Thoughts about Holland vol.8.
wow another week passed by... I had to discover that I am already a month ago here in the Netherlands, and I guess I have accustomed myself to the life here. I like it here, really. Only thing is that I am not used to this calm pace how I am living at the moment. Sometimes I really miss my chaotic life where I never had a free second to sit down and wonder about things. Here I have maybe a bit too much of time left for me and my thoughts. Although I really needed a rest, so that is why I am still enjoying this semi-isolation of mine. It is fairly difficult to gather people around me, both at workplace and at home. I mean people I can share my thoughts with. I can always find people who would drink a beer with me no problem with that!! LOL, these guys drink beer really hard. They see it as a profession or even art.
Last sunday after the trip in Haarlem I decided to go to the beach, since I wanted to walk around there, and besides it was really warm so I thought that was the best thing I could do. You know my tan is getting really impressive by know. I never thought that I would return from Holland nicely tanned, but it appears so. Scheveningen itself is not that interesting, just imagine a busy seaside resort with hotels and a lot of tourists. Germans, mostly. I was just wondering again that maybe it is me the only Hungarian in this country, because I never hear a Hungarian word. (Except with Kriszti in Amsterdam a big bunch of Hungarian tourists swearing like hell...) Or they are also lonely wolves like I am so they would never speak Hungarian on the streets. Hmm. Who knows.
The Kurhaus Hotel has a nice building, in fact the only nice one along the shore, and there is a lighthouse if you walk towards the port, but that's about it. Snack bars offering you greasy and absolutely unhealthy stuff and boutiques with the regular beach equipments. Having seen this I went back to the northern beach and laid down in the sand. After some time suddenly I heard one of my favourite Brazilian songs so I got up and tried to look what's happening. Well at one of the beach clubs whole afternoon it was a samba and axé workshop so some Brazilian and Dutch people were dancing, and showing the choreographies, one could just join and catch up. Who do you think was the first one to join?? Bingo, me :)) this encouraged others as well, but they were surprised that they cannot adjust that easily... These guys and girls were so nice with me, asked me where I learned samba, and showed me directly some stuff, was really cool!! So after 2 hours of dancing with them I became really exhausted and went home to have a well deserved shower, but I had a lot of fun there.
During the week, on Thursday I had to go to Leiden to the taxation office and get my tax and social security number (SoFi number). Haha I am almost Dutch!!! I have this number now I feel like a citizen, not a tourist anymore!!!
Zsófi, a friend from high school now was in Breda for a month to finish her double degree, and she decided to join me, so in the afternoon and evening we were just walking around the city and chatting a lot. (Miki to bad for you, you missed this...) We had a meal at the Maoz chain. So far I have never tried this 'cause alone I wouldn't eat out even in this fast food thing. Here you can only eat veggie stuff. What we had were falafel balls put into a wholemeal (!) pita with and then you can fill it up with salad and sauce of your own choice, and can return to the salad bar as many times you want. That was a really cool thing, beacuse even the balls were fried you could still compensate for that fat with all those nice salads.
We had a nice Italian cappucino along the big canal, of course taking on the habit of the locals that everyone sits to face the square or the canal. So you never sit in front of eachother, but beside and looking into the came direction. Then came this freaky old man with a funny pair of glasses, and he was talking to us in a strange mixture of spanish italian dutch english and who knows what further languages. As we couldn't really figure out what he was about to say we were just smiling, then he left.
Leiden was nice. This was the first time I could really walk around, even if this was already my third time there. I guess life in Leiden must be really nice, and it is much more a student town compared to Delft. Here not much happens. There it looks it does. So I would gladly move there, but work is here so complaints.
Work, ahh my collegues were shocked when I told them we have 44 letters in our abc!! (OK have to confess I remembered there were 46 until I counted them:)) So I had to send them to see it. Of course they don't see the point of using so many accents and double letters. They said I probably understood Finnish perfectly if I can use these freaky letters. Had to disappoint them, that I understand absolutely nothing from Finnish apart from 'Moi!'. It means hello/bye, but in Hungarian the same pronunciation means moth..
