Things I do differently here...

Living in Holland in my mindset is sometimes like being on holidays. Only difference is, this is our life and we are not on holidays (not counting next week when we really are on holidays in Bruges, bring it on). I don’t know about you, but when I’m on holidays all rules get thrown out the window, calories don’t count and anything goes.

So you might be already thinking I live my life with wanton abandon (I think that was written in one of my school reports once, or maybe it was wanton foolishness?). While deep down I’m a carefree spirit wannabe, the one major thing I do differently in the Netherlands is WORRY!!!!

Worry, worry, worry. No. I do worry less than since I first arrived in this country with a 4 week old baby in my arms and a 2 ½ year old tiger (she has been downgraded to a lion). I worry less now (after being here 7 months) because I’ve had plenty of time to work out all of my contingency plans for my worry (Mum, stop reading now I’ve already worried enough for both of us).

My major worry has been about water. That’s right water. Coming from a land surrounded by water, you might wonder about the concern? It’s that water is everywhere. If we ran off the road we could end up in water, our lion could get out of the house and end up in water. I could ride my bike with the lion and the lamb into water. What if we got flooded? Okay I don’t think I need to go on, you get the gist.

While we are on the subject of water, it is something I do use with wanton abandon (take that - teacher’s name I have no idea of). Having such an abundance of water is so different from drought ridden Australia where dinner party conversations can be about how many litres of water you consume per day. Here, we have showers or baths till the hot water runs out, I clean veggies with the tap running, I wash one pair of socks in the washing machine (okay I’m exaggerating). Not having to think about conserving water is fantastic (greenies don’t berate me now for all the energy we use heating that water).

Now what were the other worries I have? Mmm can’t have been that worrisome if I can’t remember them. I think when you come to a new place there is a certain element of fear of the unknown. It doesn’t take that long for familiarity to breed contempt (no I don’t think that was in a school report, more like.... Liz distracts others, some things never change).

So what else do I do differently here? Glad you asked. I let the kids eat just about anything (I know, I’m a crazy-o-bonkers). Well within reason, it’s not like they are eating lekker frikandel with any great frequency (translation – delicious refried sausage – you shouldn’t think too hard about its contents). But I did let the lamb (that’s my son not a young sheep) eat a freshly cooked and delicious stroopwafel the other day (translation - syrup waffle) and he thought it was heel lekker (Australian translation - bloody delicious). My carefree attitude to my children’s diets has been born partially from shopping and partially from baby feeding guidelines. You see shopping here (and finding what you need) can be hard enough without reading labels to find out what nasty additives and colours are included. And the advice you get on what to feed babies differs here from Oz and it differs again from the UK (a quick hello to Annabel Karmel, love your book). So I’m going with the good old Australian ‘she’ll be right’ attitude.

Love thy neighbour. Another thing I do differently here is talk to and interact with my neighbours (outrageous I know). We invite each other’s children to birthday parties, we play in the park together (that’s the kids not the adults), we pop around to each other’s houses at 10pm at night (actually I don’t go to anyone’s house at 10pm and was very surprised to have a visitor at that hour). Having great neighbours and neighbourhood complete with children’s playgrounds is going to be something I really miss when we move back to Oz. It is great social fabric that keeps this country together and something that is missing from urban Australia (exclusion here to rural Australia which is different).

Apart from eating too many Dutch delicacies, I live a much healthier lifestyle in The Netherlands. Terra Mia in Bulleen (a pizzeria) must be suffering from our lack of custom. I walk. Everywhere. I walk the length and breadth of Zoetermeer pushing the gypsie wagon and about 25 kilos of precious cargo. Now I’ve got my bike I ride too. We don’t eat out. I mean never. I cook delicious meals (well at least I think so, the kids and Dutchman aren’t always convinced) so we eat home every night (at nana time – 5:30pm). This is the land of incidental exercise. We park our car away from our house (no drive in garage here) and I have to walk up and down two flights of stairs to put on endless loads of washing. No wonder the Dutch aren’t so ‘fatso the fat arsed wombat’ (rights to Roy & HG) like so many Australians are. Australian’s weight imbalance problems stem from driving our V8 holden commodores everywhere. In Australia we gladly drive two minutes up the road to the bakery for a meat pie and snot block (Dutch translation – it’s like a tompouce but with delicious thick vanilla vla like filling).

So you’ve read enough? I’ve said enough (and it's bedtime at 11:45pm - very unAustralian). In summary, life is different here, in some ways worse, in many ways better. The future challenge for our family is to take the best from everywhere and find contentment where ever we are.

