The new low-budget terminal at Amsterdam Airport reveals in a cruel way that one has chosen the wrong airline: no toilets, no seats, no escalators and certainly no sky walks to the airplanes. What it does provide are sociopaths in orange uniforms that talk abusively to travellers.
I am waiting at Gate 4 section C, in front of me on the tarmac is the Easy jet almost clear for boarding, behind me an Australian woman states how much better the crowd here is than with Ryan Air flights. Thanks for the warning, how can it be any worse than here, my fellow travellers are mostly groups of bald shaved men, and women with flaxy blond hair revealing too much belly blubber who all suffer from an immense after-Amsterdam hangover. Well, not all of them, some of them are still on drugs. Britons, no doubt about that. Even though they are wearing suitable outfits for a joy-ride with Mad Max, they are patiently queuing to board the flight to Liverpool. It seems strange to me that this crowd, which I am sure caused the necessary upheaval in the Amsterdam red-light district, is waiting here so disciplined and following the blunt instructions of the orange uniform wearing Essex girls.
Two more weeks and my Sweetie will come over to live with me in the Netherlands, a condition for moving over was that I finally had to meet his family. Not his parents though, his father, a catholic alcoholic sadly died a short while ago, while his mother is demented and forgot happily everything that has to do with Catholicism and alcoholism. I am due to meet him at Liverpool Airport as we will be staying the weekend with his brother and sister-in-laws in the county of Merseyside, on the Wirral peninsula, which is across the river from Liverpool.
We have never been there before as he never told very inviting stories about his youth, in my imagination Liverpool was all burned out car wrecks in front of dirty worn down terraced houses populated by teenage moms and hooligans on benefit. But now he forced me to finally see the horror for myself, he made it a condition. I prepared myself with a Liverpool taxi phone number and addresses of hotels that seemed clean at least on their websites, just in case the worst case scenario would come true.
Arriving at John Lennon International Airport gives you a first taste of Liverpool: rows of one-armed bandits, time-share sales offices and some shady loan banks are located in the arrivals hall where airports in the rest of the world have flower- and gift shops. The floor is dirty and covered with old chewing gum. My Sweetie awaits me, “Heeeee, long time no see…” I frolic towards him and kiss him, he is at unease, gaybashing is a rather accepted pastime around here. He wears a poppy and seems generally very nervous. I follow him through the terminal which is covered in orange ribbons (it is the Easy Jet hub after all) towards the parking. We pass by a huge yellow-submarine, convenient; the only tourist attraction is located in front of the airport.
Can I go home now?
Behind the wheel he seems even more anxious, he wonders whether I will still like him once I have seen where he comes from. He misses a motorway exit and we end up in a neighbourhood with boarded up windows and burned out car wrecks. I knew it! I’m checking whether the taxi number really is in my mobile phone. We drive on and my fear seemed to be completely unnecessary: the roads get wider, the homes bigger and the gardens lush. We finally arrive at a leafy suburban road in front of a stately 30s semi-detached home. Three colourful Hirohito’s are parked outside and a large recycling bin with the lettering “Wirral Waste Disposal Service” sits in front of the house filled with garden waste, we could use that in The Hague.
We go inside through the unlocked back door, which feels to me very 1950s, nobody in Holland still leaves the door open. The family is sweet, funny and the kids even seem civilised and less loud than I expected them to be. We get a meal offered that has “welcome to English cuisine” written all over it: Pasta with Ketchup and Hamburgers. My Sweetie starts to sweat again nervously; he knows what a continental fuss I can make about food. He takes over and creates with the help of fresh tomatoes and some breakfast bacon a little miracle. It tastes fine and he gets the undivided attention of the kids, they never saw breakfast beacon abused in such a way before and look at him with the same scientific interest they would devote to a run over toad. They all taste a bite but decide that bacon belongs to breakfast.
