We figured it’d be exactly like seeing a movie in Union City

I’m pleased to say it wasn’t nearly as bad as we were told. We originally wanted to see Babel, but since the movie has multiple languages in it we were told it would be tricky to watch (the subtitles would be in Dutch, not English). We decided on Al Gore’s An Inconveinient Truth instead.
Tickets were €16 (about $20), so they’re similar to prices at home. We already looked like tourists because of the whole subtitles-thing, so I asked “Do you guys sell popcorn here?”. I got a funny look and an “umm, no”. We rushed to the movie, which was great, and it didn’t involve any rude behavior. Horray.

After the movie, we noticed that Dutch movie-going is a much different experience than that in America.

Everything here is compact and old, so the theaters, lobby, and hallways were small and had some history to them. Instead of a kiosk selling expensive soda and popcorn, the cramped lobby had a full bar with sofas, chairs, and tables. You can get relatively inexpensive beer, spirits, snacks, or even food, and are encouraged to take your beer bottle or martini glass with you into the theater. The cinema also shows classic films (like Taxi Driver) after midnight on some nights.
It seemed like most customers showed up early for their show and had a drink to warm up from the cold, saw the movie, and then spent some time socializing and talking about the film. There were absolutely zero children, not even a group of rowdy teenagers, so prominent at U.S. theaters. I wish I could take pictures because the atmosphere is totally different than the cold, modern megaplexes back home.

I do miss the popcorn though :/

After registering with my school, they gave me two letters. I was told to give one to the Foreign Police, which proved that I was registered at the school and which would allow me to receive a Residence Permit. The other was to ABN Amro, a large Dutch bank. This was a major plus, since every time I take money out of the ATM I get 3 different fees, one of which is for a percentage of the money which I take out (yikes!). I also need to transfer money into my landlord’s ABN Amro account, and the easiest way to do it is from my own.

After dealing with the Foreign Police, a process which takes two weeks, I got a flashy stamp in my passport and could use it to open an account. The delay was annoying but understandable, and I headed down to a nearby branch office to get things rolling.
Whoops, first mistake. Apparantly here in Holland there are special “New Account” days, and that day was not one of them. I came back early in the morning the next day, but there was a shortage of employees who were authorized to open accounts. I made an appointment to come back the next Monday.
Finally, I was able to open an account. I was told I’d receive an ATM card in the mail in about 5 business days, and could then use it to deposit money and make purchases.

… Two weeks later, I still had no card, and biked over to my local office. A teller informed me that his collegue forgot to click the button which would process my request for a card. Oops. I was given the same old story, and was told I could use my passport to conduct business at the branch offices untill I received my card. Because I’ve had SUCH good experiance with those visits…
At this point I needed to pay my landlord badly. I got some money together at my U.S. Bank and made yet another visit to (a different, and hopefully better) ABN Amro branch. I figured I’d write myself a check, deposit it, and all would be well.

Ooops, my mistake again. Apparantly the fees for depositing a check are high, and it can take up to five weeks for it to clear. I’m not quite sure why (or how) either of those things are necessary, as ABN Amro is a very large bank with U.S. offices, and we have moved on from the steam-ship shipping method several decades ago.

While I worked out my money transfer options with my U.S. bank, my ATM card finally arrived. Woo. Now I just have to activate it at … my local ABN Amro branch. Something tells me that this wasn’t going to work out well. After waiting in the branch for about 15 minutes (nobody else was there), a teller walked over and said she had bad news.

“Today isn’t a card-activation day?” I asked. Turns out it was not, because their pin activation machines were down for the day. I should have known.

Anyhow, I was able to figure out how to get money into my account. I can do an electronic transfer (which costs me $50 US) and it will be there in a few days. Sigh. Anyhow, tonight I’m going to try that “simple process”, and maybe get my ATM card activated tomorrow.

You know it’s bad when you’re longing for the pleasantries of U.S. banking back home…

Apparantly we arrived on race day. Well, “qualifying day” is more like it. A major A1 race was set for the next day, and everybody was headed to the race track to watch the cars qualify. Unfortunately, tickets were too expensive to get in on the action.

The beach was fun, mostly because it was not like the beaches back home. There was one sad, lonely palm tree.

The sand was soft, though, there were cafe’s on the beach, and surfers in the cold water. I guess it’s pretty crazy in the summer, with hundreds of colored tents on the beach and topless sun-bathers. Alas, no such luck today.

Where the bech lacked palm trees, it made up with shells. The beach was covered in them. Lyss had a hard time keeping her eyes off the ground during the entire stroll. Here’s a nice shot of the beach and water.

The beach was relatively empty, with the occasional
kid playing in the water or couple walking their dog. We stopped for some very tasty calimari from a stand just off the beach.

