Portlandgiving

Last year, Paris. This year, Portland. Next year, Philadelphia? 

We had Thanksgiving with Hendrik’s parents in Portland. It was Hendrik’s first time home for Thanksgiving in twelve years. We made a delicious feast and stuffed ourselves as per tradition. I insisted on making pasta fruit salad, a strange family recipe from the Midwest that should hardly be called salad. It is right up there with mashed potatoes and gravy when I rank best Thanksgiving dishes. Everyone should experience it once, right?

Our Thanksgiving feast. Not pictured: pasta fruit salad.

We walked off enough of the overeating when we took Toby and Parker for a walk so we would have room for the pumpkin pie. We spent the rest of our long weekend relaxing and gorging on leftovers. In retrospect we should have planned a small weekend getaway, but we’re not used to having so little vacation and having to maximize use of our holiday weekends. I guess we will miss some things about the Netherlands.

The chaotic Thanksgiving dog walk (with their neighbor and his dogs too).

Bridgetown Bridges: The Fremont Bridge

Going upstream on the Willamette from St. John’s Bridge, the Fremont Bridge comes next. It compromises a large part of our view from our 9th floor condo so we’ve grown quite fond of it over the past few months. It is a double-decker, steel, tied-arch freeway bridge for I405 and US30. It is the second longest bridge of this style in the world and is tall enough that river traffic can pass underneath. 

The Fremont Bridge. Obviously we should try climbing it!

A few tidbits:

• It was an official nesting site for Peregrine falcons when they were put on the endangered species list. 
• Seattle has a Fremont Bridge too, but it is much smaller and less impressive (those copy-cats).
• Our neighborhood has adorable bike racks in the iconic shape of the Fremont Bridge. 

Nancy admiring the Fremont Bridge bike racks. 

Repatriation Ripples: Laundry

I think it will be interesting to document all of the small things I find strange about repatriating. First up: laundry. 

The washer and dryer cycles are so short here! My washer in the Netherlands had a regular wash cycle of 1 hour and 40 minutes. Then the dryer cycle was at least an hour and the laundry never seemed to get totally dry. If I forgot to wash something on the weekend, I was out of luck on Monday morning. There was no such thing as a quick load of laundry.

Now it seems like it takes less than an hour for washing and drying. I don’t know how anything can get clean during such a short cycle so I’ve taken to pre-soaking everything overnight. And of course, the load sizes are much larger here. 

Nancy’s 30th Birthday

Friday was my 30th birthday! After a busy day of work, we went out for a fancy birthday dinner and then home for cake. Hendrik bought a cake from Helen Bernhard, the bakery that made our wedding cake, and he had them duplicate one of the layers (flavors, colors, and all). It was delicious! We’ve been having cake for breakfast every day since.

Birthday cake!

On Saturday Hendrik took me out for Thai food and then to the symphony to hear Beethoven’s 2nd, John Adams’ Infinite Jest, and Hindemith’s Metamorphosis. The conductor gave a brief introductory speech. Based upon hearing his accent, Hendrik was able to pinpoint his birth place to within 100 miles in Germany near the Luxemburg border (later confirmed with Google.) I guess he gained a new superpower from our time in Europe. We enjoyed the music although according to Hendrik, Adams is a little too modern for his taste. It looked to me like the musicians were torturing their instruments during that piece. I guess we’re old fashioned. Makes sense now that we’ve both entered our forth decades.

Per Diem

Nancy’s fancy-scientist-relocation package included, among other wonderful things, a per diem for each of us. Combined with living downtown, this has given us an opportunity to explore the (excellent) Portland restaurant scene. 

There have been a lot of great places, but one stands out to us: Tasty n Alder. We’ve had dinner there twice now, and are excited to go back. The menu is thoroughly international and difficult to pin down, but we loved the Iberico pork and the brussel sprouts.

Hendrik

Portland Architecture

Here is our latest treasure from Powell’s Books: Classic Houses of Portland, Oregon 1850-1950. It seemed like just the perfect thing since we are house hunting.

The pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

As Hendrik flips through the pages, he says things like, “wait, I think I know that one,” and, “I used to walk past this one on my way to school.” The real jackpot was finding his parent’s neighbor’s house featured in the Arts and Crafts section. 

Now we can learn all about mullions and muntins and porticos and dormers!

Sighting: Amy in PDX

My next post was going to be another installment of Bridgetown Bridges, but due to artistic differences, the Hawthorne Bridge will have to wait it’s turn geographically. Therefore, we will have to feature my bad-ass sister, Amy, who last appeared in our stories about Montenegro. As soon as we moved back to the US, she set up a Google flight alert and was rewarded with cheap tickets for the weekend. We had a fun time working from home together on Thursday and Hendrik kept her company working from home Friday. Then the fun began; we took her house hunting with us and then to dinner at Por Que No. Ok, ok, so she didn’t think house hunting was fun, but she did enjoy the delicious Mexican food. Then she had to work more because apparently working for a start-up sucks away your soul and free time. Like a helpful, supportive sister, I went to sleep.

Saturday started with birthday cake and coffee, then Powell’s Books, Saturday Market, a walk along the river front, a visit to Loyly sauna, ramen for dinner at Pine Street Market, and then early to bed after such an exhausting day.  Sunday was a little calmer, with rock climbing, an Indian lunch buffet, and board games before returning her to the airport. Hopefully our not-so-secret plan of showing her how awesome Portland is so she’ll move here too is off to a running start (Amy, if you’re reading this, you should move here).

Nancy and Amy looking almost as dramatic as those clouds over the Portland skyline.

Halloween

For Halloween, we went over to Hendrik’s parent’s house to hand out candy with them. Hendrik and I dressed up as Star Trek characters. The children loved getting candy from a starship captain! Or maybe they just loved getting candy.

Nancy and Hendrik, Star Trek captains. 

We also got to show off our costumes last weekend when Hendrik’s friend, Cam, had a Halloween party. We met some new people, watched movies, and played murder-themed trivia. Most importantly, Cam was Han Solo and I got the most amazing photo of SciFi universe colliding:

The most perfect picture of Hendrik and Cam.