Friday, December 18, 2009

I Don’t Care How Hard It Rains, I’m Going Out for a Drink with Hans…

The first day I actually made plans to do more than wander around Bussum (a cute, quaint, little town) the weather was decidedly Dutch. Now, whenever you visit the Netherlands you have to be ready for rain, it is a given. But it was actually storming, thunder, pouring rain, the whole nine yards. I made a few calls and pushed my plans in The Hague back a bit. I didn’t mind the delay because I was hoping that Erin was going to feel better so she could join us for a drink. I also knew that Hans was at his brother’s birthday party. Basically I was in no rush to sit on the train for over an hour feeling like a Shih Tzu that was dropped in Bethesda Fountain by a startled socialite.

Erin and Sytze did try to get me to give up and we could watch Weeds, play a game, drink the Moonshine I brought or work on making wedding programs, but I was determined to go hang out in The Hague. I lived for two years with that crazy rain and wasn’t about to drop my plans to see a friend leaving for Algeria because it was raining in Holland. After about 2 hours the rain finally let up just long enough to not get lost on the way to the station.

Once I got to The Hague it was basically raining sideways and Richard was already waiting for Hans and me at the Grote Markt without an umbrella. I’m not sure how long Richard was there by himself, but when I called to say I was at Centraal Station he decided to walk in my direction. Just as he ran into me after making his way from awning to doorstep to any other covered area, it starts to hail. It was August. Only in Holland would it hail and rain like that in August and only Richard would be wearing linen in that type of weather.

Eventfully we get back to the Grote Markt and Hans arrives just moments later. Due to the rain and the lack of the appropriate number of beer carts for they event there that night we decide that we are going to go back to Richard’s. This was just the beginning of story filled night.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Relax on the Rails or Be Highly Entertained by People Watching.

I’d forgotten how much I enjoy riding the train. Even the stop-train. I guess this can be attributed to the fact that I hate driving and I love people watching. So taking the train is perfect. There are so many different people, so much going on. I loved my little commute from Leiden to The Hague. Now, I may not have liked the bike ride or walk to the station when the weather was horrid, but the rest was wonderful.

I enjoyed my little routine. Actually, I enjoyed the fact that you could change it up a bit and it wouldn’t cost you any real hassles. Like deciding to come a little earlier and ride to HS with Erin instead of Centraal or taking a different tram once I arrived. Heck I’d even walk down to Gravenstraat and catch my tram there instead of at Centraal Station. I liked going to AH to grab a ham & kaas croissant, maybe a Lipton green tea and then walk up to the platform to wait on my train.

By far my favorite thing about riding the train is people watching. From the time I reach the station until I arrive where I am going there is almost always something entertaining to watch. Take my trip from Bussum to The Hague as an example.

The entertainment started when I witnessed a group of teens miss two trains in a row. There simply is no explanation for missing two trains in a row, but it made for a great scene as the head couple pushed and argued with each other over the second missed train. After I switched trains at the airport (my choices were take a train to Utrecht and switch several platforms away in like 5 minutes or take a train through Schiphol and simply cross to the other side of the platform for my connection- I didn’t need to be missing trains that evening so I went with Schiphol) I sat across from a very loud young lady. She had two cell phones and talked or txted on both while we all listened to her musical selection on her i-pod. It would have been an okay selection of songs if it wasn’t being played through tin can speakers more commonly known as ear-buds. Even more entertaining was the couple who got on with their toddler and baby.

The mother and her little girl sat across from me next to the young lady/slinceaphobic. She was so adorable smiling at everyone and refusing to sit down. She was giggling and pretty happy for just getting off an airplane. He mother gave her a cracker which she showed off to the other passengers before taking a little nibble. Well, more like just sucked the salt off a corner and let the thing get all soggy, but she was adorable and no older than two so one really can’t begrudge her. Then she dropped it. On the railcar floor. In the dirt and the goo. She stared at it for a moment, thought about crying, and then just as her mother turned to her, she swiftly swooped the soggy dirt covered cracker and shoved the entire thing in her mouth. It happened in a split second. But it seemed as if her mother was stuck in slow motion, reaching for her little girl and sharply shouting NO! (well NEE! To be specific…) and trying to grab what was left out of her daughter’s mouth. A look of utter befuddlement contorted the little rosy face as her mother tried to pry open her mouth. They were totally out of sync as the munchkin squirmed away and the mother caught her by her coat with a panic stricken look slowly morphing into a furrowed brow. Time finally evened out between the two as mom was scraping clumps of chewed cracker out of her toddler’s mouth causing the little girl to cry. Oh poor little thing! But she stopped as soon as her mom put her down and gave her a clean cracker.

As I tired not to laugh from how comically timed the moment was – the struggle totally mismatched with the jabberbox missing nary a beat during the entire ordeal – I realized how much I had missed taking the train.

