Krees goes Dutch!

"Going Dutch: How I Learned to Love the European Welfare State"

I recently read an essay in the New York Times: "Going Dutch: How I Learned to Love the European Welfare State" by Russell Shorto. It's a lengthy read (20 minutes?), but as a professional writer, Mr. Shorto does a much better job than I can of addressing and summing up most of my conflicted opinions about living here.

Topics run the gamut from conflicting views (Dutch vs. American) on socialized health care to public housing to individuality to professional ambition to cling wrap.

Want to know what I think about living here? Want to know whether I want to stay here or return to the U.S.? Read Mr. Shorto's wonderful essay and let's chat over a cup of coffee. Even if it's on a Sunday.

Pregnancy, birth and child care in the Netherlands

A colleague sent out an email to those of us at the office who have recently had kids, asking for information and input for a friend about living in the Netherlands, especially with regard to having a baby and raising a child here. In true Krees fashion, I sent her a treatise. Then I realized that all the information (with a little opinion) might be useful to others. So here it is.

Lammetjes! (2009 edition)

It's not here yet, but spring is on its way. There are shoots of crocuses, daffodils, tulips and hyacinths coming up in the back yard. More importantly, on a walk with Aldus and Maui past the schaapskooi last Friday we discovered...LAMMETJES! Oh squee, how I love the lammetjes!

There were two little two-day old lambs in a pen near the barn door with their mother, one of which I got to pet! (Aldus wasn't too keen. Maui was tied up far away.) And a handful of three-week old lambs were running around with the bigger sheep inside and behind the barn.

Of course I dragged Charles back with us the next day for another look and some photos. Behold, the three-day old lambs! (Yes, that wooly thing that they like to stand on is their mother.)

We also noticed a few lambs (probably also three-weekers) out in a pasture between Diever and Dwingeloo. It won't be long before they're all over the place, and I won't be able to drive anywhere without stopping to laugh and take photos.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

It's no surprise that I've been a bit homesick while here in the Netherlands, particularly during the holidays when I'd like to be setting up a tree in our own house, hanging our own stockings, enjoying a Michigan snowfall and making plans to spend New Year's Eve with The Usual Suspects in Ann Arbor. You know, as opposed to dealing wiht a turkey skinned by the Dutch butcher, trying to find flights that don't land us in Palermo at 11pm on Christmas Eve or listening to the local teenagers set off New Year's fireworks THREE WEEKS EARLY and 15 FEET FROM MY DOG AND I. (Rotten Dutch kids. Don't you have some cheese sandwiches to eat or something? Bah humbug!)

So I get a little teary-eyed listening to Ella sing this one in particular, and I hope you'll indulge me.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yule-tide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away

Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Will be near to us once more

Someday soon, we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, well have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

(And no, Mom, this doesn't mean that we necessarily will have moved back to the States by Christmas next year. It's just a song. Did I say "Bah humbug"?)

Jonesing for Halloween

The Dutch don't really celebrate Halloween. Sure, I think the college kids use it as a good excuse for another party, but for the three Halloween's we've lived here  we haven't had any trick-or-treaters. (Which is one of the reasons I was a little perplexed to see this item in the news.)

Anyway, Halloween was one of my favorite holidays growing up. It wasn't just the candy, although I did love me some Snickers. And my brother and I would always compare how good our hauls were each year by the number of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups we'd scored. But I really everything else that went with it - pumpkin picking at Evatt's Farm, pumpkin carving, planning out a costume and dressing up for the parade at school. The anticipation and planning were almost as much fun as the trick-or-treating itself. I even loved the Palmquist family tradition (or so I remember it) of eating Kraft macaroni and cheese (with a little ketchup!) and hot dogs for dinner before heading out into the dark neighborhood.

Freddy Kruger and Michael Meyers I can still do without, thank you very much, although I'm willing to give The Exorcist another try.

Aldus is probably too early to do anything costume-wise here, but I did my little part to celebrate by carving what may be the world's smallest jack-o-lantern and putting it in the window all evening.

We'll wait to buy any candy for Saint Martin's Day in a couple weeks.

Vacationing the Dutch way

The Dutch are known for going on holiday towing a caravan (purportedly already stocked with potatoes) all over Europe.

