The Family Christmas Letter, 2018

It's Christmas in Athens, and you know what that means. Well, actually, it doesn't seem to mean much of anything here on the ground, but here on the blog, oh yes, it's time for another of my occasional attempts at humor, the all-time favorite (in the not terribly competitive universe of Brekkie postings) Family Christmas Letter, starring, and in order:

TALIA:

Talia, stymied by the couch buying process in the Netherlands (pick a couch, give them some money, wait for it to show up in your living room...why do they have to make things so complicated?), went into a furniture store in Munich and has since refused to get up. We miss her, but are happy if she's happy. Before sitting down, Talia earned us a lifetime's carbon credits by restoring the creek, completed field work for an advanced degree in herring inspection, and got all caught up on her bathing.

FELIX:
 

Having finished his final year of elementary school, Felix moved to the Netherlands where he introduced bike surfing ("gevaarfietsen") to the Dutch, proof, if such were required, that you can take the boy out of California but not the California out of the boy, also, that he has no sense at all. When not brushing his hair--which is to say all the time--he is busy making excuses, popping Bloons™, and perfecting his impression of Richard Feynman (the brilliant scientist Feynman, not the louche skirt chaser Feynman). Felix enjoys picking up his clothing and coming to breakfast promptly just about as much as you'd expect.

GIDEON:

Shown here robbing a chocolate store--one sample only, Gid!--we have our younger child and his faithful bicycle helmet (he goes through bicycles like I eat potato chips but somehow the helmet stays on). Gideon went straight from second grade to fifth, albeit in different educational systems, and now mutters angrily to himself in two languages, so yes, you could say the move to the Netherlands has been a success. He sleeps in his own bedroom but doesn't like it, and is still, even after all these years, 100% guilt-free.

ALEC:

Alec found his missing hat but even so slept badly last night, so if this isn't funny that's why. When not tossing and turning he likes to collect jobs and debt, the thinking being that one will eventually catch up with the other and isn't it exciting waiting to see which one wins and doesn't that maybe explain all the tossing and turning? Alec travels often, mostly to visit Talia in Munich, and found himself on two (sub)continents he'd never expected to visit this year or any year, further proof that, as he likes to say, too much is never not enough.

THE HOUSES:
 

It was a big year for us mortgage holders and the properties by which we are encumbered. First the house in Cali had to be made ready for renting. This entailed mobilizing earth moving equipment to ensure the place didn't wash downstream while we are gone, and, harder, packing up the house completely, a process we savored over many weeks and that somehow left the space seeming even smaller than it was before. Dispirited, we rented it and moved to Amsterdam. There we embarked on a months-long process to purchase additional space for our apartment, despite the fact that, not having a couch (see above), we don't even use the living room we already have. This section, upon rereading, is sad, not funny, but it is true and sometimes that's reason enough to laugh.

THE VACATIONS:

As noted some screens above, I write from Athens, but as screens go by so does time and I'm actually posting from Meteora, Greece. Unable to pick among a plethora of my perfectly framed shots of the incredible rock formations in and around which we have been hiking almost non-stop for the past two days, I instead offer you this disgusting video of Gideon drinking hot chocolate I took just hours ago.

Now that's fresh! For more from our many picture perfect and enviable in every respect vacations this year, please review my previous posting on Ameland, which really was as wonderful as it looks. For the rest, well, here's a sampling of some ups and some downs, vacations and otherwise, with the by now usual Apple-supplied soundtrack:

Have a very happy New Year!

Fusion Festival

 I'll keep this short: if partying with me for nights and days on end to the very finest techno playing at multiple venues scattered across an abandoned Russian airfield somewhere in former East Germany in the middle of the summer (26-29 June 2019 to be precise) sounds like a good idea then you'd better register to get tickets NOW.

