vooruitgang/progress

Week three and finally, progress! Hmm, now that I said it three weeks doesn't seem like a lot of time but when you are impatient like me, it's forever! I've been duking it out nearly everyday with a list of people and waiting impatiently thanks to persons on another list. Last week things were finally moving forward.

The good thing about waiting is that we've quickly settled into our new routines. Mine is total hausfrau, his is student. R wakes well before I do and does who knows what as he gets ready for school. But he does one thing for me which I happily notice each morning, he opens the curtains.

I usually wake to the sound of the door locking as R leaves, get on my slippers and tidy up (usually put away the dried dishes and whatever mess was left from the day before). I'm usually a barefeet kinda girl but the floors get pretty cold at night.

Then I get out breakfast (typically one of the following: soft boiled egg/whole grain bread w butter and honey/sliced apple w cheese cubes and walnuts) always with green tea and always in front of the laptop. I spend my morning sitting at the dining table (it's four chairs long) facing our backyard (this is where open curtains are key) and catch up on my email accounts and google reader. For those of you who haven't discovered it yet, can I recommend reader? Love it, it links into all my news sites (NY Times, Kurier, DutchNews, etc) and friends blogs so I don't have to look it all up separately and get a great summary of what's new.

The rest of the day while R is away I usually spend taking care of little household details, my trip to the grocery store, a walk around the neighborhood or to the park and catching up w family and friends on skype. At night we eat dinner together and catchup, before bed we do the dishes and check into the same e-accounts again. It's still nice and cozy now but I'm expecting to get really bored of it within the week.

Tuesday is market day, Friday I take care of all the groceries for the weekend to avoid Saturday madness and Fridays I also typically meet up with some of the other wives and girlfriends of the MBA students. Friday nights we go out with some of the students. Friday nights we also pull out the oh so uncomfortable sofa bed in the living room. We call it "camping out". It's not the most comfortable sleep but we catch up on TV shows via ch131 (Hulu not allowed outside the US, insert sad face) or watch rented movies and sleep in. Our living room is in the middle of the apartment so it's also darker and quieter there which makes it great for catching up on lost weekday sleep. Saturdays we go to the market, then R does his best to finish school work because Sundays are just for the two of us. Sunday mornings are my favorite, R is the "Sunday-morning breakfast guy" and has perfected the morning meal. Then we get out of the house. This week it was checking out our local gym, a visit to one of Rotterdam's museums and the movies.

Progress all finally happened on Friday. That was 1. my landlord stopped by on her way to Switzerland (coming from Argentina) she fixed the TV, picked up her mail and answered some questions. It was cool meeting her face-to-face, she was super sweet and I was happy to have a non-email conversation with her. 2. the stuff we shipped finally cleared payment and customs so a delivery date was finally set (this one was a rather painful battle) 3. I received my So-Fi number!!!!! This is my Dutch social security number, which means I finally get to: open a bank account, get a contract for a cellnumber, get health insurance (ie get a bike), get a job (ie get income to pay for all of the above), sign up for Dutch lessons, be a real functioning person!

Which also means my blissfully easy chill schedule above is about to change. Fine by me. Tomorrow our stuff arrives which means I can also sign up for a gym membership because stuff = workout clothes and running shoes. Progress!

Now if only I could get Nikon to fix my damn camera...

Dutch friend

I have a Dutch friend! I only met her once. For drinks. But we've been emailing love letters to each other all week.

Yay locals!

Dutch zelfrijzend Banana Bread

I have a big fat binder full of tried and true recipes I've collected over the years. Trying to travel with little weight I decided to leave it in storage when we moved. In it is a frequently used banana bread recipe. When I noticed I had enough overly ripe bananas for bread I realized that recipe probably wouldn't have done much good anyway since European recipes tend to rely on weight measurements, not cups and spoons. I have a nice big scale in our kitchen here and neither of those cups and spoon sets so European-version recipe it was.

I googled up a new banana recipe and found one in German that sounded nice. This one uses yogurt, something I had wanted to try in my breads and muffins anyway (and we had some in the fridge). I went to the store, picked up the last missing ingredients, came home and got to work. Banana bread is pretty easy, so there really isn't much work. I just had to get used to using the scale and since I wanted to try out the convection oven, did a little math to compensate.

I also wanted to adjust the recipe slightly to add some of my own favorites: chopped walnuts, chocolate flakes and vanilla. I found vanilla sugar at the store, have never used it before but figured hey, substitute for some of the sugar right?

Cut to the mess you see pictured above.

Now, I'm really good at following a recipe. Promise. And I was looking forward to that banana bread. But any number of things could have gone wrong here. Never having used it before, I probably shouldn't have gone for the convection setting. I double checked all my calculations but the scale in the kitchen could be off. Was it the vanilla sugar? The baking powder I bought actually said "baking powder" in english so that couldn't be it. The eggs were very fresh. The flour...oh.

