Interesting Tidbits

Somehow the weeks keep speeding by and my "weekly" blog post has become tardy.

Last Thursday the orientation for TU Delft started. It runs until September 1, so it's kind of long. Oh well. The first day of orientation we were given an address in the massive auditorium. They managed to put around 1,200 international students in there.

The university facilities are pretty spectacular. Each department building has its own cafeteria and pub (I guess they know how to keep engineering students happy), and the lab facilities seem to be top of the line. The Civil Engineering building is ridiculously long, narrow, and 7 stories tall.

Interesting tidbit:
The ground floor in the Netherlands is floor 0. So the Civil Engineering building has 6 floors, which translates to 7 stories. Our apartment is on the 9th floor, aka the 10th story.

So the introduction weeks continue fairly uneventfully. It's been nice meeting the other people in the Geo-Engineering program and making friends (I hope). If I play my cards right, I'll make a friend or two with a car who can be convinced to go on awesome adventures to places with geography.

I miss vertical relief. The closest thing to a mountain we've seen in almost a month are some bunkers at the North Beach in Den Haag. Not really hills, per say, but not flat.

Hilarious Tidbits of the Netherlands #1:
When we went to the beach in Den Haag on Sunday, we saw a guy running down the beach. Completely naked. The beach was fairly crowded, and nobody batted an eye. Apparently nude running on a public beach (that also happens to be a tourist spot) is totally kosher. It. Was. Awesome.

Speaking of awesome, I would like to introduce a new section of the blog, called...

Random Overheard Conversations:
"Obviously its a crotchless tutu" - dude wearing a kilt and batman shirt

On a completely unrelated note, I present the second installment of hilarious tidbits.

Hilarious Tidbits of the Netherlands #2:
We keep seeing people biking on their old, beat up cruisers (you don't have a nice bike here because it will get stolen. There are a lot of junker bikes.) with aero bars. For shizzle. Aero bars that probably cost as much as the bike. The first time I saw it I thought it was odd, but probably just that one guy. Turns out, I keep seeing people with them. There's something incredibly amusing about someone tucked down in the aero position on a bike that's designed to keep you upright.

Also, this guy:

Yes, he is juggling knives on an insanely tall unicycle. Yes, it was awesome.


Visa stuff for Ev is still ongoing. The IND (Dutch immigration department) has been very helpful, although Rotterdam City Hall has kind of been a pain in the butt. There have been issues with bank accounts (I can't open up one on my own without a BSN number (Dutch equivalent of a social security number), which I can't get until I register with City Hall. After calling daily for almost three weeks, I finally got an appointment to register... on October 2nd), birth certificates (have to have originals - apparently notarized copies just don't cut it), declarations of unmarried status (originals had to be mailed back to Alaska to get an apostille from the Lt. Governor), which may or may not be accepted by the IND because they're not on fancy letterhead with a watermark... the whole point of showing up here three weeks early was to get Ev's application out of the way. I'm glad we came when we did, because there is no way I would have been able to deal with all of this while doing orientation/taking classes. Luckily, we were informed that we have 90 days after arriving in the Netherlands to file for his visa. Once we've filed for it, he can legally stay until the IND has processed it and either granted his residence permit or told him to gtfo.


The homesickness is starting to set in again, and I'm sure it's only going to get worse over the next month or two. I really, really miss mountains and low population densities. And our friends. And family.

I was showing one of the guys in my orientation group some pictures from our Birch Creek river trip last summer (he asked about the desktop background on my laptop) and was hit with an intense desire to find a place where there's nobody else around.

I'm not sure what possessed us to move to the most densely populated country in Europe.

Then I found some pictures from Bison Gulch and Mount Healy a couple winters ago...

You just can't get a view like that here.



I really need a field trip.