Sinterklas

Sinterklas is here! Well, he was at the kids' school, along with his faithful not-quite-blackface helper, Piet, and, if you look closely, Gid. If you aren't familiar with this Dutch tradition, look it up. If you are, then you will not be surprised to learn I wrote a gedichtje:

Gid, you learn languages so quick
Tell me, boy, what is your trick?
Perhaps you should learn another
Then you'll have one more way to insult your brother
De Sint can speak with you in het Nederlands
Because I read you stories starring Poppejans

Felix, is there anything you can't ride?
I've seen you on both horseback and bike astride
Flying hands-free and unlit in the dark
Terrifying the other riders in the Vondelpark
But I think your very best trick
Was riding the length of the Englischer Garten while sick

Talia, you're the real superstar
Planning everything near and far
Choosing schools, baking cakes
And making sure we get the best interest rates
Most impressive though to me
Was your cooking not just one but two turkeys

Family, you are totally bad ass
Which is why I'm so happy to be with you on our first Sinterklas

Bridges

Beware of trolls!

I love bridges--who doesn't?-- and to celebrate my birthday this year of years I gave a lecture (or, as some termed it, Alecture) about a bridge, specifically, the MX3D Smart Bridge, to which I invited many dear friends. More than one of these commented to me that I have always been a bridge builder, by which they meant someone who brings people together. This is true, and there isn't a better way to celebrate than to do that once again. Here they are, and thank you all for being there, and everywhere, always:

Alecture Attendees

Middagmaal in Amsterdam

An astute commentator suggested it was time for the blog title to change, given my current location. He's right. I started this blog in 2009 after my move to the US in order to keep my Amsterdam friends up-to-date on my doings overseas. Back in Amsterdam its purpose, though not its only one, remains the same, but the definition of "overseas" has changed. However, I can't just rename it to the direct Dutch equivalent. For one thing, the Dutch breakfast is a pale experience at best--there's nothing here like the soon-after-return breakfast that inspired the name originally:

(Felix was and remains a good eater, though we have since met an even better one.) For another, a lot of time has passed: surely breakfast is over? I've chosen the middagmaal instead, which can be quite good hereabouts.

American friends, you will admit that America is as beautiful and arguably even more monstrous than ever, but never fear, we will be back. And while I wrote in my original post that I expected to lose friends once they were far away, my experience has been that you lose connection with very few of the people you care for deeply, and certainly none of my Dutch vrienden have been lost to me in this way. Nor, I now understand, will my American ones be while we are away. Eet smakelijk!

De Microbe Mens

I mentioned in a previous post our fellow travelers on our trip to Ameland. Old friends, stout bicyclers, wonderful company, and microbiological missionaries to boot. I'd known that Remco and Coosje were both deeply involved in (indeed, founded) the Yoba For Life non-profit, but it was not until I arrived in the Netherlands and secured a copy of De Microbe Mens, Remco's paean to bacteria (and, not to be forgotten, yeasts, algae, and fungi, too) that I understood that story in full, along with much else about his career as a microbiologist.

A short but rich book, De Microbe Mens ("The Microbe Man") explores and explains the relationship between the microbial world and our own. Actually, as Remco beautifully illustrates, that distinction is wholly false: we exist under almost all circumstances within a world of microbes, and are ourselves walking ecosystems that they populate and, to a surprising degree, control. Much to his (and my) chagrin, that false distinction has led to a culture of "hygiene" that is patently unhealthy and ecologically destructive. Rather than detail his arguments, let me extract and summarize his advice: don't use everyday products with "antimicrobial" agents; make only very careful use of medical antibiotics; eat with great variety so as to encourage a vibrant internal flora, and avoid preservative-laden foods; air quality issues not to be forgotten, introduce external ventilation into your living spaces; route yourself preferentially through bacterially rich environments; and get educated.