The label on the bag o flour I had picked up read "zelfrijzend bakmeel" or as I like to say "self-rising flour". The kind where when you use it, you DO NOT want to add baking powder and salt or if you instead have the all-purpose kind you want to add baking powder and salt. I grabbed whatever was prominently on display on the shelf (much like you find the all-purpose kind in the US) and for the first time ever didn't really read my label (see: things you don't want to do in your second week of living in a foreign country). And then I added baking powder and salt basically doubling the effect.

Go me!

European recipe vs Doris: 1:1

and here are the wellies today

It was 45F/7C today! I had been waiting for it to warm up so I could clean up the garden a bit so today I pulled on my boots for the second time in Rotterdam and got to work. This was probably my first time doing outdoor work since reaching adulthood. Crazy. The boots were way muddier but I had cleaned them up a bit already before taking the photo. The cat in the background is examining the dead bird I somehow had a feeling I'd find. (My intuition has been spot on lately, wish it weren't)

When I felt I had done enough for a day I poured myself a glass of wine, took a seat in my now clean lawn chair and read a chapter in my latest read. Definitely my favorite apartment ever.

eerste regenachtige dag/first rainy day

I get so excited when it rains. Gives me a good excuse to pull out my wellies! Lucky for us the rain held off until after our trip to the market. This was my second trip and R's first. We walked which is about a nice half hour's walk. The past two days have been warmer so the sheet of death ice that's covered Rotterdam since we've been here has disappeared. Cannot tell you how happy that makes us.

We met up with a classmate of R's last night. He is German, but lived in Canada a while so his German accent is similar to mine (nada) and his girlfriend is Dutch (woohoo!). I had a nice long list of questions for her. As per previous post, turns out Holland was not prepared for the amount of ice it's been getting so streets have been covered in it because they are low on their salt supplies. She also recommended a good butcher and gave us some suggestions for street food at the market.

The market is held Tuesdays and Saturdays. We nibbled our way around and kept running into other classmates and their wives. I went home a happy girl with a big armful of tulips for 4 Euro (about $5.75) for the house. The temperature took quite a drop on our walk back so I made up some more of that soul-warming hot cocoa. The rain started just as R was about to leave for another Uni event. I pulled on my boots and walked him out to get the rest of the groceries we needed for the weekend. (Grocers here are closed on Sundays.) Now, listening to the rain hit our skylights, I'm getting ready to start a movie (got my DVD rental membership this week!) and pop some popcorn on the stove. We were out til about 3am yesterday so this is a perfect Saturday ending for me.

Happy weekend!

Spruitjesschotel met ham en kaas/Brussels sprout w ham and cheese

The temperature finally went up a bit and the last few days of snow created a nice crunchy layer on top of the ice so I decided to walk to the grocery store the long way. Week two and R was at school, I had unpacked and done as much as I could errand wise so this second Monday in Rotterdam I could finally spend a good few hours getting to know my local grocery store. Yes, this is what I do, I am food obsessed so I like to sight-see grocery stores around the world.

My local grocery store is one of the Albert Heijn chain, the Netherlands' biggest grocery chain. I had been a few times already (okay, almost everyday) but hadn't taken the time to really browse yet. It's about seven blocks from my house and I do my grocery shopping nearly every day 1. to make sure I get out of the house and do at least a little bit of walking each day and 2. I hate to fill the fridge w food only to forget and let it rot away, I try to plan my meals each day which works great as my cravings change constantly. But mostly because 3. try carrying home a weeks worth of groceries w/out car or bike and no muscles.

The first thing that caught my eye was one of those recipe stands. You know, the marketing-trick free recipe cards that list all the store brand ingredients? Totally fell for it. So tonight I made my first Dutch-ish dish (not a traditional Dutch food but the recipe was in Dutch). Thanks to Dutch being so similar to German I only had to look up a few words. Google translate has become my new best friend.

I picked this recipe because I had already had Brussels sprouts at home. And here I'm going to stop for a little shout out to my in-laws. Until I met R I had never had Brussels sprouts but thanks to his parents (it's something you can always count on finding at their house) I've been hard at work making up for my 25 years without them.

This recipe was quick (thanks to getting suckered into buying all my ingredients prepared). I don't like button mushrooms so I substituted mini bellas but the rest was the same. I read the directions to R out loud in my best attempt at Dutch. Horrible for R who was trying to study. My spit from overdoing the guttural pronunciations kept hitting him in the back of the head. Free shower! The meal, we loved and being so hungry didn't get a photo of it so you'll have to enjoy the one I stole from the AH website.

