Quintessentially Dutch

Today I was walking in downtown Dordrecht. It started to rain. Hard. I had a hooded sweatshirt on, it being August and all, and I pulled the hood up over my head. There were a lot of people downtown. Not one other person had on a raincoat, or a hat, or was carrying an umbrella. They walked by like nothing was happening, while I tried to shrink inside my sweatshirt. I thought they were looking at me like I was some sort of limp piece of stroopwaffle. Obviously, these people are way more used to being wet than I am. Being wet is a quintessentially Dutch experience. Gretchen and I talked about this tonight and came up with a few other things to put on the list.

• The common Dutch expression, “de volgende keer betaal ik,” which means “next time I’ll pay.”

• Letting the pooh fall where it may. We picked up Maury’s pooh on our walks the first couple of weeks we were here. Eventually we realized we were the only people doing it. The thing is, there aren’t any lawns, so when he goes it’s always in a public area. They have little red signs in places they don’t want you to let your dog go and green signs where the dog can go. Just like traffic lights. My theory is that whole dikes – canals – polders – windmills thing they tell you about how they keep their below-sea-level country from flooding is a cover for the real reason. The country is built on a foundation of petrified pooh.

• The question, “do you want curry sauce or mayonnaise with your French fries?”

• Having your wife lovingly and tenderly scream, “YOU ARE NOW DRIVING ON A BIKE PATH!” as she burrows down in her seat and hides her head under the map you are trying to read to find the store where they have television sets on sale. Never found it. I learned later that not only wasn’t I on the right street, I wasn’t even in the right city. Oops. I now own a GPS. I confessed my mistake to a Dutch friend who said, “Relax, we’ve all done it.”

• Hearing a loud “blaaaaaap” sound behind me while walking the dog, thinking some drunk guy just let out an enormous belch, and turning around to see a sheep staring at us.

• Buying a dining room table and having it come – without warning – unassembled. It required 75 screws to put it together and had four pre-drilled screw holes to get you started in the right direction. Where is Norm from “This Old House” when you need him? I thought, “If I wanted to build my own dining room table I would have rustled up a couple of chipmunks, gone out in the woods and gnawed down a tree, not bought it from a store.”

• Telling Gretchen “If you feel like you’ve got one of those stripes running up your behind just turn around and come home” as she was setting off on her bike for church one drizzly Sunday morning. I was staying home because I had to pick up a friend at the train station. She told some other friends at church what I’d said to her and a Dutch guy later congratulated me on starting to sound like a true Dutch man. I thought I was giving good advice, but apparently my comment wasn’t very sensitive.

• Getting excited because our cable TV package includes ESPN Classic only to learn it is European ESPN Classic. Tonight they are showing the 1959 football (no, not that kind of football) match between Liverpool and Leeds.

• TV shows that start at random times. We love “All Creatures Great and Small” and it’s on most every night from 5:35 to 6:20. Except last night when they showed “Sesame Street” followed by a bike race instead. Today the TV Guide said “All Creatures” would be on but "Sesame Street" came on again. We were about to turn it off when we realized “Sesame Street” was at our language level. So we watched it. And then at 6:10 “All Creatures” started. Weird.

That’s about it for late on a Friday night. Did I mention I love being here?