Gyms are horribly expensive and their pricing policies are very sleazy, because they usually don’t have any short term membership options, you have to join for at least 3 months, or 6, or 12. As a PR bandaid they like to offer an “introductory lesson” or something along those lines. Basically, you can come in and use the gym once, for free, to sort of make up your mind before the point of no return. Sometimes they have an instructor accompany you to explain what is what. It’s the same scam as “the cell phone for free”, where they try to distract you from the 12 month contract.

At the gym I went to today they do have an introductory lesson. But this being Holland, there is an interesting twist to it. If you want to just come in once you can pay a one time fee of 15 bucks. The introductory lesson, which in theory is free, costs you 12.50. Then, if you decide to get a membership they will deduct that 12.50 from the price you pay later. So the introductory lesson is only free if it’s not free, you see that logic?

This is a pretty eccentric attitude. In theory, if you wanted to bad enough you could come in once a month, try not to run into the same staff, and always go for the introductory lesson. If you could do it so that they didn’t remember you, you’d get it for free. How many people would actually try that, though? One? Three? The money a gym would lose on this scheme is pretty negligable. More importantly, anyone inclined to go to such lengths probably isn’t willing to pay for the gym anyway, so that money wasn’t yours to begin with.

But this is a loophole-closing culture, they don’t want to run that risk. In Norway the social stigma of being found out and feeling embarrassed is deemed sufficient in such cases that basically noone does it. But the Dutch are not satisfied with that, they need policies that remove any room for such creativity.

Meanwhile, Greg debunks the idea that chains actually have a consistent product and asks why would people flock to Starbucks when they could be having better coffee at a local outlet? The obvious answer is: preconception. Much could probably be attributed to MacDonalds, who have forever maintained that they serve you the same food no matter where you are. Starbucks doesn’t really have to do anything to push that idea, it’s already been implanted.

But the deeper reason is that this country doesn’t really have a coffee culture. Yet. When I moved here I was pleased to find out that koffie is part of the fabric of this society. It isn’t a “new” thing like it is in, say, Poland, where tea has always been the dominant beverage. But the Dutch koffie predates the cawfee of today. In countries like Poland and Norway, without a strong existing coffee culture, the yuppie caffè latte gimmick has been a big hit in recent years. (Although in Norway, to “our” credit, most of the coffee places are local entrepreneurs, not foreign chains, and provide considerably better ambiance than sitting in a Starbucks.)  Not so here. With an existing “coffee infrastructure”, Holland has not been quite the fertile ground, and the coffee revolution that has placed a coffee place on every corner hasn’t happened. Coffee is still, by and large, the traditional sit down experience, and an unremarkable, humble one at that.

You won’t find a lot of cafés that serve a caffè latte, or even a solid espresso. Around these parts coffee is still, much of the time, “just coffee”. Not the fast food inspired, to-go in a paper cup with a selection of 30 different drinks.

And yet, something is wrong. Very wrong.

You might think “Hey the Dutch are nuts about biking, I bet they have great bikes over there!”. You’d be wrong. The bikes in use in this country are something out of an old Soviet factory. Single speed, pedal brake, black paint (or painted a bright color to conceal rampant corrosion), with a regular chain for locking. Often you can hear them coming, wheels spinning unevenly on the axle because the rims are slightly bent, lights fastened poorly and about to fall off, crank screeching against the panel that conceals the chain. Not surprisingly, bike repair is a thriving business in this country, repair shops are everywhere.

In fact, these old bikes are so dominant that it’s difficult to find a bike that isn’t one of these historical exhibits. Furthermore, bike theft is so widespread that people don’t even want to own anything worth stealing. (A guy once told me he loses roughly one bike per year to theft.) Dutch people love to joke that the lock usually is worth more than the bike is. That’s true, I just don’t see why that is supposed to be funny. I wouldn’t want to live in a house where the lock on the front door is worth more than the house itself.

Then there are the bike lanes. Yes, they are dedicated to bikes, and yes they are separate from motorized traffic. What you probably don’t expect, however, is just how boring it is to ride on them. They are completely flat, they have their own traffic lights, and even indicators for traffic going in different directions. It’s no wonder bikes don’t have any gears, there’s no way you could build up any speed before you have to stop at the next light. It is the experience of urban biking with the added bureaucracy of driving a car

Not only that, traffic regulations for bikers not only exist, they are enforced. That means you have tax collecting traffic cops just waiting to write you a ticket for any number of trivialities, like riding on the sidewalk (even when it’s void of pedestrians), riding a light when there’s no traffic, or riding without lights. Lights which, of course, will be stolen unless you obsessively remove them every time you park the bike. (Unless the whole bike gets stolen instead.) It’s almost a wonder you don’t have to fill in a form every time.

