Crisp changes

As I sit to type this week's blog entry, hail and rain are whipping against both the front and back windows of the house. Winter-like weather has finally been reaching The Netherlands as a violent North Sea storm crashes into the coast. The rest of Europe (outside of Spain) is also getting hammered - the Austrian Alps received over 1 meter of snow last weekend.

What makes it even harder is that just last week we were still entrenched in crisp fall weather highlighted by brilliant leaf colors. It seems like the changes are coming fast and furious and it might be a good time to step back and reflect on which direction we'd like to go.

An ancient road through the North Sea dunes. We walk this trail almost daily but have just learned that it was established in the 13th century. You can almost imagine a lone horseback rider trotting quietly along, glancing warily into the forest.


A classic landgoed (estate) with long, broad and well organized paths that is now converted into a city park.

I hesitated to post this photo because it carries such a strong pop-culture connotation of religion, but the sun cutting through the colorful trees spilling light onto the approaching intersection was too perfect to pass up. Take what you want from it...as long as it helps you choose your own path.

Rijbewijs (rye-ba-vise)

Part I. The theory exam

Today’s blog entry is the first of two segments that are going to take you down memory lane into what, for most of you, was the distant past. Think way, way, way back to when you were just learning to drive a car. Of course back then you were excited with all the possibilities that being able to drive would offer – riding into town and cruising the streets with friends, road trips out to the state parks, parking with a girlfriend off Myers School Road. But let’s not forget the hassles associated with those exciting times - learner’s permit, eye test, written exam, then culminating with the actual driving exam in the little enclosed circuit behind the police station. Let’s be honest. It was all a bit stressful. At least that is how it was for me. 25 bloody years ago!

Well, guess what? I recently had the pleasurable opportunity to relive those youthful days. To re-experience the excitement and anticipation. To once again officially learn to drive.

I started this exciting process in July and I had until November 15, 2007 to complete it. That is when my US driver’s license would expire.

First, let me tell you that driving here in Holland is a complete and total nightmare. If you are not sitting in a 20Km traffic jam on the A2 (inevitably somewhere in the vicinity of Utrecht) then you are stuck in a 50 car backup on a main thoroughfare right here in Haarlem while a Leen Bakker truck is triple parked for 30 minutes to unload new merchandise into the store – which by the way is a perfectly legal thing to do over here. Bicycles, pedestrians, mopeds, motorcycles, horses, trucks, tractors, trams, carts, etc. are all considered road users and there is an obscure and complicated set of rules that dictate right-of-way and proper procedures for each of these users under every imaginable set of circumstances.

Needless to say, there is an entire industry built up around helping people to navigate these rules and successfully obtaining a Dutch driver’s license. It’s a two part process. First you have to pass the Theory Exam then you have to pass the Practical Exam.

For someone who has driven 25 years, three of which have been right here on the mean streets of Holland, it should be a simple proposition, right? I already had it all figured out…

The first thing that I did was to call the largest driving school in the region – Sprang & Tempo, for advice. I see their cars on the streets all the time and thought that they would be the best choice. They listened to my situation (in Dutch) and set up an appointment for an evaluation drive later that week, saying that they needed to assess my skills before they could advise me on what I should do.

“Ok,” I thought. “I’ll dazzle them with my 25 years of experience and they’ll recommend that I go straight to the exams. 1, 2, done in a week.”

Well, it was embarrassing enough when the neighbors saw the “Loser” car pulled up in front of our house to pick me up (the school cars all have a big “L” on the roof and are the frequent butt of jokes by us, er, licensed drivers), but it was even worse when I saw who I had for an instructor. I had been driving longer than this kid had been alive.

It quickly turned ugly. Our one hour session was filled with this little punk chastising me for everything from lingering with my right hand on the gear shift a bit too long to turning the steering wheel while the car was not in motion. When the session was over he explained to me that it was obvious that I knew how to drive, but that I needed to learn how to pass the exam and these were two very different things. He recommended that I take 6 one-hour lessons before scheduling the practical exam. I was flabbergasted and spoke up in protest. He repeated his point, saying that I would never pass the exam in the manner that I had just driven. It was that simple.

