Day 3
Fish, Forts and Rebellion
(careful with that toothpick, Eugene!)
k, left to my own
devices, I would have slept in until approximately August. Well, that's
just the way I am. It's not the way my hosts were, which was
understandable because they'd gone and disrupted their entire lives to
accommodate me (go figure), and I guess it made sense that they didn't want to
sit around all weekend wondering how I was sleeping. Then again, waking me
up meant having to interact with me for the rest of the day, so you see, there
are trade-offs involved.
Mom came a' tap-tap-tappin' at my door at some single-digit in the AM. Several times, in fact, and maybe by the third or fourth time, I actually woke up and responded. She made some hints about how the day was passing by, and offered promises of vlaai awaiting me downstairs.
I crawled out of bed and into so clothes and made my way downstairs. Understand that this took some doing, given than the stairs were about the steepest and shortest I've ever been on. You gotta sort of sideways choagie down the stairs, lest you take a header right into all their network equipment. Downstairs, I was greeted by the mutant dogs, led by Stuff, who was giving me her "Hi, I'm Cujo, and I'm delighted to eat... I mean meet you!" snarly face.
Over in the computing area, I Found Mom typing, in hushed tones (if you get the imagery) to one of our fragging friends about how I'd just kind of moved in, made myself comfortable, and at that moment was probably running around the house barefoot.
The thing about the Dutch is that aside from being terminally cute and exceedingly nice, is that they're also very proper, adhering to a very strict set of social rules and manners. I am exactly unlike this.
Although, I will say that there are some huge inconsistencies to the Dutch manners. I'll give examples as I go.
My first experience with the Dutch sensibility was during my last visit to Holland. I was there installing some field test software at the aircraft manufacturer, Fokker. See, now there's an example right there. Terminally polite, yet they refer to their aircraft as "Fokkers." Nice, cute, and polite, but weird sense of humor.
I was guided to the cafeteria by my ever-so-polite (cute and well mannered) host, who explained to me how for lunch, the Dutch eat "Bread, with stuff on it." (But I don't think he meant the dog.) I replied, "Oh, you mean sandwiches," incorrectly assuming that his grasp of the English language was failing. He gave me a very concerned look.
Later, while seated, I assembled a sandwich from two pieces of bread and something that looks just like bologna, except that it tasted good, picked it up, and before I could take a bite, heard a big gasp.
All those Dutch people were sitting in the cafeteria, completely scandalized, giving me exactly the same look that the Japanese gave George Bush Senior, right after he threw up on their Prime Minister (a moment that made us all so proud to be Americans). Looking around, I saw that in Holland, sandwiches are open face, and absolutely never touched.
I suppose you haven't lived until you've seen someone eat an open face peanut butter sandwich with knife and fork before, but it falls clearly into "nice," "cute," "polite" and "weird sense of humor," just as everything else has so far.
Mom was typing on the computer, trying not to look that scandalized, because after all, she is Dutch, and therefore too polite to let me know that she'd been breathing in paper bags all morning (either to prevent hyperventilation or to get over that smell when I took my shoes off). As slow as I am, I still realized what I'd done to her, but ultimately, decided it would be much more reasonable to just pretend I didn't notice, so I could save her the further embarrassment of being seen to be scandalized.
Actually, I just decided to keep on being a big, fat, lazy old slob, but the other excuse sounded plausible, too.
I plopped down at the dining
room table, distinctive for the fact that it's where meals are rarely eaten, and
tried to wake up. Mom was already fully awake, trying to engage me in
making the day's plans. She'd say things like, "You sounded interested in
that feet... I mean Fort, would you like to go see that?"
I'd say "Uh... uh... uh..." to just about anything she asked me. She wasn't used to the fact that I'm not used to being conscious in the morning. Eventually, she took my grunts and grumbles as indication of assent, or at least acquiescence. That's how I came to perceive a slice of flies with slag sitting in front of me. Apparently, she'd asked me if I wanted some.
Another reason why I was so tired, I mean aside from the basic immutable fact that I just shouldn't try to function that early, was that I was up all night working on these puzzles. In Holland, they're called "Japanese Logic Puzzles," and in the US they're called "nonograms," but I call them "several weeks of my life forever lost." Mom and the kids discovered, with some glee, that if you put a puzzle in front of me, I can think of little else until the puzzle is completed. So, I was up all night working on those stupid puzzles, and there I was in the morning, drooling all over my vlaai, trying to focus on the puzzles while Mom was asking me where I wanted to spend the day. Curiously, most of the locations seemed to involve feet.
After a while, after I nearly drowned in slagroom from falling asleep at the table, someone decided that maybe I should get some puzzles of my own, since the ones I was working on were really Rona's, and so far, she hadn't convinced me to give them back to her. So, our first task of the day was to go to the store to buy me some puzzles.
