Cultural Notes 3: Suburbia, Canals, Being laid-back

Suburbia

There is none. Seriously. You are either in narrow, winding cobblestone streets, or out in the middle of farmland. There is no sprawling maze of houses and yards to be had in this place. I suspect this is due to the density of population. It's either city or doing something productive, no middle ground. It's a little strange, though, when out biking around, due to the very sharp contrast in geography.

So, yeah, the University is actually a little bit away from the city proper, and I bike or bus through narrow patches of forest and farmland on essentially a daily basis. It's sort of strange, having a city so uninsulated. I went on a little bike trip today to explore around, and two minutes away from my dorm is nature preserves and the forest primeval, more or less.

They have REALLY nice bike/jogging paths out here. I also ran into, uhh, basically a ruined fort, from WWI. There were people looking around, and some signs pointing out the historicity of the place, but not much above-ground that could be seen. You can go on a tour of it during the week, so maybe I'll do that. If there had been no tour available period, I probably would have just jumped the fence and gone for it. Here is the moat, which doesn't look like anything, but marks the borders of the structure.

And here's a little pill-box thing.

We had no idea this thing was here until we just outright stumbled onto it. That's something else about Europe - they have got a LOT of history over here. Like, they can't even find enough places to keep it all. It's like being in the house of an old lady who collects everything in the world, only the size of a country, and she's collecting entire buildings and never throwing them away. So, that's pretty cool.

Canals

There are a lot of Canals here. I mean, lots of them. Apparently, some fairly large portion of The Netherlands is actually below sea level. At some point way back in the day, they got tired of having such a small country. They fixed this by, quite literally, pumping water off a lot of places, and building dams and dykes and canals and every other thing. My understanding is that those historic windmills actually helped pump water, but I could be mistaken. In any case, the point is: Do not get the impression, when I talk about cafe culture, terrace culture, and how laid-back Europeans are, that they are not industrious sonsabitches when the mood strikes them. These dudes literally BUILT some non-trivial portion of their nation's landmass. Heavy stuff.

Also, ducks live in them and they generally make the place look cool.




To give you an idea of how many canals we are talking about, I will include a picture of Amsterdam, which is fairly representative.

That's a lot of canals, isn't it?

Being Laid-Back

People in Europe are not in a hurry, I guess. For that reason, nobody mows the medians or the little grassy area near the curb, a lot of the time. I see this kind of stuff all the time on my way into and out of the city. I figure they think, "Hell, we've been here a thousand years now. Grass is still going to be there for the next thousand years. No point in mowing the damned thing now, it'll just grow back up again in the time of our children's children, if not sooner!" Or, maybe they just don't give a shit. In any case, I note that here this is typical, whereas in the states it would be indicative of a poor or run-down neighborhood.


The other night, I had dinner with one of my colleagues from Washburn and some of the local university students. We managed to scrape together some ersatz burritos and get a table out on the deck overlooking the courtyard, and had over a French guy, an Irish guy, and a guy from...I think Spain, maybe Italy. We had some beers and one of the huge goddamned spliffs that you can buy here, and I just never caught where he was from. Oh, yeah, there's a shop in town where you can just walk in and buy pot, right out in front of God and everyone. They don't let people sell anything harder than that, but, well, I think even that's sufficient to shock the folks back home. We had a pretty interesting conversation about law, politics, societies in our countries, and all that. Very cool. I think it must be the terrace-culture thing that Herman was talking about in response to an earlier post.

P.S. More Bikes. This was across from the mall.


Wow.

Cultural Notes 2: Money

As a note, I'm going to try and update every 3-4 days at the most. Whether I succeed in that may depend somewhat on how you count days, as I am in a substantially different Time Zone than most of my readership.


So, one of the major things to adjust to in any foreign locale is the different currency. It is way, way too easy to imagine the local coin of the realm as being, like, monopoly-money or something, and then you spend it without realizing you're actually hemorrhaging budget. Fortunately, I came prepared for this, and so I've kept myself fairly under control. The following is an essay on the Euro, from an American perspective, and so it's not as much fun as some of the other things I've written about.

Okay. Pretty much anywhere you go on a vacation in Europe, the currency is now the Euro. This is a good thing, because it means that if you go from, say, France to Germany, you don't have to change your money. Anywhere but Britain (apparently) you're going to get the same money. This makes it much simpler, which I assume is why they did it in the first place.

So, now I will give you a step-by-step guide to using the Euro.

STEP ZERO: Before you go to Europe, talk to your bank. Tell them where you will be going, and when you will be there. You will have to fill out a form about this. Then, when you start trying to use it in Bulgaria or wherever, the bank will not be like, "Holy Shit! Bulgarian Hacker-Terrorists have stolen our credit cardz! We will hack the internets to stop them!" Also, if you haven't done this, no money will come out of the machine, no matter how much you cry or beg.

1. Go to a cash machine. This is like an ATM. Since you are in a first-world country, they are everywhere. Here in Utrecht, there are only slightly fewer ATMs than hot women on bicycles, which means you have to look past the flock of pretty ladies gliding down the street to see to the ATM beyond them. This is not entirely boring in itself. Do not use a bank. Do not do it at the currency exchange counter. You go to an ATM, because that is where you will get the best rate. Apparently, the Post Office is okay as well, but it is slower, less convenient, and you must deal with an actual human.