This meal we dedicated to our parents. With the much loved T family vegetable paired w a bottle of white my parents had given us for Christmas, how could we not enjoy our first home-cooked meal without thinking of them? And without whom we'd have had a hard time getting here (my parents, who literally got us up to Rotterdam and R's parents for housing all our junk in their garage for the year we are gone.) Thanks guys!

So, enough schmalz, back to that grocery store. Things to notice: 1. the Dutch love prepared ingredients. And this is nothing like those jars of pre-minced garlic you find in US groceries. Here you have packages including all the ingredients for various meals (local and ethnic) or each ingredient separately packaged: from rationed cashews to sauces to marinated already cut meats and julienned vegetables to already boiled rice and pre-peeled potatoes)see Brussels sprouts recipe. 2. The cheese section is heaven. The wall is covered with big fat golden yellow wheels of cheese. I dare you leave without buying a chunk. (more on cheese later) 3. The meat and fish sections are just okay, for this and baked goods the advice is to go to the specialty stores where quality and value are better and the meats are cut to your liking. I have yet to find a good butcher around here but there is a fishmonger next door to our Albert H. 4. the eggs can be found on shelves (not in your refrigerated section).

But the best part will be looking forward to the open air market tomorrow!

Dutch process hot cocoa: feels like 16F (-9 C)

On a day that felt like our coldest day here yet, the only thing that felt right was to go home and make ourselves big hot cups of hot chocolate. I had done a lot of walking during the day to hit my errands, my face felt frozen solid. Then later in the evening I met R at his Uni for a social event they were hosting. When all was over we walked home which took about half an hour. Cold cold cold! My mind was focused on the box of Dutch process chocolate I had bought earlier that week.

At home I heated milk for two (gas stove on medium-low so not to burn the milk) and set out two of the XXX large sized mugs stacked in the cupboard. Once the milk was heated and distributed among the mugs I whisked in one heaping teaspoon of the powdered chocolate into each mug, followed by a smaller heap of sugar (plus some extra for adjusting). Mmmm. Best cup of hot chocolate ever.

Okay, so being the info geek I am I had to look up what Dutch process actually meant. And it's a little boring so wikipedia it yourself if you're interested but basically what you know as chocolate today is thanks to a processes developed by two generations of Dutch chocolatiers in the 1800's."Dutching" basically makes for a darker, more mellow chocolate.

The brand I bought was the Blooker brand. They are one of the oldest cocoa producers in the Netherlands (since 1814) and definitely get my recommendation.

I found some photos of an abandoned part of the original Blooker factory here. And in the Amstel business park there is now a restaurant/cafe Blooker in a replica of the original janitor's building.

Things we miss

My father-in-law sent me this photo this morning. It's the sun setting in Aruba. We had booked our flights and hotel for the same trip but had to cancel once we learned R was accepted at Erasmus University. The MBA program started the week of Josh's wedding.

Josh was R's best friend growing up, he lived just down the street from R's family and the entire families are friends w each other. We get to see them every Thanksgiving. Josh was R's best man at our wedding and Tracy keeps me entertained at the beach house whenever the boys get together to work on their album. You can imagine how upset R was when he realized he had to cancel attending the wedding. We hope we got to make up for it somewhat when we celebrated with them a little just before we left for Europe.

R has pretty much lived in the same area most his life (never further than about 300 miles) so this is all new to him. Me, I've lived all over, as have my friends, so I've missed quite a bit of the good and the bad over the years. It never gets easier.

So today is Josh and Tracy's wedding day. We wish them all the best and send them loads of love. We're here for support and to cheer you on, no matter how far we get. Always!

xoxo

It's 11pm, run the dishwasher!

In Rotterdam we have two electric meters. A day meter and a night/weekend meter. Why? Nights from 11pm - 6am, and weekends electricity is half off. So the Dutch typically wait until then to run their washers, dryers and other heavy electricity use items. Consider us in.

Desperately seeking local friend

Okay, maybe I'm not desperate, just curious. I have a growing list of questions for a local:

- why aren't the sidewalks de-ice'd? R and I have been slipping all over Rotterdam. In Austria and New York, regardless of whether that sidewalk in front of your property is city owned or private, that job to keep the sidewalk safe is yours. Do they not want salt in their waterways? An article I found on a Dutch news-site yesterday might be the answer. It was about the impending salt shortage for de-icing highways and low supplies for consumers who want to use it on their property. Also of low supply: ice skates. Even though officials are warning not to ice skate yet (the frost is still too young to allow for safe skating on the canals) ice skates are nearly sold out and tours are already being booked for skating tours. A friend in Vienna told us about this. The villages here are pretty close together and it's possible to skate the canals from village to village. Put that on the to-do list!