Sunday, September 27, 2009

To a mouse...

I’m slowly learning that no matter how well I plan for a vacation I will not get to do all the things I want to do. I think a small part of this is that I want to do EVERYTHING. I know I can’t do it all, but I usually set out trying. This may have something do with the fact that we really didn’t go on vacation when I was growing up.

Honestly, I only really remember taking two vacations with my family. One was in High school and we went to London for three days. The other time we went to Charleston, S.C. to ring in 2000. Now, don’t get me wrong, it was a great vacation, but I really don’t remember any other time we traveled as a family to get away from where we were living. Often Friends and relatives would come and visit us in Japan; Italy; Florida; Washington, D.C., all those really fun duty stations. And even though we would sometimes travel to different cities when guest were visiting, I still think of those trips as us being tour guides, because more often than not we had already been to the sites in that town on school field trips.

Typically, Family Vacation was just a nice way of saying “we are moving this summer”. Just to catch the none brats up, this meant having one suit case between my sister and I for up to three months, traveling with a cat and a dog, not knowing when our household goods would arrive and possibly visiting a relative or two that we are not going to see for another 3-6 years. This is *not* a vacation, but it is what we got, and we made due (like reading in a hammock on the lawn at Grandma Panter’s in the middle of Tennessee or watching every two dollar movie at the base theater while being in temporary housing). Now some bases were definitely better than others. That fact did make some moves a bit easier, but these moves were the exception to the rule.

My little sister and I would also get to visit our Daddy during some summer breaks and a few holidays. This was more like what you may think of during a vacation. Yet we would cram so much in to these visits that I really needed a vacation from these vacations when I got home! In fact one trip was actually called our whirl wind weekend. I’ve even had a short story about that printed from a newspaper contest. I’ll have to dig that up for ya…

Regardless, all of these experiences have lead to my tendency to be a heavy planner. I have a need to fit it all in. I have a few friends trying their darnedest to break me of this habit. And it seems from my last trip across the pond even God is getting in on this re-programming.

I wanted to see everyone still living in Holland, enjoy the wedding, drop by and do a little intelligence gathering on a few city diplomacy initiatives, go shopping for things I can’t get in the States, meet my relatives, go to the Mauritshuis, go for a walk along the dunes, visit the archeological museum in Leiden, and read a book or two. Maybe, if it wasn’t too expensive and I still had time I would have gone to Krefeld for work. None of this really mattered. I only did a fraction of what I had planned to do, because by day four I was down a wallet and by day five I was stuck on the couch for half a week and crutches for the rest of my trip. (Oh and those readers who know where the title of this blog comes from get a gold star!)

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Shock Me, Shock Me, Shock Me with Your Deviant Book Titles

I love to read. I’m addicted to buying books. So naturally I will pick up a new title for a flight. I’d much rather read than watch a movie while flying. I buy books relatively often so I have stacks of books lined up for me to read. When I fly I just pick one off the nearest pile. I never really put much thought in to it. Yet I recently noticed a pattern. I seem to pick out titles that are going to raise more than a few eyebrows.

A few years ago, I had picked up Emergency Sex and other Desperate Measures. It is about the UN and is a great read, but not as racy as the title lets on. I didn’t think any thing about the title until a few members of a Christian church tour group started to give me the evil eye and a few old ladies tisked at me while shaking their heads during a layover in DC.

More recently I had picked up God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. I actually bought it as a gift for a friend of mine and decided to read it on my way back to Holland after a short break at home. I had a surprising reaction for this book too. The most stereotypical looking red neck sat own in front of me on a flight. He had already done his fair share of hemming and hawing about the big city transplant types who just think they are so important and a little later said an off color remark to me after I bumped his chair while trying to put away my lap top. When I was returning to my seat after going to the restroom, He got up out of his chair and turned to me as I sat down. I was not really sure what he was going to say, but I definitely wasn’t ready for the conversation which followed. He wanted to know where I bought the book. He’d been trying to buy it for a while but it was not being sold at the stores he goes to in Alabama. I told him I got it at Target.

This last trip overseas I was reading Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. I didn’t get any odd looks for this one, but this may be because it is hard to see the couple making out on the microscope stage.

Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Transatlantic Travel

I’m quite used to long flights across the globe. I’ve flown DC to Frankfurt, Detroit to Tokyo, Miami to Santiago, just to name a few. Depending on which direction I’m flying and exactly how long the flight is going to be I prepare differently. Bring music, books, my laptop, whatever I may need to keep myself occupied incase the movie selection is poor.