This is what Aldus's babysitter and her boyfriend towed around the Netherlands for their holiday. The tractor is his own.

And apparently they're not the only ones! We biked to Diever yesterday evening for ice cream and stopped to chat with our former next-door neighbors Rudy & Agaath. They, too, have a "gypsy caravan" in their driveway and are restoring it to take on holiday with a tractor next year!

Dutch vs. American workdays

There will be some construction work at our office next week requiring the use of the majority of our parking lot. Staff have been asked to park their cars at a lot a half-kilometer away, and a small shuttle bus has been hired to drive us to and from the office. This shuttle will be available from 8-9:30 am and 3:30-5:00pm.

It is expected that one will leave the office by 5pm. (Or maybe that's when the shuttle bus company requires its driver to clock out!)

Can you imagine if the Google shuttle bus only ran during these hours? If most Americans were expected to do their work between the hours of 8:15 and 4:45, plus take a scheduled mid-morning coffee break and (more-or-less) required 30 minute lunch break, nothing would be accomplished!

Then again, maybe we'd be a little better at actually working at the office and keeping personal time free from work. Maybe these crazy Dutch are on to something...

Pondering parenthood & Judge(ment) Dredd

I've been thinking a lot lately about whether or not I want to stay here for another project cycle or try to return to the States. Of course one of the biggest factors is whether I'd prefer to raise Aldus here or there, and one of the biggest factors within that is the parenting environment in the U.S.

It struck me long before I even became a parent that the climate of judgment of other parents' choices and parenting abilities is so very nasty there. Worse than that, it's not even constructive. Parents are paranoid of making mistakes, not because it's in the interests of their children, but because other parents will think ill of them. Everyone's got an opinion about how to feed a child, discipline a child, teach a child - as though there's only one right way to do any of these things and theirs is it! Maybe it's the same over here and we're simply insulated from it by not being fully immersed in Dutch media or social circles with other parents. But I doubt it.

I've also been trying to come to terms with the fact that I don't want to join the baby-education rat race (membership required for any of the NYTimes articles linked here) manifested in Baby Einstein, Junior Kumon, etc. For the most part I really feel like kids need to be kids. There's no need to start strapping headphones on your belly to make your child a genius before it's even made its grand entrance into the world. (Though maybe I'm the one being judgmental now.)

But I also worry that kids going through the American school system don't understand that the U.S. is rapidly losing ground in the global market ("Why Nihao, China! Didn't see you there!"), or the lengths that kids in foreign countries (and their parents!) go to to be competitive. 

What's a hopeful parent to do? How do you find the balance?

I guess I'm not alone

I have this thing about Dutch bikes. Love them! But according to Stuff White People Like, apparently I'm not alone. I had to laugh out loud about the section in this post about Bicycles about how white women love European city bikes and fantasize about the lives they would lead if they had them.

I'm pretty sure friends think that this is what my life is like, working part-time and living in the Dutch countryside. The days that I'm home with Aldus I spend riding my bike into the village to buy flowers and sit at the cafes with him. Hey - that's my fantasy, too!

Maiden voyage!

Aldus and I took our first ride together on my new mamafiets. Success! I've waited a long time to be able to do this, and Aldus (who's already ridden on the front of his babysitter's bike) seemed pleased as punch in spite of the chilly weather.

We rode with Charles over by Dwingelerstroom to take Maui for a morning run, then rode to the croissanterie in Dwingeloo for coffee and nibblies. Lekker!

Mamafiets!

When Charles and I visited the Netherlands in 2003, I rented a bike to cycle around Dwingelderveld while Charles attended his workshop. That "sit-up-and-beg" style, typical of Dutch bikes, was so much more comfortable than my bike back in the States. For the next three years I thought about buying a Dutch style bike, and one of my first major purchases when we moved here was my Sparta Stilio.

And of course I was also terribly impressed and enamored with the way Dutch mamas flew around Amsterdam on their moederfietsen (mother bikes). So when I found out I was zwanger (pregnant!), I began dreaming of the day I could ride around Drenthe with my baby between my arms.

Now that Aldus is big enough to sit up on his own, he's also old enough to ride in a kinderstoeltje (children's seat). We took my bike over to the local bike shop a couple weeks ago to try one out. Imagine my disappointment at finding out that my bike was too small. Well, the kinderstoeltje did fit. I just couldn't get on and off the bike anymore. I was terribly disappointed and cranky for the whole day.

