Time flies when you're having fun

Five months have passed since my last post and that’s not because there hasn’t been anything happening here – quite the opposite. In these 5 months:

1. G and I got married which involved 3 weeks in SA (2 weddings, 2 hens/bulls parties, lots of running around and lots of socializing – it was exhausting) and a week of honeymoon in Mauritius (swimming with dolphins, reading, cocktails on the beach, many rounds of Scrabble and great food – it was perfect). I’ll post about the wedding separately.

Our happy day

2. I changed jobs. Before we left I told my recruiter that I wanted to start looking for a new job when I got back as I thought it would take a few months to find something suitable and I didn’t want to get to December when my contract expired and be stuck in a dead market. I was wrong. The day after I got back my recruiter phoned to say he had a position I might like. Less than a month later I’d signed the contract and given my notice. I’ve now been at my new huge global corporate for 7 weeks and it doesn’t sound like they will be retrenching me anytime soon which gives me comfort. I’m very happy to be back in the food industry – I can identify with our consumers more than the tobacco industry and I don’t introduce myself by saying I work for the devil…

3. We moved. We realized that our very convenient but uncomfortable apartment had served its purpose and it was time to move on so we started the tedious task of trawling the internet and open houses for a new home. We were lucky to find a nice spot after viewing only a handful of apartments. From what I’ve heard this process can be a nightmare and very competitive. We moved on 1 November into a 2-bedroom apartment in the west of AMS. It’s a much nicer neighbourhood and we have: a dishwasher (hallelujah!), a microwave (hallelujah!), a spare bedroom (hallelujah!), a decent oven (hallelujah!) and a TV (hallelujah!). No, we did not have any of those things in our old apartment and, yes, I do think we were living in a cave. It’s 10 minutes closer to my new job and G is a 5 minute bike ride from his office. So basically we’re winning. Oh, and we had to pay three months deposit plus first month’s rent up front. Eina.

A chicken before it went into our new (decent) oven for roasting

4. We’ve had our first visitors that weren’t Nikki & Conway so we had the opportunity to test out our personalised guide to AMS.

A windmill - part of our AMS tour for visitors

5. We’ve been to Budapest (possibly my favourite city), Geneva (beautiful but expensive), London (always a pleasure) and a small family holiday resort near Nijmegen. We’re in Paris next weekend, London for Christmas and the German/French border region for New Year with some friends visiting from home and London. We’ve also witnessed how AMS comes alive during summer – the entire city vibrates with energy and feels so exciting. Everywhere you look there are things going on and people doing interesting things. It’s hard to explain.

Budapest - in front of the parliament

6. We trained for and completed our first half marathon, the TCS Amsterdam. We concluded that G is a lot faster than I am.

7. We registered for the Cape Argus Cycle Tour in March and G signed up to do the cycle leg of a triathlon on May so we realized we might need actual racing bikes and have started shopping around. Budget constraints might push this to January though (we both need new phones, we need to pay for the flights for March and our savings are tied up in the deposit for the flat).

8. We’ve done several Meet-Up expat group tours of AMS to learn more about the city: a Homeless tour (red light district tour done by a former junkie who illegally squatted there back in the 70’s and 80’s), a kayak tour through the central canals, a Jordaan district tour and an Eastern Docklands district tour. This weekend we’re touring the Zuid district and next Wednesday we’re doing a historical Dutch Golden Age tour. We’ve seen Sinterklaas and his troop of Zwarte Piets arrive in AMS which signals the start of Christmas in NL and in December we will go to Gouda to watch a very special lighting of the Christmas tree in the city square.

Kayaking through the Amsterdam canals

9. I’ve joined a new ladies’ Meet-Up group that is also keeping me busy. The girls are lovely and there are a few regulars who I’ve become friends with. I think I’ll keep it up although I always feel a little guilty when I abandon G on a Wednesday night or Sunday evening for drinks/dinner. Boys don’t do this type of thing.

