Amsterdammertjes

I always thought they looked phallic, both in color (maybe J Crew would call it "Engorged") and shape. Amsterdammertjes are the metal posts that are used to block cars from entering pedestrian areas. Also very funny for me when I first arrived (though I'm used to it now) are the triple-Xes that appear on them. XXX is apparently symbolizes the City of Amsterdam, and has a very very long history that predates Jenna Jameson.

Anyway, I was recently amused by an article I just read in Het Parool, which described the City of Amsterdam's history in press relations. Here's an excerpt, roughly translated:

"San Francisco (2005). In 2005, Amsterdam politicians and artists traveled to San Fransciso, with the intent to represent themselves there as hip and creative. Unfortunately, the mayor of San Francisco could not attend the reception. Therefore, in his place, his press secretary accepted the traditional gift from the visiting city: a half-transparent Amsterdammertje with a light inside.

'The woman tore the paper open and stared right at its little head,' wrote [the Het Parool reporter] 'As if there were 220 volts on that thing, she pulled her hands off. The presenter tried to explain that these poles stood everywhere in Amsterdam, but the woman looked at it as if she had just received a giant dildo from the mayor of Amsterdam.'

Zermatt

The Matterhorn





Electric cars ensure that the air is not just cold, but clear.



Zermatt is a playground for the rich. This huge poster was one of many that we saw while waiting in lift lines, or above ski runs. Most posters advertised expensive jewelry and watches. We blended in just fine, even though we were mostly a group of teachers, designers, and IT administrators. Everyone looks the same bundled up in snow outfits from head to toe. But sometimes I did feel like I was air-dropped on to another planet. It was a true escape from Amsterdam, in both scenery and spirit.



Another example of conspicuous consumption. This champagne bar is off one of the narrow ski runs that feed back down from the main trails into Zermatt. A perfect stop for a PRE-apres-ski drink. The small wooden deck benches were draped with animal skins, and they served the champagne in real glasses, not plastic, which you would expect when each glass sets you back 12 wet and wrinkled euros.

The ski-in, ski-out bars are among the best features of Zermatt. Besides the champagne bar, we stamped into a tiny two story medieval-looking hut that specialized in gluh wine. There was another bar that reminded me of grass-roofed gazebos that you find in the tropics. And a set of igloos to which we hiked for 10 minutes through the snow from the train station to have fondue dinner.



In the Iglu-Dorf: before dinner, we were given a tour of the hotel rooms. The hot tub looked nice, but everything else looked cold, especially the toilet.






My favorite photo from the whole trip.

Les Menuires

We found some great off-piste runs in Meribel, even though it hadn't snowed in a few days.



Les Menuires through rose-colored goggles!



I couldn't stop laughing when we did this as a group activity one night -- about 40 of us, taking off at once, and careening into side walls and each other.



Hahahahahahaha!



My fantastic flatmates: Alex, Brian, and JJ.



What I love about this photo: that the shower rod was rigged with a broomstick (before that, every time we showered, the water went everywhere) and that Brian actually brought a brand-new shower curtain with him on a snowboarding trip. Zomaar. So random.



WRONG! This French breakfast treat was in the cupboard of our flat when we arrived. It seemed to go along perfectly with the motto for the week: "Too much sick for your head." We finally gave it a try on the 4th or 5th day of the trip; turns out that it tastes like a very rich thick hot chocolate.



And a few other good memories of Les Menuires (among many): fresh bread and croissants every morning, the picnic table jam, talking about music and Dutch/American culture, "wil jij een ei?", and learning that goggles in Dutch is "google" and singular as in "my google is fogged".

Porte Puymorens

We did a quick trip to Porte Puymorens in the French Pyrenees for my birthday, by flying into Barcelona and renting a car (though later we found out that flying into Toulouse would have been easier).


Porte Puymorens is surprisingly great for snowboarders after a fresh dump of snow. Short runs, but it doesn't take much effort to hit run after run of freshies. And there was a rock field that provided endless opportunities to do small jumps and spins along the way.

Our quirky hotel was ski-in, ski-out, but hardly what you'd call luxurious. It looked like every stick was built by hand, including all the furniture inside. There was an old microwave oven built next to the main entrance, which the hotel used for collecting mail. The town below offered no nightlife, so we spent every night eating dinner at the hotel restaurant and then shooting a few games of billiards in the hotel bar.




The boys and I spent half of our lunch break trying to figure out how to take a photo with all of our reflections appearing in my friend's ski goggles.


The other thing I remember vividly about this trip is the Sandwich American. It was basically a giant steak and french-fry submarine sandwich. Yes, they put the french fries in the sandwich. Once again, I was confronted with the funny ideas Europeans have about Americans!

