Albert Heijn

                                                                     

     Things in Amsterdam are very small. It's a densely populated city and the people are packed together, as the Dutch would say, like herrings in a barrel.( A lot of their idioms are about fish and monkeys for some reason). When I first came here I immediately felt like Will Ferrell in the beginning of the movie Elf where he's this giant human living in the world of the elves, breaking furniture and such. I've learned how to live with tiny things, and now I can gracefully sit on a child sized stool at a table the width of a hubcap and drink an espresso out of a cup that looks like it came in a set of accessories for Barbie's Malibu beach house.

     One item that I had to become accustomed to early on was our teeny tiny college dorm style refrigerator. It has two shelves, one drawer, and a freezer roughly the size of a Mazda Miata glove compartment that says in bold letters “ICE WORLD.” Ice world holds one tray of ice cubes and a popsicle, hardly a world at all. The capacity of the refrigerator necessitates frequent trips to perhaps the most annoyingly small of places in Amsterdam, the shop. The purpose that I'm belatedly arriving at here is to bitch about the grocery store.

     There are a few stores here, all similar, but I usually go to Albert Heijn. You might be picturing something like Ralph's or Trader Joe's where the living is easy and the aisles are as wide and unoccupied as a freeway after the apocalypse. No. I remember my halcyon days of shopping at places like Target, Fred Meyer's, and T.J. Maxx, perusing the endless aisles at leisure, poking at nick-knacks and savoring samples. Pushing a cart.

     I do not use a cart at Albert Heijn. Primarily because as everyone else has baskets I'll look like the only fat ass that needs to buy more than a two day supply of food, also because the cart (despite being roughly the size of one of those children's play carts) just doesn't fit down the aisle. Once I enter the door I'm immediately swept into a swiftly moving current of other shoppers. Due to the place having the dimensions of a large janitor's closet this happens no matter how few shoppers there actually are in the store. If I miss something as I'm swept past it I have to either make full bodily contact with the people behind me and struggle to travel counter clockwise or ride the lazy river all the way around again and try to grab faster. Did you want to take a second to read the nutrition label on that? Too bad.

     You will rue the day you drank the last of the milk if you have to go during peak shopping hours. For some reason the mostly teenage employees of Albert Heijn (bless them) wait until it's at absolute capacity to drag out these massive restocking carts with which they clog the arteries of the store. It's like being pulled into a raging river and trying to avoid areas of flotsam while also comparing prices.

     The Dutch have a different way of relating to other people's space than I am used to. I think it's a function of the amount of people in such a small area.

United States:

-Someone needs to get past me. I'll take that into consideration and do my best to make room for them with a smile and acknowledgment from both parties.

Netherlands:

-Someone needs to get past me. I'll stand exactly where I am and completely ignore them, the problem should just work itself out naturally.

      For the record I don't think people are being intentionally rude. I think that there are just so many people stacked on top of each other that it wouldn't be practical to acknowledge everyone, so you don't acknowledge anyone.

     When you go to check out at the store you always have to bring your own bag or buy one, I think this is a good thing. The cashiers are allowed to sit rather than standing all day, also good. You bag your own groceries, another plus in my opinion. I miss Trader Joe's though.

London, Cambridge, Yorkshire, Edinburgh

The Yorkshire Dales

Our method of choosing places to visit is about as well considered as blindfolding ourselves and pointing at a map, so it was with very little forethought and almost no research whatsoever that we decided to stay in the Yorkshire dales for a month after a poker tournament in London. We wanted to spend some time in the country where we could take long walks and feel like authentic British country gents whilst we drank beer and ate pheasant at the pub. We rented the below monstrosity and drove from Cambridge to Burnsall, a SMALL town of about three hundred people and countless sheep. The car was great in every respect other than the automatic sensors which tell you that you're about to hit something. Unfortunately the width of the car was only about four inches less than the width of the walled country roads so anytime we drove anywhere the car would continuously beep at us.

The Fall colors were out in force and we spent most of our time outside hiking the trails that went in every direction from Burnsall to the surrounding villages.

 

Just outside of the village were the enormous sprawling grounds of Bolton Abbey. It was so perfect that it was almost cliche. The ruins of the Abbey stand over a river winding through pastures and into little valleys where tons of pheasants were running around. There were also a lot of pheasants squished on the side of the road, not by us though, as I'm sure the proximity warning system of the car would have let us know.

Our home was a stable loft, built into one part of an old stone barn. From the kitchen window we could see the whole village


 

 

We spent a lot of time walking and visiting nearby farmer's markets, castles, and abbey ruins. The countryside was beautiful, everything had that smokey fall smell and from up on the moors the landscape looked like a giant green quilt with gray stone wall stitches.

I've never seen a burlier sheep in my life, not that I've seen a lot of sheep, but this looks like a genetic anomaly.

We both really enjoyed our time in the country and it was nice to escape the frantic atmosphere of Amsterdam for a while and spend time in nature.

Fuzzy Vagina Couch

When Bryan's mom came to Amsterdam we spent a day at the Rijksmuseum. Every time we've been in Amsterdam it's been closed for renovation so this was the first time for us all. The art was amazing! I've always really admired Dutch art, it has a special quality to it that I can't describe, as I'm not educated in art appreciation. Sometimes it's so vivid and colorful...