We then strolled around the cute beach town, which was all decorated for the next day’s race.

From there, we headed off to Haarlem. The American Harlem was named after this place, mostly due to it’s proximity to New Amsterdam (now New York). Our first stop was the Grote Markt (big market). It’s the town’s main square, located just in front of the very impressive Grote Kerk (big church). Being saturday, there actually WAS a market in the Grote Markt. We perused the goods and picked up a cable so I can steal my neighbors TV

We then walked around the Grote Kerk and went inside. As we stared at the massive organ I leaned over to Alyssa and said “you’re standing on people’s graves!”. She jumped up and looked around, but there was no escape. The entire floor was paved with stone tombs. It was pretty funny, although it took me about 10 minutes to pry her off a bench and start touring around again.

Thankfully I brought my Rick Steves book, since the church pamphlet was pretty worthless. We saw the grave of Frans Halls (whose works are in a museum in Haarlem), the beautiful wooden ceiling, the dog-whippers chapel (gotta reward those dog-whippers!), and the massive church organ.

It’s no wonder that both Handel and Mozart were impressed by the loud and ornate pipes which dominate one end of the church. Thankfully there was someone playing as we entered, and it definitely gave some extra ambiance to the place. Here’s a very short video clip of the organ in action (click here).

We then stopped for a beer and coffee at Cafe 1900, a very old turn of the century style bar with leather-strap-driven ceiling fans and some very interesting bathrooms. After that, we wandered around town and discovered that it feels a lot like a miniature, more laid back Amsterdam. There is even a Red Light Disctrict that we strolled through, and it can only be described as “cute”. There are maybe 5 windows for girls to sit in, and one of them was empty, so lyss took some (usually forbidden) photographs of the rooms.

Then we took off for home. You can click any of the above photos for larger versions (as usual), and also browse picture’s of the whole day’s exploits here.

Wednesdays are my crazy day, because I have two rather intense classes to get to which are on opposide ends of town.

At around 7-8am I get up, take a shower in my “Water Closet”, which really is closet sized and includes both a shower and a toilet. Click on any of these pictures for a larger version.

I then hop on my bike and ride to a cafe in the center of town, where I get a cappuchino and a pastry of some kind. I usually spend the time there preparing for my class, or reading the paper.

Shortly ater 10am I head to my first class, Populism and Nationalism, which is a few yards (err meters) away. It’s in this beautiful building on a canal.

For a more immersive experiance, I’ve also included a shot from the other side of the canal. My bike’s here in the front, and if you look closely you can see the orange bike (from above) across the canal.

After several hours of intense debates with mostly Dutch students (and numerous cups of coffee), I head off to get some lunch. It’s 1pm, and I’ve got about 4 hours to kill, so sometimes I just ride around looking for a nice cafe I’ve never been to.

Last wednesday I sat outside, had a beer, some amazing tomato soup, and some fries. I also caught up on some reading for my next class, which is a seminar on Conflict and Negotiation.

I headed across town to Prins Hendrikade, a major street on the northmost part of town. There, in an old building, is the International School for the Humanities and Social Sciences (my faculty). The inside is suprisingly modern and is wired with all the latest technology. I kill some time in the computer lab by checking my mail and sketching an outline for a paper.

After my seminar starts (and ends) I wrap things up and bike across town to meet Alyssa at our place. I bike past central station and down some nice streets, and arrive home at about 7:30 or 8:00.

I go down to the lobby of my faculty (department, really) to purchase a reader for one of my classes. It’s five euro, which is pretty nice. Only thing is, they don’t take money. All I have is a twenty, and they can’t break it. No big deal.

I ride down the street to a “super” market, which is about the size of a small 7-11. I don’t expect them to just change money for anybody, so I go to buy a coke, which is 65 euro-cents.

“Do you have any smaller change?” the attendant asks (in Europe, change includes 1 and 2 euro coins). I say no and explain that I need to break this €20 bill so that I can purchase something somewhere else. I even offered to buy a bag of chips. I’m not sure if the idea that I really didn’t need to buy something from her angered her, or what, but she said “I’m sorry, you’ll have to go somewhere else.” I stuck around to wittness the next transaction and she clearly had plenty of money (and change) in her drawer.

It took trips to two more shops before someone would break the bill. This brings the total to 3 places of business (school and shops 1&2) which would not take my money in exchange for goods. This isn’t a freaking 500- or 100-, or even 50-euro note here, it’s a 20. I understand not having change, but no place in the states would actually refuse business because of change-making annoyance.