Sadly, you probably cannot get educated by reading Remco's book: it's only available in Dutch, and he has no plans to translate it. There are other sources of information on the topic, of course, but I don't know of a better one and you will miss in any case Remco's inimitable voice. Here an extract:

A rotor allows the tail to turn on its axis and the bacteria can in this fashion with a spinning tail bore through the water like a corkscrew. It the tail turns counterclockwise the bacteria swims in a straight line. Clockwise, the bacteria tumbles. The tail's direction of turn is determined by signals from the bacteria's environment, and on that basis the bacteria swims straight or tumbles. The trajectory of a bacteria we can view as a wise life lesson: if you less often change your direction in response to an improved environment you will eventually reach your ideal. (p. 37)

As someone who tumbles a good deal, there's much in just this one paragraph for me. And while I'm not in a position to affirm Remco's scientific credentials, my (reading) Dutch is good enough to let me judge how well someone writes; as well, I've read a lot of the great "popular science" works by the (mostly dead) immortals, including Gould, Sacks, and Dawkins (before he got rabid about the whole atheism thing). Remco ranks. And not only does he rank, he is of a kin with the writer and the book that got me started in my lifelong love of this important genre, shown here in both English and Dutch editions (the latter photo supplied by Remco himself):

Microbe Hunters, recommended to me by my father (but not yet taken up by either of my boys), was the first book about science I ever read, and it set in train interests that led me to and through a doctoral program in Science and Technology Studies (aka "reading and writing about science and technology"). To discover that one of my besties has now emerged, a la de Kruiff, as a Dutch author writing a popular explanation of microbiology is simply delicious.

De Microbe Mens is about microbes and man, but it's also about a microbe-man, Remco himself. Two of the six chapters total are taken directly from Remco's own life. One is about his work on Yoba, the other about how he became and what he has done as a microbiologist. Remco tells me that many Dutch critics were disapproving of what they took as self-aggrandizement. These critics cannot have read much other popular science (and certainly not a word of Sacks') nor honestly asked themselves if these chapters helped or hurt the book. To my taste they serve not only as Remco's bona fides but also as inspiring and even exciting stories in themselves, offering a rare readable glimpse into the scientific process and its application.

I love the book, I love Remco, and thanks to the two I now love our little friend and sometimes master, the microbe.

AMSTELO-DAMUM AMPLIFICATUM

Map of Amsterdam with design for the expanded city by Daniel Stalpaert. A. Besnard after Daniel Stalpaert, 1657, collection Rijksmuseum.

The question I am asked most often these days: How has Amsterdam changed? The questioner most often hardly pauses before offering their own answer: it is much more crowded [with foreigners] than before. There’s no doubt about that: the number of tourists and of foreign residents has grown enormously and the impact on the city is unmistakable. Not only is the center of the city virtually impossible to access at times, but the tourists, lured by the online recommendations and offers of strangers, are turning up in the most surprising places. And those rich foreigners are driving up the housing prices, making it increasingly difficult for the Dutch to live in their own capital. My blushes. What annoys me about this is that it’s gotten to the point where one can’t even be certain that the cashier speaks Dutch, so increasingly everyone in the shops simply speaks English.

But “more people” is an observation I could have made while visiting or even from afar, and it’s a fact of life for virtually any city you care to think of. Much more interesting is how this city is coping with these problems. The city mothers (the current Mayor is a woman, a first for Amsterdam after all these centuries), with their typical good sense and very much in keeping with previous practice, are fighting addition with multiplication: they are building an entire set of new mini-cities around Amsterdam, in the process, vaulting it back into the global premier league for arguably the first time since the 16^th century.

Amsterdam began as a village and grew, quietly and unplanned, for long ages before shipping riches demanded, and paid for, its first ring of expansion. The "grachtengordel" that those masses of tourists are coming to see represents only a fraction of the footprint of the city, but when we last lived here almost all of the entertainment, food, and other pleasures of life were to be found either within or very near the outer bound of that ring. Now, that monopoly has been broken: neighborhoods formerly destitute of such are now bursting with hip restaurants, hotels, clubs, galleries, and so forth. One arises on a weekend morning and chooses a direction, confident that wherever you land the borough will be worth visiting. In this Amsterdam is becoming like New York or London, but it is doing so not via organic growth but by building and populating its own Brooklyn and Mayfair and Staten Island and Camden Town all at once. And, in some instances it's not just building those places, it's actually creating the earth upon which they rest.