Then there is the terrain. When you’re not biking in a town, which is about as much fun as driving a car in heavy traffic, you will find yourself somewhere on the grid of bike lanes that connect towns, out in the great outdoors. What fun! Well, at least until you realize that every slice of the country looks almost exactly the same, and the only thing there is to see anywhere is grasslands with canals crossing them. If you’re lucky you might spot a forest, but they are very uncommon. And it’s completely flat, so not only is there nothing to see here, you’re well aware of the fact that 10km down the road there’s also nothing. Scenery wise, this country is as close as you get to a desert.

The Dutch response to all of this? “Biking was never supposed to be fun, it’s transport.” Well, there you have it, it doesn’t get more depressing than that. “Music an art form? We just needed a beat the soldiers could march to.”

I’m down three bikes so far, in two years. Starting with this one. I also had another bike vandalized once.

I ended up going to this all night clinic after I went to the wrong location and got bounced around a little. I would have gone to the same place as the last two visits, but it’s across town and with my bike being stolen yet again, it’s just too far away. There is this place where they have a bunch of barracks (like at a construction site) and for some reason the all night clinic is located there. Odd place for a clinic. As I walk in I immediately get this strange sensation of having entered another dimension. There is a big plate of glass between me and the receptionist, with no holes and nothing that opens up. Only that little slot in the counter for passing stuff back and forth. It’s like I’m in a recording booth, because she has to press in a button while she’s talking to me for me to hear. In the back there are about 6 women sitting behind computers talking into headsets. Like people are calling in to order taxis and pizzas or something. This solid booth is the landing for anyone who enters the clinic. There is another solid door between it and the waiting room, with a lock on it. So if you don’t have an appointment or you can’t get along with the receptionist, she’s gonna keep you from getting in there.

The receptionist I got (out of the 6 who were in the room) wasn’t the most accommodating. She would ask questions in Dutch, I would answer in English, she would talk in Dutch again. When I didn’t understand, she would bite the bullet and speak English, and then immediately go Dutch again. Most people when faced with this situation decide to have it in just one language. I don’t have Dutch medical insurance, so I would “be paying”. Okay, how much? 77 euro. That is… for one visit? Yes. (Not for a coupon of a dozen tickets or something.) And it absolutely had to be in cash. You would think for a place that isolates its staff behind bomb proof glass they would be more comfortable with electronic transfers and not having any hard money on site. Okay, but I don’t have that kind of money on me. I haven’t carried around sums like that since… well, ever. The nearest ATM is pretty far away too. Utrecht is very densely populated, but it is mostly suburbia-like, not city. So I get an appointment made and I step on it to get back in 30 minutes.

My appointment was.. short, but brief (like an English teacher of mine once quipped about a presentation I’d given). It was only as long as it needed to be: 6 minutes. 77 bucks for 6 minutes, so that means I paid 988 euro/hour to see my doctor. Am I crazy or is that rather high? Then again, if I had renewed my Dutch medical insurance, that goes for 300/year. I’d rather pay 77 once or even twice a year.

So I get out of there, past the waiting room, and into the tiny-but-freezing all night pharmacy. This room isn’t even heated. There’s only one guy working there and he’s not especially fast, so just waiting for him to process one customer ahead of me took 10 minutes. Here too the sheet of glass. I was amazed by how small the place is. This is the pharmacy attached to the all night/weekends/holidays clinic, so whatever drugs you’d need at a regular pharmacy, you might need them here too, it’s the one place in town that stays open. And he’s only got one room with a bunch of shelves and filing cabinets.

Isn’t that a contradiction in terms, though? “Now you pay for free.” As opposed to “Until now you’ve been paying us for the privilege of paying us”?

But it’s a brave new world here down south. There is a post office, but they apparently don’t get much business. Instead, any shipment with your name on it is supposedly delivered to your house. The post office does this, and all the commercial package delivery companies do this. Now, I have no problem with home package delivery in principle. But in practice it just doesn’t effin work. And it’s been so many years that it’s time for someone to friggin realize that already.

Here in Holland the delivery people supposedly deliver it to your house. What this actually means is that they give it to the neighbor. Now, why the hell would I want my neighbor to have my package? Why not give it to whoever is on the street closest to my door just as well? The package is for _me_, not some other person. If your head is spinning right now, that’s normal. If *I* order a shipment, then *I’m* supposed to get it, not my bus driver, my gardener or some random person in my neighborhood.