The Wall

Wow. Another week has already gone by! Who would have thought that my attempt to post a blog once a week would make it feel like time is whizzing by. So interesting items for the week... I suppose we can start with

Bever Sports - Netherlands Edition
There's an outdoor/sports store in Fairbanks called Beaver Sports. It's kind of the go-to place for climbing and backpacking gear, plus bikes, skis, clothes, and whatever. As far as climbing gear, it was the only game in town until REI opened a store a couple months ago. For the record, Beaver has a better selection and is actually a little cheaper. Anyway, there's a Bever Sports in Rotterdam. A guy at the climbing gym told us to check it out when I was asking about getting some chalk. This Bever Sports, besides being spelled slightly differently, has a very similar vibe as the real Beaver. It has a smaller selection, but I'm discovering that that's pretty typical here. The space for massive, all-inclusive stores seems to be lacking.

Sounds Our Apartment Makes
There are some things you never think about coming from a place with minimal wind. For instance, the sounds your apartment makes when you're 10 stories up and you live in the Netherlands. To be clear, it's really, really windy here. And the house whistles when it's windy, which is pretty much always, so the vents make a lovely sound reminiscent of an air raid siren. It can get annoying fast.

Netherlands Observation #1
Everyone here smokes. I would be interested to see the real statistics, because it sure seems like there is an abnormally high number of smokers (compared to anywhere else I've been). I've inhaled more second-hand smoke in the past 2 weeks than I have since the super-smokey 2013 fire season when it rained ash on us. It's kind of disgusting.



Ev started doing some contracting work for PDC last week. Working from home is hard, and I have to profess how impressed I am with his focus and ability to stay on task. Things get harder when you don't have all of your design references and your bosses are 10 hours behind you. There is definitely a sense of being thrown to the wolves, although in this case, Ev is showing the wolves who's boss.

So after I collected my residence permit on Friday (did I mention I got my residence card?!) we went for a run and a climb and decided to go up to Amsterdam for the weekend. I went online and booked us a cheap hotel, and we hopped on the train around 9am on Saturday.

It came to my attention while Google Mapping how to get to the hotel from Amsterdam Centraal that the hotel was 14km away from the train station and the center of Amsterdam where all the excitement is. After some discussion, I called and canceled our reservation. We've never really flown by the seat of our pants before, at least in a city, largely due to my compulsive need to have at least something planned in advance, preferably a place to sleep at the very least.

We arrived in Amsterdam right about the time it started raining (surprise), and meandered across the street towards the multitude of hotel signs. We went in to 3 or 4 of them asking if they had a room available for the night, and finally found a room in an, uh, let's call it sketchy hotel called Hotel Neutraal. We figured we'd do the tourist thing all day then hit up the Red Light District in the evening. The hotel was really, really skeezy and Ev was pretty sketched out by it. By then I had decided to not stress about it, so we had a little role reversal. There was a pretty adorable, twitchy kitten at the hotel, which helped alleviate some of the skeeze.

We started out the afternoon by wandering 4-ish km to the Heineken Brewery, where we did the "Heineken Experience" tour. It was an unguided tour, i.e. no guide, except for three stations. It was fun, if a bit long. Some documentation of this adventure is as follows:

Proof that we are both, in fact, in the Netherlands. It came to my attention that there hasn't been a photo with both of us in it since we moved here.

Old stills

Stereotypical tourist pose; stirring the barley and water "wort"

En route to the brewery, we popped in to the Sex Museum, which was... crazy. Lots of historic porn, sculptures, sex toys, mannequins dressed up in pretty much anything and everything... we spent about an hour in there and didn't see everything.

As we continued our wanderings, we passed coffee shop after coffee shop. Eventually, we decided to partake, since neither of us had ever tried pot brownies (or edibles) before. The spacecake came with this awesome label:

Then we began meandering through the Red Light District. Two things really stuck with me (besides the obvious stuff that I haven't gotten to yet but you can probably guess): 1) There are a LOT of cheese shops in the red light district. Also a lot of sex shops, but a seriously surprising number of cheese shops. I don't know why I didn't take a picture of any of them. I feel like I missed out. Which brings us to 2) this:

 No comment needed.

Which brings us to the later part of our evening. We wandered around downtown Amsterdam for about 6 hours, a large portion of that being in the red light district and surrounding streets. There are a lot of people, all the time.

Something you need to understand is that Ev and I aren't used to serious crowds. In fact, we actively avoid them. Large groups of people make me very, very anxious and I have this thing about strangers touching me. The spacecake helped with this a little and neither of us had a panic attack, which is actually quite impressive.