My new bike - Part 2

A quick update for those interested in my new pushy. Bike arrived, in perfect working order and was assembled hastily by the Dutchman without complaint. I underestimated the fact that he is a kind hearted engineer, and loves building stuff. Luckily for him our house is full of Ikea furniture and he has been kept busy since our arrival.

So the bike has been going great guns. I have been wobbling around town, with either the lamb on the front or the lion on the back. Today I got out for the first time with both the lion and the lamb onboard, and all enjoyed the incident free ride. Maybe I was being mildly ambitious saying I was becoming Dutch by getting the bike as I’m not quite ready to join Dutch bike riding elite. None the less, the lion, the lamb and I all love it. A picture is here for you to admire... 

My new bike

Tomorrow I become Dutch. I’m so excited. I suppose if you look at this from a technical perspective, I’m not really becoming Dutch as such, instead I am going to be a little bit closer to becoming Dutch. Ahhh, tomorrow I take the delivery of a brand spanking new, black and white, super hot, Redy Nonna. Okay well maybe the name doesn’t sound so hot, but the black and white colour surely makes it so. It comes complete with a seat at the front for the lamb and one at the back for the lion and enough room in between for me to pedal. Tomorrow I take possession of my first Dutch bike. A moeder fiets or a mum’s bike if you like.

The choice was difficult, at first I was keen on a babboe, a three wheeler with a big boat like space at the front that you can pop your kids into. Then I thought maybe an Omafiets could be kind of cool in a old fashioned grandma sort of way (I love not only the name but the fact there is no shortage of Oma’s getting around on their bikes). But it was the Redy Nonna that won my heart and the Italian grandma name gives it a more sophisticated edge, and okay I admit it, it was the only mother’s bike in my price range that took my fancy (isn’t that such a nanna thing to say?).

Tomorrow it comes and my real Dutch journey begins. I’ve already managed to keep my car on the right side of the road (I drive along saying keep right, keep right). I can even navigate the footpaths with the red gypsy wagon on the right hand side (that is of course when they are not covered in ice). The transition to bike path should not be too difficult, I hope. I’m sure however there will be rules and order unknown to my innocent self which the locals will kindly point out to me.

So can I ride a bike? I still snigger at this question that has been asked of me on more than one occasion since I arrived. It was years ago since I got the tennis racket caught in the front spokes of my beloved white racing bike and skidded through a busy intersection on my teenage chest (I only dented my pride). And it was even more years ago when I stacked riding my very small friend’s bike (the bike not the friend) as I couldn’t pedal fast enough to keep up with her very big bike (I ended up in hospital diagnosed with mild concussion and needing three stitches to the head). Yes of course I can ride a bike (shake head, roll eyes and swish hair).

When the Redy Nonna arrives tomorrow, the only challenge I face is… well okay there is two, the first is organising (read - motivating or perhaps cajoling) a tired Dutchman to assemble it on a Friday night (I suspect he will be keen to relax and I will be unable to come up with any compelling reason other than an unbridled sense of enthusiasm, why assembly can’t wait until Saturday morning). The second and real challenge I face is...  I’ve never ridden a bike with precious cargo before (well that is if you don’t count me riding around the kitchen table on the lion’s beautiful red and yellow 16” puky with the lamb on the handle bars and the lion on the back). And perhaps there is even a third challenge, I don’t have any memories of bike riding in wet weather and definitely never through snow.

So I’ve put my OH&S (occupational, health and safety) hat on (it’s the red supervisor’s one in my imagination), and got serious about some hats. Now I know it is definitely not cool to wear stack hats in the Netherlands, which is kind of ironic because everyone rides bikes and no one wears helmets, but in Australia it is law enforced to wear helmets but no one seems to ride bikes (well not so many over the age of 18 when you can drive a car, and why ride a bike when you can drive a car?).

Helmets. We have one pink and white flower covered helmet being retrieved from storage (this means Meema is going through a series of numbered boxes in her garage to find the corresponding box which matches up to bike helmets on the numbered list - lucky the Dutchman is seriously organised – such a cliché I know – who is laughing now). We also have a blue and white speedy mouse helmet accompanying the Redy Nonna on it’s journey up from Bladel in Netherlands’ south. Once we have the safe head gear in residence, we can just hope the lamb’s stage of insisting we wear bike helmets at all times is not revisited (it’s fine for us but must make the neighbours wonder about the hazards in our house, which I can assure you are limited to being underfoot).

Practice. I’m psyched to take a couple of practice runs to blow my bike riding cobwebs out.

And more practice. When I do get up the courage to venture out with the lion and lamb on board I’ll be sure to wobble out the back gate, down the lane way and hopefully away from my neighbours’ watchful eyes. I think it’s only a matter to time before I blend in with the Dutch bike riding nuts. I’ll be soon riding along with a kid on the front and one on the back, pram securely attached to pram holder on the side, two big bags of shopping on each of the handlebars, handbag over my shoulder and mobile phone attached to my ear, and somehow among all of this I will be holding an umbrella and riding through the snow.

