Wonderful week working, touring with Sandy, and a surprising lesson

A week ago Saturday, March 2, began a week I had been especially looking forward to since my trip began – the week that Sandy came to spend with me. Sandy and I have been dating since 1980 so we are quite close now, and our marriage (to each other) has not diminished it. It wasn’t fun and games the whole week, although there was a lot of that; I’ll tell you about some great work days, too. But I took a little Spring Break, I suppose. I haven’t really played tourist very much on my own, thinking it would be more fun to do together when Sandy got here. I will confess (as Sandy’s associates have already learned) that I had been sending her pictures all the time—ALL the time—since January: what my hotel looked like, street scenes, funny people, what my new sweaters look like on me, markets and stores, funny misspelled signs (although it turns out I was mistaken and the sign saying “Van Haren” was not actually a misspelled effort to indicate the place where Eddie Van Halen was born – he was born in Nijmegen, not Amsterdam, and as far as I know the sign there is spelled correctly). But the point is that I have been showing and telling her about anything remotely interesting (and a lot of other things not even remotely interesting). I’ve been really excited to share everything with her. We’re in love.

We met at Schiphol early Saturday the 2^nd. We had coffee there and then I bought her a train ticket to Amsterdam with my bankcard. I of course used my OV Chipkaart to check in on the train, and to check uit when we arrived. I know how to do these things, of course, and I was showing off.  Sandy brought sunshine with her the likes of which Amsterdam had not seen for a good while. We walked the short walk to the apartment.  

If you are starting to get a little concerned that this blog entry is going to read like a view of someone’s endless home movies, your fears are well-founded. But I’ll try to pick it up a little. 

We went to the Neumarkt where I introduced Sandy to the regular Saturday people, all of whom I had told in advance about her coming – the cheese people (who had previously put me to work), the socks guy (who asked whether I liked the wool socks I bought the week before, to whom I told, “They made me feel like a gentleman!”), and the meat guys (who greeted me with “Goede Zaterdacccchhhh!” and made me repeat it over and over until it sounded sufficiently less stupid). Sandy chose flowers for the apartment, which I had been waiting weeks for her to do with me.




We went back home and ate some of our market findings. That night we visited my favorite pub where the bartender, Professor Hans, had also been told to expect my wife. (I call him Professor Hans because I have asked him to teach me about the beers he serves. The sign outside says they have 50 beers. When I first asked him if this was true, he said, “sixty-five!” Belgian and Dutch beers. I was supposed to keep a list of what I had tried but for some reason I haven’t. That is probably not the first time such a thing has happened.)  In any event, Hans was very, very pleased to meet Sandy. He came out from behind the bar, smiling, to shake her hand. And we both met Straffe Hendrick or someone much like him.

We went to visit Puccini--one of the world’s greatest chocolate stores--and boutiques nearby.  

Sunday we mixed showing Sandy places that have become parts of my normal day with playing tourists. So we walked past my dry cleaner around the corner from which stands Rembrandt’s house (“Is there a dry cleaner in the area?” “Yes, just go this way then make a left at the painter’s house”) where we went in. It was wonderful and I can’t describe it except to tell you that we got to get really close to Rembrandt’s etchings and we took pictures with our iphones so we could do the iphone finger zoom trick and see even more closely the tiny lines Rembrandt drew. We saw cows and windmills in some drawings this way that we had missed with the naked eye. You can try it yourself if you have a zooming apparatus on the device you’re seeing this with.

Then it was off to the Bag and Purse Museum. I had us turn left to find it, relying on my dynamic electronic iphone map, which was a mistake since we actually should have turned right. My iphone seems to be more of an abstract expressionist than a naturalist. But the bag and purse museum was also fun -- more so than I had expected (since I was initially going there to pretend to be interested in order to please my girlfriend). It was educational and interesting.

We took the compulsory Amsterdam photo of a church on a canal. The rest of Sunday I prepared for teaching on Monday and caught up on some work. We went out for Tibetan food for dinner. 

  

Monday was a work day for me. Every week I synthesize the students’ comments they send that answer a couple of questions I provide on the week’s reading assignment, a technique Sandi Smith taught me. The synthesis is tricky but worthwhile for leading class discussion. Getting ready for class includes re-reading the articles and noting the major arguments, major findings, and major problems we’ll be encountering. One of our topics was how potentially intimate self-disclosures expressed face-to-face can have the overall intimacy of the encounter reduced by including non-intimate nonverbal behaviors, a notion articulated for face-to-face interaction in Judee Burgoon’s research. It was important to us because this kind of verbal/nonverbal qualification cannot be done online, and this may be one reason that online disclosure appears to be more intimate than offline disclosure. 

