The UnDutchables

Apparently I need a lesson in blogging because I didn't realize until about thirty seconds ago that my last post was just one giant paragraph. I swear it was broken up when I wrote it but apparently blogspot still relies heavily on HTML, so just hitting Enter wasn't enough. Anyway it's fixed now.

So! The theme of today's post is going to be Weird Things Europeans Do. It might be described even more accurately as Weird Things Dutch People Do because pretty much all the people I've been exposed to so far are Dutch. Anyway.

To set the stage a little bit, Kirsten and Joost have been in Italy for the last couple days for a board meeting and the kids and I have been left in the company of Kirsten's mother, Sarah, and her mother's neighbors from back home, Patty and Edo.

Weird Thing European People Do #1

Tea and Coffee

I have been offered tea and/or coffee at least once every [waking] hour since I got here. I certainly appreciate the gesture, but I don't drink coffee (which I eventually started mentioning each time they asked, but they don't seem to understand), and I've just recently started drinking tea. Unfortunately I haven't been able to match my back-home tea concoction with the available ingredients here, but I'm not sure whether the milk, sugar, honey, or tea itself is the problem.

The point is, I very rarely want tea, and I never want coffee, and now I just feel rude because I'm turning down these perfectly friendly offers constantly. As near as I can tell, the Dutch Coffee Schedule goes something like this:

Wake up and have morning coffee
Eat breakfast with coffee
Post-breakfast coffee
Mid-morning coffee
Lunch
Post-lunch coffee
Relax outside, usually with coffee
Dinner
Coffee with dessert
Post-dessert coffee
Bedtime! (Don't forget to bring a cup of coffee up to bed with you)

Without exaggeration I turn down coffee at least four or five times a day.


Weird Thing European People Do #2

Thatched Roofs

There's really not that much to say about this except that they're everywhere. It's actually kind of cool in that a thatched roof can transform a completely normal house into a house that Little Red Riding Hood might live in, but I really hope they've improved the technology in the last hundred years or so.

This isn't a very good picture, but it's the only one I have.

Weird Thing European People Do #3

Conform to Stereotypes

I say this because the behaviors themselves aren't that weird; it's just funny to me that stereotypes can sometimes ring so true.

I mentioned before that Joost gave me a book called The UnDutchables, which was all about the interesting habits of Dutch people, as told from the perspective of an American (or possible English? I'm not really sure) expat. As a side note, the book often refers to these people as Hollanders, which I like because it makes me feel like it's a whole book on generalizing and stereotyping my family. 

Anyway, one of the things the book mentions is the Dutchman's love of flowers, and how a Dutch person will present flowers at every conceivable occasion. They mention the thriving flower business in Holland and even go into detail about how a Hollander must carry the flowers upside down, by the stems, so that the residual water drips all over his or her pants. 

Long story short, I met a family friend yesterday and now I have these:

They were carried upside down, by the stems, and given to me by a Dutch person. I guess you can't fault them for consistency.

Weird Thing European People Do #4

Categorize Things by Animal

I went to Mobistar with Kirsten the other day to get my phone sorted out and noticed this breakdown of phone plans that I thought was kind of funny:

(I think I have the Dolphin plan, but I'm not sure.) And then yesterday we went to Antwerp and the parking structure levels were named after animals too. (We were parked on Monkey, but we accidentally got out of the elevator at Ram.)

 

So I don't really know what that's about, but I like it.

I guess that's about it for the organized portion of this post. Now for some bullet points.

• We were at lunch the other day when Patty asked me if I knew Johnny Depp. 

           "Um...not personally..."

           "I know. But he was in that movie, right? Mr. Scissor Man?"

• There's a store in Brasschaat called So Bling Bling. It has things like this:

I beg to differ.

• People keep joking about American portions, but I'm sorry, not even The Hat comes close to this. That's a very large dinner plate you see being dwarfed by those fries. Four adults and two children didn't even make a dent.

We went to Antwerp yesterday, which was cool. Here are some pictures of buildings that you could find online anywhere.

This was a really cool building too:

Everything was super intricate and gilded and beautiful and looked like it might be a museum or a church or something really culturally important. 

Surprise, it's a train station.

Last but certainly not least, these kids are so freaking cute:

Even if I can never get them to look at the camera at the same time.

That's all for now! I start my Dutch class tomorrow so I'm sure I will have plenty to report back on. :)