That kind of place

There are restaurants were you sit down and the prices are not printed next to the items, under the pretext that if you have to ask, you can't afford it.

The Chateau Neercanne, fortunately, was not that kind of place. It was, rather, the kind of place where you look at your €217 bill and think, "Wow, that was it?" We were expecting something a little higher, since I'd done my five-course meal a la carte and the sommelier cracked open two bottles of wine for us.

Apparently mousse is "in" these days. Our first amuse-bouche, had on the terrace during our pre-dinner drinks, was a gazpacho topped with a mousse and a cucumber sorbet. Then, when we were seated at our table, a little row of three amuses appeared--a tiny scoop of tuna and mango, a tiny little tomato topped with a tiny dot of mint mousse and a tiny speck of basil with two tiny croutons, and a tiny sliver of beet topped with a dollop of goat cheese mousse and a drop of aged balsamic vinegaar. Throughout the meal little blobs of the most spectacular and impossible mousses (onion mousse, orange mousse) kept appearing.

But I'm getting ahead of myself: We both enjoy good food, but alas, a resident's salary, a lab tech's salary, and a mortgage plus three cats' worth of vet bills aren't quite conducive to living it up that way. So last year, on 1 January, we started a "Fine Dinner in a Nice Restaurant" jar, into which we could collect all the loose change we had at the end of the week, or whenever our wallets felt a bit too fat for comfort. By the end of the year we'd amassed nearly €500 worth of spare change, but it took us a while to figure out which restaurant to spend it on. And oh, the agony of the decision! This one was too expensive, we'd have to reserve a hotel room to eat at that one, etc etc. Eventually I stumbled upon the Chateau Neercanne while on a run, and decided that nothing would be cooler than eating in a castle. That it happened to have one Michelin star didn't enter the equation until later.

We'd gotten there early, but they seated us on the terrace and gave us a menu to look over. We were quite charmed by the view, by the fact that the The maître'd (or the sommelier, I'm not sure what his exact function was) kept calling me "the lady" and the fact that their wine list is longer than some books I've read. My boyfriend, for all that he can discern fine and subtle notes in wine, is not a wine connoisseur, in the sense that he knows nothing about vintages and regions and all that. He was only too happy to take the maître'd's suggestion--"Let me pour for you."

The main issue that I had with their five-course menu is that everything had a dead animal in it. Plus anything having to do with liver is an automatic "no" for me--bad childhood memories; I could care less about the geese that went into the foie gras. So I ordered a la carte, ordering a fish-based voorgerecht and hoofdgerecht, and it was assumed that I would want a dessert as well (and I did). The maître'd supplemented my meal with a soup during my boyfriend's fish dish.

By far, though, the most spectacular part of the evening was the cheese board. You see "cheese board" on a menu and you think "OK, just a few cheeses served up on a wooden board with some grapes and bread." Hah. No:

First the cheese-man (apparently all of the men running around in their shirtsleeves were an expert in something) pushed an enormous cart into the dining room, covered with what seemed like a casket for a dead baby. He then whipped off the casket-like lid, exposing ten chunks of carefully rotted milk resting on a marble slab, explained which one was what, and asked us which one we would like. We got to pick four cheeses, and the plate was dressed up with some honey-fig jam and a few slivers of dates and some paper-thin wafers. It was delicious, mostly. I'm not a big fan of blue cheeses, but it was made with raw milk, so I was curious to see whether the taste was really as dramatic as all the raw-milk foodies swear it is (and it was). And as much as I like hard cheeses, the bright-orange cheese just didn't seem to fit anywhere, flavor-wise. I mean, it was good, but it just didn't go with anything on the plate and the cores that were drilled were too thick for me to really enjoy. But I am apparently very much a goat-cheese person, just as my boyfriend is a soft-cheese person. He LOVED the blue cheese and also the semi-liquid oozing thing from Britain. I wish I could remember the names of all the cheeses, but by that time we'd been eating for three hours, and I was stuffed to the gills with food and it was all I could do to stay awake through dessert.

Anyway. For dessert there was pannacotta for me, and raspberries and another improbable mousse for him. They came with sorbets--a gin and tonic sorbet, and one flavored with elderflowers. They mixed up the flavors--I was supposed to get the GNT, and he was supposed to get the elderflowers--but it was so delicious all the same that we didn't really care. The pannacotta was flavored strongly with what I want to believe is lavender, but the candied flowers on it were yellow, while the little globes of jelly were mint and the hard mousse sticks were basil, so I'm not really sure what it was flavored with...

The Ultimate Question: Was it worth the time (because the whole affair took us 4 hours) and money? HELL YES. It was even worth having missed the last bus back to Maastricht and having to walk back to my hot-and-cramped room to spend the night.

