This round of brunch was in cozy Jordaan restaurant, Vlaming.  We were a little lazy and didn’t make it right at 11am, so we got slated for the second seating around 12.30p. Tragedy, the breakfast burritos were all gone by the time we settled into our seats! But no bother, Wout and I opted for a traditional English breakfast, complete with thick cut bacon, home-made organic sausage (OMG, so good!), an egg, soda bread, potatoes, black pudding (I was a little shy with this item), and beans inside a baked tomato. What a show! And, no surprise, the food totally won– I couldn’t quite finish.

Staying true to my roots, I topped breakfast off with a self-made bloody mary– they serve you up the liquor and you mix it the way you like at their bloody mary bar. Delish! But regaling the tale to a couple of Dutch friends at dinner last night, I learned that the British/American penchant for a boozy brunch is not shared by the Dutch. “A bloody mary for breakfast?! Shocking!” And yet, on further discussion, it was decided amongst the Dutch that beer for breakfast would have been totally normal. Let’s hear it for exploring cultural differences!

Wout and I have made a pact– we will be back for the next round! And this time, it’s breakfast burritos or bust! Nom nom nom…

Promo photo  source: http://www.lovefood.nl/

I may have mentioned before, the house where I’m staying has a fantastic library with many English-language books. I’m sort of overwhelmed because there are so many books here that are on my “to-read” list and many more I’ve added since arriving. I’ve started applying a rule for choosing: pick books that they have in both English and Norwegian. If’ they’ve got two copies, it must be good, right?

I recently finished reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith. I liked On Beauty better, maybe because of the academic setting and the central theme of long-term family relationships. But even still, reading White Teeth now, as I establish my life as an immigrant in a country caught up in anti-immigrant sentiment (although, show me a country doesn’t continually struggle with such things), some aspects of the book were particularly poignant.

Two quotes summed things up perfectly:

“But he knew other things. He knew that he, Millat, was a Paki no matter where he came from; that he smelt of curry; had no sexual identity; took other people’s jobs; or had no job and bummed off the state; or gave all the jobs to his relatives; that he could be a dentist or a shop-owner or a curry-shifter, but not a footballer or a film-maker; that he should go back to his own country; or stay here and earn his bloody keep; that he worshipped elephants and wore turbans; that no one who looked like Millat, or spoke like Millat, or felt like Millat, was ever on the news unless they had recently been murdered. In short, he knew he had no face in this country, no voice in the country, until the week before last when suddenly people like Millat were on every channel and every radio and every newspaper and they were angry, and Millat recognized the anger, thought it recognized him, and grabbed it with both hands.” (pp. 233-34)

and

“‘There are no words. The one I send home comes out a pukka Englishman, white suited, silly wig lawyer. The one I keep here is fully paid-up green bow-tie-wearing fundamentalist terrorist. I sometimes wonder why I bother,’ said Samad bitterly, betraying the English inflections of twenty years in the country, ‘I really do. These days, it feels to me like you make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started… but you mean to go back ! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers– who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained. Who would want to stay? But you have made a devil’s pact… it drags you in and suddenly you are unsuitable to return, your children are unrecognizable, you belong nowhere… And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this beloning, it seems like some long, dirty lie… and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?” (pp.407-08)

An impactful (collection of) story(ies) about the social clashes between generations, classes, men and women/husbands and wives, science and religion, first and second generation immigrants, foreign-born and native-born, and the legacy of empire… with a little sexuality thrown in for good measure. No wonder Smith made such a big splash. This book was quite a remarkable undertaking and was, for the most part, successful, I think.

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Couch and Audrey Hepburn

Allllll social science texts.

A touch of Wisconsin farmland.

Huge fiction selection too… and my favorite: the woodstove.

Woodstove in action a couple weeks ago.

At any rate… the meeting was fantastic, and professionally enriching and promising. The company proved to be the perfect combination of engaging and “rocking out.” And I was able to stick around for some nice touring after the meetings.

I offer you a (semi-) grand tour of the place and my people:

Stephansdom, the religious center of the city.

