These are just ghosts that broke my heart before I met you

The Netherlands and I have been going through a rough patch this last week or so.

As the weather has been freezing over so have Amsterdam's affections towards me and recently we seem to be having quite a few discrepancies. Despite my most recent efforts to induct myself into Dutch culture, the city continues to seek me out as a tourist. While I managed to keep my mouth almost completely shut observing the blacked up children dominating the crowds whilst awaiting the arrival of Sinterklaas and his hunners of Zwarte Piets last weekend and not complain as Sinter's little helpers refused to give out sweets to anyone above three foot, the Amsterdammers remain certain they can take me for a ride the second they hear my British accent. Refusing to haggle in English and claiming that I simply cannot be British because I'm not hobbling to vom in the street wearing heels far too high for me and because I'm not flashing my patchily tanned tits, arse, stomach and legs all at once is getting a bit old now guys. Plus it's a Sunday, that look is strictly Saturday only for me. On that note, we also need to talk about sarcasm and how it works.

Sinterklaas' big entrance

  
On top of this, my living situation has escalated with the police making yet another visit this time taking my darling neighbour back with them to spend the evening in jail, oh - alongside with the knife he was casually threatening someone with. Hitler has also taken to binning any dirty dishes that remain in the sink for longer than three minutes and we appear to have developed a food thief with a craving for washed, peeled and chopped potatoes when they have been momentarily left alone in a pan on the kitchen table.

However, just when I had decided to be the bigger (surprisingly difficult in the tallest country in Europe) person and give in to Amsterdam's crooked and canal-framed puppy dog eyes, my beau took it too far and let my bike get stolen. My beautiful, one week old, shiny, baby girl, Lexi with her little basket and wonderful friction powered lights. Not only unlawfully taken from me, but unlawfully taken from me in the middle of the night, when the trams had stopped running and the taxi fares were to too daunting to consider. And yes, I know it happens here on an hourly basis and it was probably a lesson to teach my to start chaining my bike to something more than just itself but a girl's got to mourn, ok?

In spite of all this, the fun has nevertheless been continuing, with a delightful visit from Bryce, the amazing treats of my first ever Thanksgiving dinner, pretty special Bon Iver and Beach House gigs and further fun times with my friends. So I guess like any relationship that wants to succeed, Amsterdam and I are going to have to look past our issues and work on the art of compromise.
Honey, I promise I'll keep my bike chained to immovable objects from now on if you'll just tell your family to be a little friendlier.

Amster-Damaged

It's been a long time coming but since my middle-aged neighbour just thought it was socially acceptable to come to my bedroom door and enquire if it was my time of the month, I've decided it's time to tell you all a little bit about my living situation.

Uilenstede is a pretty special place to live. It's basically a giant student residence complex with something like three thousand folk living here, of which international students make up a large chunk. It may be a thirty minute bike ride from the city centre but that far from disadvantages us. We have our own little community here with VU (where I study) only a ten minute maximum bike ride; Jumbo supermarket a two minute job  and a 10 second climb up the fire escape ladder on our kitchen balcony to pop upstairs to Unit 12. For a night of comfort we head over to the Green building with their luxurious ensuites, large kitchens and cosy sofas but the cheapest of cheap Red building, where yours truly resides, ain't so bad. Located on prime real estate next to both Amstelveen Snacks for midnight munching and Uilenstede's main entrance/exit - making it an ideal meeting location, the red building hosts thirteen people on each floor with a communal bathroom and kitchen area. An awesome set up for meeting and interacting with new people - all sharing cultures, cooking as a group and chilling out watching television together on an evening. Unless you live with PSYCHOPATHS that is.

Some of you may have already heard about Unit 8. Maybe from that time we had the POLICE round after our wonderful, pleasant floormate decided to BEAT the shit out of his girlfriend. Or if you missed that one, maybe you caught it the second or third or even fourth time since she was unable to leave after he took her passport HOSTAGE. Maybe you heard about our delightful floor NAZI, who puts up strict cleaning rotas every week but hides all the cleaning products in her room so in order to complete your task you must alert her so she can watch over your shoulder while you work. Or perhaps you heard about the great guy she has living in her room with her, the one who dominates our kitchen every night preaching about the way homosexuals and people who have abortions should be dealt with while we hurriedly cook our meals, FORCED to escape to our bedrooms to eat them. We've also developed a heart-warming tradition of passive aggressive notes, either stuck up on the notice board or delivered directly to our bedrooms, whether they be 'gentle' reminders to complete our tasks or the encouragement of general hygiene and cleanliness that the generous folk who leave hair-balls in the shower and VOMIT in the bathroom sinks seem to forgot about from time to time. Oh, how could I forget about my next door neighbour? The one in the heavy metal rock band who in between rehersals in his bedroom likes to considerately BLAST out his 'music' at all hours. Luckily there's a small group of us who have actually been raised to develop the general social skills and etiquette of humanity and we manage to keep each other going. However, the fear that we are merely part of a social experiment created solely to investigate how long we can grasp onto our sanity for is slowly becoming realised, as one of the good eggs walked into my bedroom whilst sleep-hallucinating last night and ate a plastic spider..

