The Zoo

The Dutch are known for many things: wooden shoes, windmills, water management, and weird food. It's a shame that they're not known for their zoos, as well.



Today, being one of those rare days when I ran out of things that I have to do so I could start doing things that I want to do, I decided to go to the Burgers Zoo in the next city over (Arnhem) and see if it was really worth the extortionist price of admission, which was advertised on their website as €18.50, but €20 if you pay with your PIN. Needless to say, I made sure to have a €20 bill on hand, and some cash. There's one universal feature of zoos, and that is that they will gouge you till you're sausage meat for concessions. Admittedly, I could have bought my own water and snacks, but that would require that I lug around a liter of water on top of my DSLR, lenses, and book (for the train ride), and secondly, it would look Very Dutch, and not in a good way.

The other thing is, I hadn't expected to stay there as long as I did.

Because the zoo is HUGE. As in, HOLY CRAP HOW DOES THIS ALL FIT INTO THE COUNTRY huge. The main attaction is probably the "safari", which is a small collection of ungulates, a pride of lions, and a cheetah--but it sounds exotic so everybody (myself included) goes to see what it's all about. They have about 7 species of antelope, on top of the usual (giraffes, zebras), and something like 3-4 rhinocerous. The pride of lions, interestingly was the most crowded, beating out the cheetah easily. It was probably still cool enough for them to be active.

Once you get through the gate, most people, like marbles, tend downhill. Downhill leads you to the Bush/Ocean Safari/Desert complex, which is an enormous building that houses a jungle (for some reason called "bush" in the Netherlands and always makes me giggle on the inside a little) full of free-flying birds, with tanks carved into the rocks for exhibits like caimans and turtles. It's hot, and humid, and there are far more paths through the place than you'd think, not only because they go through gateways and wind into caves, but they also go up and down, and they do not re-join the main one, if there is such a thing.

At some point, you are given a choice: Ocean Safari, or Desert. The Desert exhibit is another huge labyrinth, although there was a little method to the madness in the sense that there was actually a direction to follow. First, you go underground, through a blessedly-air-conditioned tunnel that just begs for a good round of paintball or laser-tag. There are tunnels to crawl through and columns shaped like stalagmites to hide behind. And then you enter the Desert, which is just like the Bush exhibit, except that rather than jungle you have cacti, but you still have free-flying birds. Not as many, but they did have turkey vultures that would occasionally do a loop. There was also an exhibit of mountain goat. Roadrunners, and indigo buntings, were also there--words cannot express the irony that I, who come from the US, saw these birds for the first time in the Netherlands.

After the Desert exhibit you can partake of all of thei exotic--and not-so-exotic--birds. I for one found it especially amusing that the cardinal, that bright red bird of Christmas, is considered an attraction. But for the most part, their collection of passerines is eclectic and huge. And I, being a bird lover, was in seventh heaven.

There is also an aquarium, which is also not anything to write home about, seeing as every single one of the exhibits contains the exact same kinds of fish. I don't know about you, but there are only so many clownfish I can stand to look at before I get bored out of my mind. I can't fault them for trying, but I really wish they'd have done something better with the space.

But perhaps the best part of the trip was how the exhibits were arranged. This photo, for instance, is only slightly-cropped, taken with a 105 mm lens:



Not only are the spaces HUGE, they're also 75% surrounded by faux-rocks and plants, so that you get to feel like you're actually peeping through to see the animal in its natural habitat. For many of the large-animal exhibits, the only place to view them was from an enclosed viewing platform, which is actually pretty neat because a) the animals aren't nearly so stressed from being out on display all day, and b) little screaming whining kids don't bother the animals.

The Burger Zoo isn't as great as, say, the Smithsonian zoo. I don't think anything can trump the Smithsonian, but then again, I don't think anybody else has anything approaching half the budget for the Smithsonian. But I'm afraid I have to say it's tons better than the Philadelphia Zoo. Even without the lorikeets.