But even more importantly, I must first pass the Theory Exam. It wasn’t even worth moving forward until I had obtained that certificate. On that point I agreed. He said that he would send me the Rules and Regulations Manual and Self-Study Guide, including 8 practice exams in the mail. “Please call us back when you have the certificate.”

Three days later all of the material arrived. I was pleasantly surprised to see that he had found an English version of the traffic manual and quickly dove into the 168 page text.

I could go on for hours about that damned manual and all the ridiculous levels of minutiae that are contained in it, but for your sake I won’t. Suffice it to say that I read every page and memorized what I thought were the important points - like braking distances, right-of-way rules, and speed limits.

After another three days of studying I sat down to take my first practice exam. The exams are 50 questions each and you are allowed to miss up to 6 questions and still pass.

By the time that I answered the last question on my first practice exam, I knew that I was in serious trouble. There had been at least 8 completely obscure questions in the exam covering everything from the flag configuration on a Military Convoy to the difference between stopping on the side of the road to get cash from an ATM machine versus stopping to deliver a package. Well, at least the “normal” questions had gone pretty good, right? The ones about right-of-way and highway merging and speed limits on country roads were straight forward, weren’t they?

I turned to the answer key and started checking my answers. Holy Shit! 14 questions wrong!

Not only had I missed the obscure questions (as predicted), but I had also brutally learned that there is a major difference in how the Dutch view an exam versus how we Americans view it. The questions on this exam were specifically designed to trick you into making a wrong choice.

This is best illustrated with a question about the age/height/weight of children in a car seat. The exam picture showed a little kid sitting in a car seat, strapped in and smiling like a dork. The text told me that he weighed 25 kilo’s, was 5 years old and was 1,2 meters tall. The question was simple: May he ride like this? (Or in the annoyingly simplified Dutch used for the exam - “Mag dat?”)

Well, first off you couldn’t pay me to care less about the rules for little kids in car seats and in my opinion it has absolutely no bearing on the ability to operate a motor vehicle, but that issue aside, Sure! The little rugrat was fine in his little car seat! The age doesn’t matter, the weight was under the 36 kilo limit and the height can be up to 1,3 meters so he was good-to-go.

But I was stunned upon checking the answer…..Nooooooo. He was not good-to-go because the picture shows that the child seat is in the front seat of the car, not the back. WHAT!!! Just bloody ASK me if the thing has to be strapped into the front or the back seat!!!! Don’t mislead me with age/height/weight stats!

Needless to say, I didn’t schedule the real exam for that week. In fact, it took me three weeks to learn the trick nature of the questions in the practice exams and be able to pass them consistently.

But by the day of the real exam I thought that I was finally ready. I took the train into Amsterdam Sloterdijk station and leisurely walked the 15 minutes to the exam center, clearing my head in relaxed preparation. Thank god I was ½ hour early because when I got up to the window to announce my arrival, the receptionist nicely took my information and asked for my two passport sized photo’s that I would need for my certificate in case I passed the exam. When I explained that I hadn’t been told about this and didn’t have any photos with me, she kindly pointed to a sign on the wall, conveniently in both English and Dutch –“No photos, no exam. No exceptions!”

Son of a … The receptionist looked at her watch and said. You might be able to make it if you hurry. There is a photo booth at the train station.

I ran my ass off back up to the station. I was in my jeans and dress shoes and it must have been the hottest, muggiest day that we had all year here in Holland. By the time I got to the station I was sweating like a fatted calf at a prodigal son homecoming party, but I still managed to smile for the camera. My nerves were fraying as I had to stand and wait for the little machine to process and spit back out my pictures. At 12:20 I started running back to the exam center. I made it at 12:28 and just deposited my pictures with the receptionist when they called us into the exam room.

Still sweating, I sat down with 11 other people and was instructed on how to use the computerized system. Although I was pleasantly surprised to see that I wasn’t the only old-fart taking the exam today, I was completely frazzled at that point and was sure that it would not be the last time that I sat in this exam room.