C'mon kids, what you waiting for? Book your tickets to come and stay with me asap. Just remember to bring your straight jacket.

So no one told you life was gonna be this way?

After reading an article titled 'The 5 Types Of Friends Everyone Should Have', I got thinking about the new faces I've added to my friendship circle during my first couple of months here and just how lucky I am. The thing about living abroad is that no matter how you look at it, it's the people you meet that shape your experience and in the corniest way possible, you grow together as you learn not only about each other but surprise yourself as well. Who'd have thought the girls that rescued me from trailing my bags around the red block confused, exhausted and completely terrified would turn out to be not only living on my floor but the only sane flatmates I have? And that one would keep me constantly entertained with her one-liners, anecdotes and sporadic sleep walking trips to my bedroom? Turns out the girl I met from my course on the first night is the only one that keeps me afloat in the deep waters of art history. And my sister from another mister? I bumped into her as we both attempted to hide from this group photo..
 

The crooked and familiar charm of this city is moulded around the people I've met and not only the newbies. I recently realised that those places where I find myself struck with a comforting sense of déjà vu can be explained by the drunken mischief me and Shar got up to during last years terrific trip.

It's the friends I grew up with that let me know I'd be fine at Univeristy and it's the friends I met there that made me think I could make it alone in Paris, it's the friends there that gave me the balls to move in with strangers back in Manchester and it's those friends that made me comfortable enough in myself to make it here. And the friends here? They sit talking nonsense with me until the sun comes up, make me laugh until my tummy aches, support me when my cycling home ain't so straight and spoon me the morning after.
I'm certainly spying some keepers.

..And Breathe

Word of the moment: Niks (Nothing).

Recently learned fact: Rosetta Stone is actually a stone, not a famous linguist.

Still a mystery: The bird sounds that play along the travelator at Schipol.

New post: To follow, give me a minute to stop having fun.

Amazon doesn't deliver below sea level.

Three weeks in and alongside the important facts and theories I've been learning as my Masters programme progresses (the difference between an Aussie and a Kiwi accent; how to light a barbecue when there's not a male in sight; how to crash a UvA Economics party with discretion, to name a few), I've also been learning some essential bits and pieces about the Netherlands. Call it culture shock if you will, however I can tell already that these are things I'm going to have to grin and bear for the rest  of my time here. Things the already stubborn Dutch wouldn't go a-changing for a group of small-time international kids.

• Toilets will never be a free privilege for a female. Not in a bar, not in a restaurant, not in a club, not in McDonalds - apparently this wasn't accounted for in the Declaration of Human Rights. You wanna relieve yourself, you gotta fork out at least 50 cents. But what about public toilets I hear you ask - if the men have free urinals at every street corner, surely there must be something for the ladies? That's what the 200-odd women thought who led a protest in the 1970s whereby they simultaneously urinated on bridges across the city, and it worked. Small circular buildings containing toilets for females were built across the city in response. However, during the hard drug boom of the 80s, these buildings became ideal spots for junkies to shoot up heroin, so each one was padlocked up. They still stand today, mostly used as advertising space but also just to rub it in women's faces. Stupid city taking stupid action against the stupid junkies.
• On a similar note, third wave feminism hasn't quite made it here yet. Men here have no qualms about cycling up next to you at traffic lights and asking if you've got a fella, nor are they ashamed to imitate any kind of animal - from a cat to a chicken, the options are endless - as you walk on by. Even a free bookmark providing key dutch phrases offers, "would you like to come home with me?".
  Women are also not allowed to ride men's bikes whereas men are free to cycle around on a bike with a dipped bar so their skirts fall just right and they can dismount like a lady. But then again, men aren't really allowed to stand in those oh so famous, red-tinted windows. Swings and roundabouts. 
• You've just got to accept here that your tea will never be served with milk, and any request for it will be met with a frown. Milk is what the Dutch put in your tea when you're a kiddie here to cool it down, it's not for grown ups. Learn to like fruit/green tea and stick with that.
• Jacket potatoes aren't a thing here. Potatoes come already peeled, mostly already sliced, and you can find them in the fridge section of your local supermarket. Small potatoes come in regular 5kg bags, but nothing big enough to slap in the microwave and cover in beans and cheese.
• People laugh in the face of your Visa Debit card here. It's Maestro or the highway.
• And finally, those candy-floss flavoured, fluorescent pink shots they sell in Coco's? They should never be put anywhere near anyones mouth, ever. I don't care how enticing 9 for 10 euros sounds. They are toxic and no good will ever come from them.