- what's with the lack of curtains? Our neighborhood, Kralingen, is really just made up of apartments (typically three stories tall) and not many shops. Most living room windows sit right on the sidewalk. And yet a drawn curtain is a rare find. Residents live out their lives in full display, expensive electronics, old antiques, and all. As I pass someone at their window, I notice they don't really look out their window or seem to notice any pedestrians walking by. R told me he and a friend were once in Amsterdam and had to do a double take after walking one particular window. A very naked man was standing at his window. He was still there when they walked back. I guessed maybe they really want to make the most of natural light.
One of the expat guides the school gave R reads "It is customary to leave the front-room curtains open day and night so everyone can look in. Yet on the other hand, no Dutch person would dare stare into the front window of another." (I guess the exception is the Red Light District in Amsterdam?) A nice change from the Viennese public transport system, where it feels like every person is staring you up and down for the duration of the ride.
I mentioned this while catching up with a friend on skype. An ex-boyfriend of hers was obsessed with Dutch architecture. Use of natural light was important she said and it was important not to feel one had anything to hide. A nice philosophy yes, but I can think of two former Amsterdam tourists who would definitely disagree!

-Why all the sheep? We drove to Delft on our first day (I'll admit, our first visit in Holland was to Ikea...the ladies will understand, the apartment didn't have a closet!). Loved our first glimpse of the countryside: v flat, loads of farmland (or as my dad said, "So this is Holland...flat and full of sh*t), lots of canals, and sheep everywhere. One of Holland's biggest exports is cheese made with cows milk and I don't know of Holland as a big wool export, so just curious about their importance here.

- Street food? There seem to be plenty of options: from fried goods, fish, fries with mayo to ethnic foods from former and current Dutch colonies. What's a must and where are all the best places? In Manhattan we could google "vendy awards" to find the results of the annual food vendor winners. They were always on point.

- Trips to the grocery store. I'd love to go to the grocery store just once with a local. 1-To help read labels. 2-to make recommendations on key ingredients for typical dutch meals. Our first grocery store trip I asked a lady for help reading milk carton labels. The one I had picked, she explained, was actually a sour tasting milk (something like buttermilk?) which most foreigners didn't like, but she said was refreshing in the summer. It'll be something to look forward to.

Semmel and salt

We've arrived! We drove up from Austria Saturday (Jan 2) and unlocked our door somewhere around 1:30am Sunday morning. The drive was hellish, we were supposed to lunch with family friends in Köln (along the way) at around 1:30 (and get to Rotterdam 2.5hrs after saying goodbye to them) but didn't get there until 7:30pm, a full 12 hours after leaving Austria. Saturday is the day ski resorts end their week, the old guests leave and the new ones arrive. Great information to have had before planning our drive. That and we woke up to fresh fallen snow and a bit of ice so leaving our sleepy little alpine village was slow to begin with. It started snowing heavily at midnight, during what was supposed to be the last hour of our drive, slowing us down again. So we ended our day the same way we began it, in pitch black darkness, with fresh fallen snow and our belongings in suitcases.

My parents really helped out by driving us up and getting us started. Our apartment came furnished but we were missing a few items and the fridge and pantry were empty so took advantage of having a car Sunday. After the trip to the grocery store my parents presented us with the plate above: a semmel (German for bread roll) and salt. They explained it was Austrian tradition to present this to the new homeowner/tenant as a token of good luck.

We awoke Monday morning to find them carrying their suitcases out to the car. They were going to spend the rest of the week in Germany on business before heading back home.

They helped a lot but it was nice to have the place to ourselves and get to know the sounds and feel of the place as we went about settling in and going through our daily routines.

We were initially nervous about the place, we had picked it based on online photos. Then the moment of truth: R carried me over the threshold and we took a quick walk-through before my parents were in. It's definitely charming and has a few problem areas (which we hope will get fixed) but we love it. I have my first backyard in 11 years (which is HUGE for me!) and we were also happy to find we had our own basement, with laundry and plenty of storage and room for a root cellar. Walking around our tiny backyard I discovered a door next to the shed leading out to a path behind our row of houses, connecting also the row of houses behind us. I couldn't open it because we have a big heap of cut-down shrubbery blocking the door but our realtor told us this connects to an exit onto the street and is used so residents can take their bikes back onto property and store them in the sheds, preventing the need to carry them in through the house out the front door. She's going to talk to our landlord and see about removing the cuttings.

So far we've unpacked our suitcases and are now waiting for the items we shipped. I'll post pictures of the place soon. Unfortunately I dropped my camera a few weeks before leaving New York so Nikon has my lens for repair. Until then I'm using my crappy little point and shoot.

More soon!