Watching TV

One of the great helps in learning a language is TV. There are lot of channels which enable subtitles for dutch programs. It's like killing two birds with one stone, you can both hear the language and  actually understand something when seeing the text as well. Sometimes in real-time things (such as the news) the timing is slightly off which makes it more confusing than actually helping.

(http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarahreido/3245498261/)

It seems in the Netherlands there are really no social boundaries in what you can say / show on TV. Many times I've sat on the couch and thought that if that would've been in Finland, it would be such an faux pas. But here it seems to be completely OK to bring people on TV (even against their will) and ask very personal questions and find ways of making people look just simply bad/sad/strange or weird.

Few interesting shows either for language learning or spotting akward social situations are

• Lingo - a great program for learning language, as it is about guessing dutch words with different amount of letters. Everything is also spelled out very c-l-e-a-r-l-y.
• Spuiten en slikken (Shoot and swallow) - the few episodes I've seen were either about people using drugs in the most sadest places or then something to do with prostituion.
• any program with Mart Smeets - He is the icon of dutch sports (who looks like it's been few years since he has been actively sporting), and most probably you will spot him during Tour de France sitting in a beautiful French chateau drinking some nice red wine and talking to the lucky ones, who have gotten the honor to appear by his side on TV.
• De wereld draait door - discussion program that seems to be on EVERY DAY. And EVERY DAY there is the same guy with his strange hair. I heard that once the program was cancelled as he got sick during, but otherwise he must be the most seen face on TV.
• Interviews of famous people - these are always good, especially for spotting akward social situations. Latest example was an interview of a family of a famous dutch woman cyclist. Her brother had some issues with mental health, and the interviewer, tactful as always, asked: "So how did it make you feel that while your sister was winning the world championship, you were sitting inside a room and staring at the wall and having a nervous breakdown?" Like, did I miss that this was a contest of how low can you go with your questions..
• Talkshows - One talkshow decided it was a good idea to have a surgeon cut out a piece of flesh from both hosts, and then they would eat a piece of each other while the one who was "being eaten" watched. How gezellig! Another one arranged a debate between a association for pedophiles and on the other side the parents of the victims of pedophiles. You can imagine the atmosphere in that room..
• Reality shows - shows such as "will you go out with me" where 20+ girls say either yes/no to a guy who walks on stage, can be also quite brutal. Or how about a show, where a teenage boy comes out of the closed in front of his classmates - would not work in Finland :-) Also one nice one is Marry my son, where moms are trying to find wives for their sons.
• Boer zoekt vrouw - my favorite! People from dutch countryside are looking for husbands/wives. Only worry there is (or the Dutch guy has), is that I get this countryside "boer" accent :-)
• Grenzeloos verliefd - stories of people who move abroad to be with their loved ones. This one I can relate to!

Language studying update and other things

It's been a long time since last blog post. Our time has been spent on getting back to normal every day life after our reeeeeeallly amazing holiday. Sadly we missed the nice part of the Dutch summer, which usually takes place in April & May. Now we are enjoying the real Dutch summer, which means rain, thunderstorms, wind and some more rain and occasionally sun coming through the clouds on unpredicted times.

We landed to the Netherlands on Friday morning at the end of May, and on Saturday morning I had my final Dutch exam for the course I was doing in the Volksuniversiteit. The timing was far from perfect, sspecially since the last 6 weeks was practically spent talking English in the US except for the rare occasions of communicating in Dutch when we didn't want others to understand us. I then spent a-not-so-efficient Friday trying to pickup again on the grammar and the vocabulary while trying to stay awake despite of the jetlag. I thought at least I can give it a try and go and see if I can make any sense of the final exam. And against the odds, I actually passed it! So now I'm officially eligible to write in my CV that guys, I can do dutch in level A2! The question is, how many people really can decipher what it means :-)

After being really annoyed in making stupid mistakes in the test (like forgetting basic verb forms) I decided I will pick up my self studying again. I also wanted to check for how to continue the language studies and after some googling I decided to enroll for a class in Utrecht University. I hope it is going to be bit more fast paced then the one in Volksuniversiteit, and this should get me close to a level where I could take the NT2 test. The NT2 test basically qualifies one to e.g study in a university in the Netherlands in Dutch etc. As a goal oriented person, I've set the goal for myself to take the test somewhere in first quarter of next year (I'm a project manager at work, hard to guess, right? :-)

In the mean time, my self-study program consists of eg. good TV programs, such as Boer zoekt vrouw (farmer seeks a wife) and intelligent reading. The Dutch guy warns that I should not start learning how to speak from the farm people, as that might severely affect my future in the whole country. I should find out what he is referring to...