Btw have to tell you that my Dutch is improving, I get to understand more....
kusjes goede vrienden,
J
wow another week passed by... I had to discover that I am already a month ago here in the Netherlands, and I guess I have accustomed myself to the life here. I like it here, really. Only thing is that I am not used to this calm pace how I am living at the moment. Sometimes I really miss my chaotic life where I never had a free second to sit down and wonder about things. Here I have maybe a bit too much of time left for me and my thoughts. Although I really needed a rest, so that is why I am still enjoying this semi-isolation of mine. It is fairly difficult to gather people around me, both at workplace and at home. I mean people I can share my thoughts with. I can always find people who would drink a beer with me no problem with that!! LOL, these guys drink beer really hard. They see it as a profession or even art.
Last sunday after the trip in Haarlem I decided to go to the beach, since I wanted to walk around there, and besides it was really warm so I thought that was the best thing I could do. You know my tan is getting really impressive by know. I never thought that I would return from Holland nicely tanned, but it appears so. Scheveningen itself is not that interesting, just imagine a busy seaside resort with hotels and a lot of tourists. Germans, mostly. I was just wondering again that maybe it is me the only Hungarian in this country, because I never hear a Hungarian word. (Except with Kriszti in Amsterdam a big bunch of Hungarian tourists swearing like hell...) Or they are also lonely wolves like I am so they would never speak Hungarian on the streets. Hmm. Who knows.
The Kurhaus Hotel has a nice building, in fact the only nice one along the shore, and there is a lighthouse if you walk towards the port, but that's about it. Snack bars offering you greasy and absolutely unhealthy stuff and boutiques with the regular beach equipments. Having seen this I went back to the northern beach and laid down in the sand. After some time suddenly I heard one of my favourite Brazilian songs so I got up and tried to look what's happening. Well at one of the beach clubs whole afternoon it was a samba and axé workshop so some Brazilian and Dutch people were dancing, and showing the choreographies, one could just join and catch up. Who do you think was the first one to join?? Bingo, me :)) this encouraged others as well, but they were surprised that they cannot adjust that easily... These guys and girls were so nice with me, asked me where I learned samba, and showed me directly some stuff, was really cool!! So after 2 hours of dancing with them I became really exhausted and went home to have a well deserved shower, but I had a lot of fun there.
During the week, on Thursday I had to go to Leiden to the taxation office and get my tax and social security number (SoFi number). Haha I am almost Dutch!!! I have this number now I feel like a citizen, not a tourist anymore!!!
Zsófi, a friend from high school now was in Breda for a month to finish her double degree, and she decided to join me, so in the afternoon and evening we were just walking around the city and chatting a lot. (Miki to bad for you, you missed this...) We had a meal at the Maoz chain. So far I have never tried this 'cause alone I wouldn't eat out even in this fast food thing. Here you can only eat veggie stuff. What we had were falafel balls put into a wholemeal (!) pita with and then you can fill it up with salad and sauce of your own choice, and can return to the salad bar as many times you want. That was a really cool thing, beacuse even the balls were fried you could still compensate for that fat with all those nice salads.
We had a nice Italian cappucino along the big canal, of course taking on the habit of the locals that everyone sits to face the square or the canal. So you never sit in front of eachother, but beside and looking into the came direction. Then came this freaky old man with a funny pair of glasses, and he was talking to us in a strange mixture of spanish italian dutch english and who knows what further languages. As we couldn't really figure out what he was about to say we were just smiling, then he left.
Leiden was nice. This was the first time I could really walk around, even if this was already my third time there. I guess life in Leiden must be really nice, and it is much more a student town compared to Delft. Here not much happens. There it looks it does. So I would gladly move there, but work is here so complaints.
Work, ahh my collegues were shocked when I told them we have 44 letters in our abc!! (OK have to confess I remembered there were 46 until I counted them:)) So I had to send them to see it. Of course they don't see the point of using so many accents and double letters. They said I probably understood Finnish perfectly if I can use these freaky letters. Had to disappoint them, that I understand absolutely nothing from Finnish apart from 'Moi!'. It means hello/bye, but in Hungarian the same pronunciation means moth..
Btw have to tell you that my Dutch is improving, I get to understand more....
kusjes goede vrienden,
J
posted by Juli at 12:10 PM
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