164), swim the English Channel (p. 111), climb Mount Everest (p. 156), or visit Chernobyl (p. 126). I haven't ruled out flying into outer space (p. 50), though; in fact I'm definitely going to do so as soon as I have a spare $102,000 in my pocket.

My research into possibilities continues, and ideas are welcome. Maybe I'll have some more epiphanies to share this summer...