Typically, I can sleep on the overnight flight from the Eastern US to Europe. Usually I miss the dinner meal and sometimes even the breakfast if they still serve food on flights (during the short leg from Charlotte to Newark one of the flight attendants on Continental actually asked me if I wanted “today’s meal”- as he held out a packet of mini pretzels). And for the record, I really hate being feed only once in the middle of a transatlantic flight. It is extremely useful to sleep on this flight. I’ve determined the only way to not suffer from jet lag going to Europe is to power through that first day. No nap, plenty of caffeine and lots of company. The goal is to stay awake at least until 9:30-10:00 pm. Often I stay up even later if my friends drag me out for a drink or two.

This time, nothing was as I planned. Tuesday flights are always packed, but this one just seemed to be more so. I had a window seat which is perfect for jamming oneself into a bit of a cubby hole with just a tad extra room for curling up. I’ve become quite adept at pushing my foot in to that cranny between the wall and seat in front of me and basically lodging myself into the chair so I sort of can fool myself into pretending (not quite believing) that I’m all curled up in my favorite arm chair at home. This just wasn’t going to happen this trip.

The gods were conspiring against me. To begin with the young woman next to me decided to read the entire time. The lights were not angled well so there was no way to shut out the light with out covering my head with a blanket, scarf, something. I hate having my face covered when I sleep, even just my eyes with one of those masks. It is because I usually toss and turn and move and then what ever it is gets wrapped around my neck and I can’t even wear turtle necks so it just doesn’t work out well. Then there was the issue that the guy in front of me has stuffed his coat in the crack I use for a foot rest. Even worse was that I couldn’t keep a constant temperature. The plane was too cold, the blanket wasn’t warm enough, and adding my coat made me too hot. Oh and there was this horrid buzz when I leaned on the window shade.

Needless to say I got absolutely NO sleep. I sat with my eyes closed for a bit, but never drifted off. So I read for 8 hours (a typically Alexis-Travel Title, of course, more on that in my next installment). This lack of sleep didn’t stop me from staying up the whole day after landing. In fact, I think we figured that since I got up early for work the day I flew over and was up until around midnight after my arrival the next day I was up for 30 some hours. Joy!

Travel Log...

So I'm really bad at keeping travel logs, but I did jot down a few notes from my last trip to the Netherlands and will be turning them in to blogs over the next few days stay tuned :-)

Only Because I Adore my FOX Friends

I was tagged by Dee's Avendentures

Silly Things About Me
Started today at 9:09pm

1. What time did you get up this morning? 7:13am (forgot to set my alarm...)

2. How do you like your steak? Medium Rare on the Rare side

3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema? District 9

4. What is your favorite TV show? Mad Men

5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be? I want to live in so many different places, but I'd like to end up in Charleston after another stint in Zuid Holland.

6. What did you have for breakfast? protein shake

7. What is your favorite cuisine? Thai

8. What foods do you dislike? mainly just liver

9. Favorite Place to Eat? Buddha's in Leiden

10. Favorite dressing? poppy seed

11. What kind of vehicle do you drive? An Altima

12. What are your favorite clothes? jeans, tailored top and a pashmina scarf

13. Where would you visit if you had the chance? Well I have to visit two more continents Africa and Australia

14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full? 1/2 full, but even if it is 1/2 empty I'm sure I can find a bottle and fill it back up.

15. Where would you want to retire? Charleston, SC

16. Favorite time of day? early evening

17. Where were you born? Honolulu, HI

18. What is your favorite sport to watch? Hockey

19. Bird watcher? yes. I love watching the birds in my yard.

20. Are you a morning person or a night person? Night!

21. Do you have any pets? My Bean, the Boston Terrier

22. Any new and exciting news you'd like to share? My Dad is up for a 3rd star!

23. What did you want to be when you were little? a purple unicorn

24. What is your best childhood memory? eating strawberries on papa's back porch

25. Are you a cat or dog person? Dog

26. Are you married? nope

27. Always wear your seat belt? Yes

28. Been in a car accident? Yes

29. Any pet peeves? stupid people.

30. Favorite Pizza Topping? meat

31. Favorite Flower? Oriental Lilies

32. Favorite ice cream? Pralines and Cream

33. Favorite fast food restaurant? TACO BELL

34. How many times did you fail your driver's test? never

35. From whom did you get your last email? That wasn't junk... Hans van der Vlugt a relative who lives near Rotterdam

36. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card? none, I don't like maxing out my card! but if I didn't have to pay it back... then Anthropologie

37. Do anything spontaneous lately? nope

38. Like your job? I love what I do.

39. Broccoli? yum

40. What was your favorite vacation? Going to Italy with Erin ties with Fishing with Ben

41. Last person you went out to dinner with? Richard

42. What are you listening to right now? I can hear Bean snoring over Alana Daivs' cover of Third Eye Blind's "I Want You"

43. What is your favorite color? Blue

44. How many tattoos do you have? None

45. Coffee Drinker? sometimes

What time did you finish this quiz? 9:46


Now I am tagging:
http://shanaiinsouthafrica.blogspot.com/