It was a little weird being ‘home’. First of all, it’s hard to call a place home when you don’t live there, even if all your friends are there and you’ve spent a significant chunk of your life there. When you’re driving around in a rental car, and you have Read more
Let’s say you get a new debit card in the mail and have to activate it, how would you normally expect that to be done? You call the number on the back, punch in your card number, maybe punch in some personal info, and voila, done right? See, this is Read more
I’m sitting in Hartsfield airport in Atlanta. I’m halfway through my trip home. It’s my first official trip home as an expat. At first this was just going to be an extended business trip, I needed to go through Newark to get to New Orleans for a business meeting. I Read more
For those of you who ever wondered, the maximum amount of times that one can safely shop at IKEA without experiencing IKEA Overload, is twice a month. Yesterday Ann and I took our fourth trip in as many weeks to freaking IKEA. We rented a car from Avis in Dordrecht Read more
Ann and I have met five neighbors so far. All of them had to be over 65. A few of them were in the 70s I think. I think Ann and I brought the average age of that apartment block down about 20 years when we stepped in. At least Read more
This weekend we moved into our new apartment. Here are some of the highlights: Four appliances came Friday morning. I succeeded in getting them out of the packaging, but after that I reached the limits of my usefulness. Ann’s dad and Mieke came about around 11:00am to help us out. Read more
So we went to IKEA last night and dropped 1,100 Euros on furniture for our new pad. Couches. Dining room table. End table. Rug. Bed. Mattress. Bathroom rack. Entertainment center. Our place is goign to be an IKEA model home. The thing is, we were supposed to eat at the Read more
The election is coming. It is less than a week away. It dominates every newspaper headline, it is on every newscast of every Dutch, German, and Belgian TV channel that we get. There are more articles about who’s leading in the polls than any other topic. Even an ocean away Read more
Ever since moving here Ann and I have noticed a certain distinct and pervasive sense of Dutch ‘style’. Simply put: the Dutch wear things that in almost all other cultures would surpass acceptable fashion limits. When put into the larger context of their country’s historically inclusive and tolerant culture it Read more