Mad Thrift

It's no secret that I love thrift stores. Even in the US, my preferred supplier of things like coats and hats were secondhand, though that was mostly because I like men's hat--at least, unusually-styled hats--and thrift stores were the only places I could find such things at prices that I liked. In Maastricht, Tuesday nights would find me more often than not at Mattie's Kringloopwinkel, where I procured my furniture. Nijmegen, though, hid her thrift stores well, and it took me a while before I learned enough about the city to find all of them:

By far my favorite is the Ideële Kringloopwinkel. It's well-hidden, but it has by far the most interesting--and most buyable--stuff. I've bought something almost every time I've gone there, which says a lot considering how far out of the way it is from everything, and how small the shop is. Despite its small size, it boasts a good selection of stuff, and I've managed to find such diverse objects as laundry baskets (matching style and color with the one we already had, even!), a wine rack, a trenchcoat--and all at reasonable secondhand prices, too. You cannot pay with a PIN pass, alas, so make sure you have cash before you walk in.

Het Goed is a chain of thrift stores, and as such it has by far the most stuff and the biggest selection, arranged across four floors. It is actually pretty spacious, unlike most thrift stores, and you can look around and poke into stuff without incurring the wrath of a grumbly clerk. I like to buy books there--they have an ever-changing selection of English-language books, and most of them are gently-used. I usually pick up small household items in Het Goed, things like baskets or spray bottles. They have an impressive selection of electronics, which is how we came by our speakers. However, Het Goed almost never has anything truly wonderful, which is why, as useful as it is, it's not my favorite.

Amaretto is a little tiny shop that bills itself as an antique store, though in reality it's another thrift shop. It's where I purchased our Galileo thermometer, and I'm still considering buying a ye-olde otoscope kit that's been sitting in a display case for ages, as a gift for Karel. However, the shop is impossibly tiny, and incredibly cramped--it's a bit evocative of Olivander's Wand Shop, wehere every last nook and cranny is occupied by something or other, to the point where the proprietor has taken to sitting in a chair by the window rather than at the cash register so he can read his newspaper. The prices are a bit higher than you'd expect, but on the other hand, many of the goods are one-of-a-kind, or at least very difficult to come by anywhere else in the city.

The Habbekrats is better known as "the place you get your fireworks from", as every December half the store is cleared of all its stuff to make room for a massive display of explosive projectiles. They have a bit of everything--I bought my binoculars there, a massive set of 8 x 50 lenses with coated glass, and of a surprisingly high quality glass, too. Most of the time, the stuff there is crap, but every now and then you find something good. We bought our coffee table there--their delivery policy is similar to that of Het Goed, in that you arrange with the store owner when you can be there, and he shows up within those times with a truck and your furniture. Unlike most kringloopwinkels, the Habbekrats does not carry clothing, although just across the street is a consignment shop in case you really need a clothing fix.

It's important to remember this cardinal rule if you're thrifting: if you don't absolutely love it, don't buy it. You don't save money if you spend it on something you'll never use/never wear. Happy hunting!

Hack Hack Wheeze

This post contains mentions of bodily fluids and functions that some people might prefer not to think about. Consider yourself warned:


It's always so clear to see in retrospect.

The sniffling, sneezing, and cough that I had been suffering for the past six weeks were not, in fact, the onset of allergies gone wrong (more on that later), but, as last night plainly and clearly showed, a case of Bordatella pertussis, better known by its common name, whooping cough.

"But only kids get that!" Of course, that's what I thought, too, when the diagnosis was offhandedly suggested by Karel. But the vomiting at the end of a bout of coughing a few nights ago negated any doubts I might have had about whooping cough. Of course, by then, it had been two weeks since I'd last slept through the night, and it was too late to do anything about it (antibiotics have to be given when you're in the sniffly-sneezy stage). And honestly, who thinks "whooping cough" when a grown woman has a drippy nose?

The doctor I went to see last week also missed it. He gave me codeine for the cough. Now--codeine is an interesting substance. Take one, and it's like having had a beer--slightly buzzed, very mellow. Take two (which was recommended), and it's like being on the edge of "buzzed" and "drunk". Both quantities proved powerless to stop the forces at play in my upper respiratory tract, though--it would suppress the cough for about an hour, only to let me be yanked out of the start of blissful sleep by the cough returning for its vengeance.