This group of magazines was available only for ~8 euros. It is meant for all those women who have nothing to do while their men are watching football. The Dutch guy had bought me these during my last work trip and they were waiting for me on our kitchen table. These are such good practice for language, and I learn things that I certainly cannot pick from the language books such as names of all kinds of royal family members and words that teenagers use when they are having a crush on somebody. And btw. it is really cool when you can actually read an whole article and really understand what it is about!



On our Sunday walk we spotted this sign saying "Koe zoekt stier" which means cow seeking a bull. I don't know though whether on the sleepy sideroads of Bunnik this message is really delivering a result..

The tricky part of studying Dutch with a group of beginners is also that most of your speaking exercises are with people who cannot really correct you when you say something wrong, and on the other hand you have the possibility to enjoy the most interesting pronunciations of other beginners. Therefore I found this blog post as a consolation when somebody else has noticed that too :)

I also try more and more to use Dutch at my work even though that is still one big struggle, mainly because of my inability of allowing me making mistakes. Somehow I end up in a situation where I think it is better not to say anything at all then to say something with the possibility that there might be some wrong format or wrong choice of de/het not to even mention the impossible word order of Dutch language. It is difficult to put yourself in the position where you really feel that everything you say basically sounds like you are in the level of 3-year-old. But getting there.. slowly.. :-)

Vacation \o/

Last weeks have been spent wrapping up everything at work, getting the garden ready to face the summer (which included for example getting rid of a bike, that was hanging besides the house and gets grown in by the plants every summer) and in general making sure we are ready to leave everything for over a month. Few neighbors also saw our activation on the gardening front (we are not the green thumbs of this street) and offered all kinds of help from borrowing tools and trash cans to explaining what could be completely removed away.

The preparations combined with frequent traveling in work has left this blog to be left in the shadows for a while. But no worries! I will return refreshed after our vacation, and I already have a long list of weird dutch things to write about :-) In the mean time, you can follow our vacation here.

Tot ziens!

Giant frogs and alcohol

Did you know, that carnival is celebrated also in the Netherlands? Before living here, I thought carnival is mainly celebrated in Rio and Venice. How wrong was I! As partly Catholic country, Netherlands also celebrates the carnival time. The celebrations are mainly centered on the "south side of the river" in Noord-Brabant and Limburg.

Our little village on the "wrong side of the river" is however an oddity amongst others (strongly catholic?), and also celebrates the carnival. Therefore I got a chance to see the mini-carnival few weeks ago. We went to get groceries one Saturday in February, and suddenly there was a huge frog on the road. The frog was the undisputed centre-of-attention of the carnival leading the way. I learned, that Bunnik's name changes into "Kikkerloo" at the time of the carnival. So, for few days I lived in place that is named after a big green frog. Kind of cool.

Since it is quite impossible to describe precisely the parade itself, here are few pictures to illustrate the things encountered. My all time favorite was the sauna-like jacuzzi where people kept jumping out when it became too hot. Please add also a max volume 90's disco music as a background music to the pictures, so you can really tune yourself in to the same wavelength.

I have to say, this is quite nice way of also making it socially acceptable to drink in the middle of the day - for three days. In any other time it is only sad. One of the carnival caravans was handing out beer with a fish net. If it would have been cider, I would have definitely opted for one :)

Needless to say, in Finland some official authority would probably prohibit these kind of motorised undefinable moving things in a record time ;)

P.S. Based on stories heard from the "real carnival" cities, I think ours was interesting curiosity, but probably a a bit pale representation of the real thing. Maybe next year I will drag the Dutch guy to the other side of the river to see how the carnival is really celebrated ;)

Dutch courage

I recently heard a term used in english language called "Dutch courage". I did not have an idea where this is referring to, so with a quick googling I found the following from Wikipedia ()

"Dutch courage or liquid courage refers to courage gained from intoxication by alcohol. Originally the phrase 'Dutch courage' referred to the courage that results from indulgence in Dutch gin (jenever), but 'Dutch courage' can also refer to the gin itself.