10. My laptop crashed along with 11 years of photos – only the first 6 years are back up. Oops. We managed to recover everything although it’s not nicely organized by year, month and event. My mild OCD cannot handle unorganized photos so I’ve sifted through over 45000 files (basically they were all duplicated several times and about half have no useable data so they’re blank) and deleted the junk ones and am now sorting them into years.

So it’s been busy few months and the next couple of months don’t appear to be letting up much. We seem to have built a mini-life here even though we’ve been very distracted by the above. The wedding was the biggest distraction and it felt like a relief when it was over. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole process and day but I never want to do it again! We’ve had several discussions on our timeline for staying here and haven’t reached any concrete conclusions. Both of our hearts are definitely in SA but I love it here. Last night I cycled to a restaurant for dinner and on the return I realized that I would never do that in SA – cycling by myself with my handbag over my shoulder at 10pm in the middle of the city. In SA you can’t jump on a train and be in Paris in 3 hours or jump on a plane and be in Budapest on 1 hour. You don’t move house and have your pension provider automatically send your statement to the new address less than 2 weeks after moving without you telling them (or even if you do tell them). But then I look at my Facebook feed and see my friends lounging by the pool or having a braai on an average Thursday evening and it looks like paradise. If you want a garden you don’t need to be a CEO or FD – a decent job can afford a nice house. The food has flavour and a new pair of average running pants doesn’t cost as much as an expensive dinner. Both experiences are very different and the grass is not greener in either place. What I do know is that I’m really enjoying it here in AMS/NL/Europe and I’ll hang around for a bit longer.

The Language Thing

When G and I first started researching NL, we discovered quite quickly that a) the Dutch language is not that different to Afrikaans and b) the Dutch speak very good English. During our first few months of living in Ede I found that I was picking up Dutch quite quickly without much effort thanks in part to the limited Afrikaans that I knew and in part to the fact that I was living in a small town where Dutch is definitely required. My vocabulary was expanding and I was starting to get the hang of the basics. Then we moved to Amsterdam. It didn’t take long to realise that my Dutch was going backwards because nobody in this city speaks the local language (that’s what it feels like anyway). We have a teach-yourself book but I wanted to do an evening course to provide structure and to fight my laziness, but the courses generally all start in the same week and run over the same 6 week blocks. I couldn’t do the courses starting in February because I was visiting SA during that time so would miss a few (expensive) lessons. I completely forgot in March/April and once May rolled round I realised that I would be away for a large chunk of the June/July classes. This means I can only do a course from August/September onwards. I can still understand a fair amount when reading or listening carefully, but speaking is a problem which probably has more to do with self-confidence than actual ability.

Up until today, I have had a mild guilt complex because I’m living in a country and I don’t know the local language. This all changed this morning on my way to work. It looked like it might rain so I took the metro. I was putting my headphones on as I was boarding the carriage which meant my hair and the long headphone cable had an altercation. I was fixing the hair/cable situation whilst getting comfortable in a seat and didn’t immediately notice the person sitting facing me. Out of nowhere these clumsy hands shot across to the cable and my leg and started to try help me untangle the cable. I looked up to see who was doing this and instantly realised the person was mentally and physically disabled. He was innocently trying to help me and explain his actions but I couldn’t respond in a way that he would understand and I was battling to understand him because a) he was speaking Dutch and b) his Dutch was very slurred/mumbled due to his disability. All I wanted to say was thanks but it’s ok if it’s tangled and I could tell that he did not understand my English. He then had this very sad look on his face, probably thinking how I didn’t appreciate his actions which is not at all the case. I felt terrible but there was nothing I could do beyond asking someone else to intervene but the other person sitting with us clearly did not want to get involved. Not a good start to the day.

So from this I have realised that even if 45% of the local residents were not born in the city and therefore everyone speaks a more international language, if you want to be a responsible and caring citizen you need to learn the language.  