Seeing the doctor in the Netherlands is, depending on the doctor and the expat, either a wonderful experience, or hell in a white coat. In my case, it was the former: the doctor spoke excellent English (while I could have described what I'd wanted in Dutch, it would have opened the door for a terrible misunderstanding), listened patiently while I described what I had, and gave me exactly what I wanted: a steroid cream for my eczema, a packet of codeine for my cough, and a blood test for finding whether or not I was allergic to peanuts. The only downside was that I had to wait 15 minutes beyond my scheduled time, but honestly, what doctor's office doesn't have that? As a bonus, the guy was cute enough to have been a TV doctor, but I already have one of those ;-)

As he filled out the form for the blood test, he told me that the results wouldn't be in for a week, and to call back to discuss them. It sounded reasonable, so I called back a week later...

Only to be told that my test results were "too complicated" to explain over the telephone. I'm not entirely sure what that means...either I tested weakly positive for just about everything they test for, or maybe they discovered that I've got three blood type alleles and not the regular two. Or maybe they found out that I'm descended from Superman, or that my blood ate through the ELISA plate.

Either way, it was a most unsatisfactory end to a week's worth of waiting. And I have to make another appointment to see doctor. The truth is? Apparently I can't handle the truth....

On the Old Sand Dunes o' Mook

I wonder if there's a song of the same title, because it seems like there ought to be one....

Anyway, in the Netherlands, the landscape is dotted with patches of forest that people ride and run and walk their dogs in. Sort of a cross between a wildlife preserve and a public park, these spaces are further puncutated by sandy clearings, where heather grows. This is a sign that, in days of old, sheep had overgrazed the land, and the sand dunes had taken over. To give you an idea of how bad the problem got, Jasper (our ecologist friend) recounted sandstorms blowing off of these dunes. Heather is about the only plant that will grow in sands like this, and indeed, the fact that sandstorms are so rare these days in the Netherlands is because the sand spots are covered with it. That, and grazing policies have been changed to reflect the growing collection of ecological wisdom.

The area between Mook and Molenhoek, then, has what's called de Mookerheide, a vast collection of sand dunes with nothing but heather and sand grass growing in it. I call it "vast" because it certain looks that way when you get there, after putzing about through the typically-artificial bos. Indeed, getting there is a bit of an epic, a nice little adventurous jaunt on a sunny day: for me, on my bike, it starts with following the Veolia tracks south, until we reach 't Zwaantje (a little charming restaurant) and turning right. At first there are some pasturelands, but then the woods start to close in and at some point the road becomes a dirt road. Pressing on, despite the risk of a flat, eventually puts you in front of a massive fence, at the foot of a hill. Walk up the hill, and the picture today is what greets you.

But in fact it's not really all that big. You can scramble around the whole thing in about an hour, two if you stop and take photos of everything. And "scramble" here is definitely the right word, because some of the inclines are steep--even worse than the Manayunk Wall, and because the whole place is just a collection of sand dunes, it can be rather treacherous. Supposedly there are also special cows grazing on the land--the kinds of cows that the Dutch use as wildlife management--but I've yet to see one there (they're all over Millingerward and the Bisonbaai).

The Mookerheide is, for obvious reasons, a favorite spot for the people who live nearby. On clear days you can see Cuijk, which has a cathedral with two towers. The whole place is really quite lovely and I'd encourage anybody who thinks that the Dutch are all about polders to come and take a wander. It's surprising how hilly some spots can be.

A Bridge Too Far

If you've heard of Nijmegen prior to reading this blog, it's probably because you've seen the movie A Bridge Too Far. When the Allies cross the Waal, a substantial portion of the film takes place on the Ooijpolder, right next to Nijmegen's Waalbrug. Yes, that bridge was there in World War II (okay, maybe not the exact same bridge--as I recall Nijmegen was bombed pretty extensively towards the end of the war, so parts of it, if not the whole thing, have been rebuilt since then). And yes, it looked as out-of-place then as it does now.

It's always strange to watch places you know pop up on screen. When I saw Ocean's Twelve (yes, I'm a bit tardy when it comes to watching movies) and watched Amsterdam roll by, it felt a bit like playing punch-buggy on a long car trip. If Cold Case is on, I'm always watching for the bits of "real" Philly that get inserted into the scenes. Lately, Karel has been taken like a virginal bride by the show Masterchef, which takes place in London. Admittedly, I don't know London nearly half as well as I know Philly, but we walked around quite a lot and it's always fun to point out places we've been to. Seeing places you've been to opens up a slice of your life to the rest of the world, even if the others watching it don't realize it. It feels like a connection in some cases--and a betrayal in others, in the sense that some places feel like they belong to you, in some way.

Ultimately, it boils down to the people you know--they are the ones who make a place feel like home. It's why, I think, I feel more at home in Maastricht than I do in Nijmegen. Hopefully that will change soon. I can't be wandering around forever.