If you go: Expect to spend around €90/person if you're ordering a three-course meal a la carte (which makes spending the same amount for a five-course meal all the more enticing), assuming that you've ordered wine by the glass. Also remember that, when the server brings you your food, to wait for a minute or two in case there's a sauce that should be artistically dribbled on the food and platter while the person explains what you've received. And definitely don't be shy about asking for advice on the wine. Definitely don't skimp on the wine, either (unless you're enzymatically retarded lik me).

A special type of insantiy

height="300" border="0" alt="White Road">

If you ever visit Neeltje-Jans or the Rotterdam port, you'll see two of the biggest man-made structures ever conceived to keep water out of the Netherlands. Which is kind of important, considering that 2/3 of the country (not the entire coutnry) is at least 1/2 meter below sea level--and sinking.

I forget how many billions of guilders it cost to build those structures, exactly--I think it was something like 80 billion. Special boats were designed specifically to lay the concrete pylons in Neeltje-Jans, and the ball bearings on Rotterdam's Measlantkering had to be forged in the Czech Republic, because presumably only the Soviets would need to make something that big out of metal.

The most incredible thing about all of these projects, including the sealing off of the IJsselmeer, is that everybody agreed (for the most part) that they were worth the money. But more interestingly is the human response: people who were born post-1953 get a look in their eyes when they talk about the water works--a look that says, "Yes, I'm proud of our little country". It's about as much nationalism as is permitted these days, the Dutch soccer team notwithstanding.

But the ability to get the entire nation involved in one colossal building project--without resorting to torture/propaganda of the sort used in China or the former USSR--also speaks for a special kind of insanity. It's like there's this collective hive mind that every otherwise-perfectly-sane Dutch person can tap into. You see this at Jan Smit concerts, on Queen's Day, and whenever a group of people decide it's time to clean up after a meal (all of a sudden everybody just gets up and starts putting things away). It's the sort of thing an American would find a bit unnerving at first. It's also the reason why there will never be a bicycling infrastructure in the US that even begins to approach the sort of setup that the Netherlands has.

Never mind that Americans can't even get past the question of "Should", as in "Should there be bike lanes?" The type of collective thinking--that, no matter where you go in Holland, you will see the same symbols used, the same types of traffic lights, the same laws apply--required to get together the infrastructure to begin conceiving of how bike lanes should work, never mind building them, is something that simply could not be managed in the US. It works in the Netherlands because a) it's a small country and b) everybody rides bikes. In the US, though, the pipe dream is still one house, white picket fence, two cars. Even assisted housing and food stamp programs won't ask people to give up their cars. It's not implausible that the oil companies are willing to subsidize food costs if it keeps up their revenue.

It's deliberate

Ah, the odes that Americans sing to the "European way of life"! Can you believe those French work only 35 hours a week? Can you believe that I get up to two months of PAID vacation time? And that's to say nothing about the way life is in Portugal, where a good friend of ours is doing a postdoc; he occasionally drops by for a visit and waxes eloquent about spending hours cooking with his buddies on a random Tuesday night and stuffing themselves until the wee hours of the morning. I've been taking advantage of the long days to take pictures. At home, in Nijmegen, I usually read a good book or update this blog or write in my journal or clean the apartment in between loads of laundry.

I don't think Europeans actually get that much free time: nobody I know has actually ever used their 41 days of paid vacation. Sure, there are some folks who take a month or a few weeks off, but I don't think anybody has ever gone missing for the full 41 days. The biggest difference, I think, is that Europeans use their free time more effectively than most Americans. For most Americans, for instance an hour-long commute by car isn't abnormal. In Europe, it's considered almost unholy. To say nothing of two hours--which is a stretch for Americans, but most of my former lab in Leiden would just shake their heads in disbelief: "Why not just rent an apartment?" they'd ask. At that time, I hadn't yet saved up enough, but moreover my contract was only being extended piecemeal.

Anyway, that's one major difference--that Europeans tend to look upon commuting as something to be avoided if at all possible, rather than a fact of life. The other major difference is that the shops all close at 6 pm, which gives you a damn good incentive to finish up before 5 if you want to pick up, say, more deodorant or a new book on the way home. Albert Heijn does stay open until 10 pm, but most supermarkets close at 8, and in any case you still want to try to beat the rush because they're liable to run out of popular things like bread and milk.

But what this all means is that the delineation between working and leisure is a very nice, clear line (most of the time--editing tasks always seem to lend themselves to eating up my Saturday mornings). You go to work, work, and then you go home and do Fun Stuff. It could be going out with friends, waiting for the sun to hit that perfect sweet spot, cooking something tasty, browsing the local thrift store if it's koopavond, or working at your second job. One guy I know of does an awesome webcomic. I alternate between finding cool things to photograph and painting.

