This is very much a draft, I've got lots of notes, photos and trip journals to add.
Eating and drinking | Living | Working | Weather | GeneralLunchtime in Dutch offices cracks me up.
Lunch at my (ex)company reminded me of a children's birthday party. Everyone has lunch together, at one long table, with their glasses of milk and fairy bread. Not all companies provide a lunch like ours - lots of cheeses (kaas), meats (vlees), salads (slaatje), chocolate (hagelslag) and fruit-flavoured sprinkles (vruchten hagel), but if they do provide lunch it'll usually be bread and cheese and milk.
Everything is eaten on bread - meat, salad, whatever, piled on to make an open sandwich; you then cut it up and eat it with a knife and fork. Someone told me that the idea is to hide the bread that you're eating; but they couldn't tell me why they bother with the bread if they want to smother it. I've seen people eat hagelslag straight from the plate but I've never seen anyone eat salad or meat straight off the plate. In fact, people stared at me like I was a freak the day I skipped the bread and ate my salad off the plate. I noticed one of the women trying it out later but she went back to salad on bread.
I think the reason that Dutch people tend to be slimmer than most is because it's too hard to stuff yourself when you have to eat your sandwiches with a knife and fork.
The less said about the rest of Dutch food the better. There's a reason there are no Dutch restaurants outside the Netherlands.
Working lunch: vruchten hagel and hagelslag on bread.
Smoke breaks are a way of life. Most of my smaller meetings take place during someone's smoke break in the office smoking room. If that room is already being used, they'll smoke in the non-smoking meeting room instead.
Working here seems a lot like working in Australia at first glance, but there are some really funny differences. For a start, by law, every worker has to have a window, which is a nice change. Also, your employer pays for your public transport (or an allowance for cars or bikes).
They say the Dutch have a 'consensus' decision-making style, and it's impossible to understate the truth of this. Managers don't make decisions, they hang about until their team have argued the point through amongst themselves and presented them with a result. If the team can't agree, the decision isn't made.
Firstly, the apartment: it's on Singel, which is a big wide canal - it used to be a moat, and our side of the road used to be the old city walls. It's very small, but very beautiful. It's right near some of the streets where the best cafes and bars are, and there are cinemas and theatres and museums everywhere.
Our view is incredibly picturesque - we look out over the canal to the church opposite. The people-watching is very good, as the area is full of both tourists and locals. Amsterdammers take their boats out on the canal the same way people might have a picnic or go for a Sunday stroll. It's especially fun watching everyone scurry for cover when a sudden squall of rain hits.
View a (very) short quicktime movie of the view from my old flat in Amsterdam (opens in a new window).
There was an official heatwave this summer when the temperature got up to 34 C (xx F). If you're an Australian, this tells you everything you need to know.
Red carpet premiere, Dutch style. All the big Hollywood movies premiere in the newly restored Tuschinsky theatre on Rembrantplein.
I always wonder how the big stars cope, because nothing is allowed to stop the trams - they have to hop out of their limos and let the tram through.
Unless they're really really famous (locally or internationally) or dolled up, the guests walk down from Muntplein with the other pedestrians. The barriers either side of the tramlines do get really packed with people, these shots are the early arrivers.
Dutch people are very similiar to Australians in some ways, so we get along well with them. The culture is a little more tolerant, in the sense that it takes a lot more to get people annoyed. I keep seeing cyclists or motorists who've nearly had an accident have a laugh about it instead of getting angry at each other, and Dutch people don't seem to get impatient easily.
The flip side of this is that you can't tell a Dutch person what to do, so they have *terrible* customer service. It take a long time to get used to it, because if you didn't know better, you'd think you'd somehow terribly offended the waiter or shop assistant.
Amsterdam is much smaller than Melbourne - 750,000 people, I think, and it's a lot smaller. It's much more heavily populated, nearly everyone lives in a flat instead of a house. The coffee is quite good, but the beer is better. Lots and lots of gallerise and museums, it's one of the reasons I wanted to come here. Also lots of film and theatre and other cultural stuff - the government supports the arts a lot more than in Australia. The cost of living is more, but your employer has to pay for your public transport or driving costs to work, and they generally provide lunch too.
Dutch cinemas have this annoying habit of stopping the movie to create an interval where hopefully everyone runs off to buy more food. I guess it's good if you've got the munchies, but it would really annoy me in a good movie.
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