For a little context on what I mean when I say "crowded," please enjoy the following picture:

 Too. Many. People.


Rotterdam feels so much cleaner and spacious than Amsterdam. Even the newer areas we passed through felt congested and claustrophobic. I suppose what it comes down to is that Amsterdam feels old. You can almost taste the history, artistic and innovative, sordid and dirty alike.

This morning we got the hell out of our hotel as fast as possible and caught the train back to Rotterdam. The evidence of yesterday's adventures is documented by the contents of our pockets and an intense urge to shower.

As we rode home we decided that our next adventure is going to involve a little more seclusion and a lot fewer people. I think a trip to the Scottish Highlands is in order, and possibly a beach outing. I'm sure there's something in Spain near some rocks that we can climb all over...

Settling In (ish)

Welp, we finally got bikes. The Netherlands is very pedestrian friendly, but it's very, VERY bike friendly. Public transportation is an excellent tool, but the reality is that it's often faster to bike to your destination. For the past week we've been hoofing it. A lot. I think we've averaged 12km a day, not including climbing or runs. So yesterday, we finally managed to find relatively cheap used bikes. All of a sudden, it's so much faster to go places.

Lesson #4 of the Netherlands:
Get a bike ASAP. They're faster than public transportation (and walking). Also, legally speaking, in a vehicle vs. bike accident, the car is always at fault, even if the biker hits them.

So there are a lot of geese, birds, and swans that hang out in and around the canals. Yesterday we made friends with a swan. Well, maybe not friends. It was hanging out in the middle of the road and walking after everyone who passed near it. To be clear, swans are not nice animals and are also quite large.

It turns out that we showed up during an unusually sunny and beautiful week. While the Netherlands gets some beautiful days, there is usually some serious wind and rain that accompany, well, everything. As a result, the Dutch really know how to get out and enjoy the nice days (sounds like Fairbanks this summer, eh?).

We were introduced to Holland rain on Friday. Sure, we got drizzled on Wednesday and Thursday, but nothing crazy. On Friday, it was cloudy. Eh, just like the past couple days. Guess we should go for a run, say 7 miles? Looks grey, but it hasn't been raining. We're probably good.

5 minutes out the door the sky opens up and it starts to rain. Hard, heavy rain that stings when it hits and would instantly turn Fairbanks into a lake.

As a side note, the Netherlands uses a lot of pervious pavements, which drains very well and coupled with halfway decent grading results in almost no puddles. The catch is that pervious pavements are pretty brittle and wouldn't survive ten minutes in Alaska.

Being Alaskan and already wet, we kept running. The rain somehow managed to intensify and it turned in to an all-out thunder storm. By the time we reached the park (2.7 miles from the apartment), the lightening strikes were almost on top of us, so we decided to not be the tallest things in a field and turned around. As the rain let up some, we put in the rest of our miles along a canal, and as we approached the apartment, the rain stopped.

And it started getting sunny.

Several hours later, we decided to walk to the climbing gym. It started getting cloudy. As we left the building I joked that it would just suck to be outside during the only heavy rains of the day, especially since neither of us had grabbed a rain jacket.

I really should have kept my mouth shut. Once again, the clouds decided to relieve themselves on us and we took shelter under a tree. We were shortly joined by two gentlemen (one of whom was wearing a red tracksuit with no shirt and unzipped halfway. Oh, and an oversized red cowboy hat) who had definitely been drinking and took advantage of the captive audience to tell us all about how rain is good but too much rain is bad and everything has to be balanced and factories are damaging the ozone and then we'll get a hole in the atmosphere and the sun will burn us and we'll have to live underground and only come out at night because the sun will be too hot and we'll have to evolve and somehow he started talking about how everything would devolve into anarchy and there would be chaos....

At this point, Ev and I decided that we were already wet and might as well keep walking. There's only so much ear-fucking you can take.