So now people get packages that aren’t for them. Talk about a problem I never saw coming. Housing in the cities is so dense that if all you know is that “your neighbor” has your package, that could easily be anyone in about 50 addresses. And in each one of those there may or may not be some person who knows something about your package. What a fantastic system.

A long time ago I walked in to see a package in the corridor in our house. That was like a month ago. Everyday I open the front door and the package is still there. It’s not for us, it’s for the neighbor. It’s been there all this time and no one has come to claim it. The packaging was also fairly crap so it started actually falling apart from being moved out of the way a bunch of times. Inside there was some shampoo bottles or something. Finally I got sick of looking at it and I put it outside the door of the address written on the box. They open the front door, they see it, problem solved. The following day the neighbor (apparently) comes knocking, looking for the package.

When I say I put it outside their door that’s not what she wanted to hear. Apparently despite the location they didn’t get it, and most likely someone made away with it. And for some reason now I’m the bad guy. “Why didn’t you come and get it?” “I didn’t know where it was.” “So why didn’t you find out until now, it’s been there a month.” “Not a month! Three weeks.” Yeah, huge difference. “There was 100 euro in there.”

I am not the post office. I am not responsible for storing or delivering packages. Least of all on behalf of people I don’t know, never seen, don’t even know the existence of. The package was kept for 3 weeks, or a month, whatever. That’s friggin ample time to claim a package you care about. I have no idea who this person is, whether they even live at that address or it’s misaddressed, when they might show up or if they ever will. I might as well have kept it there for a year, what’s the difference? From the looks of the content, it might as well be some kind of promotional gift that someone ordered and forgot about, useless junk. If it were something valuable then yes I would have more patience. In Norway if you don’t claim your package from the post office within 3 weeks, they send it back to the sender. I have never had a problem with this, and with all the packages I’ve received I’ve never lost one because I took too long to claim it.

This is friggin ridiculous. If my package gets delivered to the wrong place I don’t expect a strange person to store it in perpetuity on the chance that I may one day show up. It’s not their responsibility. If my package is misplaced, that’s *my* problem. And it has been, I’ve gotten packages here while I wasn’t home. I claimed them immediately.

“It isn’t very social.” What the hell does social have to do with anything? I have never seen this woman before. I have never even seen that door open. Not even once. In 18 months. I have no idea who does or doesn’t live there. So if I decline to serve as a safety deposit box without a time limit, that makes me “not social”. So be it.

My other neighbor came calling a couple of weeks ago looking for a package. I said I haven’t seen it. She looked very concerned about it. I sympathized with her, I wouldn’t want my package lost. I wrote a note to the people in this house to inform them of the situation. Later on she dropped off a note herself, asking us to please give her the package if we have it. This is how you go about finding your valuables. Pro-actively. If I had a package addressed to her I would be “social”, because I know who she is. But that’s rather different from expecting favors from a person you’ve never even met. You expect me to be “social” after leaving your package here for weeks on end and all this time it doesn’t even occur to you to ask the next door neighbor? Well excuse me for thinking you don’t care about it. And if you don’t care about it, I definitely don’t.

“That’s not how we do things in Holland.” Maybe it isn’t. Or maybe it’s more like the other neighbor did.

Now this street is only wide enough to allow one motor vehicle to drive, so if there is a car coming in the opposite direction, you have to basically look for a space to squeeze in so you can pass each other. And there’s normally quite a few cars on the street. On both sides you have these concrete poles every 2m to draw out a narrow sidewalk for pedestrians (but which is level with the street).

As I was making my way out, there was a van parked right up against the bike stand, which blocked my view in the direction I was going. On this street that’s quite common. So just as I mount my bike and push off, I see around the van and there are two bikers coming at me at 3m away. Oops. I was too far out to pull back in behind the van, and it was too late to speed off as well, so basically I was stuck. Terrible timing. A woman rode the first bike, probably 40ish, the other biker was a bit behind. She hit the brakes and stopped just so her front tyre lightly bumped into my front wheel. An inexcusable traffic blunder on my part.

She came to a full stop, I was relieved. The other bike just behind her also stopped. I look up at her. She gives me a stern, but somewhat understanding glance. Says nothing. I say “sorry” and take off. This is the way people are here. Calm. Patient. They’ve figured out that getting mad doesn’t do you any good. I forced her to come to a complete stop. Very annoying. But ultimately harmless, and nothing to get all riled up over.