Wait a minute. I thought
everything was supposed to be closed on Sunday, and the coming holiday on
Monday.
Well, apparently, there was some store that was normally open on Sunday mornings until noon. I say normally, because this time, it wasn't open. As we were driving away, mom explained to me that when there was a holiday, things that are normally open on Sundays will be closed on Sundays so they could be open on the holiday, which as far as I can tell, completely defeats the whole idea of holiday.
That's Holland. Nice people. Cute people. Polite people. Strange sense of humor. Even stranger set of customs. Then again, what do you expect from a country where it's traditional to show up to your high school graduation, and accept your diploma while wearing blue jeans and tee shirt?
Stuff (not the dog) is closed on the days it's normally open so it can be open on days when stuff (not the dog) should be closed.
But, I did get to see Mom buy some diesel fuel at a place that showed me that to buy gasoline in Holland, one needs to take out a small home equity loan. Good thing the country is so small.
Back at the house, it was decided that we'd go to the feet, I mean Fort, after we had lunch. Lunch consisted of bread with stuff (not the dog) on it. Trying to make me feel at home, everyone took their shoes off and delicately picked their sandwiches up with their hands. They sure did show me that they know how to live wild once in a while.
The Fort, Fort Kijkduin, was exciting. At least that's what the sign said. It said "The most exciting Fort in Holland," which when you think of it is a brutally frank statement to be making. But, that's one more thing you can appreciate about the Dutch: total honesty, even when it means saying "Yes, we're boring as crap."
"Fort Kijkduin" means something like, "Hey, look at those big frigging sand dunes! Let's put a Fort here." It's right next to some military base, where Mom told me they "teach people to shoot guns." This prospect scared me almost as bad as the below sea level thing. Imagine that: Dutch people shooting guns. "Excuse me, but I must insert this bullet into you. Would you like some vlaai and slagroom with that?"
Inside the Fort was whale bones, fake whale displays, fake dolphin displays, big plastic soldiers on big plastic horses, and all sorts of other things that I'd never think to put inside a tourist Fort. Come to think of it, I really don't know what I'd put in a tourist Fort, but whale bones just never really would have made it onto my list on their own.
Well, they did have a big display of some sand dunes with colorful little Dutch and French soldiers arrayed all around, apparently depicting some Napoleonic battle. This taught me that no matter where you go on the world, you can find insufferable twits just like our very own Civil War buffs.
But, we gamely tromped around all the
Fort rooms and Fort tunnels and Fort dungeons, and went outside and tromped
all around the outside Fort things. This eventually led to the dunes,
which isn't surprising, since just about everything in western Holland seems
to lead to dunes, dikes or both. So, we gamely tromped all around the
dunes up until I fell flat on my face "No, that's ok, I just wanted to look
at the dune, real close up," whereupon Mom declared me to be an invalid, and
in need of immediate return to the safety of the Fort.
Well, not before Rona and Ellie did severely Freudian things with a canon.
We went back inside, and found one other thing that I wouldn't have though of putting inside a Fort: an Aquarium. Lots of fish. Apparently, lots of different types of fish are indigenous to that Fort.
Mostly, it made me hungry. Then again, most zoo-like things (not the dog) do.
What can you really say about the most exciting Fort in Holland, with what I presume to be the most exciting aquarium inside a Fort in Holland? This didn't just stop at the quaintly strange, because this wasn't just an aquarium, it was a petting aquarium. Yes, that's right, we were all expected to go in there and grope fish.
Right. In other words, no way. I mean, I sure wouldn't.
But, I have to say that some of those fish, especially the rays, were serious "hoes." I mean, they'd scurry right over to the nearest Dutch person, poke their little ray heads out of the water, and look cute (obviously, they were Dutch rays), as if to say "Pet me! Pet me!"
I just took a lot of pictures - without the flash, as the signs requested. Don't want to blind them little ho-fish. Couple of other Americans there. I could tell: they were blinding the ho-fish.
All of this fish stroking was apparently very tiring. We soon retired to the gift shop where they sold CDs of quaint Dutch folk music like "Appalachian Spring" or "Grand Canyon Suite." I bought some plush fish replicas for the people in the office back home.
Of course, to me, this whole Fort thing had two real goals: first, to have an excuse to take an ungodly number of pictures with my digital camera, and second, to work up an appetite for the rijsttafel. Both goals were met quite admirably.
