Dese Weer is zo slecht!

Or, in other words, this weather stinks! How many times was I warned by European friends before moving here full time about the terrible winters? Did I believe them?  Yes, sure, but I thought they were referring to the charming picture-postcard days  of sun and snow, where I would be throwing snowballs in the street , wearing  fur coats and drinking hot cocoa in between moments of kissing a very handsome tall blond stranger  ..

Nobody told me that "horrible winter" meant exactly that ; miserable, cold , cold to your bones, windy , below zero wind chill , frigid, lonely, dark, damp depressing LOOONGGG days where you just don't even feel like leaving the house. What? Who sold me this terrible bill of goods? Where is the warrantee? And whose idea was it to make winter six months long? Or should I say, in Amsterdam, five months of pre and post winter and maybe one or two days of snow and genuine frost?

Every day it's a massive effort when one has to do something, anything outside of the house-  just dressing to leave for a short dog walk feels like preparing for an Everest expedition ;every piece of clothing chosen for practicality and warmth on the bike, topping it all off with a Woolrich coat with fur collar , gloves, boots, hats. Even skiing in the Rockies I have never had such a cold head as when I forgot the hat here, there is something devilish in the winter winds of the Netherlands.!
Annoyingly however, you don't see many fur coats in this very down to earth city, and so mine stay in the closet, waiting for the trips to the mountains and other European cities where women can dress up with impunity..

I find myself fantasizing about moving to a tropical island full time, I even think fondly of a place I really have no desire to ever live again, Southern California . I imagine buying a house in Miami, a beach hut in Tahiti, I dream of renting a station wagon and putting all necessities and my dogs inside and driving to the southernmost tip of Portugal or Spain. Is it freezing there too? Is there any Continental escape ?
I will become a winter bird,  I will fly away.

Oddly, I went even further north last weekend, I flew to Helsinki for the birthday party of a new friend. The city , in the middle of the coldest deepest midwinter frost, was completely cheerful! I woke the first morning to the beauty of the northern sun beating down on the snow covering the city's center park, the Esplandi. The sky was gorgeous,  and even all the normally serious Finns (or so is the reputation) were smiling and warm . I didn't care one whit about it being cold. it gave me heart, I thought, I  do love the winter, I have always loved skiing and snow and to be bundled up , and snowstorms and saunas and fur coats  and all these delicious winter things, I just don't like fake winters!!! Amsterdam has a lot of fake winter- long miserable wet or freezing windy days that never see snow , or sun, and sometimes even or rain, just coldness, greyness, wind. If not for all the gezellheid, the concentrated interior cuteness,coziness and warmth of interior decoration the Dutch cultivate, I'm sure the alcoholism rates would be off the charts.
How do they make it?Sun beds and coffee and .?
So many ads for "Winterin" in Portugal, Spain, etc..next year I go too, but I think it's going to be a hut on a french isle and a surfboard..maybe I'll start next year's Wintering next week come to think of it..BRRR!

Though they do say the canals might freeze in the next week, and then I can do this from my boat:)

The Dutch in Love..

I was talking to the stunningly pretty girl who was doing my nails the other day about her experiences dating in Dutchie Land. She was, to be precise in description, a beautiful blond from the far Eastern reaches of Europe, in other words, not a Dutch lass, and I wanted her outside-insider opinion on male-female behavior here, because I hadn't seen anything like it since dancing school when I was 13 and a boy who liked me had two of his friends physically drag me across the dance floor , the little white gloves on my hands doing nothing to warm my hands cold as ice from the absolute terror and abject confusion I felt. This pretty much sums up the level of discomfort even the prettiest lass from a strange land has been known to feel after entering the land of the tree tall men with one centimeter tongues, at least, one might assume so for the incredible effort it takes them to make small talk.

My new friend enlightened me and unwittingly soothed my concerns by describing her own she had when she came here,  she told me "I felt as if I had ceased to exist as a woman, I felt ugly , invisible. I stopped doing my hair , wearing makeup, and I didn't care what I wore or how I dressed, because none of it seemed to matter or make a difference".