The Dutch process, or Amsterdam’s at any rate, has evolved considerably. No longer is housing the first thing built, with all that makes life worth living left to sprout on its own. Rather than being forced there by a desperate need for a place to lay their head, people are lured to these up-and-coming neighborhoods by new beaches built next to reservoirs, by restaurants and bars inside converted warehouses and factories, by quirky ateliers systematically subsidized by public funds. As the artists run out of subsidy they may be relied upon to turn entrepreneur, creating the hip enterprises that draw the next wave of pioneers—mostly young families and mostly Dutch, or Dutch-speaking at any rate. The really early adopters have to keep their doors closed to stop the sand from construction sites blowing into their living rooms, but it's not long before things are sealed back up with a pristine layer of shops, offices, playgrounds, and bike lanes.

The foreigners, they still think Amsterdam is the ring, and the tourists, once confined to the Red Light District within the ring, are at least (mostly) held at bay by the Prinsengracht or, worst case scenario, the Amstelkanaal. Still, that leaves a lot of the city, including the part I live in, overrun, and plenty of Dutch people within it, long-time Amsterdam residents and active voters, unhappy with the changes around them. Political pressure is intense, with demands that more be done to “control” tourism in particular. (The Dutch are less interested in stemming foreign investment in, say, real estate, as it’s making a lot of them rich.) Amsterdam is actually trying to redirect some of the tourist population away from the city—they’ve arranged to name Muiderslot the “The Amsterdam Castle,” for example, even though it’s @17km from the city center, in the hopes that some tourists will head out on what inevitably turns out to be an all-day bike ride to a museum that closes at 4:30 PM—but the thing about tourists in the online age is that the more of them there are the more reviews get written drawing still more after. The question, to my mind, is not how to get rid of the tourists but how to keep them from running into the locals. That’s a much harder question to answer, the sort of thing you’d need a lot of data for, a lot of data and Smart Infrastructure. Ah, but that’s a topic for another time and another forum.

Monumentendag

What a lovely weekend, the two-day Open Monuments celebration, where the greatest places in and out of town are open to the public. We saw the old tram station and yard, a mansion complex, a medium sized church and enormous Jewish graveyard, and lots of fortresses, waterworks, and shipwrecks. Also, we encountered Napoleon and, inevitably, sheep. Here, just a few pictures, including one of a place where no monument yet exists, but which seemed well worth recording along the way.

Mission Accomplished

Longest summer ever--early start in California, late finish in the Netherlands--but yesterday was the official end of that lovely time and the start of a new adventure: Dutch school! Here are the boys on the doorstep, fresh faced, amused by Gideon's having sneezed for the first shot, ready to depart:

A ten minute bike ride later we have arrived:

The teachers were waiting at the door with a "spring into school" setup:

Having surmounted that barrier the boys went to their respective classrooms, Gideon with a group of kids his own age...

 Felix with all the other ages (there are only two classrooms total for "nieuwkomers"):

There they are in the bottom two rooms (this is about a third of the total facility):

And here we are, happy parents, having successfully negotiated yet another facet of the great Dutch bureaucracy:

Mission accomplished!

Autocorrect

To Ameland

Above, our route, by bike, from Amsterdam to Enkhuizen, from which we took a ferry to Stavoren, and then biked further to the island of Ameland, before returning to Leeuwarden for the train trip home:

One key to the trip was this:

When you don't have to go up and down you can go on and on. Another key was wind direction: nearly always at our backs. And then there was the rain, or rather, there mostly wasn't. Perfect.

