Cluture shock redux

It's almost a year ago that I posted about culture shock in the Netherlands; looking back it's instructive to see what's changed and what's stayed the same.

Smoking

While I'm a little more sanguine about this generally, I'm now possessed by a new mania - parental concern. I'm resigned to the fact that literally most people I pass in the street here are smoking - but when they blow that smoke over my obviously heavily-pregnant partner, I bridle. Interestingly the number of smoking pregnant women I see here is at least as low as Australia, but I despair at the number of people smoking heavily around their strollers and toddlers. On balance I'd say that my frustration has evolved, but remains at a consistent level.

Dog shit

One of our biggest eye-openers in NL has been the regional diversity, despite the country's small size. Living in Rotterdam was a very different experience to where we are now - in Leiden we've made exponentially more friends, found a surprising number of Aussie ex-pats, even found vastly more places to eat out. This seems to be a combination of Leiden's status as a university town and it's significantly different position in the socio-economic landscape - which is visible in even very prosaic aspects of the city, like street cleanliness.

As an example, Rotterdam's lower-middle-class neighbourhoods offered large, communal, industrial-looking rubbish disposal sites (big containers recessed into the street) and, as previously mentioned, host a lot of large dogs that regularly foul the streets. Leiden, by contrast, has a policy of residents placing their bags of garbage on the street within a few hours of the four-times-weekly evening visit by the garbage trucks -and the pet community is (and the pets themselves are) quite small.

It's difficult to generalize about the cultural differences between these two environments, but I do have one observation - in Rotterdam, the large, functional-but-ugly bins are regularly clogged from misuse, where as the Leiden system (with it's implicit trust in the community-mindedness of residents) results in neat stacks of garbage bags, placed as inoffensively as possible near the public bins. The sense of communal responsibility which results, in my opinion, more than balances the disadvantages (time sensitivity of pickup, seagulls attacking the garbage bags.)

To sum up - I'd still recommend that you avoid the grass in NL, but be aware that there can be a very large culture difference from one city (or neighbourhood) to another.

'Coffee Milk'

Switching jobs has made a huge difference to this. My old role at a very Dutch company really highlighted the culture difference I was experiencing, at it's worst giving me a definite sense of alienation. My new role at a very international company (and its location in the middle of Amsterdam) has almost completely reversed this - case in point, instead of the traditional broodje met kaas (boring cheese sandwiches elevated only by the variety of cheeses available) I'm about to go out for gourmet hamburgers with another Aussie ex-pat. :)

This really reinforces my comments above - the Netherlands is so diverse that you sometimes feel like it several city-states welded together (something similar to the Semi-United Squabbling Countries of the USA) and if one part doesn't suit your tastes, maybe another will.

Personal Space

Working in Amsterdam has gone a long way to inuring me to traffic chaos - I no longer think twice about entering the swerving mass of pedestrians, cars and diverse variations on the theme of 'bike' that is a Dutch city's arteries. My frustration about personal space has been sustained, though - while I'm less bothered by other passengers desire to sit close to me, I've developed a growing frustration at train doors and on escalators. Despite PSAs and international derision, the Dutch continue to struggle with two very simple ideas:

1. you can't get on to the train until I've cleared the door (which won't happen if you've all clustered, pushing and shoving, around the door I'm trying to exit by) - and
2. escalators work best if slow traffic sticks to one side, letting fast traffic pass on the other. (Simple rule of thumb - slow traffic sticks to the same side of the escalator as the side of the road you drive your car on, so the right in NL, and the left in AU.)

My daily commute from Leiden to Amsterdam regularly takes me past Schipol (Amsterdam International Airport) and so I'm bombarded with obnoxious foreigners yelling to each other about smoking dope and drinking in the red light district... but you know what? These yobs usually know escalator etiquette better than well-educated Dutch business people. :)

Conclusion

We've been here for almost two years now - it's a shock to realise that. I guess I feel like I can finally say I've gotten a good taste of the culture, and can draw some real conclusions about whether I'd like to live here long term - and while I've never felt better about my living environment, working environment and even the people I've met here, I don't think this is where I'll retire. The real challenge is, though, that from this distance Australia doesn't feel like an ideal fit either, which leaves me more than a little rootless, and wondering about places like Ireland, or Canada. Whatever happens, I suspect eight cities in twelve months is just the beginning...