In 1650 Franciscus Sylvius, a Dutch doctor, created Dutch gin in an attempt create a diuretic medicine. This was then used by soldiers in the Thirty Years' War by English troops and was an instant success for its believed warming properties on the body in cold weather[citation needed] and its calming effects before battle. Because of the effects of Dutch gin English soldiers fighting in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century apparently called the drink 'Dutch Courage'."

The context I heard it was referring to a situation, that you need to "get some Dutch courage" before doing something. I was puzzled by what was meant, was it suggesting that you need to be Dutch before doing something? Or do you need to have extra portion of cheese & mustard in order to be really courageous? But in essence it actually means, get some alcohol in to your system! As I have not bumped into significant amount of people being very drunk or taking sips of alcohol from a small bottle hidden in their sleeves, it is bid misleading nowadays I would say. I think there is plenty of courage in Dutch people even without alcohol - at least they have no problems being very direct! ;) I think though the Dutch courage could be useful saying in Finland, where it probably happens more nowadays as well. Sometimes a bit of alcohol is needed to get the bit more reserved/quieter Finns to talk ;)

In order to get some Dutch courage on me, I decided to emphasize it with some nice kaasblokjes and dill mustard. Please note also, the liquid in the Hoegaarden glass is not really beer, but cider. I just like the glass so much :)

Dutch cities - Middelburg

I am starting to gradually believe the sentence I have heard multiple times - that there's much more than Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Last weekend I was taken to a surprise visit to Zeeland (bte New Zealand's name comes from this province, so I guess it is the Old Zealand). It was amazingly beautiful there. We stayed the night in Middelburg, which is a very old city and the capital of province Zeeland. We were also lucky with extremely beautiful spring weather. Below few pictures from our one night getaway.

Houseboats on the river

Bakery in the shopping street, and next to that cheese/winestore. The trio is made complete by a chocolate store.

Central square of Middelburg

Lots of ships ready to set their sails to the ocean

Windmills on the coast

On our way back to Bunnik we stopped on many islands and beaches

Travellers

Our hotel was small and symphatetic near the railway station

In the summer these beaches are going to be bit more crowded...

.. But there were still few others, like this woman riding with a horse in the ocean.

During the getaway we also enjoyed the Dutch cuisine as well as neverending beer selection.. ;)

 

Relocating to a new place

What a week.. tomorrow is (hopefully) Friday and I can spend the weekend recovering and charging batteries. This week has been mainly about work, work, and again work.

When reading other expats' blogs describing the first months of relocating to a new country, it makes me feel sometimes a teeny-tiny jealous. There are stories of settling in, getting to know your surroundings by making long walks during the day, going to museums and slowly adapting to the new country around you. While I have this dream picture, the reality can be somewhat different. There are also moments of loneliness, dependency of the other person who might be the only social contact in the beginning and a sense of general lack of purpose.

Therefore in moments of exhaustion, I try also to look on the bright side and think, that I'm actually quite lucky being able to relocate to a country where I have almost everything ready. House was provided by the Dutch guy, work I arranged myself by relocating from our Finland office to the one in Den Bosch and language course is in progress. Slowly, but steadily.. :-)

I believe work is also one of the things that has made it easy for me to start building the normal, every day life so quickly here. But I can't help it to sometimes dream of this careless museum-wandering period..

The next step in the adaption process is to start getting to know people here, also those outside work. Currently my family and friends are back in Finland (except for the Dutch guy of course), and while I wish I could just export them here to the Netherlands, that is unlikely to happen. Therefore making connections in my new home country is essential for future. I wish I'd be one of those "I can network even with a cactus" type of persons. As an introvert Finnish person this takes some time though.. ;)

P.S. A nice curiosity for this week is a http://www.nationalecomplimentendag.nl/ - a national compliment day, never heard of such a thing before!