All in all, a relaxing and fun getaway long weekend.

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...

A Tribute to the Amsterdam Public Library

Last week, while I was visiting my parents on the East Coast, I spent a few hours browsing through the 20 pounds or so of Time, Transworld Snowboarding, and Travel and Leisure magazines that my mom conscientiously saved for me while I've been living in Europe for the past 9 months. Catching up on my US-centric news made me feel as though I had just arrived in the future via a time machine. When did Al Gore get the Nobel Prize? Who were the Jena 6? And Dog the Bounty Hunter had to apologize for using the N word? How come none of my so-called friends have kept me up-to-date with this important piece of information?

Also: buried on page 78 of Time's special issue on the Best Inventions of the Year was a blurb titled "Reinvented: The Hand Dryer". It stated simply that "[b]y forcing unheated air through a narrow gap at more than 400 mph, the energy-efficient Dyson Airblade dries hands in just 10 sec. flat". Well, finally, a piece of news that I actually knew about before the readers in America did. These are the hand dryers that can be found in the basement restroom of the main branch of the Amsterdam Public Library.

I've already been raving like a lunatic about these hand dryers to all of my friends in Amsterdam. First of all, instead of rubbing your hands under the airstream to dry them, you stick both your hands into something that resembles a toaster oven. Then, there's the noise, like the sound of a jet engine revving up for take-off. In the meantime, the skin on your hands is being subjected to g-forces from the heavy duty vacuum-cleaner-like suction, which -- thanks to Time magazine -- I now know is what it would feel like if you stuck your hands out of a car window while someone was driving the car at 400 miles per hour.

When I described this to my friend Jim, he was appalled. "I'd never do it. Don't you ever watch horror movies? What if I pulled my hands out and instead of hands, all I had left were bloody stumps?!"

It's true that I had my reservations when I first tried it. But now I'm a fan. Ordinary hand dryers seem so pathetic now next to the public library Dyson Airblades¹.

In fact, ordinary libraries seem pathetic next to the Main Branch of the Amsterdam public library, which I also rave about. I'm not alone in this (although I seem to be somewhat alone with the hand dryer obsession, so far). This branch opened on 7/7/07, and I'm guessing that it is the nicest library in the world. Although I haven't been to the one in Dubai, and who knows? -- maybe that one has a monorail that takes you through the stacks.

The library was designed by the Dutch architect Jo Coenen, not to be confused with my photographer friend Jo² who took this gorgeous photo of it that Flickr won't let me download except in thumbnail size (click on the thumbnail to be linked to a larger photo).

There are 7 floors (or 10, if you also count floors 0, 0.5, and -1; yeah, it's a European thing). On the first floor, as soon as you walk in, there's a bank of television screens. Most of the times I have been there, the screens are displaying a video of swimming dolphins. This seems to be totally unrelated to the reading of books, although dolphins are supposed to be pretty intelligent. I just read in Time magazine that they have recently been observed using sea sponges to catch fish. So maybe the point is that we can strive to be intelligent like the dolphins if we read a lot of books.

All the librarians have nicely designed uniforms. I read in the newspaper that these were controversial amongst the librarians when first introduced; I quite like them though. At least they are not ugly, and it makes it easier to identify the librarian when I have a question and he is trying to sneak off to the restroom to use the hand dryer.

There are escalators and a futuristic elevator and lots of ultra-modern chairs that look uncomfortably like plastic, but are actually soft and fun. On the top floor, there's a La Place restaurant, which serves cafeteria-style gourmet food (or gourmet-style cafeteria food, take your pick) and offers tables on the terrace, with a fabulous view overlooking central Amsterdam and the Ij river. They have 600 computers for free internet usage, a concert hall that seats 270, and "pods" for individual private study. They also have a gi-normous selection of CDs, DVDs, and computer games, which one may rent for one euro per week. Books are free and may be borrowed for 3 weeks at a time, although this is all on top of the yearly membership fee of 23.50 euro.

Hey, you gotta pay for those hand-dryers somehow.

Note: I plan to supplement this post with photos eventually, though my camera has been a serious disappointment to me lately, and I have no plans to go to the library in the next few weeks. Now that the nights are cold and dark, I am definitely less motivated to make excursions outside of my neighborhood.
¹Although with a name like "Dyson Airblades", it's easy to make the mental jump to "bloody stumps". Someone in Marketing really should have thought of that.
²I think Jo's photos are brilliant. If you want to see more, click here and prepare to be AMAZED. I also have a permanent link to her Flickr photo site on my blog sidebar.

It's not just rain...

...sometimes it's rainbows!