The return home

I don't know if it was because we were more tired this time or because we were just more used to travelling, I don't think that either Simon or I were as excited about the return flights as we were to the departing ones.

Don't get me wrong. It wasn't that we weren't thrilled to bits at the prospect of seeing friends and family again, or that we couldn't wait to see all the people that we had so desperately missed in the last 11 months... maybe it was that we were more used to travel, and we weren't quite as excited at the prospect of the 24 hour flight back home. Who knows. We just didn't have as many sleepless nights.

Staying with David & Kauser for the last 2 nights was a pleasure - as always. They made us feel welcome and wanted like only they can. It really helped to have a solid place to crash just before a big journey.

The trip tothe airport was fairly uneventful as it is when Simon & I are under our own steam. A lazy bacon & eggs breakfast followed by a delicious pub lunch at the Iris pub in Rotterdam and souvineer shopping before lazily making our way to Schipol airport.

The flight was uneventful and alas there isn't much to tell about Helsinki. I guess it was like a stopover anywhere. We were a little disapointed that everything was closed and that we couldn't get out to see the city, but the prospect of not spending as much time in Australia as possible was really distressing.

We landed in Bangkok at about 1:30 in the afternoon. Muggy and humid would be the only way to describe it. It wasn't as muggy as we expected but there was lots of people and boy was I glad that I had read so much about what to look out for.

Bangkok is a city know by most people not for it's pollution like LA or it's gay scene like San Francisco but for it's scamers.

In this city full of friendly helpful people, we do not look like locals. Simon and I are at least a head taller than most people on the street and we are the colour of people coming out of a long winter with the added bonus of both of us liking computers just to add that extra pasty complexion, so as westerners we are an obvious taget for scams. We don't speak the local language, know the etiquette or what to look out for.

My Lonley Planet Guide on Bangkok was a lifesaver. (graduated from being a jelly-bean)

Whenever you step out of your hotel, people seem to just want to be friendly, very friendly. (For Simon wandering into a park near our hotel, by himself some Thai ladyboys wanted to show him just how friendly they could be. For some reason he came back to the hotel (at a run) never to venture out again without me)
Generally passers by will come up and talk to you as you wander around the city. It's often difficult to communicate exactly what it is that you're looking for but it's kind of weird how samey the conversation gets over the few days that we were there:

"Hi, where are you from?" *smile*
"We live in Holland but we're from Australia"
"Oh, Sydney!" *beam*
"No, Melbourne actually but close enough"
"Oh, ok" *grin* "Where are you going today?" *smile*
"We're going to insert landmark here."
*smile* "Oh, you should know, that's closed today, it's a holy day (also public holiday)" *smile* "Show me your map, I'll show you where to go" *smile*
At least the first few times, you hand over your map, and they will take out a pen from their pockets and look at you, wait for you to nod and proceed to scribble over your map.
This next sentence happens in about 3 seconds
*smile* "You take a Tuk-tuk - 80Bhat" (it varies depending on who you speak with) "You make sure you take the ones with the white/yellow (depends on who you speak with) "You speak Thai?" *calls over a waiting Tuk-tuk - speaks in Thai to driver*
"Thanks, no but we're happy to walk" Simon and I start to move off.
"No, it's good, only 80 Bhat for you" *smile - slightly worried look*
"No, but thank-you for the directions" *we look at ruined map with added scribble and price and begin to wander away*

A couple of times while having this conversation, we were in view of the landmark and could see people going in and out. For your reference, landmarks and tourist attractions are rarely closed. They do have certain days when Thai people are allowed in for free but they don't stop the tourists from going in as well. They just ask you to be respectful during ceremonies etc.

Culture shock in the Netherlands

Culture shock hits you in weird, completely unexpected ways. Things you didn't realise you took for granted shift underneath you and you suddenly feel like an alien - for instance, we never could have predicted that barley would be so difficult to find in stores here, or that we'd be so demoralised by its absence (it's an important ingredient in one of our favourite recipes.)

Here, in no particular order, is some of the things that have triggered in me the strongest sense of culture shock - and maybe, some suggestions on how I deal with them (or at least rationalise them.)