It was yet another surprise that the exam was timed. You only had 45 seconds for each question. 45 seconds to examine the obscure details of each picture, looking for road signs, blind corners, and pedestrians. No answer in time equals a wrong answer.

It was a very long 30 minutes.

At the end of the exam the other people started talking with each other while we all waited for the results. I sat quietly. Listening. It was the 5th time for the woman next to me and the 3rd for the guy behind me. This was not sounding very encouraging.

When the examiner came back out, she had the results in a small stack of papers in her hand. She started walking among the rows, issuing apologies as she went. There were four people in front of me and she issued four apologies. “I’m sorry. I wish you better luck next time.”

Then she stood in front of me and with absolutely no change in expression or tone she said, “Congratulations” and handed me my certificate, complete with the disgusting sweaty picture attached. I had missed three questions.

Only four people passed the exam that day, which I came to find out was a typical percentage. But this expat American, who just recently learned that he had been driving illegally for the last 3 years, was one of them.

Stay tuned for the next installment – The Practical Exam, featuring the gay instructor, the air traffic controller, and the echoing words “You’re confusing the traffic! That’s the absolutely worst thing that you could possibly do!”

Fall Getaway

Normally we try to get down to the mountains in Belgium this time of year for a little crisp fall air and hiking, but this year Beth had to attend a short conference in Philadelphia so we tacked on a few extra days and spent some time out in our own mountains in Maryland.

We had beautiful summerlike weather that was almost unpleasantly warm...we were barely able to use the hot tub. The Youghiogheny River was a bit low due to the dry conditions and we were a little early for peak colors, but overall the property was in great shape and we got a nice preview of the brilliant colors that were yet to come.

The barn and new apple orchard.

Wisp Resort put in a new Mountain Coaster that had just opened in time for us to give it a try. It is an updated version of the old Alpine Slides of the1970’s. This latest addition to the resort was great fun, but I seem to remember the older slides going a little faster. Maybe that was just a perception of my youth, or it could have had something to do with the ever constant possibility that the older sleds could jump the track an send you careening down the mountain into a tree. This newer one didn’t have that “feature” and was anchored to the track like a modern rollercoaster. Fun, but not as thrilling.

While Beth attended her conference in the bland Philly suburbs, I hooked up with our good friends Steve and Grace for a tour of the inner city. The last time that Steve took me to downtown Philly was in 1987 and the focus of that tour was strip clubs, drinking, and urban blight – I had a great time but have been telling everyone that the city is a toilet ever since.

Well, I guess that we’ve all matured a little bit since those good old days and this time the tour focused on normal, everyday life in the city. I was pleasantly surprised and more than a bit impressed with what Philly had to offer outside of big hair and burgers.

A world class museum complex…

…with the famous Rocky statue as its center piece. “Adrianne!!!!”

The Italian Market is a funky, gritty district with great food offerings. Don’t laugh my European friends, but the market actually has a lot of the same character as some of the best Spanish markets that we’ve hit in Barcelona and Valencia. See…there is even an Esposito’s.

The real Italian market…coffee shop mobsters.

And what visit to Philly is complete without a look at the (in)famous Boathouse Row.

The Interview

Several readers have asked how the job interview that I mentioned in my blog post on Aug 31 ended up so I thought that I’d put the results into this week’s posting.

To set the stage for this little story you have to remember that this was the first job interview that I’ve done in about 7 years, so I was admittedly a little nervous. Phone interviews always suck, and as I’ve already mentioned this one was going to focus in on my ability to communicate in Dutch.

I started preparing by walking through my experience in English, then once I had the pat answers down in my head (i.e. best project, worst mistake, weaknesses, strengths, etc.), I started to translate it into Dutch. Every time that I didn’t know a word for something, I would look it up and put it into a small cheat sheet of definitions that I could have beside me for the interview. By the day of the call my “small” cheat sheet was two pages long filled with various definitions, sentences, and phrases. I was amazed at how little business language that I knew in Dutch. It’s a lot different than talking about the weather or dogs in the park.

