Utrecht

We’re excited to own a washer and dryer.

I spoke in the geometry seminar in Utrecht. It’s a very fun campus:

With a large botanical garden:

I think my talk went well. It’s a great department and everyone was very friendly.

-Hendrik

Unpacking and Settling In

The movers set up and reassembled all of our furniture on Friday and we spent the weekend unpacking boxes and organizing the apartment. We also went to the Gemeente (town hall) and registered at the new address. The washer and dryer arrived on Saturday and we tested them out washing curtains since the previous occupants had cats and Hendrik is allergic. Everything worked as expected.

The apartment is nearly in livable condition now. We are only lacking two things: light fixtures and internet. The internet is installed in two weeks and I have to figure out the light fixtures myself. I watched a YouTube video to learn how to install them and I thought I knew what I was doing until I went to actually do it and discovered that there are no screws and everything looks totally different! As of now, we can really only spend daylight hours at the apartment, but at least it is teaching us to appreciate the glorious natural light we get from our west-facing windows in the evenings.

Moving day!

Some very friendly and competent movers brought our stuff in today:

We saw the truck making its escape:

Rather than use the elevator, they set up a small elevator thing of their own to bring things up to a balcony on the third floor, then down the hall to our apartment:

Tomorrow we get our washer and dryer. Hopefully also our coffee machine!

-Hendrik

Bicycling in België

On Monday, to avoid the trains packed with Carnaval revelers, Meredith showed me a bicycle route home from work. It reminds me of the best way to get from southern Idaho to northern Idaho: drive through Montana! Except in this case I was going from work to home in the Netherlands and the route went through Belgium, or België as the Dutch call it. The bike path runs along the Belgian side of the Maas river and the countryside is beautiful with bare winter trees, bright green fields and a chilly blanket of fog. The route is 11 miles and I was certainly ready for dinner when I made it home.

So far I’ve taken a different commute home each day this week: bicycle, train + bicycle, and presumably train + bus today. I’ll have to think of something creative for tomorrow.

Setting up shop

We’ve now ordered the basic ikea furniture and washer/dryer for our new apartment. On Valentine’s day, we had a small picnic in our still-empty apartment:

Hopefully we can finally have some peace and quiet after this supposed last night of carneval. Now an unrelated picture.

-Hendrik

The song that never ends

From one of our new bedroom windows, we can see how a taller building gets stuff in and out of apartments (see crane and box): Carnival is in full swing. Madness. Part of the experience, as one friend showed us, is to order a beer in a glass at one bar, walk out into the street and then into another bar with it.

Every year has its own song. This year:

After careful consideration (and staring at the Mestreech-dialect lyrics), I suspect that the song is heavily laden with innuendo.

-Hendrik

How do you say “huis” anyway?

Carnaval officially starts today, so of course last night as part of the pre-Carnaval celebration, the population took to the streets in costumes with marching bands and consumed outrageous amounts of alcohol and snacks. We joined a group of my coworkers at some bars downtown. Despite the size and rowdiness of the crowd, the beers were served in real glasses and apparently there is no open container law, because people overflowed onto to the streets and carried their beers around with them from bar to bar and in the streets and squares.

Prior to our Carnaval festivities, we had our first Dutch lesson. We learned how to pronounce the different letters and combinations and I spent a lot of the time giggling because I am so bad a making the right sounds. The hardest ones are “g”  which is soft + guttural, “r” which has to be rolled in the back of your throat, “k” which has to be heavily emphasized, “ui” which I don’t understand well enough to explain, and “ooi” and “aai” because who needs three vowels in a row? On the bright side, we were very good at the listening comprehension part of the lesson because a lot of the words were the same as English or German.

We also go the keys to our new apartment! We’re excited to get started with the move.

– Nancy

Context

This week Hendrik has been away in Hamburg so I’ve been left to fend for myself. I haven’t bothered to go grocery shopping so I’ve been eating from food stands. My meals have consisted of pastries, fried rice, and my absolute favorite, dürüm dönner met friet, which is basically a Turkish wrap with shaved seasoned beef, fries, tzatziki sauce, and veggies. Note the lack of Dutch food.

This morning on the train I failed for the first time at not admitting I don’t speak Dutch. I can always tell from context what I am being asked even if I don’t understand a single word. Since they are normally yes or no questions like “is this your stop?” I can get away with nodding or shaking my head. Today, although I understood the question, it required more that a nod, so I blew my cover and spoke English since I didn’t want the fellow to take the wrong train. It is truly amazing how much context matters in understanding language.

Salsa

When I got home from work 15 minutes ago, both of these were full.

The salsa was decent; best we’ve found. So it’ll have to do. Hendrik also found the most delicious bread in the world at the market today. Now we’re eating it with Camembert for dinner.

-Nancy

Turned my collar to the cold and damp

I’m currently regretting doing the train/bicycle commute today. This morning was ok at -4C, but now even though the weather report says it is only 0C, I’m about to freeze to death. Not sure if there is more humidity or if my phone is lying to me about the temperature.

We signed the apartment lease yesterday, we get the key next Friday, and the movers are scheduled to come the week after that. We started looking at second hand furniture stores and it looks like they have some pretty nice stuff with the option for reasonably priced delivery.

Things at work are getting more interesting. I finally have access to most of the programs and systems I need to function and my project goals are becoming clearer. Today I even met with some of the business people to talk about their perspective on our research department.

Now that life is a little more settled, the next question is: should I buy a folding bicycle, a vespa, or a car?