King’s Day and Climbing

Wednesday was the most important holiday of the Dutch calendar. It was the King’s birthday, called Koningsdag. It is a national holiday so everyone gets the day off from work and celebrates in the streets. Everyone dresses in orange (for the House of Orange), gets really drunk, and has yard sales/parties in the streets. We missed the festivities last year because we were visiting Hendrik’s grandmother in Germany so we were excited to experience it all this year. Unfortunately for us and most unfortunately for the Dutch the weather did not cooperate. Instead of a park full of happy Dutch people dressed in orange, we witnessed a few soggy, sad Dutch people trying not to give up in the nearly freezing rain.

On the bright side I got to go climbing on Thursday (first time since last Fall). My climbing buddies have been too busy buying a house, moving, and renovating recently but hopefully I have wrangled them back in.

Tiptoeing through the tulips

On Sunday I went on a folding bicycle tour of the tulips in Holland with some of the American and British folks from work. We took the train from Maastricht up to Amsterdam, then west to Haarlem. From there we formed a flotilla of folding bicycles and made our way to the coast at Zandvoort where I had a delicious lunch of fries and chicken saté (typical Dutch fast food, as influenced by their colony in Indonesia). Then we cycled along the North Sea for a bit before turning off to cross the sand dunes toward the tulip fields near Lisse. We found some amazing tulip fields that looked like someone has taken the brightest markers out of the box and drawn stripes of solid color across the earth. We wove our way through tulip fields until we made it to Leiden and stopped for dinner at Cafe Olivier where we found delicious Belgian beer and deep fried goat cheese salads. Then we took the train home. 50km total cycling -not bad!

The cadre of folding bicycles at the tulip fields (tulips €1 per bunch).

Nancy camouflaged in the tulips.

Museum Nacht Maastricht

On Friday, ten of the museums in town held a joint event with special exhibits. We went with our two new friends Zhiyi and Kristin to check it out. We got to make prints with historic printing presses, listen to spoken word poetry in a church-turned-bookstore and see some local photography. The winner for strangest piece of art is either a room of taxidermied fake conjoined twin animals dressed up in party jewelry and birthday hats or a naked man covered in thick layers of ketchup and mayonnaise. The smell was overwhelming. Either way we had a fascinating night.

Commence week two

I’m sitting in the train on my way to my second Monday at the bank. HR-hiccups aside, I’m very pleased with the job. The co-workers are very friendly and eager to help, and the team is an interesting mix: one from Italy with a PhD in theoretical physics, one from Hungary with a PhD in operations research, etc. I’m glad it is apparently typical to come in not knowing any financial mathematics.

The math is good too, I think. The entire point of the department is that we’re given time to carefully think through assumptions, models, and run simulations. It feels like a nice environment for doing applied math without too much pressure for output.

-Hendrik

Hendrik’s First Day and Other Short Stories

We have fallen a bit behind in posting so here are some updates.

Friday, April 1 was Hendrik’s first day of work as a banker. His introduction to the new job is proceeding slowly thanks to the lack of focus on customer service (even by HR) in this country. Despite the impeded progress through layers of bureaucracy, he seems to like the new work and his new colleagues.

Hendrik all grown up and dressed for work at a bank!

Saturday brought the first semblance of good weather in weeks and was duly celebrated with the first expat BBQ of the year. It was held by two of my colleagues who just bought a house so we all used the opportunity to give them both joke and serious housewarming gifts. Perhaps I will attempt to explain the joke gifts in a future post. They would not make sense without an explanation of the context of Dutch life.

Sunday was even sunnier, so despite light hangovers from Abbey Val Dieu beer from the BBQ, we cycled (55 km round trip) to Abbey Val Dieu for lunch.

This week has been the first full week with the new work schedule. Hendrik has to wake up a 5:30 and take the train for 2 hours to work. My schedule remains unchanged, but now includes the added hardship of making my own breakfast and carrying my own towel with me to the shower. How I long for the good old days when my doting husband helped me through my morning routine.

Hopefully I can get Hendrik to post more about his job soon. Until then this will have to do.