Twijfelen

Preparing for a recruitment event at the beach.

For the past 4 months I have been helping a friend expand his Personnel Placement company into the IT sector. The idea was to continue in his area of expertise (HR/Payroll/Contract Employees/Placement) and expand it into a more strategic role on the IT side. I set up my own company here in Holland, got all the tax information filed with the government, received permission to open a business bank account (probably the hardest of all these tasks), developed a web site, hired employees, brought clients on-board … the whole nine-yards. We’ve had a few successes – nothing earth shattering mind you, but we’ve been chugging along. But I have to admit that I’ve been bored senseless. There has been no strategic work, only assisting with HR requirements for IT personnel. A toad could do it.

Then two weeks ago I met with a new client, and somehow, almost miraculously, the ol’ “fire in the belly” was reignited. I met with the CEO and CIO and we talked about the company’s growth strategy and technology requirements. They took me into the heart of their operations, showing me all the systems under development. It caught me off guard how much I had missed it.

So now I’ve decided to test the waters in the Amsterdam market to see who might be interested in hiring someone like me. I put together an updated CV and took a quick look at the job postings on Monsterboard.nl. There are hundreds of positions….it’s a brutal market right now for employers. I found one particularly interesting one and sent them my CV.

Here comes the point of my story – I got a call from the British recruiter who is handling the position (and placed the advert in English). They said that the hiring company is very interested in my background, but that they require fluency in Dutch.

Godverdomme! Ik kan wel in het Nederlands in het park spreken, maar in een bedrijf? Met zakelijke taal? Daar ben ik niet zeker van.

Well, I lied and told her that I thought I could get by (she spoke no Dutch and was unable to test me) and I arranged a telephone interview with the company on Monday – in Dutch. Needless to say, it will be a stressful weekend. In some ways doing the interview over the phone will be easier because I can have a cheat sheet with definitions next to me, but in other ways the phone is always difficult, especially when the person doesn’t speak clearly and you can’t read body language.

But what the hell, right? You only live once and what is the worst that they can say? Your Dutch sucks? Well, I already knew that…

Wish me luck!

Dan

Norway

We took the second (and final) leg of our summer holiday last week. It was just a short hop up to the Norwegian city of Bergen and then we boarded a boat for the famous Sognefjord.

We spent two nights in Bergen, not realizing that the town was a major hub on the tourbus circuit. But we managed to avoid most of the August crowds and found a few gems amidst the tourist clutter. The old Bryggen wharf is rightfully listed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. This complex of old wooden buildings was great fun to explore and believe it or not, the cafés that are still remaining here were some of the cheapest and least over-run ones in the city.

We also took the cable train up the mountain to the famous city overlook. The views alone were worth the ride up, but the crowds thinned dramatically as we hiked into the surrounding forest. We walked for almost two hours without ever really knowing where we were going - the Norwegians could learn a lot from Belgium on how to properly mark a trail.

Which brings up an interesting, and completely unexpected observation … the Norwegian culture, at least on the western coast, was very disappointing to us. I first started feeling a little bit uneasy about it when we asked the cab driver on the way into town from the airport to point out anything special and the first thing that he mentioned was the local mall. Culturally, it went downhill from there for us. The people were friendly enough, but there was an underlying lack of sense of community that we’ve come to love in central or southern European countries.

But the natural beauty of this northern land is unparalleled. Bergen is beautifully situated in a natural harbor surrounded by mountains, but it only got nicer once we boarded the little boat for the “scenic” part of our trip. With a thick low-hanging cloud cover above us, we motored north through thousands of islands along the craggy western coast of Norway. This alone was scenic enough to meet my expectations, but when we rounded an inlet about an hour into the trip and pushed toward the mouth of The Sognefjord, I knew that I would be seeing the most spectacular scenery that I’ve ever seen in my life.

These photo’s don’t do it justice. The autofocus on my camera kept picking up stray bits of mist floating around and caused more than a third of my pictures to go to waste and the remaining ones to come across as dark and depressing, which it wasn't. But suffice it to say that if our mouths weren’t hanging open at the jaw dropping beauty, then they were wide with childish grins as we huddled against the dampness, not wanting to miss a single minute.

The harbor of Bergen.


Fish market.

View of Bergen from the top of the mountain. Paul and Gloria joined us to celebrate their wedding anniversary.