Can I ride a bike? Harrumph, I suppose it’s all relative really.

It's all Double Dutch to me!

Double Dutch

Language that cannot be understood, gibberish, as in 'They might have been speaking double Dutch', for all I understood. This usage dates from the 1870s. Source: Dictionary.com

So I’ve made it thus far through life (let’s say over 30 and less than 40) knowing only two languages. English (not the Queens English), and Australian slang, (which I like to practice regularly). It was only a few years ago when all I needed to know was my native two languages.

Life has changed. I’ve changed. I find myself living in a foreign land with a Dutchman, a lion and a lamb. The lion can pronounce G’s with such guttural enthusiasm she sounds like a native cheesehead. You should hear her rattling off groen, goed zo and goedemorgen, I can hardly believe she is my child.

Before I boarded that jumbo jet for a 23 hour flight with 2 children, a potty, and the oddest assortment of luggage you have ever seen, I was assured I didn’t need to learn Dutch to live in the Netherlands. On arrival I was pleased to discover the Dutch for the most part speak English perfectly.

I’ve been here just on 6 months now. The first couple of months I absolutely loathed going shopping and was terrified of opening my mouth. As time has progressed I’ve become happier to engage with others in my travels, mostly in English, with Dutch, hello’s, thank you’s and good bye’s. In fact ‘dag’ is one of my favourite words, cos I can even say it.

I’ve started some Dutch classes, and even listening to what my partner is saying to the kids. That said, I still get completely overwhelmed at times when someone tries to talk to me in Dutch and I smile a lot like the village idiot and nod my head. Hopefully the smile negates the lack of response and they just think I’m a happy mute rather than stupid.

My Dutch language skills are slowly improving. Sometimes it’s a only few minutes after a person has spoken to me that I’ve figured out what they’ve said. Only yesterday a man on a tram was telling me how sweet the lamb was even though he was screaming like a banshee (the lamb that is not the man). I didn’t think I understood because really it isn’t that common for someone to find a hysterically crying baby sweet.

I’ve started to try and engage with other parents from the lion’s peuterspeelzal class. She attends a special class for kids coming from non Dutch families and most of the parents seem as awkward as me because Dutch is not our native language.

If you are coming to The Netherlands, for a week, a month or even three months, I agree with my Dutchman that you do not need to learn Dutch. But if you want to live here for longer and integrate into society, life will be far easier (at least I hope so) if you learn the language.

In the last week I’ve made a commitment to myself to have a red hot go at learning Dutch. I’m declaring this here and now in a public forum to hold myself to account. The only problem is, half the time it all sounds like Double Dutch to me.

Note: It took approximately 8 handfuls of hagel slag (giant sized chocolate sprinkles) to write this post

From Gate to Plate - 'fresh' fruit and veggies in NL

The other day I was passing the time voyeuristically viewing my facebook home page and I came across this picture. The photo was taken outside a restaurant in Albany, Western Australia and rather than your typical menu and price list, it lists the food products used in their meals and the distance travelled to get the food from the gate of the producer to the plate in their restaurant.


Now firstly, I’ve gotta say, I love it. It’s fantastic marketing to start with. I would eat there in a minute! I would feel so smug knowing the produce is both fresh and local, and hasn’t been sitting in a distribution centre in BFI for weeks before being shipped across the country or the world before it finally gets served up in the restaurant.

I also like the idea of supporting the local community. In a region as abundant as the south west of WA it is both a viable and marketable business proposition.

I think it is cool this restaurant (I don't even know it's name, it might be prudent for them to insert restaurant name on top of produce list) doesn't promote the prices of their dishes. Who cares if you are paying a few bucks more to salve your environmental conscience? (This maybe delusional given you probably don’t live in Albany and had to drive/fly there in the first place). But having eaten at this restaurant (which I just know in my intuitive heart of hearts is delicious), you could walk out satiated and feeling proud of yourself, imagining you are leaving behind only a light foot print on the planet.

This photo has got me thinking... I’ve been banging on to my Dutch partner ever since I landed in the Netherlands (in a not so environmental jumbo jet), about where the fruit and veggies that we now buy come from.

I have learned there are still products coming out of Zimbabwe, (I thought the land had been divided up into unviable small land holdings). I have bought snow peas, sugar snaps and beans, labelled as Zimbabwe, Egypt and Madagascar, (they all come in the same packaging, does a distributor buy bulk and package up or is it BS?). A quick and possibly dodgy calculation shows the distance between the Netherlands and Zimbabwe as 5500km, now that’s a hell of a long way for my snow peas to get from the gate to my plate.

