Tuesday Travel Blog: Paris

Posted on May 14, 2013 by visitingmissouri

I’ll start with a mandatory Eiffel tower picture

As you’ve all seen last Friday, miss Missouri came to town. Or, as she would see it, to Europe. Even though the Netherlands has been voted most picturesque country in the whole world* time and time again**, she feels too much contained in the 16,000 square miles that is my home country. So, as Americans do, we went to France (and she went to London while I was in class; I’m really committed). More specifically, we went to Paris. Early morning, we got in the high speed train, only to arrive in Paris three hours later. As we spent half the night not printing our tickets and had a mere four hours of sleep, those three hours were spent sleeping by miss Missouri and her dad (who joined us for the trip), and studying by me (again; commited).

Once we arrived, we went to our hotel in the middle of Indiatown. Nothing French yet. We had seen nobody walking around with the mandatory paper shopping bag including baguette, we had not seen even one part of the Eiffel tower, and every street corner had Bollywood music playing. We checked in at our hotel and started walking. Actually, we didn’t stop walking until we were at the edge of our beds and ready to fall in. The weather was beautiful, and I was thrilled to explore a new city. For some reason, it’s never the bigger moments I remember. For me, Paris wasn’t exploring the Eiffel tower and seeing the sun set over the city. It was sitting at the bank of a river, looking at Japanese tourists in a boat floating by, while having lunch in the shade of a tree. It’s the joy of being in a metro and seeing how daily life in Paris looks the same as in any other city, but with the small differences that make it fun to be part of. It’s walking along huge boulevards that make you imagine what life was in the high days of French grandeur. Climbing stairs that are just a tiny bit too long, but make up for it with the view in the end. It’s the little book stores along the river, that create a different atmosphere (and they know it, too). I was in Paris for only one afternoon and a little bit of evening, but there’s something about walking in a new city that never gets old.

*Not an actual contest
**Not an actual statistic

I Can Explain, Really

Posted on May 10, 2013 by visitingmissouri

So I was away for a while. Things happened. Don’t worry, I’m not getting into horror movie mode. I started my Master’s program just a while back and I had so many papers to write (not that many, they just demanded loads of attention) that I couldn’t get blogging in anywhere. Then, just when things were cooling down, miss Missouri came to town and we had an official pre-wedding celebration party. Because it’s really hard to get my whole family to come to the States in August, we decided to throw a Dutch party as well. Because I feel a need to include my loyal readership in the festivities as well, here’s a picture of miss Missouri and yours truly, taking the most out of the beautiful sunset that was taking place at the beach. Take it as an apology for not even texting you guys where I was.

I know I said picture, but how can I not include one picture from the ‘wooden shoe’ photoshoot?

The American Man In A New Habitat

Posted on May 7, 2013 by visitingmissouri

I enjoy sports. I like watching a game, almost any game, in which people look for their own limits and try their hardest to go beyond them. Also, I’m really glad that I can do so from well within my own comfort zone. I don’t mind to work out or play a physical game every once in a while, but I know my physical limits and tend to keep them exactly that (after all, that’s why they were limits in the first place). However, I don’t think I like watching sports as much as American society. There is not a moment when sports aren’t forced on you (again, the comfort zone version). Not just is a random team jersey an accepted part of the daily attire of the American people, but even gender roles and neatly carved out around the idea of watching a game.

This is not a stereotype. I’m pretty sure she is watching her husband do the laundry outside.

American airports, or at least the ones where I tend to show up (it’s not that many), have a habit of showing football games every time I am going back home (late summer and mid-January). As I am preparing myself for Missouri in many ways, including writing papers on Lincoln and the Civil War in the context of my study, I see it as important to understand American football. Another important factor in my choice of watching football is that I’m always at least five hours early at the gate and as there are more hours of travelling ahead than my books are able to cover, I position myself right under a speaker and at a convenient distance from the television. As more and more people drop in, I have seen a tendency among many men and women. If National Geographic is ever planning on mapping out the habits of the American people, an airport gate would be a great place to start.

Can someone explain to me why that man on the right is actually holding a football? Also, what is he wearing when he watches the Olympic figure skating finals?

Whenever a new couple walks into the seating area, the man looks around. His intuition tells him there’s a game going on. His well-developed senses then spot various groups of men wherever speakers are placed in the ceiling. They’re watching the television with an intensity that doesn’t appear when the regular CNN coverage is on. All women are either absent or turned away from the television. The man looks at his wife, she is faced without a real choice and wonders off to the newspaper stand down the hall. The newcomer now positions himself as close to a speaker as possible and joins all other men in a silent gaze.

Do you have a travel ritual? Any gender-related habits that come to play?

Blog Loving: Bizarroword

Posted on March 29, 2013 by visitingmissouri

Let me quietly introduce this. I like wordgames, both Dutch and English. I like being bilangual, so I can always play my second-language card. I never lose wordgames, half of the time because of that same card I keep playing. This is way I got pretty excited when I read about Bizarroword on Jenn’s page.

It has a button, too.

Today is the last day to play, so if you’re bored and looking for a way to vamp up your Friday, feel free to click the button above. I hope to win (and if I don’t, it’s because English is my second language), just to see how a box of apple muffins will make it here. Below, you find my entry:

Exodthem
1. Exodus
2. Forcing grammarly handicapped people to leave the building.
3. If them would speak proper English, them could stay a while, but now I’d rather exodthem.

Bettheyen
1. I got nothing
2. Ponder upon what to eat for dinner.
3. How about pasta? That’s okay, we can still bettheyen.

Conclthemion
1. Conclusion
2. Coughing up that green stuff that had been blocking your throat for days.
3. ‘Hold on, I think I may finally have my conclthemion.’