P.S. My English vocabulary also seems to have gone backwards - dealing with second-language speakers all day with no time to read in the evenings and severe bride-brain does not make you sound intelligent...

The Surname Issue

Warning! This isn’t a blog post about traveling or moving to a new city. This is a wedding-related post and it is also an opinion piece: MY opinion #ShockHorror #DontJudge #NoPhotosInThisPost #YesIAmHashtagging.

Gordon and I consider ourselves to be a 21st couple. We lived together before we were engaged, we both work full-time as professionals in demanding fields and all household expenses are shared 50/50. Both of our opinions carry equal weighting and all decisions are made in consultation with each other (except the honeymoon location – that he needs to keep a surprise). But with some things I am traditional. He had to ask for my parents’ permission to marry me although I never told him this (good boy – he knew) and I want a traditional wedding with some tweaks because they look fun. I am also taking his surname. Yes, a self-proclaimed independent 21st century professional working woman is giving up her identity. What a load of c$%p.

I am not getting married for religious reasons – I was raised in a mixed religion household where I was whatever religion suited me at the time (simplified explanation: being Anglican got me into a very good private school and being Jewish gives me a German passport both of which got me to where I am today). I am getting married because I want to make a promise in front of every person who means something to me and I therefore respect that I will love Gordon for the rest of my life and I will be loyal to him and to us, no matter what. If God/Buddha/The Flying Spaghetti Monster bless us in the process then that’s great. The more who witness it the better. I am not getting into this marriage so that my father settles a debt with Gordon’s father or for us to breed a superior race of humans and therefore cure cancer. I am doing this because I love him and I’m going to spend the rest of my life with him as his partner. As a bonus, I get a new surname.

I will always be a Gans* and I will still be on the Gaggle of Geese whatsapp group that my immediate family has. For about a week I thought about getting a tiny tattoo somewhere of a goose but that means getting a tattoo which is something that I will never do. My legal surname will change but my email address will remain. Gordon has said a few times that he feels honoured that I would change my surname to his but for me it’s part of the Wedded Couple Package.

A friend of my parents’ kept her surname and she apparently found that it became awkward once their child was at school and people would ask why the child’s parents have different surnames – people assumed that they were divorced or never married. South African society is quite conservative about things like this – in NL people often don’t get married and it’s accepted by society as being as normal as being married. Our future as we currently see it is in SA but this is not the reason I’m taking his surname. Yes it means fewer discussions and raised eyebrows when we drop the kids off at school or birthday parties but that is an added bonus.

I know people who kept their surname for professional reasons but at age 27 I haven’t sat on the board of a Fortune 500 company so my name is not that important for my career – potential employers will still need to look at my CV to determine if I’m the right candidate and I haven’t worked at a company (until now) where if you ask for references and say “Louise who worked in Finance” the company doesn’t know who that is. My current employer is a huge global company but I’m here whilst changing my surname so my manager/HR will know me by both names.

My manager kept her surname when she married but she said changing it would have meant going from one long complicated name beginning with an S to another. And she said she was just too lazy to change it (I gather that it’s not an automatic thing in NL whereas in SA it is).

I could double-barrel the old and new surnames but someone once told me that double-barreled names meant there was a divorce in the family at some stage. I have subsequently learnt that this is not the case and in fact it indicates a marriage but I still can’t get the idea out of my head that I would be creating the perception that I was divorced. This is a good example of my stubbornness – I know my reasoning is wrong but I’m so set in my ways that I can’t overcome the thought.

So, then, why am I changing my surname from a 4-letter single syllable one to an 8-letter 3 syllable one with awkward capitals in the middle? I have 2 passports, a driver’s license (soon to have one for NL as well), an ID, 2 current bank accounts, 2 credit cards, a property plus all that goes with that and all of the usual bills and accounts that currently say Gans. It will be a nightmare to change all of these so why not just stay as I am? These are all just things. They do not define me. My current surname is simple and I enjoy the Dutch pronouncing it in Dutch – they will probably panic when they see the new one. To me, getting a new surname is one of the few traditional things that I’m doing in amongst the sea of New World things that I do every day.