We rented a tandem for Gideon and the less fortunate parent (sometimes the one, sometimes the other) and set off, biking across the city and out into Waterland for a stop at a quaint but impossible pancake house. We eventually escaped that and began our ride in earnest, traveling north through lovely agricultural lands and along the captured sea called the IJsselmeer to a hotel in Avenhorn where we dined on something that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike Caesar salad. The next morning we detoured back to the dike along the sea, taking the long and, towards the end, quite rainy route through Hoorn to Enkhuizen. Both are lovely but the latter city is a true pearl, the most beautiful I've seen in the Netherlands, and home to both an excellent pool complex and the unmissable Zuiderzeemuseum (seriously, if you're planning to visit us, go here too, and bring us along!).

We had a great meal in Enkhuizen, stayed at an excellent hotel, and in fine weather boarded the ferry the next day. An hour in and nearly there, Gideon, who ate almost all of the french fries Felix unwisely ordered aboard, hunkers down as he does on the rare occasions he feels ill. He claims to feel fine, and only later, on dry land, admits to me that he wasn't but didn't say so because I'd commented that talking about being seasick doesn't make it better. You never know when he's listening, that one.

Upon disembarking we found ourselves in Friesland, one of the most lovely of all the Dutch provinces (though I admit I don't know of an unlovely one). We left the inland coast and headed for Wolsum, a tiny village--no grocery, no gas station, no services of any kind except for a bar open only during matches at the local keatsen field--where we stayed for two nights in a former orphanage, happy enough to have a day off after @150km riding. We explored a nearby canal by kayak, but mostly did nothing, no keatsen, no fierljeppen, no reedriden, no skûtsjesilen, nothing but a side trip for groceries, ice cream, some great sculpture, and the world's friendliest butcher (free sausage to people he will in all likelihood never see again, that's what Gid-level cute gets you).

Much recovered, or so we thought, we mounted up for the ride to Franeker, renown for its insanely great planetarium. No video projectors here, but rather scale models of the solar system, one of them built into the ceiling of one family's living room. Good thing, too: in a darkened room we'd have all fallen asleep, tuckered out as we were from the hours pedaling. Restored by some pizza and pasta we retired to our B&B, enjoyed a wonderful sunset across the fields, and awoke to boiled eggs decorated with smiley faces and wearing little woolen Frisian caps (the eggs that is, not us).

This day was to be our most adventurous of all: having eaten those adorable eggs we joined the enormous crowds traveling by train to Leeuwarden for the giants of Royal de Luxe. Perched in trees, we watched the littler girl giant and her dog wake up, take a shower, dress for the day, and head out for a stroll around the city. Worth the trouble and the crowds, it was as magical as the many Youtube films suggest, though we were not unhappy to flee the urban scene and return to our bikes.

Off again, this time to catch the ferry to Ameland. Along the way our first and only accident: Felix rode into the one rough gutter in the Netherlands, ripping a hole in his front tire. He then quite manfully pedaled another five or six km to a bike shop where we replaced tube, tire, and even his seat. Felix transported himself and his stuff some 300km on an omafiets without complaint and, indeed, with every sign of enjoyment, these few km excepted, but I think he was proudest of this stretch, as well he deserved to be. Despite this and the previous detour we still made the ferry in good time, crossed, rode a good stretch of the island, and then even further to have an excellent meal in a former school house in Hollum. Felix then added a good few extra km to the day by going off with our partner family and getting lost in the dark.

On Ameland we wandered the dunes and beaches, played Junior Monopoly and Canasta, and ate mustard soup. I love all the Dutch schiereilanden and it was nice to explore a new one, but we had scheduled back-to-back trips (I write this from Tenerife) and after three nights said farewell to our travel partners, old Dutch friends and their two girls (the latter both younger and taller than our boys). We rode back to the ferry, wormed our way across the sand flats, and had a beautiful ride to Leeuwarden, where we ate an excellent lunch, loaded our bikes on the train, and a mere two hours later were back in Amsterdam.