Making do, or "How to get arrested for animal abuse"

If we want to begin at the very beginning, then this story begins four years ago, when I lived in Philadelphia and found a kitten. The exact date was November 26, 2006, which I remember only because someone tried to scam me out of $400 in phony medical bills that were allegedly accrued on that date--as if medical bills in the US were ever that low, but that's another rant. Said kitten was a black kitten with a single white whisker, and I smuggled it onto the subway in my tote bag (which she then proceeded to piss and crap all over) and home to my apartment.

Meet Shadow:


Anyway, after spending $100 for the first vet check-up--during which she obligingly provided a perfectly fresh and stinky stool sample--I couldn't very well justify leaving her at the Humane Society or the SPCA or the Morris Animal Shelter. Therefore, I decided to keep her, and take on all of the responsibilities that a good cat owner takes on, which included adopting a second black cat.

Actually I hadn't wanted to adopt the Tweeb. At least, I didn't really want a second black cat, and one that was so stringy and mangy, not to mention completely broken and OLD (she was at least six), didn't exactly appeal to me. But the rescue assured me that she would get along quite well with a young and boisterous catten, and that she was a feisty old gal who could hold her own. After some thought, I decided to give the Tweeb a shot. So S brought her to my place, whereupon she immediately hid in my closet and refused to come out for two days. Three weeks later, the vet diagnosed the Tweeb with renal failure, but by that time the little girl had completely won me over so, in exchange for waiving the adoption fee, I got to spend the rest of the Tweeb's life footing her vet bills.

Meet the Tweeb:


So now we push the fast-forward button: Cats get shoved into carriers, driven to the airport, and we board airplanes for Copenhagen and Amsterdam. I get a new job, zip back and forth across the country between Nijmegen and Leiden, and pipette stuff. The Tweeb goes to the vet to get renal panels. And in 2009, I accept a new job in Maastricht.

My boyfriend, K, is a wonderful man. He is also very much a cat person. When I showed up in his apartment he had three massive bowls of chicken in the fridge. He loves the girls just as much as I do, and probably more. We joke about eating them when they scratch the couch, but it's only a joke, since the Tweeb is so scrawny there wouldn't be much to eat, anyway.

So when I got the job in Maastricht, it was assumed that I would take the cats with me. Both of them, since the Tweeb had to be with her mommy (me) and Shadow needed a constant companion to keep her little brain from atrophying. That would leave K WITHOUT A SINGLE KITTY to his name, so after some consideration we decided that we would adopt a third.

Meet FatBoy:


It turns out that life in Maastricht is completely unbearable without K, so I left the girls with K. This has its advantages--less trouble finding an apartment that would welcome cats--and its disadvantages: no kitties during the week for me. But it also means that we don't have to find a new vet for the Tweeb, who during this time has seen the vet three times to monitor the state of her kidneys, and has yowled every step of the way. And this brings us to the events of today:

Now, you, intelligent reader, have no doubt divined by my above paragraph that we don't have a car. A bike would ordinarily suffice to transport things like little kitties, but usually we walk. First of all, 1000 m isn't that far, and secondly, the chances of a disasterous crash are far less. Add to this the fact that K has never in his life been able to keep a bike for longer than 6 months without it being stolen, and that my bike currently resides in Maastricht, and you begin to understand the difficulties involved in transporting three kitties 1 km to see the vet: Shadow, because she needed her shots; the Tweeb, for her renal panel; and Leto, because K suspected he had arthritis and wanted the vet to look at it.

One kilometer isn't that far if you have one cat, but when you have three, you need to change tactics. To whit, build a Stargate, or bribe the vet to make a home visit, or procure the vaccines illegally off the Internet and hope they're more potent than salt water. Some way, in other words, to get these



1 km through urban Nijmegen to the vet.

After much pondering, we hit upon a brilliant idea: a kitty stroller! You might think the Dutch are too pragmatic for this kind of extravagance, and for the most part, you would be correct. But any culture which keeps cats for pets has its fair share of crazy cat people, and crazy cat people create a demand for this kind of thing, if only to take their cats to the vet.

So we set off to the Windmill, which I will treat as a proper noun because it is the only windmill in the whole of Nijmegen. Said Windmill has a pretty big, at least by Dutch standards, pet shop in front of it. I'd seen a kitty stroller before--I was sure they'd have one now, since, as I said before, the Dutch are too pragmatic to buy such a thing.