Now this girl was, is, stunningly lovely, blond, very skinny, and very petite, in other words, quite apparently not a typical Dutchwoman.
Dutch women have a reputation for being attractive, we have seen so many lovely ones in the fashion industry as young models, but after 30, the typical considered sexy Dutch woman fits a precise model, it's not necessarily bad or good, but it is considered the gold standard to fit in and look the part and get a boyfriend/husband/man to cheat on said husband with (that's a topic for another day, for such a stodgy race they are not, I have learned from married friends, particularly faithful) - :
tall, preferably over 5'7(below see the prime of life version of the genus)

Large, BIG boned, as in, I do NOT want to get into an argument with this woman after a few glasses of pinot noir in a dark alley .Think Wagner and Hitler having a communal conjugal fantasy about their nanny. These ladies are big. I am not petite by American or French standards, and I feel like an an
absolute midget here on nights out, a charming blond American midget. It's a conversation starter at any rate.
And BLOND. Mostly  dyed, over-processed blond. The incidence of tow headed children here is astonishing, I've never seen so many booby trap children in one place . Booby trap children are the kind that are so cute that you think you should have one yourself- then, hello, diapers, sleepless nights- booby trap!:). Adorable little blue eyed, white haired children. They don't exist in the wild naturally after about age 13, thus high rate of consumption of hair bleach, there are seemingly hundreds of varieties of blond hair dye in the pharmacy.
And oddly, only one or two good colorists that I have seen evidence of, even on the richest heads, here in Amsterdam (you know who you are, good one;) ) . A lot of bad bottle blond! The Dutch practicality seems very often to flow over to the beauty parlour, or lack of use thereof..

Not to say that these women are not attractive- not at all! A majority have a sexy quality that is utterly different from the American ,French, Russian or even British varietals, that depend more on standard feminine wiles and artifice to generate the accepted levels of appeal for men in their respective nations . Here the women have the kind of sex appeal I admired often in horsewomen , a sort of devil may care you like me or you don't and I don't give a damn one way or the other about it feeling. Little makeup, hair rarely blown dry (as the rain would do it in in short time at any rate), nails done when they feel like it and not every week at the nail place as we do in the states. As a side note, maybe my reference to horsewomen has something to do with the gold standard in Dutch street fashion, which is to say: tight jeans tucked into knee high flat boots , a little jacket over a button down shirt, and some kind of interesting scarf.

Other attributes of this typical Dutch woman?
They  seem  often to have the same  sun loved skin after the age of 40. Owing to their desperation for warmth  after months in this miserable climate in the winter I believe they spend their entire summer vacations on their backs in the sun, and in the winters cooking in the sun beds at the gym (all gyms have them here ). And they often smoke, and drink . Horrors! it is though really nice  to be in a country that at least in this respect is not politically correct , after years in California, I find it  relaxing to be in a place where you can have a cigarette outside and not be shunned and loudly complained over and badgered  as the pariah you are  as happened to me in New York last year when I had a cigarette, outside, ten tables away from anyone else.. (here they would throw the complainer in the canal) .

And lastly, don't forget the very distinct female Dutch voice, which has a strong masculine quality, owing more to the cigarettes or the language, I have yet to decide, but between one and the other most Dutch women sound like sixty year old Dutch men by the age of 18.  The Dutch language, though having much in common with German and a little in common with English, has a distinct "G" sound that is heard often in Arabic, imagine someone spitting up a fur ball every time they say the letter G (and imagine how often the letter G occurs in most sentences) or the three letters "cht" in any word, and you can  imagine for yourself a language that sounds like something invented by a drunk  German who  had a bad head cold . When I first got here and was bored at night, I would turn on Dutch tv to have a laugh over  the phone sex adds that multiple tv channels had on , and cracked up over and over to the  ladies rasping out all their G's  and trying to sound sexy at the same time while writhing in cheap lingerie. "Bell me, lekker borscht , nul zeven zes etc.."Coughing up furballs was never so sexy...not..