Like the first Dutch who brought glass pearls to the Indians of Manhattan I brought Gouda cheese to please the local natives. While munching the cheese the conversation turns soon to the subjects every Dutch national is faced abroad: sex, drugs, euthanasia, abortion and teenage pregnancy. They seem to be open for my defence of the liberal politics and for a moment I boast in national pride. Until they let me know that they have heard about the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. Fortunately the conversation soon changes towards their favourite subject after football: how bad France is. “Chirac does not like our food” and “French food is horrible, the only good thing about it is that they serve you so little. Give me a proper full English breakfast anytime.” I did not quite understand that this was a test of my loyalty, I failed miserably by defending French food. Stupid me. Yet they took it better than I thought, as London had got the Olympic Games no talk about French sophistication could harm them.
Our nervousness passes by; we hold each others hand for a moment. Two more weeks.
Sunday, 15 April 2007
Wednesday, 11 April 2007
Talent or T9 ?
“I am yellow” he growled self-satisfied.
He had just returned from his first day of Dutch class, faced for the first time on the bike the traffic in the centre of The Hague and even survived it unexpectedly. He was glowing with pride and his trained chest seemed a little wider than normally.
I felt like a mother when I explained to him that I was sure that he meant to say the Dutch word for “horny” and not “yellow”, they are indeed close in sound. I was getting concerned about the things he learned at this language school, was that a good school after all? This was not proper language to bring home, especially on the first day. He did not care about my preaching, he also had learned how to say “fouck” and “souck”, we definitely had to do something about his pronunciation.
Deep sigh, I always refused teaching him Dutch curses because I thought it to be of poor style starting a language with nasty words. I did not anticipate that during the first lunch break at school the other kids, oops excuse me, his fellow students taught him the necessary dirt. I mumbled something about proletarians that have probably been living in the Netherlands for years already who started to learn the language way too late, have no idea what supermarket staff are talking about yet do know all the foul language. One of my famous rants was coming up, they usually last for 20 minutes and end with a long complaint about the business hours of Bijenkorf (the Dutch Harvey Nick's) or other serious world misery. He stopped it by kissing me. Darn, after two years of long distance relationship he knew how to use his physical presence to stop one of my rants. If he was at home listening to me having a rant on the phone he was helpless because his phone cord was too short to use the time more efficiently, like I do whenever my mom calls. Thanks to the wireless phone I can multitask and be on the phone whilst using the toilet or pluck my eyebrows. Maybe this was one of the reasons for him to leave the lush refuge of Dorset and move over to The Hague.
It’s been two years now that he approached me in a bar in the South English resort of Bournemouth with the question: “Would you terribly mind if I would ask you whether I could buy you a beer?” How British. My Dutch mind translated this with “Have a free beer”. I did like the sound of that; the Dutch are the Scottish of the continent, anything for free is a major bonus. What I did not expect was getting a pint. A pint equals four Dutch beers. So when my group of friends prepared to leave for the next bar I could not follow them as I had just started the pint. For politeness reasons I had to stay with that nasty midget, also it would have been a waste of perfectly free beer. Well I drank the pint and one thing led to another, it turned into love, daily phone calls and frequent visits. After two years he finally decided to give up his well-paid job and career and come to the Netherlands and live with me.
Live with me, wow.
Three more weeks and he will be here for good. By now he has done two language courses and already on the seventh day of class we had our first conversation in Dutch. I must admit that it was rather nerve wracking for me and I needed to beef-up my patience with a couple of G&T’s, but he did well. Next thing is the pronunciation he sounds like an actor of ‘Allo ‘Allo, officer Crabtree, the Briton who is ever mistaken. I am not allowed to mention it anymore though as his fellow students told him that their partners are criticising them all the time about their pronunciation and so they all together decided that this criticism should stop immediately. This is probably how the French revolution started. I asked whether the pronunciation of the others was as bad as his which made him rather angry. He told me that all the partners of his-fellow students offered excuses for the misconduct to their foreign partners – except for me. I think this to be a real difference in ambition, they have all lived in the Netherlands for some time already, while my Sweetie is the only one who started classes before he actually entered the country. This was something he had to keep in mind the next time he was afraid of never finding a job here. He protested against this Dutch Consolation, but this is the way we work: Just look at someone who is in a worse situation and be grateful for what you have. Calvin’s principle of happiness.