But Charles, knowing my disappointment and himself still eager to take bike trips with Aldus and Maui, talked me into going back to the store yesterday. We didn't exactly want to look at new mamafiets; for one of those we would have actually have had to take out a loan or give up our firstborn. But we asked about used bikes, and lo and behold they had a used Batavus mamafiets. And it was comfortable!

They're going to service it this week and order our kinderstoeltje. We'll pick them both up next Saturday and, if the weather's nice (or if it's not -- we are becoming more and more Dutch), we'll go for a spin! Woo hoo!

Lammetjes!

Guess what's new in Dwingeloo this week? LAMMETJES!!! Oh squee, how I love the baby lambs!

I don't know what they're doing out so early. No, really, I don't know anything at all about sheep farming or animal husbandry. So I'm not sure why there are some baby lambs out now when most of them didn't appear until mid-March last year.

Regardless, after Aldus, they're the cutest things in Drenthe!

That would be better than usual

We got into a discussion in Dutch class the other day about what places here make us feel "at home." Honestly, the closest I feel to being at home is being at one of the Asian groceries. I feel more comfortable at Shilla in Amsterdam or the new Amazing Oriental in Groningen than I do at the C1000 or Golff. Maybe it's because I feel like such an outsider at the Korean groceries in the U.S. that it feels perfectly normal/acceptable to feel the same way in the Asian groceries here. Whereas when I'm in a regular Dutch supermarket, because looks-wise I could pass as Dutch, it surprises people when they speak Dutch to me and I give them a deer-in-headlights look.

Anyway, Charles returned from Athens today. I drove Aldus out to Schiphol to pick him up, and we stopped at Shilla on the way home. I noticed an excellent bit of Engrish on the back of the naeng myun package we bought: "Preparing the broth which can be the thin ice, that would be better than usual."

I know this is what my Dutch sounds like.

Occasional Aldus: Six to Eight Black Men

In addition to visiting Aldus for Thanksgiving and for his six-month birthday, Mom and Dad were able to witness the spectacle of the Dutch Sinterklaas.

Sinterklaas and his Zwarte Pieten ("Black Petes" whom you may remember from my post last year or from David Sedaris's "Six to Eight Black Men") arrived last Saturday in Hoogeveen. I don't know what it means that I've become this desensitized to people in blackface, including kids(!!!). I certainly don't get a kick out of it the way the Dutch do, but I no longer have the jaw-dropping repulsion as I did last year. This is decidedly not good.

Regardless, we thought it would be good for my parents to witness. The Sint was driven down the hoofdstraat escorted by Pieten, with other Pieten looking on from above and throwing pepernoten (small spice cookies) to all the onlookers.

The following Saturday we all attended a Sinterklaasfeest at the office. Most of the kids were pretty excited.

Including the kids dressed up as Zwarte Piet:

Aldus was less than impressed:

By his turn, though, Sinterklaas and the Petes had Aldus's full attention:

Aldus liked the teething ring Sinterklaas left for him, but he was also happy just to chew on the packaging:
 

Cycling and the Dutch

Every time I think I've seen every possible type of bicycle here in the Netherlands - regular two-wheeler, bakfiets, tandem, side-by-side tandem trike, bar-on-wheels, even a brass band on a bike - I see another new and intriguing type of bike.

But it's also been interesting to see how the Dutch switch to different bikes and other modes of transportation as they get older. First, well after they've turned 70 and their hair has gone silver, they might get an assisted-power bicycle that they can still pedal but with a little extra help. And/or they'll switch to a tricycle like my own Nana used to pedal around in Florida. Then, when pedaling is no longer an option, they'll get a Rascal scooter and drive down the street following the same rules as the cyclists.

But today was the best so far! It's the start of the local Fiets4Daagse (four day cycling event), and there are LOTS of extra people on bikes in Diever. I came home from the grocery store to find an elderly man with a bike at the foot of the driveway. He appeared to be resting or waiting for someone, and as I approached I noticed that he had medical tubing running to his nostrils and oxygen tanks strapped to the pannier racks on the back. Clearly age and health were not going to hold him back from cycling!