Re-ex-patriation

August/September was my longest trip away from the Netherlands since I moved here four years ago.  I hadn’t planned to be gone for more than a couple of weeks, but an opportunity, sudden time in someone’s schedule, a meeting, planning and training: one thing led to another, and time passed.

There’s adjustment in returning, and rediscovering things

• Finding where I left my bike.  I chose someplace safe, but different than where I usually park, so steps had to be retraced.  And the right set of keys found.
• Learning to cross streets.  Looking right, not left, and registering the presence of bicycles instead of cars.
• Climbing stairs.  Narrow passages and thin treads on top of the sheer number of steps and the breathtaking angle of climb.
• Coping with IND.  My visa renewal went in last July: no word from them in the mountain of mail at my front door.  I called; learning that a decision was reached September 24.  I will hear in a few weeks.  No, they can’t tell me what the decision was.
• And, about that mountain of mail.  The sheer volume of junk mail vs. real mail is astounding.  Newspapers, flyers, magazines, advertisements, probably 10:1 in number, 100:1 in volume.  I took a big bag of it to the recycle bin.
• Rediscovering café’s.  ‘How I’ve missed streetside coffee on a  sunny afternoon.
• Getting back into exercising.  And bike riding.  And stroopwafels.
• Boats going by the windows.  And people. The pulse of a city’s day again, so different from the day’s phases in the countryside.
• Resuscitating the plants: Guidelines recommend CPR before shocking them.
• Restocking the ‘fridge.  This meant doing a big shopping at midweek, when it’s out of style to do a big shopping,   People were inconvenienced, which made the usual race to pack groceries before the next customer’s stuff arrives even more pressured.
• Reconnecting with friends.
• Tuning in to the Dutch language; remembering forgotten Dutch words.  And getting comfortable with missing a portion of everyday conversations around me again.  It drove me back to the Dutch books by late last night.

But the skills will all return by the weekend: it’s just like, well, riding a bike.

-------------------------

Two links of interest, then back to work on the budgets:

Schiphol Airport has long had a small art gallery, where passengers could browse paintings from the Rijksmuseum between flights.  No, next to that spot, they have put a library.  There are several thousand books that can be borrowed, most focused on Dutch history and Culture, and comfy chairs for reading.  It’s a great idea, and may pull me away from the airline lounges on future trips.

My mail updates are returning errors; I can’t Like my friend’s status.  Is it my fault or is the site down?  Downrightnow.com knows: it’s a free site that monitors the major social networking sites and keeps track of whether they are working.  The graphic history of up- and down-time suggests that the Cloud is far less perfect than we all think.