Smoking

Europe is a little behind Australia in the process of enforcing bans on smoking in various venues and public places - and libertarian little Holland is having a lot of trouble making those bans stick. neither of us smoke, so seeing people light up in a bar (despite prominent non-smoking signs) certainly gets to us - and the sense of wounded pride exuded by 'poor disenfranchised' smokers is palpable.

Knowing that Australia went through exactly the same cycle of whining and acceptance within living memory makes dealing with this easier - but as an asthmatic and a great believer in my right not to breath other people's smoke, this still rankles.

Dog Shit

Everywhere. I mean it - don't ever walk without looking first, and stay off the grass if you don't want to spend ten minutes scraping filth off your soles. A 'god-given right' of the Dutch people is apparently to keep huge dogs in their poky city apartments - which while already an abominable crime in my opinion, also leads to dog crap on most footpaths (not cleaning up after said dogs is another privilege, apparently) and on every scrap of grass.

This one I find very hard to deal with - the cruelty of keeping big pets in small spaces always depresses me - but that's weirdly edged out in the disappointment stakes by the implied disrespect of leaving shit everywhere, in a country that claims co-operation and mutual respect as core values.

'Coffee Milk'

For the uninitiated, 'coffee milk' is a variety of condensed milk sold in the Netherlands, marketed specifically for adding to - you guessed it - coffee. Imagine the product increment just before the diabolic 'non-dairy creamer' sold in the States and you've about nailed it - homogenised, sterilised little satchels of white fluid with a nasty chemical flavour.

I recommend you try it, just as I recommend Dutch people try Vegemite - you won't like it (just as they almost never like Vegemite) but its important to try new things and understand that taste is fundamentally tied to the culture you grew up in. I personally relish pouring real milk (full cream if possible) into my coffee and tea, to the bafflement of the locals: for whom coffee milk is a cultural default, and tea with milk is a drink for children. Vive le difference. :)

Personal Space

This is an interesting one, because it hits me in two places I've never really had trouble with before, ie. train carriages and bike paths.

On trains people will avoid a carriage full of empty seats to sit directly behind me. This contradicts (what I thought was) a basic tenet of society, which I believe is best illustrated by men's behaviour in public toilets: it is considered polite to choose the urinal most distant from the other occupants. (The implication that standing closer implies you wish to intimately share the experience is outside the scope of this essay. :) ) In the same vein, I consider it polite to maximise the distance around me in a train carriage, for my (and everyone else's) comfort.

Neither of my two theories about this behaviour is satisfying: Do Dutch people live so tightly packed together that they've become inured to issues of personal space? Seems unlikely - I would have expected the opposite reaction, hyper-sensitivity to the issue. Perhaps it's a threat-management behaviour - sit directly behind the only other person on the train... to what end? To show you're not scared of them? To stay out of their field of attention? To intimidate them? Any light the reader can cast on this behaviour would be much appreciated.

Bike paths can also be unnerving - I often feel the urge to point out that with a path three metres wide, there's no need to graze me while trying to get past. This is a little easier to understand though, I think - I come from a culture where bike ownership and usage is restricted to enthusiasts, and sharing a path or the road with a bike is still rare enough to confuse the hard-of-thinking. Here, though, bikes are commonplace - everyone has one and knows how to ride it. So riding becomes like walking - you think nothing of brushing past close to someone because you've been riding your whole life, and so, presumably has the person you're buzzing past. With that firmly in the front of my mind, I'm working hard to acclimatise - but it's hard going.

Conclusion

It's been cathartic to jot down a few of my local frustrations, but I wouldn't want anyone to think I regret coming. This sort of thing is exactly why I'm here - to learn what's different between our cultures, and what's shared. The Dutch have a lot in common with Australia (pragmatism being a the most obvious trait) and when it comes to the streets, Dutch dog crap is a lot less depressing to step over than the Californian homeless. Holland's expensive, grey and a little stuffy, but it's culturally rich, libertarian and reasonably liberal - there's lots to like, and I'm looking forward to making a fresh start in late April.

Current Plans

A lot has change in quick succession, so here's the fullest update I can make in the time available. :)

Simon's Job

My employer can't organise a work visa for me, so I've had to either look for something else, or make plans to head back to AU. Luckily a lucrative role drop in my lap almost immediately, so the dream of a few years spent living in Europe is still alive. The new contract is signed - I start at RIPE NCC in Amsterdam on the first of May.

