Tuesday, 28 January 2014

Dutch stairs, also known as house TRAPS

When I found the Dutch word for stairs is "TRAP", suddenly it all began to make sense. I could now understand why they are so steep and narrow, so they can act as house traps for visitors or thiefs -- at least this is my theory :))

Dutch house traps

I also come to the conclusion that Dutch try to fitt in as many staircases as possible in one house. While back home most of the 2-3 room apartments have no stairs, here they managed to fit 2 staircases in less than 60 square meters. I can sincerely undertand the staircare from the living and kitchen to the bedroom level, but why they needed to have the appartment entrance and an almost inexisting hall (seriously, it's like half square meter) on one level and then the living room on a different level is still a mistery.

Make the trap double
After intense studying of the issue, it seems that there is actually an explanation for this. In the past, people had to pay tax depending on the width of their house, so in order to avoid high charges they just build "tall" and narrow houses, connecting the levels by (what else than?) narrow stairs.

Now that I know the rational behind, I seem to enjoy my stairs more :) I realised I can exercise a lot without even leaving the house, who wouldn't want that? On top of it, I am becoming more effective, planing in advance the "trips" upstairs and "downstairs" and making sure I don't forget anything I have to take with me from one level to the other. But still, when it comes to suitcaises carrying up or down, I cannot help but wonder: "Dutch narrow stairs, are they a curse or blessing?"












Wednesday, 22 January 2014

Holland vs The Netherlands

Although in many parts of the world this tiny country is called Holland, you would be surprised that some of the Dutch would be offended if you called their country like that. What is also funny is that their nationality is called Dutch, not Netherlander or Hollander, as you might otherwise assume.
Things are getting even more complicated ... apparently there's a Kingdom of Netharlands (d'oh, so that's why they have a King :)), but more on that in the movie below*:



* called Step 1 to my Cultural Integration by one of my collegues that shared this with me :)




Monday, 13 January 2014

In KLM we trust

The Dutch are very proud of their Royal Dutch Airline, so much that KLM used the following advertisment at some point in time:

"Holland ocupies les than 1% of the Earth's surface...Its airline covers the rest..."

Well, I would say there's nothing wrong in travelling royally and having the royal landscape below in front of your eyes :)





Sunday, 12 January 2014

My first home made Dutch meal

...or putting the goodies in the welcome basket at use. Here is the result:


Boerenkool Stamppot and the famous by now Rookworst - Yummy!

Boerenkool Stanppot (Kale in english) - really not my type of food, I much prefer the buttery mashed potatoes instead of this mix. Shared the pic with people at work and all of them were asking if I ate the whole rookworst, as if it would be a sacriledge (no, I did not eat the whole thing; although I see Really Hungry Me capable of comitting such an  unimagined act)

Hagelslag bread and milk 


Again, it seemed I did something wrong. Mixing chocolate hagel with colored hagel seems to be contrar to all Hagelslag eating Dutch principles, so I will make sure I'm not doing it again (or not :P). All in all, good alternative to the milk & cereal breakfast, if you ever get tired of it (I'm sure I do).

So that's about what I and my cooking skills could do for now, more to come (unless I surender to the Sandwich Supremacy).


Saturday, 11 January 2014

The Land of Welcoming People

Moving to a new country whithout basically knowing anyone can lead to cool feet for anyone. It can be even worse if you start (as I did) with the predjudice that Dutch people, as all Nordics, are not very friendly and warm, but very different from the Latin Balcanic culture I come from, meaning I would need to bring out the super friendly, nice and cool me :)

It turns out that I was quite wrong about that, and the first sign of that was the HR lady from my company calling the hotel where I was staying to make sure I got there safely. It did not stop there, and in my first day in the office I was received like this: 

my colleagues had decorated my desk with NL flags and banners with "Welkome Thuis". Not little was my surprise when I realised it doesn't stop here, they had also prepared a basket with Dutch "goodies".


Among others, what I could find in it were the follwing:

- big jar of mayo, as we are in the land of friet --and if you didn't know, no friet here comes without mayo 



- the delicious Stroopwafels, one of the lekkereste (as in delicious) Dutch inventions, which immediately entered my Top 5 favourite sweets ;) But beware, these yummy, sugary/honry/caramel syrup filled double waffles can create serious addiction 

- the one and only, the Rookworst or the Christmas Sausage as its very popular this time of the year. Its "goed", but a bit overrated -- for me its still a larger smoked hot dog sausage 
-  the famous chocolate sprinkles, or hagelslag (they do have a thing for the letter "G" and diffcult to pronounce combinations, don't they? :)) Must admit they are better than expected and can make a more than decent breakfast if you add them on a butter topped slice of bread and have a glass of milk next to it


- Kruuinoten -- the traditional hard spicy cookies that Sinterklaas (more to come on this mysterious character) spreads around, sort of gingerbread in a diferent format


- Audio CD with 2013 Top Hollandse Hits :) Sounds like songs my parets used to listen to, but its me who is  not able to appreciate it to its real value as my Dutch level is still a painfull topic 

So, are Dutch really nice or what? As I would later find out, they are considered the "Friendly, but not very  polite", as opposed to their Eastern neighbours, the Germans, which are "Polite, but not very friendly" -- just love finding out this cool cultural particularities.

Enough about all this, ran to buy some Stroopwafels ;)





Wednesday, 8 January 2014

Starting the Dutch journey

I recently moved to the country of windmills and tulips, home of milk & sandwich lovers, also known as the Netherlands or Holland, where I will be living for the next one and a half years - gezellig (that's Dutch for "cool", to keep it short)! I am looking forward to get emerged into this new culture which has never ceased to surprise me in the month I've spent here until now -- will get back on this topic ;)

I must confess I had some help which made my journey start easier (and also made me seem really savvy about Dutch habits in front of my truly Dutch work colleagues): this amazing blog http://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/ telling (almost?) everthing about interesting (euphemism for sometimes strange :)) habits that are common in this (small) part of the world. I sure hope its not telling everything about Dutch people, leaving some things to discover myself :)

I am living in Breda (just realised I am starting each paragraph with "I...". Damn, blogging is difficult :) So, starting again: Breda, my current home, is a cute, cozy city in the South of the NL (9th biggest city in Holland, to be more exact, with a population of 170 thousand inhabitants). Probably not many of you have heard of it, unless you are living in Netherlands or you are a friend of mine or you are a true football fan and you know the almost anonymus (to me at least) football team NAC Breda. Although at first being not that happy about coming to this never heard of small city (from Bucharest, capital of Romania, with more than 2 million inhabitants), I began to love the nice cobbled streets, the popular Grote Markt with its cafes and pubs, and the beautiful impressive church (which I can see from my apartment's window and who my friends say I'm obsessed about as I keep sending them pictures with it). Moreover, Breda is (ladies, pay attention to this) the city with the highest density of shoe shops in the Nethelands :) Although I must confess I was dissapointed when discovering this funny fact, as I was sure it was just my plain luck for having one of these shops in the building I live and several others on my street :), I know am just grateful for lining in Happy Feet City.







Some of these pics were taken end of November, so that's why you will see green grass and autumny leaves in some of them - and although the winter has been mild until now, the scenery has changed a bit.

As this first post is becoming quite long (I'm sure there must be a rule saying that you don't have to write long posts which I am breaking), I'll live those of you ever wanting to visit the it to a short movie about its main attractions.

Doey! (I love this very funny Dutch way of saying goodbye,so be prepared to see it quite often around here)