Needless to say, we were really, really happy to arrive at the gym. Have I mentioned the climbing gym is  AWESOME? How awesome you ask? This awesome:

Ah yes, and then there was the meeting with the guy at the University who helps arrange all the health insurance. We left Rotterdam early and managed to hit all the connections exactly right, thus arriving an hour early. Whoops. We figured we'd show up at his office anyway, just in case he was able to see us. Lo and behold, he was, and we learned about the Dutch healthcare system (to be clear, it's awesome and super-comprehensive), especially the awesome international student insurance that has (wait for it) ZERO OUT OF POCKET. After our productive meeting, we dawdled back to the bus station. And caught the bus. We made it ten minutes before breaking down, at which point we had to wait an hour for the next regularly scheduled bus to pick us up. Kinda defeated the point of showing up early so we could get on with our day...

The "big" news of the week is that I needed a goal. Obviously, the only appropriate goal is a marathon. So we signed up for the Athens Marathon on 9 November. It follows the original marathon course from Marathon to Athens, which I think is also the marathon course from the 2002 Athens Olympics. Basically, we aren't just running another marathon, we are running THE marathon. Which is awesome. (It has been brought to my attention that I make questionable life choices and should probably redefine my criteria for goals. I may have peer pressured Ev...)

Today we took the metro to Den Haag and went to the beach. We talked about biking, but the weather looked foreboding and biking long distances in rain just didn't sound that great. The metro was followed by a tram ride and a three minute walk to the beach.

And what a beach it is. Beautiful, clean sand for kilometers with no rocks or boulder fields. There's a large boardwalk that runs parallel to the beach with lots of restaurants.

We managed to walk along the beach for about an hour and a half before, in true Netherlands fashion, it started to rain. We ducked into a restaurant, had some delicious lunch (apparently the Dutch version of a veggie burger is basically falafel. Falafels are amazing. Best veggie burger ever.), then headed home.

Then we did some Dutch learning via Duolingo (awesome program, btw. Free, easy to use, and has a bunch of languages) and went climbing.

Ev is getting better at climbing. And, just for the record, if he had to be a sea animal he wants to be a big turtle. I can't make this stuff up.

Lesson #3 - Regarding Trains and Gyms

Lesson #3 of the Netherlands:
Don't rush to get on the train. Ever. You will get separated and it will be terrifying. Especially when you don't both have phones. And lack sufficient coins.


We're finally starting to settle in. Yesterday we actually started unpacking. Granted, we can't figure out how to get hot water in the shower, and the bathroom smells like a flour tortilla that somebody pooped in (disgusting, but oddly descriptive. I'm not sure why, but it's not airing out), but fresh produce is really cheap. Actually, groceries are really cheap. And the orange juice has pulp in it.

Also, we're 90% sure that a hooker is working the corner across from our apartment. I think I'll call this segment of the blog

Hooker Watch!
Two nights in a row (late nights - blame the time zone adjustment) guys have pulled up to the corner, talked with her (and the other guy who manages to appear, pretty sure he's her pimp), then driven away with her hopping on her bike and following. Exciting stuff.


Yesterday we decided to find a climbing gym to help mitigate the culture shock. Google Maps informed us that taking public transportation would be about 15 minutes faster than walking, so we decided to hoof it. We then proceeded to go on an adventure through an industrial district, past what I think was the jail, and finally around a large park in the center of Rotterdam. Google Maps then got confused about our actual location and we proceeded to wander in every direction until we said fuck it and got pancakes.

Dutch pancakes are more like a thick crape and are delicious. Just so you know.

I'm pretty sure the 5km walk ended up being closer to 9km. Eventually we found the gym and wandered in looking, I'm sure, like confused and uncertain tourists. The guy who worked there noticed us and probably thought we were clueless newbies. He was very nice to us and, when we told him we had just moved here, explained the "subscription" to the gym. We were then asked if we had any climbing experience and/or needed to rent gear. I suspect the gear question was in part to feel out if we actually have a clue what we're doing. We were told to go ahead and start climbing and that he would keep an eye on us just to make sure we were ok (code for "not going to drop someone or belay like an idiot"). No belay class or certification, just a "have at."

It's worth noting that the wall was about 30m tall. It's also worth noting that everyone in Europe uses the French grading system instead of the Yosemite Decimal System to rank the difficulty of climbing routes. And apparently like to use static ropes. This is definitely going to take some getting used to.