Even when everyone in the painting is wearing puritan uniforms, it's still interesting...

There are more than just paintings in the museum, there are a lot of artifacts. This is one room of an immense dollhouse. You get up on a stepladder to peer into the rooms with all the perfectly made, tiny furniture and teeny tiny delftware.

This was one of my favorites, the light looked so real...

It was at the Rijksmuseum that I decided I really hate modern art. After seeing the amazing works of the Dutch masters we went up to the contemporary exhibit where we encountered random junk made of wires and this monstrosity:




It's a vagina couch and it's just so damn ugly. Maybe I'm unrefined and troglodytic but I don't understand what qualifies this as art, modern or otherwise. Can I just throw poop at a dartboard and qualify as a modern artist? What does this vagina mean?! It isn't even an accurate representation. It also looked really grimy and musty, like something you would find in a creepy uncle's fetid garage. Seeing works by Vermeer and Rembrandt in the same building as this grotesque eyesore makes me worry about the human race.

Demon Dogs and Alien Cats

     Despite being easily frightened I love spooky things. Luckily the Dales are purportedly full of monsters, ghosts and other Halloweenish anomalies. Near the village we are living in now is a geographical quirk called Troller's Gill, it's a large gorge carved into the limestone by a small river which is supposedly inhabited by trolls and a demonic dog, known as the barghest, which has glowing eyes the size of saucers. We set out to the gorge on a rare sunny day, which diminished the creepy factor considerably.

    To get to the gorge you hike a short way through fields, and in our case a large group of cows.

     The river was rushing from significant rains the night before, still no demon dogs though.

                                                    The fall colors were stunning.

                                  Following the path of the river took us right to the gorge.

The gorge extends a little bit overhead so at some points you walk directly underneath these large limestone boulders that appear to be clinging precipitously to the ledge. I feel like helmets would have been appropriate.

Our first (and only) evidence of the maleficence of the gorge was the mostly decomposed carcass of a sheep. I would like to believe that it fell victim to the barghest, but it's more likely it was knocked dead by a falling rock from above.

     Fred, being averse to water or anything wet, insisted that Bryan transport him from here to there.

 
  Eventually the canyon narrowed to the point where we wouldn't have been able to continue without waterproof boots and a less cowardly dog, so we turned around and made the scenic hike back.

This is the only demon dog we saw that day.

Another spooky thing they have in our area, aside from the reported poltergeist at the local pub (seriously), is something called ABC's or "alien big cats." "Alien" because they aren't native fauna, not because they're from space. I'd heard of people seeing panthers and pumas and such out on the moors before, but it always seemed kind of ridiculous. Then, the other day when I was watching the bell ringing practice at the church the ladies were chatting about them and one older, respectable looking lady said that just the other night, as she was driving home towards the next village over, a huge black cat (leopard size, not large house cat size) ran in front of her car and made her slam on her brakes. When a well dressed, church-going, English woman tells you in a British accent that she saw a jaguar crossing the road, you believe her.

Collection agency vs. Chihuahua

Here's a fun story about the perils of vacation rentals. We have a great little place in the Jordaan neighborhood of Amsterdam, kind of a trendy and eclectic part of town and everything is lovely. One afternoon we return from a day on the town to find that someone has come into our apartment and left a formal looking letter taped to the computer. It's all in Dutch and at first I think maybe it's the gardener's invoice or something. I was immediately really creeped out that someone had been in our place. I'm a huge fan of privacy and someone coming into our dwelling without our knowledge or permission really did not sit well. Thanks to Google translate we quickly discover that this letter is not from a gardener, but from a collection agency. Things quickly go downhill after this realization. The letter is written to our landlord, the owner of the home, informing him of the following things:

1. They have entered the apartment with a police officer.
2. They are charging him 500 euros for having to force the door because nobody was home.
3. They have inventoried the contents of the home and will be repossessing them forthwith unless he pays the debt immediately.

The first major problem was that a police officer came in and Peanut was there, so I know some Dutch cop was probably bitten. The second problem is that OUR computers and various other items are included in the inventory of things to be repossessed, presumably because they have no idea that the property is being rented and therefore assume that all the contents belong to the landlord. My purse had been rifled through, including my wallet. I don't care if you're the damn CIA, stay out of my FREAKING purse or I will cut you.

Okay, so we call the office of the collection agency to inform them that we are renters and find out what the heck is going on. To their credit, I'm sure that people call in all the time with excuses and lies and when Bryan tells the secretary our story she starts laughing in an I-find-your-fake-American-accent-and-load-of-crap-story-very-dubious kind of way. Apparently Bryan's very real American accent must sound like the machinations of a dutch debt dodger.

Our next step is to call the landlord. He's very casual about the whole thing and comes over at his leisure to collect the letter. He's irritatingly cavalier about the situation, like it's an everyday occurrence for the police to enter your home and make lists of your things to take. He tells us some story about how his scooter was stolen and he stopped paying the insurance and he's in some sort of battle of wills with the collection agency. Might be true, might not, I'm still on the fence. He assures us the matter will be resolved post-haste.