The predominance of these phone sex ads on late night tv brings me back to my topic ; Dutch dating practice. After investigating and interviewing a number of single and married , expat and native people here, I have learned a few things:
that Dutch women do not like chivalry, and if a man opens a door for them they are likely to look at him as if he has been hit in the head.
And more to the point, and importantly, that Dutch men are terrified of them.(And thus terrified , in due order, of anything that resembles them, including the rest of us hapless visiting felines)

Equally, if they do not like a strange (previously unknown) man who approaches them in a bar, they will not even reply when he speaks to them, but look at him as if he is simultaneously trying to steal their purse and passing gas ,and then angrily turn back to their girlfriends as if to say "How dare this lowly worm there doth dare speak to Ourself " and laugh at him. This has been reported to me by more than a few Dutch guys.

I was told  this behavior originated in the 70s', when the Dutch feminists took that movement to the extreme, and treated all of its tenets as religion, as the Dutch have been wont to do with most social movements that have come through their parts, going back to the religious zealots of the later Middle Ages, whose various movements culminated with Calvinism, whose ideas of being normal and modest to this day control the behavior and thought of much of what constitutes "normalcy" in behavior and ethics in Dutch society.

It's a funny thing, because even the biggest, bossiest, most manlike Dutch woman is usually only working part time if at all, statistically women in the Netherlands work much less than women in other countries, most hold a part time, 2-3 days a week job to "keep busy". Some work to help support the family, but many do not work at all, and yet, there is no place for chivalry in this society, though I have come across a few Dutch men, thank Heaven, who had mothers who taught them to open doors and the rest. But who is teaching the women? Men should also be respected for their contribution, call me old fashioned, but I think we have , in this modern world, lost something when we threw out that baby with the bathwater, I think men should be honored for their work and contribution and for supporting their families..but topic for another day...

Back to love and the Dutch.  What is love to a Dutchman or woman? I have found one charming answer to this query in my examination; it seems that once a pair of Dutchie birds have mated, once they have made it there, there is among the middle class at least, a high tendency towards fidelity, and strong friendship. Though have to say, among the wealthier classes, to be exact at a few parties, I have seen married couples going home with separate partners, and no one seemed to care very much about it.

I also often hear through the tiny grapevine in Amsterdam of men taking their partners to "swingers' clubs" , or even of single men attempting to take their dates there to "try them out"! So beneath the veneer of middle class respectability, or should I say, above the seventh figure in the bank account line and beyond the pale, Dutch birds seems rather conversely and inherently  in-capable of sticking to the one they put a ring on. One of my first friends here was a very wealthy guy who had a wife and children, left her to make more children with another woman, and now still cheats on the new one with other random women around town. Very depressing. !

And Dutch flirting? Ah..here we get back to the heart of the matter...well, remember when you were in kindergarten, and there was a boy you liked/hated? How did he try to get your attention, did he woo you with chocolates and flowers or did he try to hit you over the head with his basketball, ignore you the rest of the time and make fun of you in front of his friends when you first meet?
Well, if you want to understand Dutch men in love, you're going to have to regress a few years.

For the male of the species, and evidently the female, do not flirt and join in the way we in the rest of the west have considered "normal" ever  since Romeo did not throw a shoe at Juliet..cooing and comforting and wooing and wanting words are thrown away in lieu of the following tactics;(and I shall just for the moment speak of the male side, for such only I have experienced)
A. looking , just briefly , very briefly at the target
B. studiously ignoring said target all night thereafter
and then either C. waiting till said target is drunk and self is equally drunk before lunging at her , grabbing onto the closest available body part and holding on for dear life (this has been attempted on author's person and it is not pretty)
or, C. throwing insults at the object of affection and attempting to start an argument .
If object is not Dutch she may be bewildered to learn from friends after evening that the abuser in question was actually a pursuer.