And what's even more telling is that people are simply NOT IMPRESSED if you tell them you spent 60 hours in lab last week. They'll look at you quizically and ask, "What for?" Last time I pulled those kinds of hours, I also wondered "what for?" I couldn't answer the question then, and I still can't answer it now. Especially since I've gotten some really nice photos.

I don't quite know when the whole idea of living deliberately became so deeply internalized, but I know that it didn't come naturally to me. I'd like to place it as happening at some point two years ago, when I started working in Leiden: commuting for four hours per day really really SUCKED, and the only way I'd ever be able to do things that I wanted was to either hope I wasn't too exhausted by the time I got home, or plan them into my weekends. It means that I almost always get to do what I want, just not necessarily when I want.

Pet Peeves, Editing Edition

I get asked to edit a lot of stuff. Being a native English speaker has its perks, I suppose--for my boss--but it'd be a lot perkier for me if I got a bonus for everything I edit. Nevertheless, since part of my job--hehe, my job, period--is to make my boss look good, I'm a good little minion and edit away.

I'm not going to kvetch about stupid English, because a) my Dutch is just as bad and b) I've seen worse English coming from English-speakers. By and large Europeans have a pretty good command of the English language, and even those who do not know enough to make themselves understood. To me, at least--but then again, I have an almost telepathic ability to understand what people are trying to say. Oh, the benefits of growing up with ESL parents!

No, the bitch-fest this time centers around a whole other aspect of writing: namely, construction and composition. I probably have higher standards than most, since I took so many writing classes in college--well, all of 2. But there were several history and pre-law courses that I took that also required a ton of writing, too. Thanks also goes to somehow never managing to get above a C+ on my lab reports in spite of arduously adhering to everything my "how to write a lab report" guide said. Things that have become second-nature to me--summarizing, careful usage, and making sure things "evolve" in a sensible manner--are apparently not so second-nature to most people.

I don't think it's the language barrier--I really believe that, if things could be written in Dutch, I'd have just as many issues with things showing up in the wrong place, or even worse: again. That's my first pet peeve--repetition. One does not get brownie points for repeating the same thing over and over again. This could be avoided by, say, planning an outline of what you're going to write beforehand.

And that leads to pet peeve number two: said outline, if someone has one, usually has no structure whatsoever. At least, that's the only explanation I can think of when I try to explain why the writers put a particular section "here" as opposed to "there". A good structure allows you to build up a story--it gives your ideas a direction to "evolve" in, without repeating yourself.

It also helps avoid my third pet peeve, which is non sequiturs. That which does not follow. The things which I am asked to edit are often rife with them. And the thing is, I can usually understand why the writer chose to put a paragraph about A next to a paragraph about B, but there's no link between the two, nothing to tie them together.

The last pet peeve of mine is the following: a string of citations does not a coherent point make. Very often, especially in reviews, you'll find that the author strings together a list of one-sentence article summaries, and...that's it. Not even an attempt to say "And what this means is..." See above about non sequiturs.

These problems, again, are not endemic to Dutch scientists. After all, I've read some pretty craptastic shit in the US, too. I guess it's safe to say that I just really, really, spectacularly, hate bad writing.

Only the Dutch

I'm pretty laissez-faire about sharing stuff with roomies. I don't really mind people using my coffee maker when I'm not around, provided that they clean the machine afterwards. And I don't really mind buying toilet paper. As long as someone else takes care of these things from time to time, I'm cool.

But of course, if things were that simple then I wouldn't have a post: I technically live with my boyfriend (as in, his place is my address) but I keep an apartment in Maastricht, the better to not commute for 4 hours a day with. In May, I moved to my current setup, which is a house in a very snazzy neighborhood (Sint Pieters, or the Hill), owned by a lovely old couple who get rich off of renting the individual bedrooms of the house out to poor students. Well, okay, they can't possibly be getting rich at the prices they charge. But you get the point.

There's room in the house for 5 girls, but whoever lives in the huge space on the ground floor (what Americans--but not Pennsylvanians--call the first floor) has her own bathroom. The rest of us, 4 girls, have to share a bathroom, and everybody shares the kitchen. We've all sort of come to an unspoken agreement that we will not share food and that the Internet/TV gets split 4 ways regardless of how many tenants there are (currently just 3). A little harder to split evenly, in a manner that could be construed as "fair", is paying for trash bags and toilet paper.

Now, I'm not talking about the €1 trash can liners. Here in the Netherlands, the cities have special vuilniszakken (vile-ness sacks?) that you must place your trash in if it's to be collected. Said bags cost a pretty penny, too: in Nijmegen they're €5 for 10, but in Maastricht, they're €11.70 for the same number. If that sounds outrageous, consider that at least you don't have to pay a separate bill for garbage removal.