Constitthemion
1. Constitution
2. When a bus or train is so crowded you cannot pass easily.
3. ‘Let’s take the next one, this one is constitthemion.’

Ththem
1. Thus
2. A minor, unplanned surprise.
3. ‘What a ththem, there’s a $10 bill in my pocket!’

Theyre
1. Still not a clue
2. Archaic English for ‘deer’.
3. Shan’t we be humble, lest we stumble; thyself thy heir, evermore thirsty, like a runaway theyre.

Theme (pronounced as something between thumb and tomb; don’t ask why, I didn’t make the rules)
1. Use
2. When your little toe slams the door.
3. I feel a little lame, maybe it’s because of the theme yesterday.

Themurp
1. Usurp
2. In a family with many kids, themurp is almost the youngest.
3. ‘I have one younger sister, that makes me themurp.’

Lost In Translation, Please?

Posted on March 26, 2013 by visitingmissouri

I started English lessons in fifth grade. Nevertheless, I have an accent (even though American politeness sometimes seems to oblige native speakers to pretend they never noticed). As I’ve noted before, the more tired I am, the more Dutch seeps through. This results mostly in severe difficulties in the ‘th’ sound. When I focus, I can pronounce ‘brother’ right, but whenever I say ‘first things first’, I mix up the sounds, creating the even harder to pronounce ‘thirst fings thirst’. Also, don’t give me a Bible with the word ‘brethren’ in it.

Like this one.

What’s worse than my accent, however, is that sometimes it’s not really English any more. It’s replacing normal Dutch with Dutch with English words. This means a shift from ‘we’ll all pretend he doesn’t have an accent, just smile and nod’ to ‘what did you just say?’ (I found a wikipedia page on Dunglish; I found myself guilty on all of listed symptoms, although not as bad as the most colorful examples). Below is a great video, because of three things: a Dutch man faking a Scottish accent, an American speaking Dutch (two sentences) and then bursting out in a flawless Dutch accent.

Sometimes, it’s a little subtler than downright wrong. When miss Missouri is trying to learn Dutch and getting ‘nice to meet you’ right (‘Aangenaam kennis te maken’), I tell her to ignore the whole sentence. People don’t say that, especially not in the robotic way the cd will teach you. There is a downside to this, though. I must have met quite a few people who now think I did not take any pleasure in meeting them. Also, I must seem rude every now and then, because the Dutch use of the word ‘please’ is for toddlers that wanted to be lifted only. Americans use it for passing salt, ordering coffee and asking for amnesty alike. Maybe this is the reason I get a dirty look along with my salt all the time…

What’s your best accent?

The American Dilemma of ‘Paper or Plastic’

Posted on February 26, 2013 by visitingmissouri

Sometimes I feel sorry for American tourists that visit the Netherlands. Not always, there are times when I’m cycling and a tourist (and a lot of those are American) hops onto the road without even looking to see who’s coming, forcing me to swerve across the street, while avoiding other cyclist, causing a chain reaction of road rage. Also, don’t think that I’m being too harsh, because I’m counting on enraging half the States by the time I learn how to drive (when I’ve actually mastered the skill it will be okay, but who knows how long that might take). Anyway, one of the times I feel most sorry for American tourists is when they go grocery shopping.

I didn’t want to give away any spoilers, so here’s a very happy woman doing groceries in Holland, Michigan.

You see, in the States there is a certain luxury when you’re doing your groceries. You get your basket, walk up to the register, pile your stuff on the belt and pay while someone else packs your bags. The confusing part in the Netherlands is that it sneaks up on you. You get your basket, walk up to the register, pile your stuff on the belt and pay while you’re at the same time supposed to pack your own bags, that you should have bought before you got to the register. No one is packing your bags for you. I feel a lot of sympathy for those tourists that go through this the first time. As a teenager, this was the worst part of doing groceries. By the time I started packing, a big line had formed behind me. I would get nervous by having all these people wait on me, packing bags and getting my wallet out at the same time. Of course, the nervousness would cause my wallet to burst open and spray coins all over the place, so after picking them up, I’d carelessly pack my bag, throwing the eggs in first and piling cartons of milk on top of them, getting more and more nervous by the minute and walking home with broken eggs, leaking cartons and enough to cry about for the next two weeks. That’s why I feel sorry for those who didn’t even see it coming.

It didn’t help either that half my basket was filled with the stuff you use to fight acne.

Reader Appreciation Day

Posted on February 12, 2013 by visitingmissouri

As you may have seen last Friday, I threw a bit of a blog party, calling out three fellow bloggers to join in my happiness. In fact, even those people I didn’t call out were appreciated a lot more than any other day. Some days go by where I really couldn’t care less about my readers. It’s at those days that I refuse to write. Wait, that’s not true. I value the readership on this blog every single day. So why throw a reader appreciation day?

The banner that you can’t read says ‘customer appreciation day (my photo skills are the reason I don’t believe in the idea that a picture can be a thousand words).

Because it’s American, that’s why. The picture above shows a small town in Illinois that my train went through. It announces an upcoming customer appreciation day. I don’t know what they actually did on that day. Probably not aligning cars and trucks, because that’s more of a daily routine job. It’s one of those things that does make you wonder why there’s a special day for that. Like Mother’s Day, it seems just to serve a commercial want. Even worse, somewhere in the back of your head you suddenly feel okay ignoring your mother for the rest of the year. You did bring her breakfast in bed, after all. So, you won’t see me on customer appreciation day. I want to feel special every day.

What do you appreciate?

visitingmissouri

Visiting Missouri: A Dutchman's view on the Real America