And if you meet a Dutch man you like, don't be afraid to ask him out. If he manages to call you on his own, this is the Dutch man's dating equivalent of climbing Everest, swimming the Channel with one arm tied, fighting a Kimodo Dragon with a kitchen knife. Be nice to the poor darling, if he calls, throw him a bone, ask him out. After some time of off and on of interaction with their race I have discovered that being VERY clear with your intentions is perfectly okay with a Dutch man, in fact they prefer it as they are absolutely no good whatsoever at subtext or subterfuge.

more on the subject to come with further experimentation....:)

Heaven is..my electric bike..

The incredible lightness of..
electric biking...
Everyone knows about Amsterdam's biking culture..what everyone might not know is about the Dutch bicycling subclasses, social orders, snobbery and infinite array of bicycling possibilities this highly creative little country has devised to define their lives on two (or three, or four) wheels.
I have been trundling along on my trusty black omafiets since giving my last electric bicycle away to a friend (who deserved it :)), thinking, ah ! I am back to being a regular Amsterdammer , no one can make fun of me now for the damn electric bike  , I'll get super fit and be really happy on my lovely black Oma fiets with brown basket and the sidebags for all other portables, including : bookbags, swimclothes , groceries, dog food, kitchen sinks and , not to forget, dogs themselves.
Though I and the dogs prefer to have them in the front basket,smiling at each other through the canals and dreary weather .
 Since bringing my 14 year old labrador home, the little ones' trips out have stopped. I can't take them out and leave my big angel home alone, it just wouldn't be fair!
So I have been thinking, maybe this summer I'll get the electric bakfiets to get him and the Littles all together to head to the beach..but I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I first got here, I bought a nice, white, trusty modern omafiets, somewhat chic but not completely chic, as I later learned, because it wasn't black.

( it's the little details here in a little country that tell the story :)) with leather handles maybe, a woven basket if you want to be really cute about it. Guys often take the big black version with the bar across, an idea I've often wondered  the wisdom of  as the men have more to lose if they fall off their seats.

Many other versions of the Oma are to be seen; spray painted, very beat up ones that look as if they came from Ye Olde Junkie's fine establishment under the nearest bridge.  That would be , evidently , secret spots around town where you can support the local addict community by buying back your bike that was nicked a week ago for a small sum. Or, if you're lucky, your neighbour's bike, the nice one with the leather handles. I've never been offered a stolen bike for sale, I must look too goody-two-shoes, I feel I have so far thus missed a proper Amsterdammer behavior; riding stolen goods.
Ah well, maybe some day..
But the beat up one is most favoured, a kind of I don't give a damn chic(translates to : please don't steal me, I'm a working man's bike) . Oddly, I think these bikes get stolen more than the nice ones, at least so far, touch wood, my own experience.
Everyone uses two locks , one that clamps the wheel down, and one you use to attach the bike to a pole or a tree , or the nearest British tourist in a drunken stupor on on the corner. Always the effort is made when parking to attach the bike to some object that can not, even with superhuman drug induced adrenalin(sorry to stress this point but it is evidently that crowd that have cultivated this art of bike thievery around here), be lifted off the ground.. I've met so many tourists who have had their bike nicked the first day in town, so tie that puppy down!

If you are a Mum, a chic, or some would say , nouveau riche (here we go again) mum, you've got your self a Bakfiets. This is the Dutch biking world's version of the annoying SUV  bought by a mum who insists she "needs the space" for the one child and three bags of groceries.
Maybe I'm too much of a Californian, though, but I really dig the Bakfiets, it's to me the epitome of Dutch cuteness in design, and I find myself having fantasies of kidnapping one small towheaded Dutch speaking child so I can put it in the bakfiets and be as super chic as the Old South (Out Zuid) mums riding around like queens, to be honest, some of them balancing four and five little towheads ever so gracefully in a giant glorified wooden bucket at the front end of their bike. A fijn talent indeed!

But the old , "real" AMsterdammers hate the Bakfiets, and complain about the N.R. that come from the south of Holland, live in Out Zuid, and fill up entire bike lanes with their "big , stupid, useless bikes". A real Dutchman, they say, just puts the little ones on the back of the bike in a child seat, or on the bar in front of the parent (owww!) or in the basket. THAT is considered  truly chic.