But these are the kinds of blind spots we have. On my bike I maneuver just fine. Two minutes after the incident I caused a kid a bit of mild panic when he thought I was making a turn just in front of him and he was going straight. Of course I could see I would make my turn well before he could crash into me, so there was no risk. But these are the things we don’t think about. On the bike, fine. But while getting on the bike with a heavy backpack and one hand not fully available, reaction time increases.

If you’re a conservative/romantic when it comes to bread, you probably slice your bread with a knife. This means that a) it’s hard enough to be sliced and b) it’s a loaf, not pre-sliced. Well, if you come to Holland, both of those terribly reasonable assumptions are unapologetically cast aside.

When you buy bread here, it’s a soft sponge. And it’s pre-sliced. In fact, natives are so terrified of bread that isn’t sliced that if you actually find it in the supermarket, a rarity in itself, it has a big label saying not sliced. Yeah, take your chances, buddy.

This presents a real practical problem, because the bread gets deformed before you get home. If you apply the classic 7-loaves-to-a-plastic-bag formula, you’ll notice that you can fit many more loaves into a bag, just like you can fill a bucket with untold amounts of cotton. But the result is that the bread doesn’t restore its original form, as a sponge would. It’s permanently deformed. So now instead of putting bread at the bottom, you have to handle it like the most fragile piece of fruit, silk gloves treatment.

But that’s not all. The bread here just isn’t very good. Although there is plenty of choice, it’s a choice of mediocre products. Sure enough, they may appear to have all kinds of different flavors, and different grains, and embellished packaging, but when you actually try it, you often realize that the most fancy looking products have an aftertaste you can’t stand. They also smell funny. On the whole, the bread gives the impression of being manufactured, rather than baked.

Predictably, it’s not just the bread. A rich culture for bread products tends to show in all kinds of pastry. One that Holland apparently doesn’t have. And the pastry here is truly bad. There really isn’t anything you would buy to say serve to guests, or for a snack. For instance, you’ll find croissants, but they’re far from the real thing.

In Poland the bread is certainly a lot more authentic, although it isn’t that great. But not this mushy spongy stuff. Meanwhile, the pastry is very good, there’s lots of choice and tradition.

In Norway the bread culture is very high, and just about any bread you can find is better than anything you’ll find around here. The pastry side of things is less prosperous, there are a few trademark traditional products, but not too many of them. Then there’s a tradition of imported products like Wiener-rolls, which is a cornerstone in Norwegian pastry. Not native perhaps, but embraced as one’s own.

Children have very strong reflexes and often react in a clear, unambiguous way. When you’re a kid, even though you are one of them, it can still come as a bit of a shock at how paranoid and over reaching some reflexes can be. To start off, the concept of sharing, which is advocated by parents as such an amazing thing, is very problematic, for kids and adults alike. But with kids it’s a lot more obvious. Say you’re with another kid, you both have toys of your own, and of course you’re most curious about the other kid’s toys, cause your own you know inside out. Just the same way, the other kid is interested in your toys. So you pick up one of the toys you want to examine, and just like that, out of the blue, a siren goes off. Mine, mine, mine!!!! You look up, the other kid is yelling at you. You’re caught off guard, not knowing what to do, you drop the toy to make this bastard (no pun intended) stop. Just as you do that, he clutches the toy (which 4 seconds ago he was not remotely interested in) and holds it to his chest. Is it time to send the little critter to therapy? Relax, I wasn’t about to take it from you, I just wanted to pick it up and have a looksie. Just because I’m holding it right now doesn’t mean I’m not going to give it back to you in a second, doesn’t mean I’m going to keep it forever. Although that is what your reaction would have been appropriate to.

Of course, as an adult, you will laugh it off. Hahaha, kids…

Contrast

A caravan is a fairly practical and inexpensive way to travel. You need a car with enough horsepower to pull it (so compact cars are out), but other than that you are your own master, go anywhere, sleep anywhere. That’s the beauty of the car&caravan. You can go from campsite to campsite, but you don’t have to. You can just as well pull over at a parking lot and spend the night there, quite comfortably. A caravan is bliss.

Unless you’re in England. The English countryside (and allow me to generalize here) is not welcoming to caravans. In a classic caravan holiday scenario, you’ve driven for hours, you’re approaching that landmark/city you’re heading for, and it would be good to find a place right now to spend the night, so that tomorrow morning you can stroll into the city and check it out.