But oh woe woe, was I wrong! There was no kitty stroller. The Windmill offered to order one for us, but we needed one today. So with sad faces, we made our way home. K decided to stop by the Blokker, because he needed new ink for his inkjet...

And that was where we had the brilliant idea of buying a shopper. One of these:



The hallmark of little-old-lady-hood in the Netherlands. You will never see one in use by a man, nor by anybody less than 55 years of age. It is the demarcation of elderly woman--you might be 80 but if you don't use a shopper when you do your groceries you're not "old".

This, then, is what we ended up pushing to the vet's:

*

It was a good deal trickier than it might seem. Every little bump made the front wheels threaten to fold under, to the consternation of the kitties loaded up on it. And plus we live on the third floor of the complex, which means stairs to negotiate. It was definitely NOT a one-man job, getting the kitty tower to the vet, and back again.

And this is without the stress of hearing FatBoy scream--quite literally scream--with terror. I don't know what kind of experience he's had with carriers in his day, but I'm pretty sure that today's excursion didn't help his previous impressions any. After a little while he stopped screaming, but he did let out a choir of melancholy yowls--I am fairly certain that more than one person wanted to ask us what we were doing to those poor cats. Because, even though Shadow and the Tweeb were silent, he was making enough noise for five cats.

The vet visit was uneventful. FatBoy was, as his monniker suggests, pronounced fat. The Tweeb got her blood drawn, and Shadow was praised to the heavens for being such a perfect cat (she really is a perfect cat, calm, quiet, and pretty). All three cats had ear mites, so we got a vial of eardrops for them.

When we got home we let the kitties out and they promptly began sulking in earnest, except for FatBoy, who'd not only peed all over the cage but also laid down an impressive turd in the corner of his hated carrier. And then we all had a good stiff drink.

*I'm quite aware that there aren't any cats in the carriers. The reason for this is that when the cats were in it I didn't want to stop and take photos, owing to FatBoy's panic and the stress it was causing the girls. So after we got home (and after we cleaned out the turd) I reassembled the tower for this shot.

Benign neglect

I've been neglecting this blog for almost two months. I shouldn't, I know--and it's not because my life is too boring to write about, because it isn't. Nor is it because I don't have anything to say, because I do.

I've started keeping a journal--a longhand one, one that's written in a rather nicely-bound journal that used to have an elastic band holding it shut. I'm not so childish as to procure a lock-and-key for it, although I must confess that the thought of having a lock on it is appealing. Not because I have anything overwhelmingly bad or private to write about, or anything to hide (once again, I apologize for being quite possibly one of the most boring people on the planet). But, like an occasional marshmallow-binge, it's one of those very childish indulgences that remind you of just how happy the little things in life can make you.

One of the odd Americanisms that have made it back across the pond is the phenomenom of Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. Stores will have Easter eggs and Easter-themed candy--and surprise of all surprises, they are not in the guise of Jesus dying on the cross and then rising from the dead. Which you'd kind of expect from a nation as emotionally crippled by Calvinism as the Netherlands.

But no, the Easter candy is cute, teaming with bunnies and baby chicks. Bite-sized chocolate Easter eggs are especially popular. Less popular are marshmallows, commonly known as spek, which also happens to be the Dutch word for "bacon" and if you append "koek" onto it, it refers to a cake. This is because spek does not refer to the actual thing, but the description, and marshmallows in the Netherlands are, in fact, striped. Like bacon. And the cake.

But anyway: The point is that I am keeping a written journal. It's mostly a way to get things organized into my head, or rather, get better at organizing things in my head. I've been doing this for three months now, and it's actually pretty amazing what comes out of your head when you sit down with a pen and paper. Even the most boring of days (like yesterday) has some interesting little facet to it that you don't really think of when someone asks you "What happened today?"

In other words: I'm going to get back to maintaining this blog. Hopefully things will be a bit more coherent now that I'm writing again.