Getting ready for this discussion also involved preparing to show some coding materials my American students and I used some time ago that allowed us to compare the emotional qualities in the words of computer-mediated messages to those of the words + voice + physical behaviors exhibited in face-to-face communication, each of which requires separate analysis. Class was good, as it has consistently been.

Monday evening was an exceptional time spent with Patti Valkenburg and her husband, Paul Van der Heijden. Despite their public careers they are private people so I won’t say much except to note how gracious and charismatic each of them is and how magnanimous they are together. It was a captivating evening discussing a number of things including comparative higher education and the directions that publicly-funded universities are taking their faculties and students, and what young people both in the Netherlands and America seem to be seeking in college, topics that occupy the professional attention of both Paul and Sandy, and of course affect Patti and myself.  We had a spicy Rijstafel which we enjoyed very much, and some flaming coffee-gin-and-incense sacrifice to the gods of fire (and/or coffee and gin) at the end of the meal. It was a charmed evening we will not forget.

Tuesday morning we left the apartment for me to go to the Fulbright Center and for Sandy to explore Haarlemerstraat, one of our favorite Amsterdam shopping streets. I spent most of the day at Fulbright in a panel interviewing thirteen Dutch applicants in succession for student Fulbright scholarships to the US. Joining me was Mrs. Linda Johnson, Executive Secretary for the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam; Mr. Jan Petit, a Board Member of the Fulbright Center, Founder of Consultant Profonte, Consultancy for Philanthropy; and Marcel and Linda from the Fulbright Center. We met some truly amazing individuals. There were applicants  who were already working with Doctors Without Borders who wanted to go to the US to get training in logistics and management, since so much of what they do in the field is ad hoc organizing.

There were several lawyers who were interested in things from international law to human rights work. I met someone who had already worked in the international criminal court in The Hague. There was a budding anthropologist who studies how US and Dutch aid organizations effectively and ineffectively administer services in developing countries, an individual who worked in Arab and Israeli schools in the Middle East, economists, and several individuals who anticipated the benefits of American graduate education and its interactive, Socratic style of teaching. They were all impressive. Some were nervous, which we disregarded, while others eagerly taught us about the issues they faced in lines of work and study we could only imagine. Our objective was to identify promising individuals who would represent their country to the US and who would bring their American experience back with them, and who would bring credit to the aims of the foundation both in the near term and long term.  Part of our challenge was to identify those who represented the Dutch, a task complicated by recognition of the “New Dutch,” sensitivity to being a nation that embraces its immigrants and the cultural diversity they infuse into society. It was not at all an easy task, but it was quite enlightening and enjoyable. Sandy, meanwhile while strolling, had found a breakfast of yogurt, muesli, and croissants the likes of which we cannot find back home.

Tuesday evening we joined our friends Lotte and Sarah for a wonderful French dinner. Lotte and Sarah had spent time with us at MSU last spring where they dropped in on my graduate course, attended research meetings, and worked on project and article ideas with my American students and me.  We laughed and ate sampled wines and laughed some more.

Wednesday we bought Sandy a ticket and went by Intercity train an hour to Delft and later to The Hague. (I do not need a ticket since I check in and check out with my Chipkaart.) Delft is a smaller town and we enjoyed the relative quiet and the picturesque qualities it offered, a wonderful lunch of cheese and cake, and a visit to the old church where many of the Dutch royalty have been buried. In the new church, a few blocks away, there is a mausoleum for William of Orange (ancestor of the current Dutch royalty) depicting the king with his dog at his feet, symbolizing loyalty. 

Then through the market square, and to the tram to the Hague where old buildings are interspersed with modern, tall, experimental architecture. Our intention in the Hague was to see the Dutch masters paintings at the Mauritshuis Museum, upon arrival at which we found it closed for restoration, and signs indicating that its holdings were at the Gemeente Museum and how one could get there by trams. The iphone map was looking a little less than helpful so, after walking through the Dutch parliament square on our way to what might or might not have been the right way to the wrong tram, we grabbed a taxi. The Gemeente Museum was breathtaking, and we could have spent a day or more instead of the couple of hours we were able to manage.

On the way home at the Hague Centraal Station we found a train to Amsterdam about to leave so we ran for it. I did not scan my Chipkaart to take care of the fare, figuring I could pay on the train. Sure enough when asked for our tickets I indicated I needed to buy mine. I had misestimated what happens, and I had to pay a fine as well as the ticket price. I did not contest it, and was glad I had the money, figuring it is not wise to take chances with the law so close to the International Criminal Court.