At 4:50 on the day of the interview, I locked myself into my office and ran through some last minute rehearsals in my head. The call to my cell phone came at 5:00 sharp. I answered with a formal greeting. The guy on the other end of the phone returned my greeting and then added something that I had absolutely no idea what it meant. It must have be something cordial…not a question yet, right? Everything drained from my head. It was like someone had rebooted me and I lost any semblance of composure.

I stammered back a daft reply, only to be greeted by silence.

It went downhill from there.

I found myself explaining my background in simple, 2nd grade Dutch. Loosely translated, it went something like this:

“At that job I did important work. I had a team. They lived in different countries. It was hard work, and important. We worked hard on projects. There was a lot of data.”

You get the drift. It wasn't exactly what you would expect to hear from an IT professional with more than 17 years of experience.

When I hung up the phone - after a whopping 10 minute interview, I never felt smaller in my life. That horrible feeling lasted about an hour…then I got mad.

That evening I sat down and wrote a letter - in English, to the guy that I had interviewed with. I clearly spelled out my qualifications and highlighted the ability to act as a communications bridge between the IT and business world as my greatest strength. I also outlined a plan to quickly improve my Dutch in a business environment. Every word that I wrote was bold, assertive, and confident.

The next morning I sent the letter via email. I wanted it to get to the guy before he had a chance to reject me.

That afternoon the recruiter that introduced me into the account called me. The manager had received my letter and was sufficiently impressed enough that he wanted to meet me in person. An intense, 4 hour face-to-face interview was scheduled. No mention of the disaster on the phone.

I met with 4 different people during the interview, and with three of them (including the guy from the phone interview) I didn’t speak a word of English. It was 100% Dutch and it went 100% better now that I was face to face. I’m sure that I missed a word here or there, but generally I was able to hold a conversation. I only faked understanding things once or twice and that was only a detail or two. I still was able to follow the general meaning of what was being said.

The fourth guy that I met with was a senior manager and I did speak with him a bit in English…mostly because he wanted to practice his language skills.

After the interviews were done, they had me wait in a conference room for about 20 minutes. The hiring manager returned with a folder full of material. It was an offer of employment.

So, it all worked out in the end. I rate my Dutch skills as reasonable, but the company actually felt that I was more in the “satisfactory” category. I think that is a bit of a stretch, but who am I to argue.

By the way, I rejected the offer.

Vaardagen

It’s funny how you can live somewhere for so long and still continue to discover so many new things. It’s been more than three years now and we had never even heard of Haarlem vaardagen – boating days, a festival in town that we stumbled across this weekend. Apparently it is held every year and wreaks havoc on the local traffic situation because of all the sailboats coming through the draw bridges. Add in the Jopenfeest, (beer festival), Open Monument days and more than 150,000 visitors and it was another jammed weekend of activities.

Sometimes we forget how cool this town is that we now call home – Haarlem.

The Spaarne river crowded with boats. Usually a busy local shipping route, now there is no way to get goods up and down the waterway with the boats stacked 4 and 5 deep along the bulkheads.

The boating lifestyle. I would like to rent a boat one of these days and do some touring around Holland. There is so much water and so many possibilities that it boggles the mind.

More boats…more parties.

Something for the kiddies. This old ferry was converted to a floating stage where performers entertained the kids.

We toured one of these 1930’s barges that had been converted to a floating house. It was fantastic inside! Hardwood floors, fireplace, TV/Computer room, gourmet kitchen, big bedroom, and skylights.

There was plenty to do on the land as well. All of the historic buildings in Haarlem were open and free to go through all weekend.

Brooding sky over crowded streets. But the rain held off and we even caught a bit of sun later in the day on the terrace of a local café.

This should be a familiar sight for everyone by now – the Grote Markt, Haarlem. We took this picture from the steps of city hall, one of the oldest buildings in all of The Netherlands. It was open for monument days so we got to check out the mayor's office....this was basically his view.

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.