Sorry

It’s a recurring theme in the rants of even the most experienced expats living in the Netherlands: why the generally friendly or at least often smiling Dutch people never say ‘sorry’. (It’s a recurring theme in our inter-cultural marital fights as well, but let’s leave that aside for the moment.) And since for many expats, I’m one of the few Dutch people they know well (that’s apparently another thing that still baffles foreigners living here; how hard it is to become friends with a true Dutchie, but let’s leave that aside as well), they come to me for an explanation.

The first few times it came up, I didn’t know what they were talking about. I don’t find the Dutch people particularly rude, nor do I think they don’t apologize when they do something wrong.*

But I remembered that I was often annoyed, when living in the United States and in Lebanon, by people who kept saying sorry when I felt they didn’t even mean it. “I had a flat tire” – “I’m sorry”. “It’s raining outside so I can’t go out” – “I’m sorry”. “My dog died” – “I’m sorry”. I mean, I knew it was supposed to be friendly, but those ‘apologies’ only made me want to ask ‘why?’ Did you puncture my tire? Are you the one who made it rain? Or worse: did you kill my dog?

And then I realized what the problem was, and luckily it wasn’t rudeness: a different notion of what it means when you say sorry. The foreigners say sorry when they feel bad for you; the Dutch when it’s their fault that you feel bad. Don’t think we don’t sympathize with you – we just don’t want you to think we’re to blame.

*Except when we really did something wrong, like made a fortune by trading slaves. Then it becomes a lot harder to say ‘sorry’.

Clavisaquaphobia

I have a typically Dutch fear, or maybe I should say a fear typical for Amsterdammers: I’m afraid that one day I will accidentally drop my keys in the canal.

Now you may have been to Amsterdam and think: that’s ridiculous! I mean, how often does one actually get close to a canal? And even if you get close, why would you run the risk of dropping your keys into the water?

Well, we also have bit of a parking problem here in Amsterdam. A parking problem that is not restricted to cars; it is almost as hard to find a spot to put your bike as it is to find a place to park your car. (There is even a three-floor ‘bike-parking-garage’ next to Central Station – it fits around 2500 bicycles and it is always full.) So what do we do? We lock our bikes to the bridges. The bridges over the canals.

Once you are busy locking your bike to the railing of the bridge, it’s a small step for the keys to drop into the water – you yank a bit too hard when opening the lock, you pull your gloves out of your bag and the keys somehow got stuck to one of them… there are endless scenarios possible. I mean, if around 850 bicycles a year end up in the canals, what about the keys?

As far as I know, it’s not in the list of phobias, so I propose clavisaquaphobia. Makes it sound a whole lot more acceptable to worry about my keys.

A phonecall from hell

My friend Iman, afraid that I might start missing (an idealized version of) Lebanon too much, forwarded me the following joke: Queen Elizabeth, Bill Clinton and the Lebanese president died and all went to hell. After spending a few weeks in de house of the devil, Queen Elizabeth says: “I miss England. I would like to call my country and see how everybody is doing there.” The devil hands her the phone. She calls and talks for about 5 minutes, hangs up and asks: “well, devil, how much do I owe you?” The devil answers: “5 million dollars.” “5 Million dollars?” She writes him a check and sits down on her chair.

Then Bill Clinton, a little jealous, gets up from the couch and says he, too wants to call his country and see how everybody is doing. He takes the phone and talks to the United States for about 2 minutes. Afterwards he asks: “well, devil, how much do I owe you?” To which the devil answers: “10 million dollars.” “10 million dollars?” He writes him a check and sits back down on the couch.

The Lebanese president gets extremely jealous; he wants to call his country too! “I want to see how everybody is doing!” he says, “I want to talk to the prime minister, to the deputies, I want to talk to Lebanon!” The devil hands him the phone and the Lebanese president talks and talks and talks, he is on the phone for almost 20 hours. When he hangs up, he asks: “well, devil, how much do I owe you?” To which the devil answers: “2 dollars.”

Queen Elizabeth and Bill Clinton jump up and scream “only 2 dollars?!?!”

“Well,” says the devil, “from hell to hell, it’s local!”

The country in which things make sense

Now that we moved to The Netherlands, we plan on doing as the Dutchies do, and let our cats roam around outside. Since we have already spotted several ‘Missing: Cute Cat’ posters, we will not let them go out just like that: they will have to wear a collar. One with a small thingy attached with our name and phone number in it, so that should they get really lost and eventually very hungry, the nice person who fills their bellies can check who they belong to (and send us a cheque for the food). But these collars don't come with a cat-saving device only. They also come with a little bell attached. A little bell that tinkles every time the cat jumps, runs, or even licks its back feet to enthousiastically. It drives us insane, and it drives the cats insane, so Walid figured he’d remove the little bells.

Not so quick, dear man! That little bell is there for a reason! Dutch people really, really like cats, and cats really, really like catching birds… and a drastic decline in the bird population led to the idea of bells on cats.

Oh, true, Walid sighed. In this country EVERYTHING happens for a reason.

That Moment

When I move somewhere for a longer period of time, one of the first things I usually do is get myself a bicycle. Nothing says ‘home’ to me as much as having a two-wheeler at my disposal, a means of transportation that makes me feel free to go anywhere I want to. In New York City, I took over a little gray All Terrain Bike that was slightly too small for me. It cost me $25 as I picked it up from Spanish Harlem with a flat tire. It was the lock that emptied my wallet; four times more expensive than the bike itself.

For one year, that bike and me were inseparable. I rode it to class, I rode it to visit the boroughs, and I rode it during the demonstrations at the Democratic Convention (2004) when suddenly the police blocked all the roads and made lower Manhattan a no-go zone for cyclists. My roommates didn’t quite understand that my bicycle was my mode of transport rather than a work-out accessory, and they also had difficulty grasping the concept of biking in a skirt. (I dare to state that any Dutch woman knows how to ride wearing a skirt, but they didn’t know that, so to them I was merely eccentric.)

The bike as a way to get around in the city also proved hard to explain in Beirut. The mountain-bike I bought in early 2006 was used maybe three times until I started realizing that it was not appreciated if I showed up somewhere drenched in sweat (inevitable, in Lebanese summer and traffic). I also became aware of the attraction me and my bicycle formed when a complete stranger asked me one day if I would like to join their bike-for-peace ride – I was the local ‘bike-girl’, after all. Until a month ago, when a Syrian worker in Hamra became the happy new owner, the yellow & blue bicycle has been gathering dust on our rooftop terrace.

Now I am back in the Netherlands, back to bicycle country. It took me two weeks, but my old bike is restored to its former glory and I just rode it to my parents’ house in the village. I had almost forgotten how good it feels – the speed, the wind, the freedom. I had also forgotten that in this country, rain is inevitable. And that rain + bike = wet. I came back home with puddles in my shoes, dripping hair and all the clothes on my body completely soaked with water.

But I loved the ride, because it reminded me of That Moment: the moment you realize that no matter how fast you go, no matter how hard you push those pedals, there is no way you will arrive to your destination in a presentable manner. You KNOW you will be drenched, soaked, dripping wet; you KNOW that turning around won’t help you, nor will finding shelter because you KNOW the rain won’t let up for the foreseeable future. So all you can do is throw your head in the wind and enjoy the freshness of the rain… and the hot cup of tea next to the heater when you get there.