It has been exciting (small things) to learn Kiwi fruit manage to make it across the oceans from the land of the long white cloud to the land of cheese and clogs. Well you see they are Zespri Kiwis and my friend works there in Tauranga in New Zealand.

I was blown away that the bananas come from Brazil, now that seems like a long way away (it’s a shame all I learnt in Geography was about cumulonimbus clouds). A quick consult of google maps it is another 5500km (is that a coicidence or did I not clear my earlier caclulation) from the gate in Brazil to my daughter's banana eating hand in the Netherlands (personally haven't been a fan of bananas since eating too many as a child and spewing on mum and dad's bedroom floor - sorry, too much info I know).

The oranges come from Spain, god love em, they are delicious! At least they aren’t from California (I have an inherited prejudice of Californian oranges which are imported to Oz even though there are also grown in Mildura).

What has surprised me most is it is just not the supermarkets importing 'fresh' food. At my friendly Saturday morning market in Delft (which is clearly more commerical than farmer's market), the ‘fresh’ fruit and veg also includes food that is imported.

So anyway, I suppose you are wondering what my point is about all of this? No, well I sure am, let me think…

Well, if it was up to the Dutch to consume Dutch produce that was only grown in their local region, they would end up only eating potatoes and boerenkool (kale – farmers cabbage), which I must say is a delicious dish to have, but could easily be limited to consumption once every three months.

It snowed... It snowed...

Okay, I was warned it would be cold when I came to the Netherlands, but I had no idea it would snow. As an Australian in the Netherlands my previous experiences of snow have been on top of a mountain with a couple of planks strapped to my feet. Snow to me has been something that is accessed only after a five hour drive finishing with an impossibly steep and windy mountain road, and a good dose of car sickness. I don't think of walking out the back door of my house onto snow. That has happened maybe once in my life, and in retrospect maybe it was drawing a very long bow to say it was snow, it was more like ice passed off as snow. As a five year old, and with no other perspective I was happy to believe it was snow.

In a former life, I dreamt of living in the snow. My wild imagination had me living in Canada or Austria, swishing my way down never ending ski slopes, covered with fresh powder and lined with trees on each side. I fantasised about Apres Skiing, of cute boys, of dancing all night and skiing all day. I was committed to do a season, to give it a go, to improve my skiing ability and to see the world. So that life didn't go further than my imagination, but I was very surprised when three weeks ago or so, I ended up living in the snow.

The first night I scoffed at the predictions, yeah right, sure it will snow. But at 4am in the morning when the magical flakes were coming down, I woke my partner to share my delight. He was enthusiastic, and even managed to get out of bed and have a look, but it wasn't long before he was sucking back some Z's, while I was jumping out of my skin, unable to wait till the morning to check it out. I even dreamed the snow had all melted by the time I awoke, but in reality it hadn't, I arose to a winter wonderland.

It wasn't just one day of snow, as those living here in the Netherlands know. After our first really big dump of snow (about 15cm) my partner and I put the sleeping lamb in the cot, rugged up the little lion, and went out to play in the snow. We ended up with two kids on the lounge room floor watching baby TV, while we, the parents, played in the snow and upgraded frosty the snowman from a metre high version, to a double balled two metre high snowman who sat in the back yard proud as punch with his new girlfriend. For a week, neighbours would look into my house and smile, and I would think, what they find my messy, toy covered floor sweet? And then I would remember frosty and the missus peeking through the windows like a pair of old perves.

2009 the year of the lamb's first Christmas, was the lion, the lamb and my first white Christmas too. What a delight! At new year the snow came again, and we got to see in 2010 among fireworks and snow.

The other day, I sat mesmirised while in the space of an hour our place went from covered in crusty ice, to wonderful white. I shook my head as I navigated the red kinderwagon through the snow to pick up the lion from school as I just couldn't believe that I was walking through the snow as part of my daily life, I imagined telling the lion in years to come, when we lived in Holland when you were a girl, I walked through the snow to collect you (insert halo here).

So while I'm still very smitten with the snow, it isn't all schnapps and yagerbombs. Doing a week's shop, is not so possible in the snow. I've grown muscles on my muscles lugging two kids to the doctor's through fresh snow. Our trip to Berlin was postponed due to snow. The snow melts and becomes ice, and like every other person I slip and slide as I get around in the snow. Today we even had a rollover with the red kinderwagon, and to this mother's terror, my precious lion and lamb also hit the ground, luckily we came off OK. The snow has been the cause for much of my recent pleasure and today has been the catalyst for a meltdown about how hard it can be to live in the snow.

The snow is always whiter :-).