Returning to Amsterdam, Sandy I had dinner close to home at a Thai snack bar which was better by far than anything at home. We shared a table with a Dutch man and his friend, who told us about his university history studies and the surf music band he plays in—the guy is mired in the past!

These details are most likely far less interesting to you than they were to us at the time and remain so afterwards. We have so much fun sharing things together, Sandy and me, that they feel enchanting when we experience them. 

On Thursday Sandy set out for the Rijksmuseum while I set out for the university, to meet with my student Marco about his term paper ideas, and to finish some preparations for our weekly research meetings. One of our colleagues, Dian, had found us a recent article about self-presentation in online dating, which impressed me to no end as incredible, monumental, and creative. That is, it offered an incredibly atheoretical and contradictory rationale; its measurement methods were monumentally artificial; and it boasted incredibly creative claims about its findings that its data analyses had not in fact demonstrated. But, in all sincerity, it raised some ideas about how to add some measurement strategies to a new behavioral research project we have been developing, and taught us some things to avoid and improve, and in that way was quite beneficial. We argued during our meeting Thursday. Arguing with great researchers—articulating a position and its implications, reconsidering it based on counter-arguments, and making a decision about competing hypotheses and how to study them—is extremely invigorating and I think we all enjoyed it.

Thursday afternoon Sandy and I started our last big adventure together for the week, taking trains to Bruges (or as the Dutch and Belgians themselves call it, Brugge). We had purchased tickets in advance via the Internet (having learned well about putting off such things) and had a hotel room reserved, so we went from Amsterdam Centraal to take the lovely Intercity train past the Hague to Roosdaal, where we had five minutes to change trains. That would have been no concern except that the train out of Amsterdam we were expecting was running late by either 20 minutes or 20 years or something. Fortunately the earlier train (the one that was expected only last month) arrived just in time to keep me from accepting completely that I would be sleeping on a train station bench that night, perhaps somewhere in Poland. So we hopped on, eager to show our fully-paid tickets (which of course no one ever asked to see), and rode to the end of the line at Roosdaal.

The next train was more of a toy tram from an old black-and-white movie. To make it run, I suspect, someone had to go behind the tram to turn a key and wind its spring. This one didn’t stop at train stations per se, but at cross-streets. Or at various intervals when the spring needed key-turning again. Our phones apparently knew when we crossed the border from the Netherlands into Belgium, as they displayed a Dutch text message that we understood perfectly. It said something about the royal kingdom of Belge, or that it would cost us a royal fortune to make a phone call, or both. We headed toward Antwerp station where we would have 7 fun-filled minutes to change for the train to Brugge. We had no track number on our itinerary, but how hard could it be?

Plenty hard. The station was almost deserted where we got out, and there were no departure signs we could find. We did find a man in a suit with an old-fashioned letter B (for Belgium trains, I assume, or Brooklyn Dodgers) who we asked for help. He said Track 3 and sympathetically added that he didn’t think we could possibly make it. He pointed up, to indicate it was God’s will whether we would make it or not, or that track 3 was above us somewhere. So we ran and ran up escalators and across lobbies to Track 3, where there a train indeed stood, unmarked in any language spoken since the Reformation.  We asked a man in the train’s doorway whether it was the train to Brugge but it turned out this was the only individual we had met so far who had missed the two days in school on which they taught English one day and geography the other. Fortunately a woman on the train understood the universal sound of an individual wondering if he would be sleeping on a bench in Poland, and she came to tell us that this was, indeed, the correct train. Relieved, we embarked. Next stop, Brugge.

Not so fast. Although we heard the intercom announcements on the train, our Mesopotamian is a little rusty and we did not understand the notification that we had actually boarded the WTF Express which was not going to Brugge but was in fact going to hell.  Our guardian angel who had welcomed us to the correct train back in Antwerp came to where we sat to inform us that we would need to disembark at another town, where we would take a bus to a different train which would probably go to Brugge if it (the train, not Brugge) was still there when we arrived. How quaint! Trains that change destination once you board! What will they think of next?  Fortunately, she offered, she and her friend with a purse dog were also going that way and we could follow them. Why not? She seemed nice, but more importantly she spoke English and therefore, to us, appeared extremely knowledgeable. We rode a while seated one row away from Nosferatu, whose image used never to show up in snapshots but since we were using iphones which can do anything except depict maps, we can share his picture with you.   