And want to play "Spot the American Expat Mum"?
Look for the REALLY BIG Bakfiets, the one with tricycle formation three wheels,the ones that doesn't give a damn if it takes up the entire bike lane and takes off like a tank with a diesel engine..
all the children , AND the mother, will be wearing helmets. In CLoggy-VIew, this is about as dorky as you can possibly get, thank heaven the majority of (wealthy) expat mothers don't speak more than five words of Dutch and are happily oblivious to  the curses flying over their heads. I met a woman at my gym last month who
1. married a Dutch man, 2. lived here for now thirty years, 3. has Dutch -American children who speak fluent Dutch and go to Dutch school.

She doesn't even know how to say good night in Dutch. This is bad.Really bad. What's worse is she wasn't in the least embarrassed about it!

I was told by a new guy friend at a bar last night, that if I put the dogs in a Bakfiets I would be "talked about in the neighborhood"...for a society known to be so "liberal and forgiving" , the Dutch have rules for absolutely EVERYTHING.  Topic  for a later post, but to begin (to start , at least on the bike) ; do not stick out . Favourite and much repeated Dutch adage" Just be normal, it is strange enough" -means; do not be eccentric or different in a noticeable way to US, or we will think you are weird, make comments, make very rude comments , insult you to your face, kidnap your dog, throw your children in the canal, hang you up and burn you from a post on the Leidsplein on friday night when the moon is full.

So I knew I was heading into tricky water buying a new electric bike- back to the bike, I live in the center , everything is fairly much within a few minutes' riding distance normally, except for the things that really matter! (to me) My best friends both live in Out Zuid, a decent 20 minute ride and can be a witch on the windy Weterinschans in wintertime, pushing against a solid wall of below freezing air to reach the destination, some gezellig bar or elegant joint, where you will be then unlayering levels of sweaty clothes and trying to make the hair decent after having your fresh blow dry squashed in a wool cap.It ain't easy being cute here!
And my school where I go is all the way past the Westerpark, other side of town, a good forty minute ride in the best of times!
I broke my back a few years ago, and it has really been a pain in the neck making it on time to school on Sunday mornings, for reasons I imagine I need not elaborate having to do with the extensive gezellheid of Dutch saturday night  drinking culture but mainly because my darn back doesn't become one piece and not a puzzle till after noon.
I was cutting class and or getting there grumpy or late most of the time, and then got that electric bike- all of a sudden I felt about five years old! They go like the wind!!!

Start peddling and it feels as if the Very Hand of God is pushing you from behind, flying along, passing bewildered teenage Dutch boys who thought you were dust in their shadows.
Brilliant invention, the electric bike. Silent stealthy wonder.
But I gave mine away because a . a friend needed it more than me, and b. I was made fun of for being a junior old fart.  See here, till just recently, only old people rode these things. I think this was an old person's secret actually, because these things rock. No more arriving sweaty and disheveled, now you dismount the bike at destination like a rock star floating out of a Bentley, clean, smiling, hair  in place (ok  I lied, that the bike can't help) . Life is beautiful!
I was denying myself, but today  I bought another...it's a classic Omafiets like my regular one, with wide handlebars that wrap around, a giant bell you can hear a block away, and man it goes like the wind,
strange be damned , I love flying like the wind..

Seven years ago I was having my summer fun in the sun in the south of France, in that silly village by the sea called St Tropez, and I  met my first cloggies.. They were a magnificent sight to be seen outside of their natural environment, the men stood a head and more taller than everyone else in the room (ok, most of the women too) . They were tall, blond , Viking like, and they spoke with VERY loud voices, filling up Tahiti Plage with voices that boomed even over the soft continuous roar of the Med roughed up by a touch of  the Mistral wind. They seemed freer, happier, wilder than everyone else, and I started to fall in love with the lot of them.
I wondered for years what it would be like to live among them, to be one of them, if it was possible.
I had no idea of what I was up against and what I was in for when I finally deposited myself , eight suitcases, and three dogs on the doorstep of my houseboat in the canals of Amsterdam.
This blog is my story of what it was I found out.