Another odd, and slightly annoying, practice is that of not giving out actual change. Euro coins come in €2 and €1 flavors, along with 50, 20, 10 (gold) and 5, 2, 1 (copper) euro-cent coins. Frequently, stores don’t hand back the copper coins, even if you are supposed to get that change back. Purchase something for €1.95, and you’ll be lucky to get a 5 cent coin back. If it costs 1.96, you’ll almost certainly get nothing back. On a mass scale, this is pretty serious inflation.

The worst part is, it’s always against you. I can understand (although I still think it’s wrong) to round up a cent. but if it’s 4 cents (or worse, 9) you should give me back a 5 or a 10, certainly not nothing.

Done with the rant.

This was made easier by my rental of a bicycle, which I succeeded in obtaining at the drawing. There were about 300 people there for 100 or less bikes, and I was the sixth or seventh person called. Go me. Here’s a picture I took of the bikes being set up for the drawing in front of my (very pretty) student services building.

A bike is the way to get around this city. It’s pretty clear that this is the case when you get here and almost get hit by them, but the realization is even more dramatic when you’re riding them around town. I’m convinced that traffic laws don’t apply to you when you’re on a bike, although the city does put these cute things up in busy areas.

Right now we only have one bike, although Henry has been gracious enough to let Alyssa steal his bike a few times. We went for a ride in Vondelpark, a big central park in the city. It was amazing. Most days we only have one bike, and so at some point we tried the typical cloggy method of getting multiple people onto one bike (one person sits sideways on the rear-luggage rack). It proved to be both difficult and frightening. We have not attempted it again.

Mostly, my bike just facilitates me getting to school and back, which is a pretty decent walk if you’re on foot. School is going well, although there are more Americans in two of my classes than there are in my classes at SFSU. One of my classes is even taught by an American…

My “Dutch” class, Populism and Nationalism, is both taught by a Dutch professor and comprised nearly entirely off Dutch students. During the initial chatter before the first class I was genuinely worried that the class might not be in English. Thankfully it was, but that does not mean that it is by any means “easy”. It looks like we’re going to be reading the equivilent of half a book a week, as well as several reviews, presentations, and a 6000 word essay. That’s a good 25 pages, double-spaced. The class discussions, on the other hand, are very engaging and interesting, and much more informative than they are back in the states, or in my other classes.

Tomorrow is my visit to the Foreign Police, so I’m gathering up all of my documentation for that today. The idea is for them to give me a residence permit (and by “give” i mean force me to pay €433 for it) so that I can get a bank account and whatnot. That’s probably a whole other ordeal.

I’m still without internet at the house, which explains the length of this post. I purchased a usb-wireless-gadget on ebay which may allow me to break into my neighbors wireless network, and thus avoid paying completely rediculous DSL fees to the resident monopoly, KPN, which forces me to sign a one year contract. Until that thing arrives, if the seller ever manages to ship it, I’m stuck with going to the library.

I’ll close with a fun picture of something I saw while getting my morning crossaint and coffee.

We did, however, get the cat over to the new place.  That helps a bit.  After spending a few days with a Spanish family, he now meows in espanol.  We also found an AMAZING pancake house.  To quote my fellow-sfsu-study-abroader Susan “you can get anything on a pancake here.” I got bacon, mushrooms, and Dutch cheese.  I plan on getting strawberries and cinnamon ice cream sometimes soon.  Damn tasty. My classes started this week, and I’ve only been to one of them so far.  I find it amusing that I flew all the way out here to have a class taught by an American.  This class (conflict and negotiation) seems fun, but I’m a little concerned about the “group paper” at the end.  That alone should be a good exercise in conflict and negotiation.  Maybe that’s the point…

The plan for today is to see if I can rent a bike for the semester (there’s a raffle) and then go to my student orientation.  Then I need to go back to the apartment and get cleaning.

When we arrived there were also no problems. We had to wait around for ami, who hadn’t messed his box up at all. There was *no* customs check for our bags or him, just a Dutch stamp on our passport. Henry (alyssa’s boss) had called a cab for us, and we had a nice ride to his place.

Upon arriving, Alyssa immidiately fell down the stairs and got banged up a bit (she’s ok, though). She went to bed and I ran around trying to figure out what was going on with my classes. Not to be outdone by Alyssa’s fall, I took a dive on a borrowed bike, and now I’m a bit sore. I also found out that they start on Monday, which is a day before my orientation. Joy!
So today we’re just settling in. We both woke up at about 9 am so hopefully we’ll adjust quickly to the time here. I need to go back to school and take care of some more administration crap, but I should be good to go for monday’s classes.

Stay tuned, more updates to come!

We had an amazing going away party, and the pics are rolling in.  I’ll post them when I get some time on the other side of the world.  Now I have to go drink some coffee and give my housemates a hug… one last time.