What makes this a tricky matter to negotiate is that I produce a comparatively huge quantity of waste: I eat ramen, buy things that come in plastic boxes, eat yogurt, and drink coffee, all of which generates a fair amount of trash that must be disposed of. My soon-to-be-former housemate (who's just finished her final exams and is now in Germany, and presumably celebrating) generates...well, I don't know how she does it, but I don't think I've ever seen her make a single speck of trash. So you begin to see why this matter can be a rather delicate calculus. Fortunately, my new housemate also cooks, cleans, eats, and all sorts of things that human beings do, and has said that she's perfectly happy to split the fee for the trash bags. The toilet-paper issue is a little less contentious--I consider €2.65 a cheap price for a non-stinky house.

And here is the point: yesterday my housemate introduced me to Wie Betaalt Wat, a website that tracks all of your common consumables in a shared household, and automatically divides by the people who share it, to show who owes how much. Quite a clever little site--it's not something that only the Dutch would think of (after all, roommates and roomie drama happen all over the world) but it is something that has a very nette feel to it. That last word, according to Google's Translator, means "neat", but like gezellig, there is an element of, well, Dutch-ness, to it that renders the site completely foreign even if you understood the language perfectly. Which is a rather long-winded way of saying that the site is very, indescribably, Dutch.

Crazy is...

Being an ex-part incurs it's fair share of mental health hazards. I'm not talking about the culture shock, or the language difficulties. The latter is kind of irritating--I have "Dutch days" when I can talk and joke around with others, and other days when it's hard for me to figure out what's the word for something I've said a thousand times before. I know I know how to say what I want. Apparently there's a linguistic wall as well as a writer's block.

But that's a mere mosquito bite compared to rolling around butt-naked in stinging nettles. What really drives me crazy is when people ask questions like, "Do you miss the US?" and "Where do you work?" Not necessarily because they're bad questions, but because they're questions that people should know the answer to, or at least, know better than to ask. Maybe I'm just grumpy, but three years of answering the same questions can do that to you.

So, my top five questions I hate answering as an ex-pat:

1) Why did you pick the Netherlands? Because I like eating pickled herring...in all seriousness, though, you almost never pick up and move to a completely new country without either a job, or someone you know. Since I've been working here for a shorter time than I've lived here, it follows that I came here because of someone I knew. And yes, my boyfriend is Dutch. I don't know why I have to clarify that.

2) What do you do? I work in a lab (and keep two blogs and comment here and there and shoot fungi and go birdwatching and, well, Stuff). Please don't ask me to clarify, or ask me what sort of research I do, because unless you're a molecular biologist, you won't know what I'm talking about. Oh hell, I don't even talk about my work with my boyfriend, and he's a DOCTOR! Between 8 am and 5 pm I live in a whole different plane of reality that most people don't even know exists. Unless you're in my field, I really don't have time to explain wht the difference between phosphorylation and allosteric inhibition is.

3) Do you miss the US? Obviously I miss some of it. Amsterdam is not New York City, and no place on earth could possibly match the Strand. But I wouldn't have been here for three years if I missed living there. I'm fortunate that most of my friends are on Facebook and we keep up with each other there, and that they're the kinds of friendships where a space of years doesn't mean anything.

4) Wasn't it hard to get used to the language and everything? This stems from the fact that Dutch has a reputation for being a difficult language to learn. It's not that difficult to learn enough to get by--the biggest problem for English speakers is remembering to put the verb at the end of the clause rather than somewhere else. But the other part of the question is just...well, stupid. Getting accustomed to living in a country is as difficult or as easy as you want it to be. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open, and you won't have much trouble.

5) Are you a student? I get this from strangers, mostly. Part of it is that I look really young. The other part is that I do tend to live and shop like a student (i.e., cheaply), and I do call my practically-speaking-basically-husband my boyfriend (and he's almost 40!). I am not a student, though, and I wish people wouldn't just assume that I am.

Tweebly drama

On Thursday night I got a phone call from Boy at 1 am, saying that the Tweeb had diarrhea-and-no-it-wasn't-just-soft-poo, horking, wouldn't look at her food (very alarming in a cat that is always hungry), and was hiding under the sofa. The Tweeb has renal failure, so this was Very Bad News. He called the vet first thing on Friday morning, and my boss, upon hearing the VBN, sent me home early, so I got home in time to accompany the Tweeb to the vet.

The vet poked and prodded but couldn't find any physical cause for the sudden deterioration--she had been fine Thursday morning, yowling up a storm for her breakfast. Sub-cutaneous (sub-Q) fluids were given, and she handed me two cans of Science Diet a/d and an odd syringe with a ring around the plunger. The directions: force-feed the Tweeb, as much as she can take, and give 1 "click" of the stuff in the syringe (that's what the ring was for) to settle her stomach and make her poops solid again.

This morning, after a whole night of hiding under the bed, she got out from underneath the bed, and ate. On her own.

Here's hoping everything passes.