I will miss Google automatically translating my NL internet banking name to LT Goose and Gordon’s silly laughter whenever he calls me Lieutenant Goose. I will no longer Google my name and see a New York Acting Chief Justice’s name but rather a freelance translator. I am looking forward to the day when someone calls me Louise Gans and I have to correct them. They will immediately know that I have married and I will quietly think to myself that I am still Louise Gans but I am also Louise McTavish. Mostly, I am still myself.

*Gans in German and Dutch (and some other languages) means Goose in English

The Bicycle

The Netherlands is known for many things, but probably the one that has the biggest impact on daily life is the way that the Dutch are devoted to The Bicycle. Before we moved here I’d heard and read about how everyone is on bicycles but until you see it for yourself, you think the guide-books and blogs show posed photographs. Those pictures you see of a bicycle leaning against a pretty canal are real. Except it’s not one or two pretty bikes leaning against the canal, it’s thousands. Thousands of bicycles. EVERYWHERE. Arriving at Amsterdam Centraal or any train station will blow your mind because you can’t believe how many bikes can be in such a small area. And they are in all conditions – old, new, single-speed, 3 gears, pedal breaks, normal breaks, Omafietsen, racing bikes, mountain bikes, bent wheels, flat tyres, covered in plant life, wicker baskets, spraypainted neatly, spraypainted badly, beer crates, flower garlands, worn-spring-exposed saddles, tandem with kids seats and my personal favourite: the bakfiets* – it has a trunk on the front for loading groceries/kids/furniture/dogs/grannies. How you turn a corner when you have wriggling children in a huge bucket in the front of your bicycle is beyond me but this shows the capability of the Dutch on bicycles. These people can cycle before they can walk and the cyclist is king. Pedestrians and drivers must give way to a cyclist, even if the traffic light changed 15 seconds ago. The dedicated cycle lane system with cyclist traffic lights is really impressive and 99% of the time it can’t be faulted. It’s fantastic.

 A lone Omafiets alongside the canal 

Our first four months of being in NL were spent living in Ede and once we moved to A’dam I wanted to get a feel for how things worked so I used public transport to get to the office (and it was February so still a bit cold). One mid-March Saturday, Gordon and I decided to test out my route to work. Google said it was 10.2km door-to-door and would take 34 minutes. Considering the metro takes 28 minutes, cycling supposedly was a good alternative. That first attempt showed that I have an easy route but it did not flow well as there was a huge rowing regatta happening on the river so we had to negotiate screaming crowds for the first 5km. But I knew how to get to the office on Monday which was the purpose of the excursion.

The view from the first 5km of my daily commute

Monday morning, I left the apartment 45 minutes before I was supposed to be there so that I had a buffer. My ride was lovely. The first 1.5km is city cycling but along the Amstel river. Then the city suddenly disappears and for 3.5km I’m cycling with the river next to me on the left and beautiful parks and gardens on the right. Across the river is farmland. It’s lovely and a popular route for runners, serious cyclists and commuting cyclists. It looks flat but has a few sneaky rises which you notice when you are on a single-speed bike.

The windmill and a serious cyclist (note the helmet) at the turning point in my commute

At the 5km mark there is a typical Dutch windmill and that’s there I turn onto a lovely country road with canals on both sides with farmland, sports fields and cute little houses for about 1.5km. This is also popular with trainers and commuters. After that I turn onto the final stretch which is a main road (with more-than-sufficient cycling lanes) that basically takes me to my office. This road also looks deceivingly flat and is lined with apartment blocks, canals and patches of tulips and daffodils. Just before my office, I have to go under the metro which means a ramp down then up the other side. Thanks to the gentle undulations and the last (significant) ramp, I was drenched in sweat and about 5 minutes late. This was not a good start to a Monday morning! I’d packed my deodorant as a precaution but that wasn’t sufficient – I needed a shower and a fresh shirt. I hastily dabbed toilet paper wherever possible in the bathroom and took deep breathes to dry mitigate the problem but I knew the damage had been done. This was not mentioned in the guidebooks and blogs, which is why I’m telling you here – NL is not flat and cycling 10km in 45 minutes on a heavy single-speed Omafiets will leave you sweaty.

