Travels

Weather here seems to be predictable…..rain! Not really, but it sure seemed like that was de rigueur for a while. Having now made the journey ‘across the pond’ it was time to try to settle in.

Monday the 13th: After a good night’s sleep we made a small breakfast in our apartment, showered and set about the day. BJ would spend most of the day with her work friends and I planned to unpack, make an appraisal of existing food stocks in the apartment, create a list of what we needed and then obtain same at the local ‘Albert Heijn’ (pronounced ‘Hine’). ‘Albert Heijn’ stores are all over the area….they seem to be the local equivalent of Safeway or Von’s or IGA, etc. if a little smaller.

It was no problem to establish a shopping list and so I grabbed a couple empty shopping bags (I’d been warned that such was expected) and hiked the one block to the store where I learned very quickly that although my strategy was sound, my tactical approach was full of holes.

Strategy, as you know, involves the ‘big picture’. It’s a view from 35,000 feet, a look at the forest rather than an examination of the trees. It involves things like objective and manpower requirements. Tactics, on the other hand, vary with circumstances. Tactics are the ‘how’ in a maneuver. They are the close-up look at a problem and the tactics that work well in one situation may be completely unsuited to another.

My tactics were to walk confidently into the grocery with my list, locate the goods recorded thereon, load them into my cart, take them to checkout, smile and chat cheerfully with the clerk, pay and depart confidently for home. No sweat! I’ve done it a million times.
I’m so much more humble now.

It wasn’t that I’d made any single ‘fatal’ error in my planning. Rather, I’d made several little ones that added up to a large problem. My first error was in ignoring the possibility of a language disconnect. My command of English is pretty good and thanks to a high-school Latin class (which I only just barely passed), and a couple of semesters of French in college combined both with my being around BJ and her abilities at Spanish and by having lived in Mexican-influenced San Diego for so many years I find that I can usually ‘dope’ my way through printed latin languages. Dutch, however, is like none of those. The words printed on the packages in the store meant virtually nothing to me.

Error number two involved my erroneous assumption that the commercial packaging would carry pictures or diagrams accurately depicting contents. Sometimes, yes…..most of the time; no!

Error number three was my faith in American marketing practices. Surely, I reasoned, the packages and logos will be familiar. It was not. Nowhere was there a red and white Campbell’s soup can. . I didn’t find any root-beer colored ‘Bush’s Baked Beans’ can. Nowhere was there the cut-off cone shape of a Yoplait container or the green ‘scrubbing bubbles’, or anything else that I recognized.

The final errors involved the shopping cart (there was none), and the smiling, helpful clerk who, as it turns out, doesn’t always speak English and, because of the pace of throughput at the market, is kept far too busy to be terribly helpful to any one person.

I managed to find a quart of milk, a loaf of bread, some cheese, a bottle of wine and a half-liter of Diet Coke. I took it to the counter, paid, packed my stuff in one of my bags and retreated, a diminished man. More about the grocery store later.

That evening we became acquainted with Rob & Kelly who were occupying the other ‘company’ apartment one flight down the stairs from ours. Rob was here to train repair techs for the company and Kelly, his wife, was in a situation similar to mine: spouse who happily gets to enjoy their mate’s connection to the company. As both had been here for a couple weeks (Rob, even longer), they took us under their wing and endeavored to show us around.

We all took the tram to meet others from the company for dinner. Now, the tram (the GVB) is an interesting affair. It’s not dissimilar to those serving San Francisco. On rails and electrically operated, Amsterdam’s tram system has been in constant operation since 1900. On August 14th, 1906 the first electric tram began and by 1916 the entire system was electrified. Its 261 cars are distributed to serve 16 routes serving virtually all of central Amsterdam at roughly 15 minute intervals from 0600 to 0100 daily.

The fare system is automated. By passing a ‘reloadable’ (prepaid) chip-card in front of a reader as you board a maximum fare of approximately 4 Euro is deducted from your card. By passing the card in front of the reader again as you exit that 4 Euro is re-loaded onto your card minus the actual fare as computed from boarding point to exit point. The same card can be used on the transit busses and local trains which serve the few places not covered by the tram routes. Now, I’m sure that you can see the hole in this system….and since that first night I’ve often seen it exploited…mostly by students (kids)….after using their card during boarding they hang near the doors (each car has its own) ….then when the tram debarks passengers at the next stop the kid’s will pass their cards over the reader again thereby accumulating only the minimal fare … at which point they return to a seat and ride to their real stop.

As we boarded the tram I realized that we didn’t yet have chip-cards! So, being charitable and cautious Americans….we became stow-aways. We did get cards the next day, but for one evening, I’m ashamed to say that we were tram-illegals.

The restaurant we found was Italian. It is located near Leidsesplein, (Leidse Square), which is an area dedicated to eating, drinking, shopping, entertainment, etc. There are several different ‘pleins’ around town and each has its own personality. There we met with Shaun and Lindsey and the six of us had a great dinner and drank good wine.

As we were beginning to think about leaving, I noticed a trap door in the floor near our table. When the waiter (also the owner), returned I asked him about that. He told me that all of the buildings up and down the street have them and asked me if we wanted to see. Picturing in my mind the catacombs of Paris, old inter-connecting doors (now padlocked or barred, of course), bricks and mortar from the early nineteenth century, secrets and mysteries untold, I enthusiastically accepted his offer.

When our dinner was complete and we’d drank coffee and declined further dessert he returned and true to his word, opened the hatch and invited us to descend. As a group we cautiously edged down the steep wooden stairs and, at the owner’s direction, found the switch for the electric light which revealed… a 15’ x 20’ poured concrete cellar. Dang! I had something completely different in mind!

Well, we all had a laugh about the adventure, thanked the owner for the fun, paid our check and trammed back to our apartment….

The rest of the work-week passed quickly but uneventfully. There were a couple more trips to the store, introductions to more of BJ’s ‘company people’ and some time spent just cleaning and re-ordering the apartment. We changed the furniture layout and tried to discover just how everything worked. All the while the weather remained cool and wet. Daily rain, a lot of wind….a whole new environment.