Rotterdam has no soul

There are times when I love my job. Not only do I get to play with really cool toys all the time, but sometimes I even get almost-free, all-expenses-paid trips thrown in. Case in point: Last Thursday kicked off a three-day meeting in Rotterdam. The hotel, meeting, and meals were paid for, although I still had to buy my own train ticket to Rotterdam, and good coffee had to be bought at the train station.

Aside: The best coffee is not to be found in the coffee shops (the ones that actually sell coffee), but in the train stations. Fresh grounds for each cup--nothing better.

Rotterdam is probably the poorest city of the Randstad, despite its enormous size. I'm not entirely sure which one is larger, Rotterdam or Amsterdam, but it's definitely bigger than Utrecht and the Hague. Kind of fitting, if you think about it--the soccer teams Ajax (Amsterdam) and Feyenoord (Rotterdam) have had a rivalry older than many of their fans for a while, so much that it's hard to tell who's better.

I dislike Amsterdam. It's too commercial for me. The whole city feels like a tourist trap--until you wander into the Parts Where Non-Muslims Dare Not Go. To be quite honest these parts are substantially less scary than, say, North Philly, where I spent a fair portion during my time in Philadelphia. Nevertheless, there are parts of Amsterdam where people just don't go to, and the parts of Amsterdam where people do go are fitted out with the latest in Dutch marketing strategies to convince people to part with their euros.

But if cities have souls, Amsterdam at least has one. It's not an entirely pleasant one, especially if you compare it to the neat prim one that pervades Nijmegen or the hustle-bustle of New York, but at least it's there.

But Rotterdam--Rotterdam reminds me of Washington DC. Which is not to say that Rotterdam is pristine and glistening, or that DC is...well, Dutch. Because neither is true. Rotterdam reminds me of DC because DC has no soul. Whatever soul DC has is glitzed out by shiny new buildings and too many cars and fat boulevards. Rotterdam doesn't have shiny new buildings, although it does have too many cars. But both cities have one thing in common--the basis for their existence is money. In DC the problem is a surfeit of money and no way to spend it all, so all you see is one sparkly building after another (I'm talking about the area around the capitol, of course, and not the glaring povery on the wrong side of the tracks, as it were). In Rotterdam the problem is not enough money, so you see lots of stores trying to undercut each other, buildings built without any sense of style (a very Dutch trait, but one more prominent in Rotterdam than anywhere else), and no sense of cohesion into a whole.

The history of Rotterdam explains a lot about it: Rotterdam was one of the most heavily-bombed Dutch cities in World War II. After World War II the Dutch government didn't have much money to rebuild, so their criteria was, essentially, "anything that will stand". It was also a period where the right-wing Christians had a lot of power (read: Puritans), so the gaudy scrollwork that bedecks the houses in Amsterdam were frowned upon.

No, I can't say that I like Rotterdam much.

Stay-at-home moms creep me out

I have nothing against SAHM. Really. I swear. My own mother is a SAHM, and a good mom at that.

All the same, it is weird to go to say, the Albert Heijn and see nothing but these women buying food like bread and cheese and frozen pizzas for their families. After the first few times I avoided them by not going to the AH or the city center until after noon, when all of the kids start playing hooky.

Now that I've been gainfully employed for almost 2 years, the weirdness of SAHM has only hit me that much stronger. After having not seen them for eons, and then going into town yesterday (I have two days off thanks to the Carnival in Maastricht), was like entering the twilight zone again.

I suppose it's because I'm used to working. I don't have children. I don't want to be a SAHM, even after having kids. Being able to have a home life separate from a work life is comforting--I don't want my home life to be another job.

To Dyson, or not to Dyson?

We've been thinking about getting a new vacuum cleaner for a little while, now. Translation: for a few years.

The problem is less with the vacuum iteslf, which still sucks and is quite adequate in the perpetual war against dust bunnies and Leto-fur. The problem is with the attachments. They are quite literally being held together with packaging tape.

So now, you might be thinking, "Well, just get new attachments, then!" The issue, though, is less with finding the attachments, which can be bought during the Saturday markt, than it is with the price of the attachments, which is quite literally more than the vacuum itself is worth. My boyfriend paid all of €40 for the vacuum and everything with it a few years back; I can sort of understand why he'd balk at paying €50 for a bunch of plastic pipes.