After leaving my apartment this morning, I stepped outside and saw this. Of course, I ran back inside to get my camera. Then I biked to the metro station in a nice light drizzle, feeling very hardcore (from biking in the rain) and warmfuzzly (from the memory of "my" rainbow) at the same time.

Snowboarding IN Amsterdam

Yes, it's actually possible. You can snowboard within the city limits at Indoor Ski & Squash Watergraafsmeer. Can you believe it took me this long to actually do it? It's only a 25 minute bike ride from my place, it cost 12 Euro to participate in an hour-long group lesson, and they supply all the gear.

But there's a catch (of course there's a catch!) The catch is...there's no snow. The "hill" is a carpeted conveyer belt that is sprayed with stuff to make it slippery.

Check out the photo. There were six of us snowboarding in this tiny space at once!

Our instructor started by putting long metal bars down, and then had 3 of us stand behind the front bar and 3 behind the back bar, all in what he called "gliding" position, as if we were pointing straight downhill. He pressed a big black button on the side and suddenly the ground started to move away underneath us.

Gradually, after we all got used to the idea that we could stand upright while the conveyer belt was running, we did exercises to learn how to slow down on the mountain. In other words, we turned the board so that it was perpendicular to the slope to simulate a heel-side stop. We did the same thing facing uphill to simulate a toe-side stop. Next we did some toe-edge and heel-edge turns, but we could only angle the board enough to move from one end of the bar to the other. Then some of us were able to let go of the bar, and do the falling leaf in place. The final part of the lesson -- strictly for those of us who already knew how to snowboard -- was to move the top bar further back and have us do linked turns from one bar down to the next.

The instructor warned us that even seasoned snowboarders would have trouble at first. He wasn't kidding. 12 of us participated altogether, and 9 were complete beginners. Even the three of us who had been snowboarding for 7 years or more fell on our knees, butts, and backs a few times.

One main difference was, the belt didn't slow down or stop, so you never really got the feeling of how being perpendicular would actually slow you down. Also, it was very weird to be in such a constricted space with a metal bar at waist-level and two other people on either side. On a snowy hill with that kind of slope I wouldn't normally be afraid of falling, but with the conveyer belt constantly going, you had to trust the instructor to stop it before you hit the back wall.

That said, I'd say it was a fantastic way for beginners to learn the body movement required for snowboarding. It was cheap, it wasn't cold, we didn't have to drive or fly for hours to get there, and the bar was literally three steps away from the hill. And of course, this being Amsterdam, the apres-ski was especially good! We shared a few bottles of wine and pasta at an Italian restaurant in Rembrandtplein and then mega-strong cocktails upstairs at Harry's Bar. Just like after any other day on the slopes, we talked about the best falls of the day and our future snowboarding trips. We'll probably hit a few of the other indoor slopes in the Netherlands (there are 4!) within the next few months so that the beginners will have a chance to give it a try on real snow. Having never been to one of these indoor snow domes, I'm really curious about what they are like. So watch this space for more about indoor boarding in the near future...

Giant Disco Ball from Outer Space

I feel compelled to post about my night at the Sugar Factory, a club off the Leidseplein in Amsterdam. "Interactive Disco Opera" was the collaborative masterpiece of artist Eric Staller, filmmaker Miss T, and costumer Nepco. It was described as "Fellini-esque" in the paper, so I knew it would be surreal. But since I've never seen a Fellini movie myself, I wasn't sure what to expect. I will definitely go out and rent one now.

The theme of the night seemed to be alien B-movies from the 50s. When I walked in, they were showing the short film "Strip Tease on Mars", which was basically a gorgeous woman getting naked to 50s cocktail jazz on what seemed to be a desert planet, while eyeballs attached to long antennae quivered behind every rock. This was followed by a live saw harpist playing along to a film of vinyl records hovering above the Nemo & other obvious Amsterdam landmarks, a really clever localized send-up of the horrible special effects that make B-movies so fun to watch. Along those lines, I never realized what I was missing in life until I saw a cross-eyed Godzilla melting a toy windmill with his fiery breath in the wildly exciting action-horror short "Godzilla vs. Amsterdam".

There was also the Burka Boogie Woogie Band, where women dressed in burkas played in a band, with the burkas strategically fastened so that the shapes of the trumpet, trombones, bass, and other instruments poked out from the sides. One of my favorite pieces involved 4 women just standing still on the balcony in the darkness wearing beauty parlor helmets with lights that blinked in rhythm with the music; they looked like deep sea creatures. And there was a bizarro film featuring pink plastic breasts each moving separately, and then you were gradually made to realize that each breast was actually a woman wearing a huge plastic ball and a hat resembling a nipple. The grand finale, which was truly magnificent, involved 4 beautiful women in white glittering leotards, high heels, and disco ball helmets dancing around a shivering mass of silver, which eventually jelled (to the tune of "Last Dance") into an enormous disco ball man, about 3 times my height in diameter and at various times seeming about to roll off the stage into the transfixed audience.