The middle stretch of my commute - my favourite part

There have been several cycles to work since then and I am slowly mastering the art. Tip 1: Don’t trust Google – I give myself an hour so I don’t have to rush which means a) less sweating and b) I can enjoy the scenery more. Tip 2: Don’t ride with your handbag strapped across you – it will hold the back of your shirt against you which leads to sweating. Air flow is good. Tip 3: Even if it feels really cold, don’t ride with a warm jacket because after 3km you will feel those evil beads running down your back and it’s really hard to recover from there. Remove the jacket asap. Tip 4: Take an umbrella and a scarf just in case. No explanation required. Tip 5: Crossing the road can reduce the number of undulations on a particular stretch – this is worth investigating. Tip 6: Enjoy it. The days when I cycle to the office always seem better than the days using public transport. The endorphins and lack of sneezing passengers make you feel great and it’s a sneaky way to burn a few more calories – very useful in the weeks before your wedding!

Gordon's commute is through the city - the red lane indicates a bicycle lane (see how close to the tram line it is!)

It’s a hard feeling to explain, but riding through the city surrounded by traffic and other bicycles is when I feel the most like a local. I feel like an Amsterdammer even though I’ve only been living in this city for 3.5 months. It’s by far the best way to experience NL and we are planning a countryside adventure on our bikes over the long weekend in June – route still to be determined. When we were living in Ede we would often ride through the forest and farmlands on the well-marked cycling routes. It was a fantastic way to spend an afternoon. This country appreciates bicycles and I love it.

*A colleague of mine says only people who aren’t from Amsterdam ride a bakfiets and he means that in a not-very-nice way.

Where has the time gone?

I had great plans for this blog, including keeping track of all the steps it took to get me and The Man here. Apparently that never happened. Oh well, I'll start again now that things are starting to settle down a bit. This will be another log entry but going forward they should be shorter and slowly I'll figure out how this blog will work.

Brief update on what has happened since my last post in August 2013:
1) We got engaged! Yay! (Some might say it's about time after 5.5 years). Brief synopsis: the first place we ever went on holiday to was Glengarry, in the Kamberg. We've been back a few times since then so it means a lot to us. Glengarry hosted a mountain biking weekend in September so we went with my parents. Sneaky Gordon had asked for their permission the previous weekend when I was visiting friends in Johannesburg (which included me moaning at one stage to one friend that it would be nice to go overseas as an engaged couple. Little did I know...). Friends who got engaged in July (also at Glengarry) had set their date for July 2014 so we decided that was a good time as well, as all our mutual friends who live overseas would be flying out to SA for their nuptuals. So in the space of 10 days we set a date - 19 July 2014 - and found a venue in amongst the panic of moving countries. All the other stuff is organised by remote control - the internet and email make it surprisingly easy to plan a wedding from the other side of the world. I spent a week in SA in February to do wedding planning that couldn't be done from NL.

My ring!

2) We lived in Ede for 4 months with N&C. They have a lovely home in a lovely little town in the Bible Belt. So not a lot happens there although the town square has a decent collection of bars and the town is on the edge of a huge forest/conservation area so there's a fair amount to do considering it's a small town whose shops all shut on Sundays. After 2 months of interviews and "whoring out" my CV to basically every large company in NL I started working in finance at an international FMCG - the tobacco industry which I've had to adjust to as I have never smoked and have never been a fan of smokers. It's amazing how perceptions change when smokers pay your salary...
At first the 1.5 hour commute was a struggle, especially as I started during the build-up to year-end followed by the audit in January so there were numerous late nights. I did quickly get used to it though and would read or watch series on my phone. In the end I enjoyed having a guaranteed 3 hours to myself everyday to think or zone out.