Mandy's Job

Mandy's current position is also in jeopardy, unfortunately - she's been informed that her current role will be offered to any and all Shell employees before she, a lowly temp, is even allowed to apply for it. My new employer has promised me the work visa I've long sought, though (the much rumoured 'Highly Skilled Migrant Visa') which provides a free partner work visa - so looking for a new job (if it comes to that) should be simpler as a result.

Movin' House

With Mandy's role in The Hague (for the moment) and my new position in Amsterdam, we've decided to move to a good compromise city - in this case the attractive university town of Leiden. With double the rent and quadruple the bond it's not exactly the budget choice - but we decided to treat ourselves after the frustrating experience of noise and crowding at our current place.

The new place is a brand new (still currently being completed!) subdivision of a beautiful old traditional Dutch town house - as such it's a little on the cosy side, but it's nestled opposite a beautiful 14th century church, surrounded by boutique stores and coffee shops in a very nice neighbourhood. We're both very much looking forward to moving in on our return from our...

Australian Holiday

As planned, we're taking much needed break on our home turf at the end of March. After a short four night stop-off in Bangkok we'll be spending a hectic ten days in around Melbourne, trying to catch up with our friends and family. Check your mailbox for the invite to our 'homecoming'/engagement party.

The Return

...and all too soon we'll be back here - new jobs, a new house and our first full Dutch summer. Should be interesting.

Paris

Paris is the city for wandering. I think that you should be checked that you have both sensible walking shoes and blister blockers for when you come through customs.

We had a wonderful time seeing the sights. Together and separately, Simon and I wandered our feet off... in my case literally. Walking along the Seine, finding unusual parks that inspire us to create our own château. Across from our hotel was a market - mostly closed because it was summer and most Parisians go on holiday during summer - we bought fresh baguettes, French wine, cheese, and blueberry compote, pastries and took it to Belleview park. We enjoyed a very French luncheon in the shade near fountains over looking the city - would you want to live any other way?

Warm sun, good food, a truly romantic way to spend a few hours.

Whilst wanderings around the streets, we stumbled into Lafayette - a department store so stunning it would be a museum in Australia. A domed, stain-glass ceiling over-hangs floors and floors of exquisite designer clothes. From the roof-top, you can see all of sprawling Paris. The only hill - Montmartre, the Eiffel Tower, a breathtaking panorama.

The Louvre was like every museum, full of priceless works of art - it was however very crowded - I was a little sad was that I wasn't blown away by the artworks there. The Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, etc. I have seen so many times in books and films that seeing them in the flesh - so to speak - wasn't as moving as I hoped it to be. Maybe there was too much build-up in my head.

Across the street from the Louvre is The Salon de Angelina - aka Angelina's. Join the queue out the front and wait for a table, then be prepared to enter a diabetic coma because they have the most fabulous hot chocolates and pastries and cakes... they are simply to die for. Given the opportunity I would move to Paris, just to eat there over and over again. Of course, by the time I had finished out the week, the staff wouldn't be able to get me through the door, but no-one would blame me...

My mother was a chef in a French restaurant for a time when I was about 5. We would often have croissants for breakfast, and always we would have butter and jam or honey with them. I made it one of my missions to find out how the French eat their breakfast bread. So I sat in a cafes eating French breakfasts - coffee, orange juice, bread (usually half a small baguette) and a croissant with a little pot of jam and butter. It turns out that the French only usually eat croissants on the weekend - like a little treat, and they don't usually put anything on them, apparently the jam and butter is for the warm baguette and the croissant is to dip into your coffee... or at least that's how it appears. I won't get over the taste of the fresh warm pastry, crisply crumbling smothered with butter and jam... just unforgettable.

I wandered the back streets of Montmartre, I climbed the steps and checked out the view from La Basilique du Sacré-coeur - well worth the walk and spent time in the Dali museum - which I think my dad would love it, if only I could get him to leave Australia.