2. Use the cash machine. This is just like any other ATM. There will probably be a button for English, even, although you will have to select it rather than it being the default setting.

3. The system automatically converts however many euros you ask for, and then subtracts the appropriate amount from your account. There will probably be a service fee, on the order of 3%. Life's tough. But, don't go anywhere where the percentage is high, as that's a rip-off.

4. Okay. Now you have a big stack of Euros. Here is the thing. Euros are not cheap. Go look at the picture above again. That's a fifty-Euro bill, a one-euro coin on the left, and a two-euro coin on the right. The smallest bill is a five, so those coins are necessary. The exchange rate is about 1.5 dollars to 1 Euro right now, probably 1.6 dollars if I count in the exchange fee. So, if you got 250 Euros, which is pretty good for a few days wandering, eating, and shopping (if your lodging is already taken care of), you will have five fifty-euro bills. Every one of those is worth 75 dollars. Think about that. That two-euro coin? After a while, you'll have a handful of those. What you need to realize is that a few in the palm of your hand is fifteen bucks in US currency.

Do not treat this stuff as monopoly money.

5. Buy Stuff. This is easy. Look at anything you want. Multiply the cost times 1.5. That's how much you're paying for it.


See that? That's cheese. I've got a hundred grams of feta, a hundred grams of brie (which, btw, even post-conversion, the price compared very favorably to what I'd pay for brie in the US), a hundred grams of "vegetarisch" (which means vegetarian, and means that there are, and I quote, "plants" in it), and a hundred grams of Oude (old) Amsterdammer, or something like that. That last one is amazing, it's a very well-aged, strong cheese. You'd like it if you like good Gouda or aged sharp cheddar, that kind of thing. I bought all of these from a cheese shop in the open-air market (the market itself will most likely be my Saturday update.) They must have had a hundred very distinct cheeses in this still, and they'd cut you off a slice to sample of anything you liked. You had a ton of options there. There was many different cheeses that were, well, cheese with X inside it, many of which are very good (the Cumin I was fond of, but didn't buy. I couldn't possibly have bought everything I wanted.) Yes, people eat a LOT of cheese in these parts, probably somewhat because meat is so obscenely expensive. You do not even want to know how much cold-cuts cost in the grocery store. It's unspeakable. So, if you want a nice hearty sandwich, you put a big old block of mozzarella on there for substance, with some tomato sauce and just a little slice of ham on there for flavor. Also, you use real bread, with grains and nuts and oatmeal sticking out of it, not that nancy-ass white sandwich bread that people in the US are so often deluded into eating. No, I am not going native, I've been eating whole wheat/multigrain bread near-exclusively for years now. I'm just now lucky enough to be somewhere where that is the norm.

So, to the point, I picked out a bunch of cheeses, and it came to seven euros. That's essentially 10.50 in USD. Not too bad, when you kick in the brie and the Amsterdammer, which are the kind of cheeses you pay many dollars a pound for, if you can find them at all.


Trixie, for another example, cost me a total of 100 Euros, including the lock and the saddlebags. The guy cut a little off the price since I bought it all at once. That comes out to $160. I could have bought a whole new bike for that in Wal-Mart, I think, were I in the States, still. However, I am not in the states. You cannot go to Wal-Mart to buy cheapo versions of everything on the planet. You want [X]? You go to a goddamned [X] store, you deal with the proprietor himself, who knows all about [X], and you pay for the privilege and like it. Or, well, you walk. But even then, there is no wal-mart, so you will buy your walking-shoes in a shoe store, from a shoe guy, not from whatever blue-vested troglodyte wanders past.

I believe this has some impact on the psychology/sociology of material culture, but I don't think I'm qualified to write about it right now.

So, the point is, how much things cost in America is not a good guide to how much they will cost here, comparatively. Cheese is pretty cheap, for what you get. Meat is insanely expensive. Fish is gloriously inexpensive. Etc. Essentially, you have to shop around and get a feel for the market where you're at, not just buy things the same way you would at home. This requires a whole mental paradigm shift, and it's not at all obvious that you need to do this.

Forthcoming Posts: The open-air market, food in The Netherlands, Booze...I may begin to feel sadistic, and talk about international or comparative law (you know, that stuff I came here to study?), which is what I will do when I get tired of having people actually read this thing.

Also, Trixie tried to eat my fucking Eggplant the other day. I found a nice one at the Market, and put it in the saddlebags. Within a kilometer or so, she was chewing on it again. In a rage, I brought her home, and went downstairs to demonstrate, finally, who is boss. After ten minutes' work with pliers and some velcro, she is now much more pleasant to ride and generally obedient. We're getting along far better now. Also, I cussed her out in at least four or five languages, as every polyglot obscenity I have ever heard and forgotten rose unbidden to my mind. There are some SICK insults in Croatian, my friends, and I think that's at least part of why Trixie is now a much more pleasant companion.

