Vrijdag

Friday morning I woke up, showered, and watched a horrible episode of Lois & Clark while getting ready (no WONDER main characters never get together -- all they did that entire episode was talk about their relationship). Casey took my bike to work, and I left a bit later to catch a bus to his office, like many other days. As I was almost at the bus station, I saw Casey, coming back to tell me that the power was out on the Science Park campus, and nobody was allowed into his building. As my laptop, keyboard, and mouse were in there, and the data he's working with are on the local computer in his office, this meant that neither of us could do any work. We quickly agreed that the most productive use of our time would be to run some errands and then see a museum, which would be more crowded on a weekend, and perhaps the free lunchtime organ concert at Westerkirk. Hopefully the power would be fixed by Saturday and we could work then instead.

First: phone cord. Our home phone is not working. When I called the phone company, they said our line was "perfect" and that we needed to read our phone manual (in Dutch and French). We then took the phone into Casey's office, and it worked fine there, but there are two types of phone plugs (the normal US one, and another one that has four prongs and sticks into the side of the phone jack). Anyway, long story short (too late!), before we pay the $75 or whatever for the phone company to come fix our jack, we want to do as much troubleshooting as possible.

So, we got the cord, at a store called "Handyman" with all sorts of adorable logos. From there our idea was to keep walking north and go to one of the two museums we'd heard of that were 17th century houses with French-style gardens. So we left Handyman and walked north, and then we saw what looked like a street market. I spotted some watches a few booths in, and since my crappy Target watch broke last week, I sped over to get one. Long story short (too late!), we had inadvertently stumbled across the largest market in the city, and we were not disappointed. In addition to the watch, we found some spices for our empty cupboard and vegetables, bread, manchego, and italian sausage for lunch. On our way back home to drop off our purchases, I stopped at a health food store and got some vegetarian pate thing that tastes a little bit like liverwurst.

One lunch, a nap, and a frustrating phone test later, we set off again. First we went to the Last-Minute Ticket Shop at Leidseplein for tickets to the Talking Cows at Bimhuis, the new jazz theater. Then we strolled along a canal to the Museum Van Loon, which was lived in as a house from the early 1600s until 1971. One of the bedrooms was last redecorated in 1690-something... So that residents of that house lived with that renovation for almost 300 years!

After the Museum Van Loon closed, we tried the photography museum, "foam," across the canal. This museum was mostly glass and steel, and very fun to explore. The major exhibit was by a Japanese photographer who photographs urban scenes with a small hand-held camera, often with grainy film. Some looked like crap, but I was surprised, after reading the discription in advance, how many of photos struck us both.

Before we had time to tire of museums, we left (these Museumkaarts are great -- as many entrances as we want in most museums for a year) and walked up to Rembrandtplein, where we sat at an outdoor cafe, writing postcards and gradually eating dinner for a couple of hours.

Then, tram up to Centraal, and walk across the construction to the Muziekgebouw, the new concert hall that also houses Bimhuis, the jazz room. We were early, so we joined the disorganized blobs of people gathered on the terrace and watched boats come in, drop people off, pick them back up... To our surprise, they all managed the jump from boat to terrace without landing in the questionable water. Then we went up to the Bimhuis... a small theater with great red leather seats around a stage looking over the city, behind the seats some tables with chairs, and behind a moving wall, a bar with a view over the harbor.

The photo for today is from the show, which was great. The green curvy building behind the bassist is NEMO, the science museum. Part of the fun of the show was the space, with its view of the city and trains going by (we saw an ICE high-speed train).

Not bad for a spontaneous day.

zes

Here's a little sculpture from a theater down the street from our apartment. Starting this week, the theater is showing Rembrandt: The Musical. I'm not making that up. Sadly, the show will be performed only in Dutch. I'm almost tempted to go anyway, though, because it's such a great-looking theater. Or maybe I'll just wait until the mambo show in January.

Speaking of stuff in our neighborhood, there is a restaurant nearby that has a huge deck over the water, as well as boat docks with easy-to-get-to-from-a-boat tables right on the water. So people can pull up in their boats, have some beers, and keep going. Anyway, we keep going by that place and seeing it packed with people and thinking it looks cool. So when Casey's sister wanted to meet somewhere in the city (she's visiting her boyfriend's family near Amsterdam), this was the first thing that sprang to mind. So we met there, and it was indeed a pleasant place to be! As an added bonus, my salad had some very good feta (the creamy, not-very-briny kind).

fiets!

I have a bike! (It's the green one in the photo.)

After spending 175 euros on the bike, the bungee cord straps, and the two locks (the second being the handcuff on the rear tire), I have to say, I miss hand brakes. On the first day, I fell off. Twice. I definitely need to practice stopping and starting before I try biking in a skirt again. And forget about putting Casey on the back there.

But all the bikes have neat mechanically powered lights. When it starts getting dark out, you can engage the little gear that uses friction with the front tire to generate enough electricity for the small front and back lights. And it doesn't feel like I'm losing that much efficiency to the light while pedaling. I also don't mind having only one gear: there are no hills, and without a helmet I don't want to go very fast anyway. So once I get the starting and stopping down, I'll be all set.

Here's my quick guide to Dutch pronunciation. Like in German, "ie" is pronounced like a long "e" sound. So "fiets" ("bike") sounds like the English word "feats." And "drie" ("three") is pronounced... well, I don't think I'm the best person to describe the pronunciation of this word, because every time I ask for three zones on the tram, they think I'm asking for two. (When Casey does it, they think he's asking for one, which is even weirder.) Right, so, "twee" is pronounced kind of like "tveh" might be in English, and "een" is... something like "Maine" without the M. We can't figure out why they're confusing those three words when we say them.

One more word for today -- five is "vijf," pronounced like the little piccolo instrument (fife).

vier

Back to my original naming scheme. In case you're upset that you missed out on the last post, the Dutch word for "three" is drie.

This picture I took last Thursday at a park near our temporary apartment. It was an uncharacteristically nice day, so I printed up some work and sat on this bench for an hour or two, alternately working and watching the ducks and KLM planes go by. I may have gotten another freckle or two in the process.

I am certainly not as tan as most people here. Right now the sun is up from about 5 am to 10 pm, and most restaurants have well used outdoor seating, and every park is full of sunbathers. However, I did also see some home tanning beds for sale in an electronics store ("it's"), so I suspect at least a few of the orangey people are cheating. (I haven't noticed a plethora of tanning salons, but it's possible I just don't recognize the word for "tan.") I'm curious to look up whether my health insurance covers skin cancer screening and removal.

We spent a lot of Friday and Saturday organizing our new apartment. I'll post a more relevant photo soon. One great surprise is that if we open the balcony doors, we can hear the water lapping on the river bank. The river itself is good entertainment now, too. There are boats going up and down all the time, and on Saturday night one went by with a jazz band that we could hear for a little while. During the day there are puppies to watch. And one crazy guy who shouts a lot.