Hundertwassehaus, a mid-century example of imaginatively artistic public housing. Take note, Scandinavia!

“Pizza, Pasta, Schnitzel”– Only in Vienna!

I could never have believed that good food and drink could have been so inexpensive in Europe! From the 3€ half liters of wheat beer to the 6€ schnitzel to the 1.80€ wines… a frugal-man/woman’s paradise!

While impressive, in some cases the scenery paled in comparison to the glow of young love (Arieke and Maarten, engaged to be married in 2011!).

And of course my feminist cockles were warmed by the frequent reminders of the one, the only: Maria Theresa! The only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg.

But lest you (post-) modernists despair, Vienna does well to cater to the modern art aficionado as well. We saw a fantastic exhibit by the controversial Otto Muehl. What a risk to exhibit his work! I would have loved to be there at the opening to hear the apology letter read.

And in the spirit of radical artists, we also strolled by the Vienna Secession Building.

On a sidenote, kick me for not taking photos of the Soviet monument (the Heldendenkmal der Roten Armee) on the Schwarzenbergplatz. Idiot idiot idiot. Well thank the internet for being such a good archive of photos. It certainly got my history nerve to itching.

Well, getting back to the grandeur of the empire…

…and back to the typically touristic photo genre.

And no trip to Vienna would be complete without a visit to the Opera House.

But I must admit… I missed it! I know, scandal!

Unfortunately, my flight home clashed with the State Opera House tour.

So I ran off to the airport, while my friends toured the famous building. Back- and fore-stage!

But I have sworn, hand-to-god, that I will make it back! Not just for a tour, but for an opera! A real life opera! And there are certainly some winners in the upcoming season… Indeed there are some chances yet.

Cheers, from Vienna!

(Ps- Please enjoy a few more photos on Flickr.)

… And then I got on several planes and with a quick stop over in Atlanta for a work meeting I arrived in…

OSLO!

I’ll be here through the winter to work on a chapter of my dissertation. It’s so fantastic to do all of this globe trotting for work! Of course there are a few minuses to go with the plusses (both of which I’ll detail as things go along), but all-in-all I’m super happy and excited to be here!

One thing you might have guessed, a fall/winter in Oslo means being away from Wooter for an extended period… AGAIN. Well, we’ve arranged for monthly visits and since Wout cannot help his awesomeness, he’s already booked one last minute weekend. So far, that all adds up to us seeing each other 4 out of 6 of my first weekends here. (The math may seem fuzzy there, but I’ll sort it out in the next post, promise.)

But back to the timeline… I arrived in Oslo on a Wednesday and Wouter arrived Thursday evening and we spent that first weekend exploring the city. I’d visited Oslo once before, but it was only a quick, 1-day stopover before launching into Norway in a Nutshell. There were loads of things left unexplored and Wouter and I definitely put a dent in the list. So enough yapping… on to some photos! (Click to see larger images/info; see the whole set on Flickr.)

Welcome to Oslo!

…Followed by a brief visit to New York…

And then…

Goodbye Home!

Bring it Oslo, I’m ready for you!

1) The elections: the “libertarian lite” VVD party won (31 seats), followed by Labor (30 seats) and then… gasp!… the anti-immigrant, anti-Islam PVV (24 seats, up from 8!). There was no majority, so coalition talks started with the VVD, PVV and the centre-right CDA (that lost big, from 41 to 20 seats). Those talks fell apart last Thursday, opening the door for new talks between the VVD (“libertarian lite”), Labor, D66 (also a “libertarian lite” party, but more left wing) and the Green Party. It’s unclear if these talk will succeed as the VVD and Labor (and D66 and the Greens) have some very different ideas about how to run the economy. But let me tell you, I breathed a sigh of relief when I heard that talks with the PVV were over. For now. But I’ll take it.

UPDATE: Ok, apparently as soon as I posted this (literally… like 2 minutes later) news came through that the talks between the VVD, Labor, D66 and the Green party failed. Now what??