Here it all is in photos, again, as an Apple-generated montage. I recommend watching with sound off. Then I recommend arranging the same for yourself, say, summer 2019.

Klapgijp

Ah, summer! And a tropically warm one, so what better choice than to spend all day, every day, on a small boat on a tiny Dutch lake (man-made, as is everything around here) learning how to sail? Some of my clearest memories from my youth are of doing just that on the very much not man-made and perfectly enormous Lake Michigan (which program I was one of the first to join and which it appears is still active more than forty years on). What I did not expect was that I, too, would learn something more about sailing from Felix's attendance, namely the Dutch nautical terms he brings home. My English sailing vocabulary, after so many years, is reduced to little more than "port" and "starboard," so no surprise some of them are new to me, but I'm pretty sure I never knew the English word for "klapgijp" (and it appears Google Translate doesn't either) which is the moment when the boom flies around unexpectedly because of your poor handling of the boat and almost or possibly actually does hit you in the head.

I've spent most of the summer indoors in front of this computer feeling jealous of Felix.  His joy and this useful word are my payback.

Photoessay: Amsterdam, month one

Hard to believe--it feels both much longer and much shorter--but we've been here one full month now.  Here's what it looks like (and apologies for the elegiac music, that's Apple's idea not mine):

In the Neighborhood

I had been trying to write a quick post about how things are going here, now almost a month in, but Talia beat me to it. So, for the first time, we're going to have a guest blogger on Brekkie. Ladies and gentlereaders, my wife:

It's quite funny to be back in a house that you custom designed 12 years ago. Some of the aspects are not, as it turns out, timeless. Having been put to the Rental for 9 Years Test, I am grateful that most is very well built, but why did we install so many hooks? Perhaps when the weather turns and these long summer clear sky days turn inevitably to dark, rainy, and wintery ones it will all become clear.

It's wonderful to be back on this block with many of the same neighbors who lived here all those years ago. Some we knew, the ones with kids, and some who didn't have kids then but do now we met recently at a party our downstairs neighbors hosted. One such neighbor even recalled that when I was pregnant with Felix our street was being re-cobbled and when we returned from the hospital Alec had written Hoera! in front of our home with loose bricks. We certainly didn't remember, but it was truly touching to hear this at the time total stranger relay this lovely story. Alec, ever the historian, was able to pull up a picture of it [above --Ed.]. It's very much how we are all feeling right now about being in Amsterdam again.

I think at the time I was uncomfortable meeting the many people who lived across the street from me, who know so much about me (as I do about them) since it's a pretty narrow street and our windows and lives are always open and in each others faces. I think I thought then that if I didn't know their names or acknowledge them on the small street perhaps they won't be able to see even further into my life than they already do.

Somehow with this party our neighbors hosted, whatever that feeling from 12 years ago when we first moved in to Saxenburgerstraat, washed away. And it's a relief. 

There are things to adjust to: the so very many and narrow stairs, needing to weigh the fruits and veggies before going to the cashier, that finding a decent spot to park your bike is only slightly less challenging than finding parking for your car. It's a very very crowded city, especially now with all the summer tourists.

There are things I forgot that I'm so happy to have again: the herring is even better than I remember it. So is the yogurt, which has become our evening family ritual - we polish off two containers between the 4 of us and our newest favorite flavor is hazelnut. A morning run in the Vondel Park. Jumping into the Amstel to cool off. 

We are getting settled: as of this week we have both cell phones and internet at home, the kids are schedule for camps (Gideon will start with two weeks of language camp, and Felix with one week of sailing followed by a week of language camp). We are arranging a bike trip with another family to Friesland. We are working on our travel calendar for the year. I'm starting to look for a job locally, but also because timing is sometimes funny have a new SF-based client for survey work.

We both use WhatsApp, and so should you. FaceTime, Skype, Signal, happy to receive your messages any which way, including your birthday wishes and holiday cards by snail mail.

 

All [our] love,

 

[Us]