Climbing is an excellent treatment for culture shock. Climbers are a special breed, and we immediately felt more at home when we walked in to the gym. We got some beta on good climbing spots in Belgium and Germany that are only a couple hours away by train or car, and I chatted with a guy who graduated from TU Delft with a masters in geological engineering. It's a small world, and I maintain that engineers and geologists are drawn to rock climbing; our climbing group in Fairbanks consists of 4 engineers and a geologist, with an additional 2 engineers and an aquatic ecologist (who works at the satellite facility) who occasionally join us. Dakota, our poor geologist, catches a lot of crap for not being an engineer. Or having his bachelors. Or for being our token sport climber.

Also, they serve beer and coffee at the climbing gym. BEER and coffee. Mostly the beer part.

Anyway, I digress.

We did find some fantastic graffiti on our walk back to the apartment.

Interesting Tidbit #1:
The Netherlands conduct an air raid siren test at noon on the first Monday of every month. This system was put in place during WWII and apparently you can hear the siren everywhere in the Netherlands.

So back to Lesson #3...

We went to Delft today to meet with the professor I'll be doing research for. We took the bus there and decided it would be nicer to take the train back to Rotterdam. After wandering our way to the train station (much further from the University than anticipated), we bought tickets from the kiosk just as a train was arriving. We hurriedly tried to get on it, and Ev made it on just before the doors started closing. We both had a sinking sense of horror as the train pulled away from the platform with Ev aboard and me standing there. The super-fun part was realizing that the train was going to Amsterdam.

That's right. We got separated with Ev heading the opposite direction of where we were going. And Ev hadn't been able to get his phone unlocked, let alone memorize my new number. I sucked it up and got on the next train to Rotterdam Centraal, hoping that Ev would show up eventually.

Ev asked someone on the train where it was going and realized he was on the wrong train. He explained to the very nice guy that he had been separated from his partner and had no way to contact her. The guy took pity on him and helped him switch trains. Once he was on the train to Rotterdam, a women lent a sympathetic ear and took Ev under her wing, explaining to him that once the door alarm goes off, you need to be either on or off of the train because the doors are closing whether or not you've decided where to be. Let it be known that I almost lost a finger figuring that out on my own. The very nice lady suggested that Ev try to contact me via Facebook and lent him her phone to do so. I pulled out my phone to check if he'd emailed me and found the following:

Amazingly, we managed to meet up in Rotterdam Centraal and I was the recipient of the most ecstatic hug of all time. We were both pretty freaked out by the whole debacle and Lesson #3 was born.

We promptly searched out a pub near the apartment and had a couple beers (or in my case a beer and an espresso).

Now, having settled down, the view of the sunset from our apartment is quite lovely.

Day 1 - What Have We Done?

Jetlag is a bitch.

Actually, flying for 15 hours straight, then hauling 300 pounds of stuff on to a train, then a metro, then down a street is a bitch. Turns out that 300 meters is a really, REALLY long way to haul everything you own.

Luckily, the many people we asked for directions during this ordeal were very helpful.

Important Lesson #1 of the Netherlands:
The metro kiosks only take coins or "chipped" credit cards.

This was not taken into consideration when we got a bunch of euros at Wells Fargo, and my Master Card isn't chipped, so there was some drama getting on to the train from the airport to Rotterdam. A very nice girl took pity on me and bought our OV-chipcards (the transit pass, which works for all the public transportation) with her credit card.

Important Lesson #2 of the Netherlands:
You will get sores on your shoulders/neck hauling around 300lbs in the form of 4 duffel bags.

This time zone thing is going to be interesting. We're both tired and spacy and it feels like there are a million things to do. The culture shock doesn't help. Hopefully we'll figure everything out and life will get easier. The biggest thing at the moment will be getting the University to tell me what my bank account is so we can get Personal OV-chipcards that don't require going to a kiosk every time we use public transportation (the disposable OV's are good for 1 or 2 hours, which is actually kind of nice given that you have to swap modes of transportation to get anywhere).

For now, we'll take things one day at a time.