This is the forest near Ede

3) We moved to a 1-bedroom apartment in Amsterdam in February which has changed our lives dramatically. We both realised for the first time that we are alone in this adventure - N&C are 1.5 hours away so we can't just pop over for coffee or wine if we've had a bad day. The London thing makes sense now - this is a struggle to survive in foreign country, away from everything you are used to and if you have access to people you know or who know people you know then you have a support structure. After a few moping days in February, I resorted to the internet and discovered www.meetup.com. It's awesome. Apparently it started before Facebook in the USA and is a brilliant concept. You sign up to groups in your area which arrange events for like-minded people in your area. A'dam has a HUGE expat community - I read somewhere that 45% of A'dam residents were not born in NL - which means there are a lot of lonely people who are also looking for friends. So we've been to a comedy show where everybody (+-50 people) meets for drinks beforehand; we've been to a dinner (+-12 people); we've been to some drinks evenings at various bars around the city (30-100 people) and tomorrow I'm going to a ladies-only brunch (+-15 people). And slowly we are making friends. There are paintball events, running clubs (I'm currently investigating), travel groups and basically anything you can think of to keep you entertained and sociable. It's cliched but it needs to be said - you don't know what you have until it's gone; and in our instance we were the things that have gone away and left behind friends who have known us for over 2 decades in some instances, travelled through darkest Africa with, been chased out of Afrikaaner-extremist towns with, laughed until we've cried with or just cried with. Oh how the mighty have fallen! But we're getting back on the horse and have started to meet some really interesting people who also just want companionship and something to do on a Friday night.

Picture-perfect Amsterdam

4) Gordon managed to get his residency permit quite easily and quite quickly so he's been able to work since January. Not that there are many Architecture jobs available. There are (literally) thousands of firms in A'dam, Utrecht, Rotterdam and surrounds but they aren't growing even though the economy is no longer in a recession. He's consulting on a risk-work project for a firm but he will only get paid if the project comes to fruition. He's interviewed at some firms and basically we're just waiting. We can survive on my salary but only because we're paying very little for rent (it's a long story but basically we don't officially live in A'dam but still in Ede. This creates other hassles but saves about EUR400 a month). And to add to the stress, my company is restructuring this year so there is no guarantee that I'll have a job in December. I'm considering marketing positions (I can hear all my university accounting friends gasping in horror) because finance is almost completely being outsourced to Romania.

5) I successfully applied for the 30% ruling, which means that 30% of my salary is not taxed. This is a benefit for expats in NL who have scarce skills to compensate for the additional costs of living here. I wouldn't call accounting/finance a scarce skill but I won't question it! Besides the additional money I get each month, I can also convert my SA drivers licence to a Dutch one without doing tests. There are some other tax benefits as well.

Vondel Park, Amsterdam

6) Nikki was an absolute star with helping us settle in. Although there are so many foreigners here, it is still difficult to get settled in NL. Registering with the gemeente (municipality), immigration, bank accounts and pin cards, public transport systems, bicycle transport systems - it's a lot of complicated information in a foreign language so having a local who knows makes an enormous difference. People I've met through meetup have also said they couldn't have done it by themselves - agencies or local friends helped. She set up our appointment at the gemeente to register us; she came with to the IND (immigration) where we applied for G's permit and spoke in Dutch to the woman at the counter (who could speak English but some things are hard to understand in a second or third language); she phoned the bank when my card wasn't activated and 1000 other small things that we couldn't have done or even knew had to be done.

The famous I amsterdam sign

So, for now, we are content in A'dam.