Boyzweek

Those of you who follow regularly (and our poll indicated there is a least 1 of you out there!) may have noticed the absence of a female perspective in recent days. Indeed, the girls have packed up for a mini-vacation to France. I'm sure the entire event has been documented with pictures and videos, so expect a download soon. Strangely you can open a bank account in France with no issues, but the internet does not appear to function.

So the boys (Rocky and Booberry, though some may argue their gender stati on a technicality) and I have been on our own. Rocky has been recovering extremely well, and has plenty of tricks to finagle an extra treat out of his medicine routine. Booberry can't figure out why the other side of the bed is neither warm nor lumpy. Daddy has been doing what everyone would expect of a 'bachelor' with a week in the crazy city of Amsterdam: work and taxes.

Yes, it's that most wonderful time of the year even with an ocean's divide! Communicating one paragraph (or scanned PDF) at a time with our accountant has been challenging, but I think we are nearly on the verge of done. Enjoy our contributions to your societal benefits stateside Americans!

OK, there have been a few free moments in the city...

Wednesday was Boys Night Out with a small crew from Swindon. We strolled through Red Light and drank pricey pints before dinner. Tim once again permitted me to watch him school me at billiards. After a vigorous debate about our dinner options, we stumbled upon a comfortable little place with Continental fare. Despite Other Tim's warnings about cheese consumption -- allegedly a matchbook-sized portion contains enough saturated fat for a month -- we ordered the "30 Matchbook" fondue with Cheddar, Stilton, and olive tapenade. Yum. We finished the evening with desert (Guinness) at the Tara pub up Damrak.

Friday, I was invited out to the movies. Going to an actual theater is a rare treat, so I was quite anxious to go. The experience was even better than expected, as the movie was playing at the amazing Pathe Tuschinski near Muntplein. This is an incredible Art Deco building with a classic interior--an opulent lobby, red velvety seats, and balconies. Ignore the rats, but enjoy the beer with your movie! We saw Vantage Point, which was entertaining up to the over-the-top end sequence. We all ate too many sweets from the Jamin. I had walked there to expand my knowledge of Amsterstreets, but thankfully found that the 24 Tram had a stop at Muntplein.

Saturday I took full advantage of my Museumjaarkartje. Early in the afternoon, I went to the Rijksmuseum. I tried to use the 'Fast Lane', but unfortunately our card (or my accent?) doesn't have that privilege. The wait was only 20 minutes. Did I mention I am a fan of Dutch Masters? The Rembrandt collection was really good. My 2nd favorite was his Self Portrait as St. Paul. They also had quite a few Vermeers as well as Frans Hals and Jan Steen. Of course, there is no topping The Night Watch. The sheer size of it is impressive (though the museum describes it as 'relatively small'), and the sense of motion combined with the contrast of light and shadow really make it wonderful.

From there I darted over the the Van Gogh Museum. I started with the special exhibit of John Everett Millais. We had seen posters of his painting Ophelia around town, so I wanted to make sure I saw it before it closed. The web picture of this painting really fails to capture its power. I hadn't seen Millais' work before, and I was really impressed by the radiance of the paint jumping off the canvas. I added a few to my favorite paintings list, though I was underwhelmed by his later landscape portraits. After that, I circled back through the Van Gogh gallery. On this return visit, it did strike me that many of his more famous works are conspicuously absent. On this visit, I think my favorites were two by Gauguin: Self Portrait (Les Miserables) and VVG Painting Sunflowers. The evening closed with a glorious meal at BK and a few beers with the local crew at Hole in the Wall. John made it clear that while I may narrowly escape a beating while refering to Guinness as desert, I shall not drink it with a straw. On the Tram ride home with John, a local asked us why 'North Americans' were so loud. Dutch directness nearly collided with an Irish beatdown (you see, Ireland is not part of North America), and that was when I nearly missed my stop but artfully leapt through the closing doors at the last second.

The final footnote to the week is the haircut (aka Mowin' the Fro-in'). I really had to brush up on my Dutch to be sure I didn't end up with a reverse mohawk.

Befro

Aftershave

There seems to be a recurring self-portrait theme here...

Pining for a PIN

Oh, the saga continues. When we last saw our heroes they were at their (un)friendly neighborhood bank branch. After submitting 12 forms of ID, a blood sample, and a 357euro convenience fee, we were assured that convenient banking (implied by the imaginary convenience fee) was just around the corner.

So at the end of last week, we were delighted when our PIN cards finally arrived in the mail. Oh joyous day! Oh deliverer of monetary sustenance!

Included with our new PIN cards was a letter with the following instructions (roughly translated from the Dutch): "Please continue to use your previously issued PIN with this card"

Needless to say, there was no 'previously issued PIN'. Phone calls to our customer torture representatives were met with an unexpected Niet Mogelijk. It's not that I didn't expect a Niet Mogelijk, but it was the context that floored me... "I'm sorry sir, it is Niet Mogelijk that you did not receive your PIN". Well I'm sorry to inform you that your 26-Sigma model of perfection generated a defect in our general direction. More specifically, two of them. (Apologies for the nerd-speak, but those in the know are chuckling mildly)

That was followed up with the promise that it was Niet Mogelijk to reissue cards in a timely manner. After searching all corners of the world for the PINs, we decided to request a reissue. So now the next 2 week waiting countdown begins! Not ironically, the gentleman I most recently spoke to was more than anxious to let me know my current balance.

No, we don't want your money

"Sorry sir, but that department is located in east-lower Narnia" (or somewhere thereabouts).

Despite our best intentions to hand money over to a Dutch bank to earn 0% interest and pay monthly fees, we've been stymied once again. Yes, you guessed it..."Niet moeglijk"!

We finally made the journey to our nearest branch to complete what appeared to be a simple task: present our identification to prove that we are, in fact, us so that our account could be activiated. As it turns out, we did not bring the allegedly-mailed Official Identification Presentation Form in Nederlands en Engels. So, not to our surprise, they were unable to print a new form of this nature, despite having our account number and 15 forms of ID.

We did eventually convince them to accept various other forms on behalf of the Non-Residents department (Aliens!) and copy our passports for future reference or immediate disposal. That will save us a 44 eurocent stamp, so we really stuck it to them!

According to Madeline it is significantly easier to open a bank account in France. France! Did you hear that Holland?

Spanked by the Bank

I lied. I was indeed stymied by another 'niet mogelijk' prior to Thursday. On Tuesday afternoon our relocation agent whisked me over to our semi-neighborhood ABN Amro to open an account. We had barely been seated when my passport raised the eyebrows of our banker. "American?" Furtive glances across the desk. It seems a recent policy prevents ABN from opening accounts for Americans (later clarified as those owning property, but still no dice for me...). This was due to the stock market or currency fluctuations, or perhaps the sub-prime crisis, though it's not clear which... But rack up another for niet mogelijk!