One evening Simon and I had a hankering for Thai food. We checked out our guide book and found one that seemed to be exactly what we were after. So after trekking much further than we had anticipated, our brilliant plan of eating Thai goodness, we found ourselves at yet another closed restaurant. Not to be disheartened, we figured that mostly restaurants keep to their own kind so wandered a little further and found another place to sample. Although the waiter only spoke broken English, we managed to order a dinner for 2. I was feeling adventurous and a little rushed and basically chose at random from the menu when it was my turn to order. We received our main and mine had white meat and fine bones. It turns out that I had ordered fusion food. It was Thai spices with a French flair. Frog legs. (one wonders what they do with the rest of the thing) Frog tastes kind of watery.

We actually got out of Paris - sort of - for one day. It was just unfortunate that I had accidentally miss-booked the hotel - oops. We had found our way to Versailles when we received the call from our hotel, "Why haven't you checked out?" So regrettably after much embarrassment on my part and us only getting to see the outside of the estate, that we turned around and headed back to the city. Versailles is on top of my list of things to do when I get back to France. That and Angelina's of course. It was at Versailles that we encountered our first example of French passion. We were speaking with a woman trying to ensure that we could get back into the museum as our tickets had already been stamped. A misunderstanding ensued - as it often does with me - and the woman thought that we were hoping to see Versailles in an hour. She started yelling - not angrily but with great passion - "HOW could you think you could see any of Versailles in an hour!?! It would take 3 DAYS to see it properly!" Obviously very proud and passionate about her work. Sadly, we didn't go back to see it, but it will be the first thing I do when I get back to the most beautiful city in the world.

Ah Gay Parie

Ah Paris, the city of love, the city of lights, the reason that romantics - the world over - save their pennies. It is the most visited city in the world and from the moment that you step into it's streets, you can see exactly why.

The day before we found out about the news of Simon's visa, we had pretty much given up hope that we would be able to stay in Europe, so we decided that we had to make the most of our remaining time. We had about enough cash left to tour one city properly and we decided that Paris was our choice. I had been in Paris before - for one crazy day when in Europe two years ago - and fell hopelessly in love from the first moment. I wanted to share that with Simon.

More trains. We took the Thalys from Rotterdam to Paris with a brief stop in Brussels. We found the website a little broken, but there are some pretty good deals to be had - and when you take into account the hassle of getting in and out of airports, it's faster to travel by train than it is to fly. When the nice person comes around with the cart, don't buy the coffee. No cup of coffee should taste that bad.

We have been in Paris for only a few hours, and from the moment we stepped off out into the Gaue du Nord, we could tell we were in a whole different world. Everything about Paris is presented beautifully, it's just the way they choose to do things here.

We ate at a restaurant serving typical French cuisine, and as you would expect, it is very rich. Duck thigh with sauteed chats was more than enough for me. The skin was thick with fat and a small amount of this with the flesh that fell from the bone simply melted in my mouth.

I think I am going to leave this city spherical. But it's going to be worth it.

Filling in the gaps...

Mandy's caught you up on our current predicament, so it falls to me to fill in the remaining gap - our experiences between Canada and The Netherlands.

Leaving BC

Our time at UBC was running out fast, so we tried to cram in as much fun as possible before leaving. A trip to a funky sushi restaurant (with a 'Miso Horny' neon sign, no less) and a last-minute tour of UBC's TRIUMF particle accelerator rounded out our delightful stay. (The TRIUMF tour was engrossing, and took more than two hours - we almost made us miss our next flight. Light speed packing and a very friendly taxi driver got us to Vancouver International on time, though, and on to our marathon trans-Canada, trans-Atlantic flight.)

Great Britain

Maybe it's the dyed hair, or the way we volunteer too much information - whatever it is, the staid, buttoned-down variety of airline staff just don't seem to like us. Case in point - our arrival at Heathrow. After trying to explain our plan to work in The Netherlands, the immigration officer explained that he had no idea if he could let us through (fearing that we'd be deported back to the UK if our crazy scheme failed) and dumped us on a bench for half an hour or so, while he talked to most of the Dutch migration department (or so it seemed.) When he finally staggered back (to find us slumped on the bench, nearly passed out from lack of sleep) he admitted that he really had no idea what he was doing, and that apparently people did go to other countries to work, and he was supposed to let them. We bit back a few choice words about clueless bureaucrats and headed for the train station.