Venting aside, I am actually having a pretty massively incredible time here. I can no longer imagine life without a bike, I've discovered there's not only a Boots in Amsterdam but rumours of a Primark too and whats more, they sell yoghurt in cartons here. Yoghurt you can just sit and drink out of a carton, any place any time. And if that isn't winning then I don't know what is.

Amster-Damsel in Distress?

Whoever said "life begins at the end of your comfort zone", got that first four letter word so wrong. Or at least that's what I thought as I hopped on a one-way flight out of the country, my life packed into one suitcase, ready to surround myself with the complete strangers I am to spend almost everyday of the next year of my life with. That four letter word? That was definitely something more like fear. 

Shying away from the big move even once I'd arrived, I spent my first couple of days in Amsterdam with my number one Dutchie, plus friends, bbqing in the Vondelpark and sipping coffee in the sun, leaving it literally to the last available minute to move into my home for the next 12 months. Unfortunately, I would find out that this leaving of everything to the last minute is way down the bottom of that list of things that the Dutch folk like. Off to a bad start at the Uilenstede one could say but within the hour I'd slipped, surprisingly with ease, back into the Anglophone amongst internationals state of play. And as our first beer fuelled and naturally awkward night at the on-campus Cafe Uilenstede played out, I began to recognise those little tricks and traits Paris taught me about internationals meeting abroad and the way said internationals can seamlessly, let's face it, do it so much cooler than us Brits:

1) The Europeans (anyone mainland, for the sake of this blog) will always be the first to dance. And regardless of the circa 2009 music they are dancing to, it will start with the innocent side step and get only progressively more sexual. Meanwhile the flustered English folk will watch from the side lines, those brave enough to go in will only return traumatised, either from what they saw, from the pelvis that grinded up against them or the most psychologically scarring of all, the circle of chanting internationals they get shoved into the middle of and forced, yes it was physical, to bust a move.

2) Fellow international students pretend to be jealous of our native tongue but every time I answer the age old question "where are you from?", I can see the empathy in their eyes. They also are surprised every time we complain about the rain. Yes we are used to it but who can turn down an opportunity for a good moan?
3) Anyone you can get past the following four questions with is a potential-BFF.. 

    - "What's your name?"

    - "Where are you from?"
    - "What do you study?"

    - "Are you exchange or Masters?" 

NB. Anyone who doesn't meet this but is from an exotic, tropical place slash anywhere you'd love to visit and wouldn't mind a free bed is worth persevering with.
4) There's only a certain amount of times it is appropriate to ask someone to remind you of their name. Once it's reached three, go along the lines of asking for the spelling for the inevitable Facebook add. Passed four? Try glancing over their shoulder at a credit card/phone/notebook and hope you can pronounce those letters in that order.

5) The unavoidable hug/kiss/handshake dilemma is only significantly more disastrous at an accommodation campus of over 300 international students made up of 40 odd nationalities. You're just going to have to face it.

My first week here has certainly had a lot to leave Paris feeling red-faced for. With speed dating, a trip to Ikea, a stand-up comedian, a lecture on doing soft drugs responsibly and a team leader who provided us with two bottles of wine throughout a scavenger hunt through the city to name few, I can honestly say I'm feeling completely settled.

And as far as being Dutch goes (now that I'm an officially registered resident and all), meet Leonart. My other half, wind beneath my wings if you will. He doesn't much like tram lines or going too fast but we're already inseparable. Until he gets stolen that is. 

So keep it coming Netherlands and I promise that one day, I'll even turn up on time..