They start them young in Norway.

Bergen shopping.


Bryggen

In Bryggen's old streets

Entry to the Fjords

Any bit of flat land is used to build and farm on. It's a really hard way of life in the fjords. There is very little road access. The kids even go to school by boat.

The famous narrows...all that's missing is the cruise ship coming through.

This is the small fjord and farm of Finnabotn. The farm is now used as a guesthouse.

We've only seen this clarity of water reflection one other time in our lives. It was almost disorienting it was so clear.

Heidi? A nice hike in the mountains above Finnabotn with waterfalls cascading all around us.

This boat was also owned by our captain. To put the scale of the mountains into perspective, this boat holds more than 100 passengers (ours held 10).


The small village of Undredal. It got it's first road service only 20 years ago. What a fantastic setting! And the brown carmelized goat cheese found only here is delicious.

A lonely sailboat. We mostly had the fjord to ourselves, which surprised us for August.

We stopped at another farm that has been the same family for more than 500 years. With a waterfall like that right behind your house, why would you sell?

A nice bike ride to stretch the legs on one of our village stops.

The bus ride back to Bergen was also very scenic. The switchbacks up from the road seen below were amazing!

For anyone interested, the complete set of photo's can be found at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/dglasstetter/Norway

Dancing on the volcano

Since the night several weeks ago in Zimbabwe where we danced the night away to everything from traditional African tribal music to traditional Bon Jovi (whooohooo!), we’ve found ourselves more and more frequently out on the dance floor (or street) with friends, whooping it up and dancing late into the night.

As I said, it all started in Africa, but it continued the very first night that we were back in Holland. We ran into our friends Patrick and Sheila in the park and they told us that they had extra tickets for De Dijk, a very well known Dutch band that is a favorite from the late 80’s early 90’s. The band was playing Friday night at the amphitheater in our local wandelpark Caprera. Little did we know what we had signed up for when we accepted their invitation.

There were 7 of us at the show and apparently one of the infamous traditions of attending a Dijk concert is to drink bottle after bottle of really, really bad rose wine. But the sweet Boone's Farmish wine did help to prime us for when the band took the stage and the entire audience jumped to their feet. It felt more like a sing-along as everyone joined in, singing and dancing to well known favorites. Of course Beth and I had never heard any of the songs before and couldn’t understand a word of the garbled Dutch. But the music was great and the crowd’s enthusiasm was infectious so we just faked it, joining in like it was Don McLean’s American Pie. It poured down rain half way through the concert, but somehow that just added to the ambiance and we kept dancing and singing until the last encore.

The following weekend we biked over to Bloomendaal Jazz, a large street party in a chic little village about 3 km from us. Beth and I were just aimlessly wandering around between the different events and bands when we stumbled across Linke Soep - a really great 80’s/90’s coverband. They were playing a wide variety of music, mostly sung by their female vocalist. (U2 with a female lead…but it somehow worked). We quickly picked up the beat and pushed our way up to the stage where we spent the rest of the evening dancing on the old cobbled streets.

We liked Linke Soep enough to follow them the next weekend up to another village festival in less chic Santpoort. Our friend Esther came into town from Eindhoven and Sean and Sandra joined us as we all biked the 5 KM up to the village street party. The band was playing in a crowded little bar, but we still managed to stake out enough space to dance with the rest of the farmers. What a hoot!

And just last weekend I won the ‘husband of the year’ award by joining Beth back over at Caprera for ABBA Mania. This was an embarrassingly enjoyable show, complete with platform shoes and glitter hair. The band only let us sit for their intro piece, then they got everyone onto their feet and we found ourselves once again bouncing up and down the amphitheater - this time under a crystal clear night sky.

And one of the nicest things that we’ve noticed at all of these events is that we never stand out as 'the old farts' in the audience. In fact, we’re right at about the middle age bracket of the people who go to these types of things over here. I remember at the Bloemendaal festival taking a moment to look around at 11:00 pm. There were children splashing in a nearby fountain, teenagers dancing and trying to cop a mutual feel, loads of 30-40 - 50 somethings dancing, drinking and talking in groups, and quite a few senior citizens also swaying/bopping to the music – yes, even to the likes of Joan Jett.

And our favorite annual street festival is yet to come...Aug 18... Haarlem Jazz.

Ahhh….summer in Holland.