Cultural Notes, Volume 1: Bikes, Fat, Beer

First off, a few housekeeping issues:
1. If you leave a comment (and I do thank you all for leaving them), please leave it after the most recent post. This makes it much easier for me to notice them. Leaving comments at the bottom of the page is much less useful for everyone.
2. You may note that you can click on the photos for a larger version. I actually invested in a pretty decent camera, so the photos are high-resolution. So, this is worth doing, ESPECIALLY for the church photos below.

So. I am in Europe, as those of you who know where The Netherlands are have already figured out. This is the land of very high gas prices, very small cars, and narrow, winding streets. So, nobody drives a car. I see a few of them, like big enclosed golf carts. A lot of people ride the bus, which is expensive. A lot of people walk, which is slow. However, there is one form of transportation universal here in Utrecht. I'm going to post some photos and see if you can guess what it is.



Now, what you need to realize is, I didn't have to go all over the city to find those unusual concentrations of bicycles. That's every direction you look. They're just like cars here. You've got people with kinda weird baby-carriages stuck to the front, saddlebags on the back, baskets, bells, whistles, lights, everything, all over the place. Everywhere there is a road, there is also a sidewalk and a bike lane, generally separate from either. What I'm getting at is, bikes are ubiquitous. Now, I am a believer that when you travel, you don't act like the American dude everyone is supposed to make way for. You adapt to the culture you're in. Also, I hate walking for miles every day and didn't want to pay all that much money for bus passes (strippenkaarts, literally strip cards.) So, I went out to buy a bike. Being as how I am only here for a short period of time, I figured I'd buy a cheap, used bike, which is what every other law student has also done.

Now, what that means is, we've descended like metallovore locusts and stripped the bike shops bare of cheap used bikes that are not completely worthless. Well, I got one for very low price of fifty euros (plus the cost of a lock and saddlebags. Bike thievery is so rampant that I could get a whole other Cultural Notes post out of the topic. Perhaps I'll get lucky and somebody will steal the damn thing, then I can write about it.) It is not the happiest purchase I have ever made. In point of fact, that bicycle is not merely a material possession. It's actually my arch-nemesis. The tires try to send me flying every time I cross a curb. The seat is like a torture device. I somehow have bruises on my hands from the handlebars. Seriously. Like on the palms of my hand, which is demonstrably one of the most resilient areas of the human body. The rear tire attempts to eat the fucking saddlebags with alarming regularity. The fender thingy seems largely there to merely redirect muddy water onto the cuffs of my pants. In essence, this bicycle was designed in hell by the devil.

You can't see all the rust and stuff clearly in that photo, but trust me, it's there. I have named the bicycle Trixie, because it sounds like a prostitute's name, and Trixie for sure sucks more dick than an aged two-dollar whore on welfare night.

***

So, this leads me into the next point. You're probably wondering: "Gee, Nathan. You hate that bike so much that it sounds like you're going to throw it into the canal before you leave, rather than try to recoup some of the expense by selling it to another unsuspecting victim (And you're right! I am!) Why don't you just get a month-long bus pass and ride the damned bus?

The answer to that is simple: it's exercise, and I would like to lose a few pounds peddling my fat ass up and down the cobbled streets of Utrecht. You see, I noticed something on arriving here. Utrecht is full of the highest concentration of hot women I have ever seen. Shortly after I adjusted to this great plentitude of pulchritude, I noticed why that is: There are no fat people here. Seriously. I am like the fattest man in the entire country. I mean, I didn't gain weight on the flight, I was already a tubby bitch back in the states. This is okay, however, because there were tons more fat people there, and tons of people more fat than me. No matter how jiggly my love-handles, there was always that spherical, twinkie-munching lardball who had to buy his fodder from an electric cart in wal-mart, because he couldn't even walk to the hostess snack cakes and cola. Well, that dude isn't around anymore. I am sitting all spread-out and lonely at the top of the food pyramid, and I have to say I don't like it.

So. I walk and ride my bike all day, the portions of food are smaller (and groceries are more expensive, so I tend to plan meals a little more carefully), and I am suffering the enormous peer-pressure of being the only bearer of man-boobs in sight. I can see how European culture, diet, and lifestyle produces this effect. Now, I need only let it work on me, and I might be a little lighter by the time I get home.

***

Okay. I'm right next to Germany. Some of the same cultural attributes apply. There is beer everywhere in this joint. It is crazy how much and how many different kinds. There's a bar here in town with two hundred kinds. You can buy it in grocery stores, you can buy it in the little CAMPUS grocery store. You know the picture of my dorm down the page? That thing in the middle, on the ground-floor between the two towers? That's the bar. Yes, there's a fucking bar in the basement of my dorm. It opens at nine, I may check it out. It's not just beer, either. Grocery stores have their own brands of wine. Like, imagine if there was Hy-Vee or Wal-Mart wine. That's what we're talking about. Also, the beer is amazing, if you like real beer. I drank some beer with lunch today that was made by Trappist Monks. If you know aught of beer, you're jealous right now. Yes, it was amazing. Anyway, here's a picture of my friend Robert. The beer has convinced him he's strong. In fact, it is only the beer. Examine those labels carefully, and stare in awe at the outputs of a mature culture.