Saddle Sore

Forget that last post - I’m not as Dutch as I thought.  The sun was out again today, so I decided, like a typical  huisvrouw that I would do the grocery shopping on my bike.  I’m lucky – I’ve two medium sized grocery stores within a five minute walk of the house, and up until now, I’ve walked to them.  The limitations of grocery shopping by foot, or on a bike, are of course that you can only buy what you can carry home. The typical huisvrouw will have a set of fancy paniers on the  back her bike as well as a basket up front. I’ve only a small, by Dutch standards, basket. Never mind, I thought, I’ve not quite got my head around food shopping/meal prep yet and with stores so close by its easier just to pick up a few bits every day.

As soon as I sat down on my bike I realised my dainty English buttocks had not quite recovered from the weekend’s trip to the beach. It’s me or the saddle, one of us is going to have to gain a bit more padding. 

However, I made it safely to the store and back, although my trip was slightly marred by discovering a rogue bike had been unceremoniously dumped on top of mine when I returned, laden with groceries to the bike park. I’d been blocked in!

Spurred on by the semi-success of the shopping trip, as the sun continued to shine, I decided to set out on a recce to the local  swimming pool. I like swimming, it’s non weight bearing, calorie burning, and relaxing all at the same time.  Haarlem has its own sports centre and according to Google maps, it’s a mere 3 km or so from our house – or a twelve minute cycle ride.

Fantastic. I set off in what I thought was the right direction. Twenty minutes later I decided I’d either taken completely the wrong route, or the Dutch Google map guys cycle a lot faster than me.

I had a moment of panic, despite telling myself over the last week that the best way to explore my new home town is to get lost,  (OK when you’re on foot and no more than a mile or so away from the house) I was  now on very unfamiliar streets. What if my chain came off? What if I fell or got knocked off my bike? (If this was Hollywood of course, new girl in town, lost, accident waiting to happen, the Dutch equivalent of Hugh Grant would have dashed to my rescue.) Even if I found the sports centre, would I really fancy swimming 40 lengths after a half hour cycle ride to get there? Plus there was still the ride back. I wanted gentle exercise, not Triathalon training.

I decided to call it quits. I’ll seek out the sports centre another day, and tomorrow, I’m doing the grocery shopping on foot.

The Great Outdoors

We’ve now been living in Haarlem a week, and I think we’ve settled in remarkably well.  In fact – apart from not being able to speak a word of the language - I think I was born to be Dutch.  I’ve taken to my bicycle like a natural.  Nine kilometres to the beach? No sweat. After a week of  rather grey damp weather on Sunday the sun came out and it was time to finally unleash the bike.

Our nearest beach is Bloemendaal-aan-Zee and it’s totally accessible by bicycle path – no traffic to contend with apart from maniacs on mopeds and roller skates. Even the humiliation of being over-taken on an uphill (OK a slight incline) stretch by a couple of 70’ year olds on their racing bikes couldn’t spoil the pleasure of the afternoon.

Who needs  a car? The Dutch are fit. They may well drink a lot of beer and eat hearty,  heavy food, but it seems to get burnt off – either that or it goes upwards rather than outwards, which might explain the height issue.

We’ve met our neighbours – fortunately both sides are fluent in English and it is embarrassing that so far I can do little more than mutter a hesitant ‘goede morgen’ in Dutch.

However, the Google-translate is proving invaluable in sussing out the inner-workings of our new house.  The word for today is verzekering - insurance. Not that exciting, but unfortunately a necessity and something we take for granted back home.  We have accrued a fair pile of correspondence already and although we don’t need to know what each letter says word for word, just being able to get the gist of what we are paying for helps. In Holland personal liability insurance is compulsory. It's all back to those bikes again - doesn't matter if one hits you or you hit one, it's always your fault.

Modern technology too is proving difficult to comprehend. Our state of the art central heating system appears to have a mind of its own (it seems to come on when the house is already warm, as opposed to when it’s cold). Despite being  left an instruction manual in English, the messages that appear on the programmer (which rather smugly refers to itself as ‘the brain’) are all in Dutch. 

But still, its early days and after a re-shuffle of the furniture, the purchase of some lamps, and the arrival of some plants, the house itself feels like ‘home’. Ed has been allowed out in the garden, and quite naturally the first time he was left unsupervised he disappeared straight over the back fence.  After an anxiety ridden hour he was sensible enough to return, so can now – like us - be trusted to explore the great outdoors. This is good, because to be honest he was beginning to get under my feet.  The entire upstairs of our house has black carpet. It’s a good job Ed has white paws.