It's seems a little weird thing to say, but I really like London's public transport system. The claustrophobic little trains, the complete absence of wheel-chair accessibility - nothing could dampen my ardour for the beautifully designed tube maps (the only present I asked for from my sister's visit to London) and the delightful station names (locals must be able to spot Aussies instantly by the giggling every time the female (and very proper) English announcer says 'Cockfosters'.) We picked up some Oyster cards and took our first trip into the grand old city of London. (The Oyster cards were our first experience with these (insecure) RFID public transport cards - Rotterdam has a similar system called OV-Chipkaart, and Australia is also supposed to be getting one - the much delayed Myki system.)

London turned out to a lot of fun. Our hosts were in the process of moving, so apart from the occasional pub quiz, we were mostly left to our own devices. We explored museums, parks, climbed St Paul's and shopped the Camden Markets 'til we nearly dropped. A week is nowhere near enough to do justice to this huge warren of a city, and we were sad to say our goodbyes, and climb on to the bus bound for Harwich.

...For that is where our ferry waited. We decided very early in our trip-planning that neither of us wanted to miss the scenery, so we'd like to avoid flying as much as possible - 'how you get there is the worthier part', as Shepherd Book says. So our trip from the US to Canada was a very pleasant scenic train ride, and a Stena Line ferry had been booked to get us from Great Britain to The Netherlands. And though the train trip to Harwich had been replaced by an uncomfortable bus, the ferry ride itself more than made up for it. Good rooms, nice food, and smooth seas made the crossing very pleasant - and although the the fog was near-impeneterable when we arrived at the 'Hoek Van Holland' ('Hook of Holland' - a small port on the west coast of The Netherlands) we were still standing excitedly on the deck, waiting for our first sight of land.

The Netherlands

It's strange to look back on that day now - leaving the boat early in the morning, negotiating slowly with the sleepy immigration officials, and finally climbing on to the Rotterdam train - because it took place only a short distance from where we're now living. All the train stations that seemed so alien then are now familiar, running along the line we use every day to get around; the language, the architecture, the faces - all changed from bizarre then, to common now.

Through trial and error we found our way to Rotterdam Central Station, and then a tram out to our hotel. Wrestling with heavy suitcases, our first properly foreign language signage (American doesn't count) and the frequent obstruction of canals, we finally reach our destination and signed in. And then we slept for about three days, interrupted only by meals and a few rambling explorations of the suburbs around the hotel.

Having recovered from our travels, I contacted my prospective employers and visited them, where I was disappointed the discover that my work permit still hadn't been awarded (little did I know that I'd still be waiting for it two months later.) Having little else to do in Rotterdam, I contacted some the Dutch side of my family and arranged to spend spend some time with them.

My 'aunt' Els (my mother's cousin, technically) has been a regular visitor to Australia, so we thoguh we'd start by returning the favour. She was tremendously welcoming - both she and her partner Cees (pronounced 'Case') had taken time off work so that they could show us around the area of Alkmaar, where they live (and where, apparently, my mother was born.)

The cheese market, the crazy canal boat ride (some of the bridges it goes under are 40 centimetres above the water! You basically have to lie in the bottom of the boat!) real working windmills, bike rides, crossing the dam of the IJsselmeer, sailing El's brother's yacht - we saw more of The Netherlands in that week than we have in the months since.

Then it was a week with Aris and Jeanet Kijper, and their sons Pieter and Martijn, where we enjoyed the luxury of having their whole campervan to ourselves. We toured Edam, visted Amsterdam, and managed to catch the Kijper family party, which celebrated birthdays for most of the family.

For most of those two weeks, though, we were in contact with real estate agents in Rotterdam - and in the second week we made several trips down to check out places to live. At first we were a little dismayed at the cost of apartments, but once we got a sense of the market we quickly found a place that suited out needs (Thanks to Heidi at RotsVast Group. :) ) With Martijn's help (specifically, his van) we were soon moved into our new home.

...which brings us roughly up to date: after almost two months of waiting in our nice apartment my work visa has finally been awarded, and as long as we can run the bureaucratic gauntlet involved to get residence visas for us both, we'll be here for at least the next six months. We're settling into Rotterdam, making friends and getting familiar with attitudes and the language, and generally trying to make the most of our time here. I guess the next adventure will be starting work, unless we find time for just a little more travel before then...