Well, I have been here for just under a week, and am just starting to get used to my new neighborhood here. Every day life is a very different experience from travelling as a tourist!
First off, the entire country goes on vacation in July and August. As a tourist, you dont notice this as much, since the tourist activites are about the only places fully staffed. We often hear "normally this takes 1 week, but with the vacation season, it will take about 3 weeks". My postings are infrequent now as we are into week 2 of a 4 week wait for phone and internet connection in the house.
I've been busy in other areas, adapting to the neighboorhood and our new house. For dutch living experiences, thats a pretty good place to start. Rob rented us a beautiful little duplex house in a suberb of Dordrecht (about 30 minutes away from Rotterdam and 1.5 hours away from Amsterdam). It is in the typical dutch style, very tall and narrow. The stairs are more similar to a ladder, much steeper than American stairs. Dont go down these after too much dutch beer!
The house has a pretty little back garden, and a 3 story house. The ground floor has a kitchen and livingroom. It came with a pretty oak dining table, side board and coffee table, and 2 brown pillow sofas. One the first things I notices is that the cabinets are very high, and the fridge very small. Our fridge is the size of a mini-fridge, and the freezer is on the 3rd floor in the attic. For the first time in my life, I am seeing the inside of a market more than once a week. I shop at the grocry around the corner each day now, both for freshness and lack of space.
Another difference is there are no closets in the house! The dutch prefer to by free-standing cabinets and wardrobes, saying "Ï want to select where I put my storage". Dutch houses have sepreate showers and bathtubs, never having the combined one we see in the states. The shower is tall and thin, with the faucet at about 6 feet tall. Finally, comfortable for Rob to take a shower without stooping.
One great feature is ä "No junk mail please" sticker you can put on your front door. Wish they had that one in the US!
Well, next exciting episode to be posted later this week...adventures in shopping in Holland
2 comments:
wow. i can't wait to read more. you're definitely hitting the points of a good travel/lifestyle blog.
yay... good post! more please! =0)
i love your blog so far. yes, more please! can't wait to see pics, too! :)
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