Now that I'm typing all of this out, I realize...well...you really had to be there. There's just no way to describe it in a coherent way. It was abso-#$%@-ing incredible. I'm so going to all of Eric Staller's future disco operas. And you should too, if he ever comes to your city.

I can also highly recommend Hans Eijkelboom's photography, which is on exhibition now at Foam. Not nearly so dramatic, but also very interesting.

What's French for "whiplash"?

In the summer of 2005, I parted with 100,000 Northwest frequent flyer miles in order to attend McNab Snowboarding Summer Camp at Les Deux Alpes, a glacier in the French Alps. It was such a great experience that I knew I'd do it again once I moved to Europe.

I just came back from my second trip to Les Deux Alpes (and second post-McNab side trip to Lyon), and once again, thoroughly enjoyed my holiday, though it meant consuming half the box of ibuprofen I'd bought at the start. 6 days of repeatedly throwing oneself off a jump in a desperate bid to land a cool trick is a joyous yet painful experience.

Thanks to the marvelous coaches at McNab (including Jenny Jones, who might well turn up as one of the few non-American women invited to the X-Games this year), I'm now nailing frontside 180s. Sadly though I seem to have mysteriously lost my ability to perform switch 180s -- which I could do, albeit not beautifully, before this trip. There was one day where I managed three gorgeous backside 180s in a row. It's all on the McNab video; okay, so I don't have a copy of said video, but there are witnesses to back me up. I need proof, since one day later, I couldn't replicate the feat.

Again, I was hanging out with a crew of Brits & Scots, all very friendly and sweet. There were only three female campers, and two of them were there with their boyfriends. So it was perhaps a dubious honor when I won the Women's Big Air competition on the last day (similar to when I won "Best American Camper" 2 years ago, and I was the only American camper there!) The prize was a brand-new North Face jacket, so I'm not complaining.

In addition to the trick contest, on the morning of the last day, the coaches held their infamous McNab Derby. This was no ordinary speed competition. They clicked all of our boards together in a big pile, and then they faced us in a line. When Neil called "Go!", they tackled us as we dove for our boards. Then we had to race down the mountain to the train, ride the train back up, and tag one of the coaches who was wearing a bright orange jacket. I had trouble extracting my board from the pile but made a decent showing in the race portion -- despite a number of slow-moving obstacles on the hill such as the people riding the t-bar. Boarding the beginner-strewn runs with my speed-addicted skier friends at Heavenly is good training, as is weaving around trams, cars, other bikes, and tourists on my bike in Amsterdam.

On Saturday, while almost everyone else either stayed in Les 2 for another week or took a flight back home to the UK, I went to Lyon. It was my second visit there, and I really love it. It reminds me of Philadelphia, where I grew up. A small city, with acres...sorry, meters...of shops and restaurants and bars and cafes. No major tourist attractions like the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre, so it's often overlooked by tourists. I didn't have time to do the tour of the covered walkways or the silk-weavers house. I did have time to watch Die Hard 4 dubbed in French though. Um, why did the bad guys kill off all the computer geeks? Oh never mind, I'll watch it again in English some day.

I also rented an electric bike. You can turn the dial to "Off", "On", or "Eco". I never figured out what "Eco" really did. But when you clicked to "On", it felt like someone was giving you a tiny push from behind every 30 seconds or so. Fabulous for biking uphill. Not so good if you start with the "On" setting, like I did once accidentally; the bike started to go without me so I almost fell off it. Once I got the hang of it, it was no problem. I even answered my mobile phone in the middle of biking to the park and had a 5-minute conversation, during which the other bikers on the path gave me hard stares. They all had two hands firmly on both handlebars. I guess it makes more sense to do so when you have hand brakes. In the Netherlands, I could be cradling a baby in one arm and smoking a cigarette with the other and hardly anyone would notice.

Lyon has a great bike path along the Rhone River, with floating beer gardens along the way, and a giant park that compares favorably with Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. The park has a little zoo, so I'd turn the corner on my bike and suddenly be within a few hundred meters of some elephants, lions, or a giraffe. There's also a beautiful Vieux Ville, with quaint narrow staircases going up into the hills. And while most people are willing to speak English, they were also willing to speak French, if it looked like I wanted to speak it -- and even if I spoke it badly. A nice change from Amsterdam, where I'm thrilled if I can convince a shopkeeper to speak to me in Dutch for 2 minutes. My French improved by miles...oops, I mean kilometers...in just one day. Though I have to admit, I had a 15-minute conversation with my taxi driver during which I was convinced I understood everything he was telling me about his mother, only to find out that the whole time he wasn't talking about his mother at all, but the mayor of the city. In other words, "le maire" and not "la mere".