The matter is not resolved post-haste.

Several days later I'm just starting to shake the unpleasant sensation of having my space invaded and time is healing the horrors of having my purse gone through when a surly looking man from the collection agency comes to the door with a clipboard and brusque demeanor. He has come to deliver another list of the things that were itemized and a bill for the privilege of having the locks breached and our sense of security summarily squashed. He starts acting like a Russian mafioso, telling us that we should pay our rent to HIM instead of the landlord and asking us questions about why we are living here and how can we prove that we're renters etc. He was also telling us that they might end up taking our stuff anyway and that we could get it back if we showed receipts proving that they belonged to us and not the landlord (why of course! Let me just grab those from the filing cabinet full of proofs-of-purchase that I bring with me on every transatlantic journey). I had kept my cool up to this point but it suddenly dawned on me that this was probably the very man who had intrusively pawed his way through my sacred valise. MY PURSE. I was seized with a sudden indignation and told that man to go to hell. I knew our landlord had already set up a payment schedule with the company because we'd been in contact with them and it was obvious that we were renters at this point and had nothing to do with this debt. Anyway the story ends with the man leaving with his tail tucked and after a call to the company office we confirm that the matter had already been resolved. The lesson I learned is that I should leave my purse closer to Peanut's bed next time I go out.

The steps required to take your dog to the UK or EU.

I wish there had been a concise list of steps for bringing pets into the EU/UK when I was planning this trip so for others who may be planning a similarly ridiculous endeavor here is such a list. You probably don't want to read this unless you're trying to get a pet passport as it's a long, boring, bureaucratic process. Here we go.

       1. Because there are specific time windows for the various vaccinations book your trip first                and book your pet/s a spot in the cabin ahead of time so you know exactly when you're                  leaving.

       2. First things first. Start this process no less than 21 days before your pet's arrival in the
           EU/UK. The rabies vaccination must be no older than 1 year and no newer than 21 days.
           WAIT!!! Before, BEFORE, BEFOOOOORE you get the vaccination you must get                        a microchip. Any rabies vaccination that is given before the microchip is fitted  is 
           automatically invalid. The microchip must be ISO standard, an internationally recognized                type which conforms to the readers they have at customs. If your pet already has a    
           microchip that is not ISO you can get a new one or bring your own reader.

       3. Once you have a microchip and a rabies vaccination (in that order!) you are ready for the
           next step which must occur between 1 and 10 days of your arrival in the EU/UK.

       4. Find a USDA certified veterinarian. Inexplicably, there is no database to tell you whether
           the vet is certified or not, you have to ask.

       5. Have the USDA certified/federally accredited veterinarian fill out the applicable health
           certificate.   This is called the Annex II form. You can print it out online or have the vet  
           office print it. Take the original copies of the rabies documents as proof that they are
           vaccinated.The vet will read the microchip and record it on the certificate and will verify
           that the pet has been vaccinated against rabies. They will also include other relevant details
           like the type/color/breed of the dog. NOTE! Make sure that the vet fills out the certificate              and signs it in BLUE INK ONLY. This is a requirement.

       6. Take the completed health certificate to a FedEx office and mail it overnight via certified 

          mail, remembering to use a tracking number so you can keep an eye on it. Also include in
          the envelope: a prepaid overnight return envelope so they can return it to you once it's
          stamped, a check for the payment for the stamp (I believe it was around $30.00 per pet but             this varies by state so check), put your driver's license number on the top of the check.

       7. Shortly it should be returned to you, stamped. If you are going into the EU you are ready to            go at this point. If you are going into the UK there is one more important step.

       8. UK only: between 24 and 120 hours your pet is required to receive treatment for  
           tapeworms. The veterinarian administering the treatment must record all the relevant
           information including date and time of the tapeworm treatment.

       9. Make sure you purchase an airline approved pet carrier that will fit the under-seat
          dimensions, which may require calling the airline and getting measurements. Call the airline             48 hours ahead of your flight to confirm your pet's reservation (just to make extra sure).

       10. Get to customs and eagerly try to show them your completed health certificate like you
             colored something at Sunday school and you want them to hang it on their fridge. Find to              your dismay that they don't even freaking look at it. Congratulations, you leaped through a              bunch of bureaucratic hurdles and your pet is an international traveler!

Because I went to the UK from the Netherlands I had the tapeworm treatment there and had the vet issue me a Pet Passport which allows the dogs to travel freely throughout the EU and UK. This was very easy, I just showed them the health certificate and they filled out the passport for me with all the relevant details.
Not too long ago it would have been almost impossible to take your dog to the EU because there were quarantines and a drawn out rabies testing process, but now the UK has come into line with the EU animal import regulations and even though the list above looks really daunting, it just takes a little bit of planning. Another note: this list only applies to people coming from the U.S. and Canada and other low rabies incident countries. Good luck!

FYI, this is what the health certificate looks like, on the bottom is the USDA stamp.

These are the E.U. pet passports, although I'm still not clear on the word "gezelschapsdieren."