The more globally-oriented reader will know that although Europe lags behind the US in terms of what's available, nevertheless things from the US eventually filter across the pond and thus standards of living and what's available in the stores remain more or less constant. You may have to go to seven different stores rather than one Wal-Mart, but if you want it, it can be found.

Which brings us to the Dyson.

Dyson commercials first popped up here the year before last. I'm sure Dyson would have made it here earlier, given the Dutch penchant for cleanliness, but for the fact that developing the canister-type vacuum took a little longer. Uprights, for some reason, are not popular here at all--indeed, they're almost as rare as a dog without fleas. Of course Dyson charges an insane amount of money for their product, even here: €400 for the canister model, but it promises to pick up everything!

My boyfriend and I went into town today to look over what was available. It was interesting: most vacuums could be had for around €150. And then there was the Dyson, which was €400--a little less if the store had a sale. At the heart of the difficult was whether or not it was worth the insane amount of money to buy the damn thing.

We still haven't managed to answer that question yet.

Mijn Nederlands Taalessen

Mijn Nederlands taalessen gaan wel. De klas gebeurd vroeg om maandag en woensday 's ochtends. Er zit 10-12 mensen in de klas.

It's funny. In my three years here I haven't manged to figure out the grammar, and while my understanding of the language is pretty decent, I still bungle speaking and all but the simplest writing. The vocab isn't that hard. I still do get words mixed up, but that's because, I think, I pay attention to stems and prefixes and suffixes, and so words that look similar get assigned similar meanings and then I get confused. Dutch grammar, on the other hand, is one huge-ass long rule list of rules and an even longer list of exceptions. But construction-wise, it's not that different from English (at least, compared to Spanish), so my lack of language is more from lack of practice than anything else. I work in an academic setting, so most people around me speak English, and I know enough simple Dutch to get around the ones that don't.

From what I understand, there is a panel of linguists that convene every few years to discuss what's "real" Dutch and what's not. I would imagine that these people make their living scanning the newspapers with a red pen in their hand, circling words that they didn't know existed, checking up with Van Dale (the dictionary of the Dutch language, complete with "het" and "de" in front of their nouns) and then making a list of noncompliant text examples. Then they convene and "tsk" over how much of other languages are polluting the purity of their beloved Nederlands but go about deciding which words get added to the language anyway.

Watching languages evolve is, I think, one of the more fascinating non-scientific pursuits--one that is a good deal more satisfying than, say, elaborating on the Bhuddist influence on Chaucer. You have to take into account the history, the influences, the ideas that wanted expression. Bill Bryson does a cursory job in Made in America but the English language practically begs to be abused, and if you're an American, you don't (according to Bryson's depiction of the fussy British) have the reverence for the sanctity of the language.

I wouldn't say that the Dutch are worried about the proliferation of English congnates in their language. The Dutch are very pragmatic people: a computer is a computer, and to call it by any other name would be a waste of breath. But they do want people who live in the country to know how to speak Dutch, and the individual steden (new vocab word, woohoo!) arrange language courses for newcomers that are free of charge, if you can prove that you have residence and can't pay for it. Many of the universities also give language lessons, and you can arrange for private tutoring if that suits you better, as well.

I do not understand people who pack their bags, move halfway around the world, and expect to continue living as if they were still back home. Who refuse to learn the language (or, in the case of Pakistani men in England, to let their wives learn the language, the better beat them into submission), refuse to learn about the culture, refuse to integrate--and then they wonder WHY they are so unhappy? I don't understand why people think it's society's job to integrate people who clearly want to spend their lives wallowing in misery. If they want to drown in their own despair, then let them! But for the ones who do want to learn the language, learn enough about their adopted culture to get along, at least, to get a job and work and earn a living and be happy--then they shouldn't be prevented from doing so.

This is actually a fairly big issue in the Netherlands. There are a fair number of immigrants living in the Netherlands--I think at last count some 10% of the populace was foreign-born. Who's responsible for integrating all of these noobs to the country, etc, and how can we make sure that none of these are suicide bombers, and so on. There aren't any easy answers--there never are, to these kinds of questions.