By now he is back in England. We started to communicate via text-messages in Dutch. Is that talent or T9? A bit of talent I suppose as he finally masters the correct pronunciation of horny, fuck and suck.
He had just returned from his first day of Dutch class, faced for the first time on the bike the traffic in the centre of The Hague and even survived it unexpectedly. He was glowing with pride and his trained chest seemed a little wider than normally.
I felt like a mother when I explained to him that I was sure that he meant to say the Dutch word for “horny” and not “yellow”, they are indeed close in sound. I was getting concerned about the things he learned at this language school, was that a good school after all? This was not proper language to bring home, especially on the first day. He did not care about my preaching, he also had learned how to say “fouck” and “souck”, we definitely had to do something about his pronunciation.
Deep sigh, I always refused teaching him Dutch curses because I thought it to be of poor style starting a language with nasty words. I did not anticipate that during the first lunch break at school the other kids, oops excuse me, his fellow students taught him the necessary dirt. I mumbled something about proletarians that have probably been living in the Netherlands for years already who started to learn the language way too late, have no idea what supermarket staff are talking about yet do know all the foul language. One of my famous rants was coming up, they usually last for 20 minutes and end with a long complaint about the business hours of Bijenkorf (the Dutch Harvey Nick's) or other serious world misery. He stopped it by kissing me. Darn, after two years of long distance relationship he knew how to use his physical presence to stop one of my rants. If he was at home listening to me having a rant on the phone he was helpless because his phone cord was too short to use the time more efficiently, like I do whenever my mom calls. Thanks to the wireless phone I can multitask and be on the phone whilst using the toilet or pluck my eyebrows. Maybe this was one of the reasons for him to leave the lush refuge of Dorset and move over to The Hague.
It’s been two years now that he approached me in a bar in the South English resort of Bournemouth with the question: “Would you terribly mind if I would ask you whether I could buy you a beer?” How British. My Dutch mind translated this with “Have a free beer”. I did like the sound of that; the Dutch are the Scottish of the continent, anything for free is a major bonus. What I did not expect was getting a pint. A pint equals four Dutch beers. So when my group of friends prepared to leave for the next bar I could not follow them as I had just started the pint. For politeness reasons I had to stay with that nasty midget, also it would have been a waste of perfectly free beer. Well I drank the pint and one thing led to another, it turned into love, daily phone calls and frequent visits. After two years he finally decided to give up his well-paid job and career and come to the Netherlands and live with me.
Live with me, wow.
Three more weeks and he will be here for good. By now he has done two language courses and already on the seventh day of class we had our first conversation in Dutch. I must admit that it was rather nerve wracking for me and I needed to beef-up my patience with a couple of G&T’s, but he did well. Next thing is the pronunciation he sounds like an actor of ‘Allo ‘Allo, officer Crabtree, the Briton who is ever mistaken. I am not allowed to mention it anymore though as his fellow students told him that their partners are criticising them all the time about their pronunciation and so they all together decided that this criticism should stop immediately. This is probably how the French revolution started. I asked whether the pronunciation of the others was as bad as his which made him rather angry. He told me that all the partners of his-fellow students offered excuses for the misconduct to their foreign partners – except for me. I think this to be a real difference in ambition, they have all lived in the Netherlands for some time already, while my Sweetie is the only one who started classes before he actually entered the country. This was something he had to keep in mind the next time he was afraid of never finding a job here. He protested against this Dutch Consolation, but this is the way we work: Just look at someone who is in a worse situation and be grateful for what you have. Calvin’s principle of happiness.
By now he is back in England. We started to communicate via text-messages in Dutch. Is that talent or T9? A bit of talent I suppose as he finally masters the correct pronunciation of horny, fuck and suck.
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