Another announcement, I believe in Aramaic this time, and our angel explained that we needed now to get off at a different city. Fine. We did, and crossed one platform to another train. Not long after we left the station on this new train we heard another announcement we did not fully understand—NCAA basketball scores perhaps?—but we recognized “Brugge” and relaxed. We spoke to our guardian angel, who, as it turned out, had spent her senior year in Texas, and to her friend with the purse dog. Her Texas experience was too hot and humid, and she had discovered that seventeen-year-olds were not allowed in bars in Dallas. Her friend asked, if you could not go to bars, what was there to really do? The mall, our angel said, and the Baptist church, which contrasted sharply with her own church experience of weddings, funerals, and atheism.  We were grateful for her help and pleased that we had an adventure that turned out well in the end. We got to Bruges without further complications, and took a taxi to our hotel. It was beautiful. The room had enough space for only a bed, which was fine with us.

But we were hungry and curious so we set out for a nearby Belgian beer and something to eat. We found ourselves at the Brugs Kiekse/Bruge Chickenhouse, where a delightful man welcomed us and prepared some dinner. He brought salad and offered us vinegar and “the oil of the olives,” as well as meatballs, frites, and wonderful beer. We ate, then chatted with the staff who had been watching some American reality TV show in the back. I am not sure what the show was but it depicted some slobs in their messy house that was bursting with a chaotic collection of junk. “Our house in America,” I told the staff. We all laughed. It is not so easy being a cultural ambassador from America after drinking 9% alcohol Belgian beer, but somebody’s got to do it. 

Friday morning the sun was shining and we eventually left the hotel for a day in Brugge. A beautiful old city, it reminded us of our 2006 visit to Prague in that around every street corner were more striking things to see, from centuries-old buildings and the spires of churches and city buildings, to narrow alleyways where local characters traversed. We saw the Burg square and made our way to the market square taking pictures along the way. We entered the belltower building and passed its courtyard to ascend the narrow spiral stairway to the top. The passageway got steeper as the stairs got more narrow, changing from stone to wood, climbing past the carillon level all the way to the belfry just in time for the pealing of the bells. You can see the mechanism that pulls back and releases hammers that strike the bells and play the music. Watch and listen!

It is hard to describe Bruges as it was such a visual treat for us. Highlights of the day included a museum with some very early paintings and works by Vermeer and others, a famous chocolate shop (with sugar-free chocolates for Joe) where the young steward knows all about his craft and is very eager to make you a personalized collection of chocolates based on any whim you can convey to him and where his mother—who says she works for the son—seems to have an opinion about things. A late lunch of local stew, salad, and frites with strong, tasty Belgian beer. 

We each had a beer and either split another or had another each, I’m not clear on that, oddly. And Sandy and I told each other things we treasure about one another and how we love travelling together and being with each other. We do these things at other times, too, the difference being that discussing these things over Belgian beer involves a bit more crying and sniffling. 

More walking, a little shopping, more photography, and just enough time for a round of Trappist beer—Belgian beer made by monks. 

We stumbled onto a bus and rode to the train station to board the WTF Express, although either everything went exceptionally smoothly on the ride back to Amsterdam or we didn’t notice or care very much. 

We got track information for our Antwerp change from a very helpful conductor and/or Dodgers fan. 

And on the way back, Sandy learned to read Dutch -- with a Belgian accent -- from a group of Belgian Girl Scouts. 

Saturday morning came a little too quickly. We snuggled, and I made breakfast while Sandy packed, and we headed to Centraal Station for Schiphol. At 1 pm we weren’t early so check-in and the walk to passport control went fast, and all of a sudden we had to say goodbye. Kisses and oh-so-tight a hug. It was as hard as I feared it might be. So it went.

I went back to the train by myself. No adventures planned. I looked up the best way to get to Albert Cuyp market where I wanted to go back for some almonds and who-knows-what surprises might delight me as before. I found a route I had never used which would take me on a walk through streets I’d not yet seen. I went. It was raining.

And here is the surprising lesson I had: It was dull. It was cold. It was wet. The weather that never bothered me before had become a most unpleasant gloom. Nothing at the market delighted me. I had no pictures to take of things I could share with Sandy when she came to visit, because she wasn’t on her way to see me anymore. Somehow the colors of all the sights were all muted, if there were any colors there at all any more.

The day dragged on that way. I went back to the Saturday market on Neumarkt, where (as you know) I’d become a regular customer and where I’d been so excited just a week before to introduce Sandy to the meat guys and the socks guy and the cheese people. It wasn’t so much fun this time. My cheese guy saw me and asked, “Are you okay?” Was it that obvious?

I cleaned up the kitchen from breakfast. I did the laundry. Did some work. Hoped she’d drop me a note when she got home even though I’d be asleep.

She did.