Paprika

Upon rising from my bed (at 3pm) I showered off all my Americanness and set out for my first Dutch adventure! Thea pointed me in the direction of the grocery store and off I went, braving tiny cars, bikes, and vespas alike to reach the Voorburg marketplace. I was told to look for a supermarket, but assuming all European cities are set out like what I’ve learned from French textbooks, I wound up paying an arm and a leg for petit magasin produce and bread. My oneness with the ease and joy of the jetsetter was revved up when I taught the cute, fauxhawked Dutchman at the produce shop that the English word ‘pepper’ refers to both the spice and the vegetable. Voila! Le meme! Onward to the bakery where I tried to order some sliced cheesy (I think that’s cheese) topped bread and got laughed at for reasons I still don’t understand by the beautiful bakery girl. Confidence down, I wandered about till finding the actual supermarket where panic officially set in.

I am a picky eater. In the past few years, I’ve become decidedly less so, and mark that as a personal achievement. Still, there are a number of foods, which quite honestly scare me. Thus, the plastic container of some sort of soup was an obvious NO. As was all other unrecognizable soups which came in everything but tin cans. Milk products in general were also stayed away from. I took a shot with some sliced cheese I didn’t recognize, but since it had no spots and no distinguishable smell, it went into the basket. My French actually came in handy one or two times, such as when I had to determine what jam was strawberry (frazenboen or something is the one I went with) and not yucky raspberry, and in staying away from anything champignon that wasn’t an actual champignon (re: mushroom). I came away with some things that I hope will together constitute an actual meal at some point, but we’ll see.

Dan and Thea informed me they were planning on eating out tonight, so I thought to find something easy to eat while I was out. There was an adorable and IKEA looking restaurant in the square called Noody’s that looked promising. However, while pretending to understand what was written on the chalkboard sign outside and actually staring at everyone’s food inside, I realized that every plate was adorned with something like a shiny ball of meat and some gravy and quickly ran away. I came home to D & T ordering pizza and I learned the Dutch word for pepper—‘paprika’, just like the spice!

Lessons learned: What goes around comes around. And everybody loves pizza.

Bon Voyage!

I recall growing up, Papa Bear Flynn spent most of the year traveling. I don’t remember at what point, but somewhere in our brattish history my siblings and I began requesting tokens of affection from Dad from these far flung places. After each long trip, we would each receive a tee-shirt memento of the duty-free gift shop type, which would eventually grow into an embroidered flamingo, dogs in sunglasses, national treasures heap of cotton, entombed in Rubbermaid in our attic.
This will come to no surprise to my immediate family, but for whatever reason, I have only one recollection of any of my separate gifts—a hand-held drum on a stick from Osaka, Japan—but can recall, in detail, almost every gift my sister received from these travels. Years of fighting over space in a shared room most likely has something to do with it, but more likely it’s a result of my sister’s memorable mini obsessions with seemingly random icons. For a long while, it was Big Ben that captivated her and a drawer full of watches and several paperweights from London soon followed.
There was one fixation, however, which always seemed to puzzle me the most. M. went through several years in love with wooden clogs, windmills, and dolls with flaxen braids and porcelain water pitchers. Amongst the clutter and disorder of my sister’s designated half of our room’s surface space, these trinkets held a special place of honor and were often admired by both of us. A tiny red sweatshirt exclaiming “IT’S HOLLAND”, embroidered next to a happy tulip toting, wooden shoed, psychedelic bunny got repeated wear and continues to be a favorite wintertime bedshirt for me even now.
What’s funny to me now is that neither my sister nor I had any real concept of the cultural importance of these typically Dutch symbols, and until college, I never even dreamed of traveling to the land of windmills to live and work. But here I am, days away from a semi-indefinite stay in this amazing country, and I’m finding I’m not the only one who knowledge of one of the most historically prosperous European nations is a bit sparse.
I think if you really dig deep, though, you probably know more about Holland than you think! Tulips and canals and wooden shoes, oh my! If nothing else, images of spring breaks in Amsterdam and all that entails should at least ring a bell. But my stay in this beautiful country will be dotted more with foreign diplomats than strippers as I tag along with the Dutch traditions of justice and tolerance. I’ll be able to relay how so more once I start work next week, but for now, feel free to check out the organization’s website at www.unpo.org.
As I'm finishing packing I'm just thinking: Holland hier kom ik!