Little things I've noticed

A typical street in Almelo, NL.

We are now in Almelo, our second city in as many days.  Seth has a week  here observing how the parts of his machine are built, and we are staying in a nice hotel that is built around an old theatre, appropriately called the Theatre Hotel.  It's not as convenient as our apartment in Eindhoven because it's not an apartment, and it doesn't even provide a refrigerator with the room, just a mini-bar.  Still, it has a pleasant view from the balcony, and like our room in Eindhoven, it has a huge bathroom.  Dutch hotels seem to do themselves well in bathrooms. 

Our hotel, which is built around a working theatre.  The theatre is only active in the winter.

Jet Lag

Jet lag is a beast.  Jet lag is a six-legged dragon in a hula skirt and a fluorescent Elvis jacket dancing the Cha Cha around my hotel room all night defying me to sleep and then slithering along behind me slavering and snapping at my heals all day.  For three nights, I've been watching the clock and wishing that I could just turn my brain off and then dragging myself halfway through the morning until I crash for two hours of sleep.   My sleep medication got doused with soap on the trip over, so that's no good.  One tiny blessing is that Boo is running on the same schedule that I am, so she gets tired when I get tired.  One the other hand, she's four, so she doesn't stay tired as long.  Oh, to be four again or even twenty.  I don't remember any jetlag when I went to Oxford in college.  It's amazing the difference a decade can make. 

Other odd little inconveniences

There are other odd little things that serve to remind me that we're not in Kansas anymore.  Public restrooms in the Netherlands cost 50 cents per visit, so most of the time, when the Boo needs a potty, we end up walking back to the hotel.  On the other hand, there are public urinal stands on the street corners, at least in Eindhoven.  Apparently public urination constitutes a problem in the Netherlands, and that's how they decided to fix it.

One thing I've noticed about the Dutch language is that they like to be blunt.  In the States, we'd call it a waste disposal bag.   In the Netherlands, they just call it "bag for dog poop."

Another interesting quirk is that all the hotel beds are twin beds.  The room might have a queen-sized bed, but it's really two twin beds shoved together.  This isn't twin mattresses on a  queen-sized frame;  this is two twin beds with twin frames, twin-sized sheets, and twin-sized duvets jammed but not fastened together.  We're not sure if this is an economy drive, an ergonomic measure for the people who have to move the mattresses, or just a sneaky Dutch form of birth control.  I find it ironic that I crossed the Atlantic to sleep next to my husband, and now when I roll over to be close to him, I slide into the crack between the beds.

They also don't believe in distinct demarcation.  In the U.S., we have a yellow line going down the middle of the road to let us know that traffic on the other side of that line goes in the opposite direction.  Not so in the Netherlands.  All the lines are white.  A one-way street looks like a two-way street looks like a freeway entrance.  The only way to know the difference is to know which street you're on and which way it goes.  That's a good theory for the natives, but in practice with out-of-towners like us, it amounts to being forced into awkward turn arounds because we didn't realize that a certain otherwise unmarked street was one way only.

There are toys in the market streets.  Granted, this was outside a toy store, but it wasn't the only place we saw this.  It's as if the merchants of Almelo decided to be nice to parents.  Almelo is a very family-friendly city.

Also on the residential streets and market streets, the streets, the bike lanes, and the sidewalks are distinguished only by barriers, like a concrete mound here or a post there.  Otherwise, the brick intermingles freely with the pavement, it's all of one color and pretty much of common use.  The theory seems to be that if you can get to it, then you can ride on it.  The barriers keep out the cars.  The curbs keep off the bikes.  But nothing is marked with paint, and people mingle freely with cyclists while drivers edge their way cautiously through the crowds. 

Boogaloo watches Daddy make his "Dame Blanche."
The deserts over here are decadent, but they're really not that
sweet. 

Another example happened to us last night.  We were going down to the hotel restaurant to order a pizza because we knew Boo would eat it.  At some point on the cobbled patio, we passed from the hotel restaurant to an adjoining restaurant without noticing it.  The chairs were of a similar kind.  The table umbrellas matched.  The only distinction was the color of the card holders on the tables, which we didn't see until after we had ordered drinks.  So we had Spanish tapas instead of pizza, and Boo spent most of her time playing on the play structure. Even the classy restaurants out here have fisher-price type play structures to entertain the younger patrons.  This restaurant had a play structure and a bouncy house.  She didn't come to the table until it was time for desert. 

Other distinctions

A typical family conveyance.  The kids are so at ease on their
parent's bikes that they don't even need seats.  They'll sit on the
rack if nothing else is available.  But most parents are more
consciencious than that. 

The wine is cheap, but the water is expensive.  Everyone rides bikes, but only the police wear helmets.  I saw a woman with two kids on her bike, one in a kid seat on the back and one in a kid seat on the front.  Necessity is truly the mother of invention.  People wear blue jeans as dress pants with dress shoes and jackets, and you can tell that's how they've always seen them.  They are slowly becoming work pants, which is opposite their history in the U.S.  Fashion seems to be very important out here.  Almost everyone I see seems to be in the peak of city chic by U.S. standards.  Of course, our fashion writers might just be entranced with European fashion. 

Speaking of clothes, I had promised myself that I wasn't going to view this trip as an extended shopping trip.  Yes, it would be fun to bring home jackets and dresses and say, "Oh, I got this in Amsterdam," but gosh, stuff is expensive out here.  However, it became apparent on our first day out here that Boogaloo and I would need to make at least one significant wardrobe purchase: rain boots.  Seriously, we went for a walk on Sunday, and my shoes still aren't dry.  We thought we were encountering a little drizzle, but we were encountering a sustained cloud burst that made even the native Nederlanders take cover.  And these people don't stop for rain; they just open up their umbrellas over their bicyles and keep on riding.  It quickly became plain that if we are going to go anywhere or do anything when the weather is less than ideal, we were going to need appropriate footwear.  Of course, they don't have plain old galoshes out here (I've seen kids wearing them, but they're noticeably absent in stores), so Boo has her first pair of real leather boots, and I hope they last her a good, long time.