Oh. Merde.

"ick ben moo"

That's how you say "I'm tired" in Dutch. So what do the cows say then? The cows say "booooo". I also found out that a Dutch pig is a "big".

Whores are "hoeren", to rent something is "huuren", and to hear something is "hooren". So you have to be careful when you say: "Yeah, I hear that". If you're a man and you mispronounce "ja hoor" (which is actually a very common way of voicing agreement here in Holland), then you just might get pushed into the nearest canal.

Speaking of canals, to the Dutch, the Panama Canal is still a canal. But a canal in Amsterdam is actually a "gracht". You might also have a favorite "kanal" on television. And did you hear the one about the tourist who accidentally dropped his camera into one of Amsterdam's (famously dirty) canals? When he was finally able to fish his camera back out, the film was already developed.

Barumpdum.

Just a sampling of the many random things I learned last week at "the nuns course": the famous language school in the southern part of the Netherlands, which was founded by the Sisters of the Holy Order of St. Augustine. When my company first told me that they were sending me there, I pictured sleeping on a bare cot with a wooden cross hanging above it, stoically surviving on a diet of bread and water, moving silently through open courtyards, and studying rigorously from morning until night.

The only thing I got right was the last. It was indeed 5 days of intensive Dutch language learning, but we slept at a luxe hotel nearby, and every morning a bus picked us up at 8am and dropped us off at a modern new building with a very corporate feel. During our frequent coffee breaks, we were offered cappucinos, espressos, and fancy tea. During our afternoon snack breaks, the spreads included such delicacies as steak tartare and salmon mousse.

We had classes all day from 8:25am (the Dutch would literally say: "5 minutes before half 9 in the morning") until 7:15pm, at which point we were served a fabulous 3-course gourmet dinner accompanied by excellent wine until the bus returned to pick us up at 9pm. Back at the hotel, most of us would gather at the hotel bar and talk until after midnight.

While Americans were the biggest group, there were still only 5 of us learning Dutch. The rest were from: India, Taiwan, Germany, Finland, Libya, Sweden, Romania, Kyrgyzstan (okay, I'll admit I had to wikipedia that one), Chile, Uruguay, Australia, the UK, Scotland, and South Africa. There was also a large contingent of Dutchies learning Italian, French, Spanish, and German.

One of the Dutch guys who joined us a few times at the bar was a dairy engineer trainer. He asked me whether I knew that California had recently surpassed Wisconsin in the production of cheese. I told him that I didn't know that. "Well..." he said, "Wisconsin knows".

So how much Dutch did I actually learn? A lot. But still not enough. It's still a struggle to form sentences. I only started learning past tense on the last day, and my vocabulary is very limited. And I still don't get word order at all. Last night (back in Amsterdam), I tried to carry on an entire conversation in English, but using the Dutch word order. I was only able to handle about 5 minutes. I want Dutch really to learn but think I that explode my head will if it I try it too long to do. My friend claims that the language was invented by Yoda.

By the way, in Dutch, I could never say "my friend" unless I meant by that "my boyfriend". If I said "me and my 5 friends", I'd be admitting to leading quite a promiscuous lifestyle. I have to remember to say instead: "a friend" or "some friends".

Well it's now 8 minutes before half eleven at night (that is, 10:22pm), and I'm getting moo-er by the minute. Goodbye for now and "slaap lekker!"

Ooh Naked People!

I didn't hear about this until after it happened. Not that I'd get up early to get my picture taken naked in a parking garage.

Check out more photos and a press release here and video here

And if you want to be immortalized as a work of art and you're not shy like me, you can sign up to be part of future Spencer Tunick events here.

I wish I could title this post "Only in Amsterdam", but it looks like Mr. Tunick has already been to Bruges, London, Lyon, Melbourne, Montreal, Sao Paulo, Newcastle/Gateshead, Vienna, Barcelona, New York City, and Mexico City (where he somehow persuaded 18,000 Mexicans to voluntarily strip in exchange for nothing but a signed photo).

He hasn't hit San Francisco yet though. I figure it's only a matter of time. However, given that saran-wrapped nudists running in Bay to Breakers is ho-hum now, maybe no one would blink an eye at 5000 naked people blanketing the Golden Gate Bridge.

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!