2) The World Cup!!! Netherlands has played two of their three group play games. The first against Denmark was a 2-0 win… one of those goals as a DK own goal, oops. I watched that match in a bar downtown and it was super fun! The place just erupted when the Dutch scored! It was so loud in fact that you couldn’t even hear the vuvuzelas on tv! Haha. The second match against Japan was a nail biter. NL won 1-0, but there were a few scary shots on goal by the Japanese toward the end of the match. I watched this match in the airport in Denmark. I think I was probably the only Dutch fan there (I was certainly the only conspicuous Dutch fan, decked out in orange). A few people clapped when the Dutch scored, but I really let out a “Yeahhhhhhhhh!” with an enormous fist pump. Apparently Denmark was not the place to root for the Netherlands, given the Danes’ loss to NL in the previous match. Oh well. The Dutch are successfully through to the elimination round, but do have another match on Thursday.

Oh, and apparently the US are playing in this tournament as well? I did see the first match against England, but I’ve basically forgotten about them as I’ve been swept up by Oranje fever!

3) Why was I in an airport in Denmark, you ask? Well, last weekend I headed up to Lund, Sweden for the Nordic Demographic Symposium. It was good fun, professionally and personally. I gave a talk that was well received and was able to catch up with all of my friends and colleagues from Stockholm University and Statistics Norway. The only disappointment, the folks in Southern Sweden really weren’t as enthusiastic about the royal wedding as I had hoped. Indeed, on Saturday afternoon Crown Princess Victoria married her personal-trainer-turned-sweetheart. Although the ceremony was private, there were a number of public events in Stockholm and people turned out in droves to see the Princess and new Prince. I had hoped to score a tea-tray or coffee mug with a photo of the royal couple (or something equally tacky… royal china?), but the demands of the conference and world cup watching left little room in my schedule. Tyvärr.

Prolineserver 2010,
Wikipedia/Wikimedia Commons (cc-by-sa-3.0)

4) Nearly 2 weeks until I head to the States for the big move out! OMG, I am hyperventilating. But I am very excited to see friends and family!

5) I saw the Hold Steady at Melkweg last night. Again, a great band in a small venue! These guys are such rockers! Their songs are all about rocking out and being young and living like they’re no tomorrow and loving every moment of it. A typical theme might be, for example: being 16 years old, at a music festival and it’s hot and dusty and everyone’s drinking, smoking and maybe even doing drugs (if that’s your thing) and you’re having the time of your life and you love EVERYONE and particularly that guy over there with the messy hair (wow, he’s cute) and the Hold Steady are on stage totally rocking out and they are singing a song about being 16 years old, at a music festival and it’s hot and dusty and everyone’s drinking, smoking and maybe even doing drugs (if that’s your thing) and you’re having the time of your life and you love EVERYONE and particularly that girl over there who is checking out you (wow, she’s cute). To me, this is the Hold Steady. And I think they’re fantastic.

But, as luck would have it, I am not the only expat blogger to notice how nutty things are getting around here. And so I bring you Isabella’s fantastic YouTube creation “Go Holland Go!”

In the first part of the video Isabella documents some of these “Super Fan” neighborhoods. In the following section you’ll see a wide array of adverts featuring orange products.

No surprise, companies develop all sorts of “Oranje”-themed gimmicks to get people into their stores around the World Cup. The top grossing crap items so far this year are furry little caterpillar-looking things called Beesies at Albert Heijn grocery stores (you get one free for every €15 you spend… we might have two already) and an orange dress produced by Bavaria beer. Apparently the dresses are causing a stir at World Cup matches in South Africa.  FIFA officials had 36 Bavaria-dress clad Dutch female fans ejected from the Netherlands-Denmark match, accusing them of ambush marketing. Never mind that the women didn’t work for Bavaria and the dresses didn’t have any Bavaria branding on them. (UPDATE: Now it’s come out that Bavaria did pay for the tickets, accommodation and travel costs of the ladies! Ooo, scandal! Here’s a link to the story (in Dutch).) A similar incident occurred at the tournament in 2006, when officials forced fans wearing Bavaria-branded orange lederhosen to strip. Well, no matter. You really can’t keep the “Orange Army” down.