Normally, this is the easiest thing in the world. There’s always a parking lot, a designated “sleep over” lot in the back of a gas station, a rest stop, or even just some side road where you can spend the night. Not so in England. Very hard to find that place to stop. Why? Because everything is private. Every side road is marked private and sealed off, you can’t stop anywhere.

Variation

Rome is a very dense city. Parts (especially those of historical interest) are very old, with buildings planted very densely, narrow streets between them. This makes navigating (on foot) uncomfortable; yes, it’s charming, but you start feeling like you can’t get any space, everything is so cramp.

Because it’s so dense, they tend to maximize the space they have. So when you look to the horizon and see this hilly terrain (because it is that as well), with these small pieces of property very close together, the land owners tend to leave no space between one piece of property and another. This is not the historical center, this is just plain 21st century Rome as it is. What you often see is a cascade of land property, every piece sealed off with a fence, and they’re almost on top of each other. Some are small pieces of cultivated land, some are gardens, yet others are tiny football pitches.

Yes, football, the very reason I found myself in Italy the first time, what sparked my interest. Seeing that terrain arranged in that particular manner, I couldn’t help thinking that boy it must be a pain to play football around here. There isn’t one piece of land in sight that’s actually open to the public, everything is sealed off with a fence, in these cramped little sections. So either you’re blocked out (most likely), or you’re at the mercy of someone to use the football field (not likely), or you’re sneaking in to play hoping to not get caught (not such a great idea). Everything is private, there is no public space. How odd, how sad.

Da capo

It is with astonishment I notice the same culture in Holland. People are only too eager to put up signs telling other people to keep out of their property. It’s mine, mine, mine!!! all over again. You come to a road that leads up to someone’s house and there’s a sign there saying private road, keep out. Relax, I wasn’t about to build a cabin on your tiny stretch of road. I wasn’t even going to park here, I just wanted to pull in so I could turn around and go the other way. You see this everywhere; there isn’t one stretch of road or piece of land that doesn’t carry a sign like this. Relax, I’m familiar with property.

Why are people so obsessed with marking their property, putting up fences, demonstrating in such a paranoid, over reaching way what is blindingly obvious?

Let’s turn back to football. To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t one, I repeat, not one football pitch in all of Utrecht that isn’t sealed off with a fence. I can’t say this for sure, but I know I’ve seen plenty, and all of them were sealed off. Why is this? Obviously, you won’t leave your best grass pitch, that requires plenty of upkeep, open to the public for prompt destruction. But why isn’t there anything that isn’t restricted? (Short of those concrete-jungle playgrounds for kids in inner cities that are completely useless. Just to leave no doubt, you do not play football on concrete, case closed.)

Coda

Back in Norway, casual recreation is very big, and although the majority of kids start out in some sports club at age ~7, most of them quit pretty soon. These clubs are inexpensive for parents, they pay some fee, but sports clubs are also subsidized by the government to an extent. The property these clubs own is strictly speaking theirs, but it’s usually not restricted in any way. We are not talking about professional clubs here, we’re talking amateur clubs that (most of them) don’t even have a senior squad.

The pitches are not surrounded by fences, anyone can come off the street any play, as you damn well please. That is, unless the club is using it, in which case they will shoo you away. (Which, of course, they do a lot, so you have to adjust to their schedule.) But basically, whatever pitch they have, gravel (standard in the 90s, phased out now), or astroturf (introduced en masse in the last decade), they use it, you use it, everyone’s happy.

Of course, the clubs probably would prefer if you didn’t play there. Any use will degrade the pitch, the goals, the nets, everything. But that’s just the way it is. You pay taxes, they get a cut of it, the system works.

In Holland, no such thing. You wanna play some football? Love to. Where???

Ps. In the Baroque passacaglia you would have one theme and then any number of variations on that theme. In the Classical theme and variation it would be the same structure. In minuet and trio from the same era you have a theme, a contrast to the theme, and then the theme again, with each of the three parts further subdivided into smaller atomic pieces. Finally, in a rondo you would have a theme, then a contrast, then the theme again, then a development on the theme, then the theme again (and possibly more variations). There are codas to be found in quite a few of these structures, not strictly just at the very end, but also serving as interjections. However, the formula I concocted: a theme, a contrast, a variation of the contrast, a da capo and then a coda, does not fit any of these structures and is a non sequitor by all accounts, to either the Baroque or the the Classical era of music. Just so you wouldn’t feel compelled to point out the obvious, I’m being quite frank about this.