Now, here's another strange thing. Half my reason for going over there was to eat Indonesian Rijsttafel. In fact, if you could open my brain and look at my little map of the world inside, you'd find that I have Holland marked as a little hole in the ocean with a sign sticking out of it that says "Eat Indonesian Rijsttafel Here." This shouldn't be too surprising to people, because I have little signs like that all over the map, including one that says "Eat Haggis Here," but that's a whole 'nother story.
The strange thing was that Mom and the kids said that they didn't know of any place that served Indonesian Rijsttafel, which was sort of odd, because I thought it was third on the Dutch attribute list (behind "nice" and "cute" and right before "polite").
They ultimately had to rely on the judgment of Mom's ex-husband, which kind of made me nervous, because, well, I'm just not into trusting the judgment of an ex- anything. He recommended some Chinese restaurant in Den Helder, which apparently offered Indonesian as well.
This didn't concern me too much, because I distinctly remember that a lot of the Chinese restaurants I saw the last time I was in Holland seemed to have more of what we'd think of as Indonesian fare than Chinese. So, ok, I was game.
So was everyone else, including Ellie, who was otherwise showing signs of coming down with something. It wasn't clear what, but she said that she was feeling sick. I never fully established if it was some sort of virus, a case of smelly-foot-itis, or if she was just sick of me. Either way, she was feeling well enough by dinnertime for a free dinner at the Chinese place.
Like I said, everyone was game, except for those who operated the Chinese restaurant. No one's sure what they were about, but it was pretty clear that they were intent on providing us with a surreal experience. You'll note that "surreal" hasn't appeared on my list of Dutch attributes. There's no inconsistency here, as the restaurant was staffed by people who weren't originally from Holland. Therefore, providing a surreal experience did not technically violate any Dutch rules about cuteness or niceness.
What followed came to be known as the Great Den Helder Toothpick Rebellion, and its story is still told in hushed, yet reverential tones, to this day. No one is entirely sure why it happened, or even exactly what happened, but basically, the restaurant staff blamed it all on us, claiming that we ordered the wrong thing.
I'm going to sidetrack to the one major disappointment of the night (actually, the one major disappointment of the whole trip). My prior experience with Indonesian Rijsttafel, my expectation for future Rijsttafels, was that you go and order something extravagant, and they bring you mouthful sized servings of about 30 different dishes. Like I said, at least that was how it worked the last time I did one of these things.
Here, the Rijsttafel consisted of about... five or six dishes. I think this was arranged ahead of time to get even with me for the feet thing.
Like I said, though, I was buying, and after some reassurance, I did convince mom that the typical American custom when someone else says they're buying is to start mining the higher priced areas on the menu. So, it was in this spirit that she happened across the Peking Duck.
An excellent choice, and a pretty good consolation for the Rijsttafel thing. Of course, my command of Dutch is still poor enough that I couldn't quite figure out how many courses of duck that would be: whether it would just be the pancakes, skin and hoisin deal, or whether there'd be duck soup and stir fry duck and duck custard, or other extras like that. I decided it would be an interesting experiment.
It was. The duck itself was excellent. But how it tasted wasn't really the experiment.
Unbeknownst to us, or at least as they explained later, ordering Peking Duck also put us on the "really lousy service" list. Or, that's what they said. Our alternate theory had to do with what we came to call the "Anti- Plates." These were black plates with ornate designs along the rims. There was one at each place setting. Anyone who accidentally dropped food on one would be greeted by one of the restaurant staff who would replace the Anti-Plate with a clean Anti-Plate, and distribute dirty looks around the table.
Well shoot, at least they were still looking at us at this point.
Our theory was that each ort dropped on an Anti-Plate would result in a table-wide 5 minute penalty. In reality, we don't know which answer is true, and at the time we ordered, we didn't know that any of this would happen.
What did happen was that Mom ordered the Duck for her and me, and each of the three kids ordered the Rijsttafel. That was the official story; the truth was that we were all going to share everything. Apparently, we needed a cover story like this to keep the staff happy.
Which is how the kids came to drop mega-multi-orts of Peking Duck all over their Anti-Plates, which obviously resulted in the generous display of dirty looks.
Here's how it went: the traditional first course of the Peking Duck - the scallions, skin, hoisin and pancake course, was considered the appetizer. This came out very quickly, as I spied in the corner of the restaurant: the staff wheeling out a trolley bearing a festively decorated Peking Duck with a couple of burning sparklers sticking out of its ass. Really. But, since this was Holland and low key, they apparently felt that this level of festiveness would be too much for us, so they kept the duck in some corner of the restaurant, so as not to overly excite anyone, and carved it there.
It was pretty good. Minor variations on Peking Duck you'd get in the US, but nothing worth getting worried about.
They took the remainder of the carcass back into the kitchen to make the subsequent courses, and disappeared for quite a long time. We waited. We spun Anti-Plates. We waited some more. Eventually, the waitress emerged with our Duck Soup - two bowls, for Mom and me.
