The Back of a Bike

I think that slowly, insensibly, Amsterdam is attempting to turn me Dutch.

A good Amsterdammer, you know, does everything whilst pedaling away atop their fiets: carrying the grocery shopping, talking on their mobile, TEXTING on their mobile, moving furniture to a new house...

Meanwhile, I find myself doing more and more ridiculous things on the back of MY bike. First, you know, I found myself riding one handed through the city every Friday evening carrying a big bag of bread. When I was sufficiently acclimated to that, the bakery gave me TWO bags of bread. I don't have three hands, but somehow I managed.

Then came Saturday. Let me tell you about Saturday!

We had a rare day of sunshine. So it was agreed that some of us would ride up to Amsterdam Noord. 'Noord' is basically the part of Amsterdam that is north of the River Ij (pronounced 'eye'), which runs E-W through the center of the city. It's newer and a bit less developed. I had never been.

You take a ferry to get across the river. In typical Dutch fashion, it's packed with bikes.





Dad?!?



Yours truly.



Across the Ij.



Anya being chill.



From left to right: Anne, Carlo, Larissa.



Russians are cool.

Anyway, across the river it was a short but scenic ride to our destination: a second-hand furniture store. Larissa is finally getting a place of her own at #95. She's all grown up! But she needs furniture.



Furniture!



This piano was only 200 euro. But I didn't think it would fit on my bike.



I finally find a decent hamburger in Amsterdam.

So Larissa picked out a nice mattress and a big brass floor lamp. "So," I said, "how are we getting this stuff home?"

I was sorry I asked.



Carlo has the mattress, Anya the lampshade, and I've got the lamp. Larissa... lends moral support?



Keep your comments to yourself - it doubles as a weapon.


Turns out you can absolutely carry a lamp on your bike if you put your mind to it. Undeterred by a few bemused looks from passerby and/or Carlo's needling ("You should ride in front so we can follow the light.") we hauled our haul safely back to its new home at #95.

Another milestone down on my passage from American to Dutch. I shudder to think what I'll have to carry on my bike next...

Pics snapped with Anne's camera, since I am not so conscientious as to remember mine. If I'm in the picture you can assume she took it.

Good Heavens! Water From the Sky!

Growing up a Florida boy, I admit that snow is a bit of an alien phenomenon to me. Sometimes it takes me a moment or two to realize when it's happening. My brain is geared to automatically chalk any precipitation up to the warm, heavy tropical rains I grew up with. So it takes me a moment or two sometimes to categorize the slower, denser, fluffier stuff coming from the sky as 'snow'.

The Amsterdam winter makes this categorization harder still.

I have heard a joke that in Amsterdam they get all four seasons in one day. In fact it's worse than that. This morning I went out in the rain, returned to find the rain frozen, which then turned to snow as I biked home. This grim meteorological behavior does not preclude the sun coming out later, either, and shining for all its worth amid blue skies. Such is winter in Amsterdam.

It does make planning outings slightly difficult.

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In other news, Br. Luc and I have been working on updating the Oudezijds 100 website and he has uploaded several videos. For the most part it won't do you much good, since it's all in Dutch, but I thought I'd this news report about the children of Oudezijds 100 with you. It's a few years old, and it is of course in Dutch, but it should give you some nice visual ideas of what life is like here.

It should be pointed out that most of the children depicted are now considerably older. But there are new children now, and things are much the same.

A Hard Day's Night

A question I often get when I explain that I'm working as a volunteer at Oudezijds 100 is "So what exactly do you DO there?" I can generally tell from their wry expressions that my response - "Everything!" - fails to satisfy.

But it's true! By way of example, here's what I did yesterday:

• Woke up, showered, got dress.


• Went down to breakfast. Helped clean up afterward.


• Studied Dutch in my room.


• Went to chapel.


• Was supposed to work on website, but found that only one person had showed up to clean the kitchen. So instead I scoured the house for additional help, then pitched in myself.


• Finally got a chance to work on website.


• Ate lunch. Helped clean up afterward.


• More website work. Finished early, so...


• Went over to the front office and fixed someone's email as requested.


• Met up with Hans, who needed a hand moving furniture to his new flat.


• Spent an hour and a half hauling furniture across the RLD and up two very narrow flights of stairs.


• Somewhat exhausted, took a brief nap before dinner.


• Ate dinner with the community.


• Left a little early to work in reception at the KruisPost.


• Spent two hours filling out forms, filing things, and trying to communicate with uninsured foreigners in my broken Dutch.


• Finally free at 9:30, I snuck out for a brief snack before calling it a night.

A full day's work! Fortunately, not every day is so busy. But I've singled out this one in particular because I think it gives an idea of the variety of activities I might participate in on any given day.

It seems like a good many of the things I wind up doing aren't on a schedule anywhere. They simply involve helping out where I am needed. For me this is a good thing because that's something I came here hoping to develop in myself: a greater willingness to serve other people. And most of the time I enjoy it!

In 2009 I've definitely feel as though I've started to gain some familiarity with the community, which enables me to be more useful to them. I think that this is part of the reason why I now feel so much more at home in the community as well. Community living depends on the members helping each other out.

When people first come into our community (and this certainly includes me, circa October 2008!) they need a lot of help and guidance. Even when they are doing helpful tasks they must be helped, because they don't know how to do them! It's sort of like childhood.

But hopefully we progress out of childhood and into an 'adulthood' (or at least an 'adolescence'!) where we are able to stand on our own and even give back. For me at least, this is a very satisfying state.