The kids showed me how loudly their stomachs could grumble.
Mom and I ate our soup, quickly, as we feared that they might wait for us to finish it before starting on the rest of the meal. As the waitress cleared the bowls away, she brought some hot platforms for the Rijsttafel, and said to Mom that they were going to hurry up with the Indonesian stuff so the kids wouldn't have to go hungry. Too late. We'd already been there for an hour.
We were there for another 45 minutes before we saw any of the staff again. At first, Mom and the kids were a little concerned about the delay, but after a while, they came to the conclusion that they were going to have to lodge a complaint.
If you've never been to Holland before, you have no idea how serious this is. For about 15 minutes, they carried on a heated discussion, attempting to determine whether lodging a complaint was indeed possible, then another 10 minutes deciding how to actually carry it out. Being Dutch, I don't think they'd ever complained about anything in public before, so it really was something of a new concept to them, and a fairly frightening one at that.
This is where my company was at least a little bit helpful. Being the nearest crabby American, they naturally assumed that I was an expert in complaining about things (a very good assumption, I might add), and therefore called on me as a reference to guide them in their complaint.
Maybe that's not such a good idea.
But, they decided to "wing it," and when the waitress and hostess appeared with our dinner, Mom meekly suggested to the hostess that waiting two hours for dinner may have been a little excessive.
A deafening hush fell across the restaurant. All one could hear was the faint sputter of a sparkler, and a lone grumbling stomach. The hostess looked at Mom with shock, politely verified that Mom had indeed lodged a complaint (she had), then launched into a stream of vitriol that really needed no translation.
What can I say? The hostess wasn't native Dutch. This had the unfortunate (for her) effect of redirecting all those "You threw up on my Prime Minister" looks from Mom to the hostess.
All of this drama almost distracted me from two basic facts: 1) that the Indonesian Rijsttafel, while tasty was disappointingly limited in scope; 2) that while the third course of the Peking Duck was the traditional duck meat and bean sprouts stir fry, the fourth course was... I can barely bring myself to type this... Sweet and Sour Peking Duck, served in a hollowed out pineapple half.
I'm sorry I had to do that.
And, if you're up for that Polynesian automatic transmission fluid that shopping mall food court Chinese places call "sweet and sour sauce," you would have been right at home with this, although I have to say that the juxtaposition of high royalty cuisine with your-worst-nightmare faux Chinese really did sort of add to the charm of the evening.
The rest of the main course of dinner was conducted in a way that completely avoided communication, even eye contact, between waitress and customer. There was, however, a lot of slamming around of Anti-Plates.
I think all of this only steeled the resolve of Mom and the kids, because after the dishes were cleared away, and they asked if we wanted dessert, Mom clenched her jaw, stared the waitress right in the eye (causing her considerable distress) and said "Yes."
Not bad. This was greeted with slight nods of approval from the neighboring tables, which is the Dutch equivalent to screaming, cheering and doing the Wave.
The only problem was that it meant being there for another hour while the desserts were prepared according to the same leisurely schedule that governed the preparation of the rest of the dinner.
While we were waiting for the dessert, after having been given those warm damp hand towels and a cup full of toothpicks, we had to improvise a bit. By then, we realized that we were going to be in for the long haul, waiting on dessert, so Ellie and Rona showed their initiative by supervising the post-prandial recreational activities.
First, we had the hand towel and toothpick tent building competition. Ellie won, getting an 8.8 (the US judge was brutal), and Rona came in close behind with an 8.7. But, there were only so many toothpick tents that they could devise, so Ellie decided to take the plastic wrapping off all the toothpicks and start a game of toothpick pick-up-stix. I forget who won, but I think it was Rona.
This caused some internal conflict on the part of the restaurant staff. On the one hand, they'd resolved not to look at us again, but on the other hand, the desire to give us some really dirty looks was proving to be overwhelming.
And I think it was sometime along here that they had a sort of Grinchlike experience. We could hear the muffled pops as their hearts grew three sizes, brought our desserts, and informed us that they were on the house for having made us wait so long.
Never underestimate the power of a toothpick in the hands of an expert.
Of course, the bright side of this was that since dinner took over three hours, Mom didn't have to worry about what we were going to do with the remainder of the evening. There wasn't any evening left.
So, we retired to Mom's house, the squeaky rats, the mutant dogs, the strange flavored Dutch soda pop, and of course, the Japanese Logic Puzzles.
Which is what I did until some ungodly hour of the morning.
It really was a good day, and I'll always fondly remember that heart wrenching display of human spirit that I'd seen at the restaurant that night.
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