Must

Must... blog.. again... soon.. I know... soon, soon...

Spain's Costa Brava, 90 minutes north of Barcelona. Muy agradable

Time for a Change | The Favourites - final (for now) | The Differences | The Downsides

Wrapping up the Favourites section of the four-part Expat series, here are some images that convey some of the richness of Europe, all within a few hours' flying from Amsterdam.

Above - Sintra, Portugal - just your random, everyday medieval castle in the sky. Amazing.

Below - Lisbon, Portugal - the view from a room where I lived for month (the city, not just the room). Lisbon (and really, all of Portugal) is too often overlooked as its bigger neighbours get all the attention. Nice people, fantastic climate, laid-back life - it needs to be doing better than it is.
Above and Below - Peniche, Portugal - Home base of the Baleal Surf Camp. A great place to channel your inner Bodhi, but you don't need to rob banks to live here.

Below - Amsterdam's VondelPark (again). I'm not sure if Europeans invented the urban park, but they sure have perfected it. Places like this exist all over each major city I've been to in the past three years - a welcome break from the busy streets.

Below - Domburg, Netherlands. A few hours south of Amsterdam, this town is a surprise for anyone, expat or local, who is accustomed to the crowded houses and busy streets of the bigger Dutch cities. Miles and miles of coastline (why does kilometers and kilometers sound strange? anyway...) and sandy beaches can be found here, all ringed by dunes and then the town itself, which is full of classic pubs, pastry and gifts shops, and lekker restaurants with a Belgian influence.

Below (2) - Provence region, France. Read Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence" - it's like a vacation in paper form. And it describes this fantastique part of the world more eloquently than I can.

Above - Silute, Lithuania - The woods here on a sunny late winter day were perfectly lit and peaceful. Lithuania has many small towns like this, along with some beach towns that I will update you on at some point in the next year or so.

Above - OK, I snuck in one more Paris photo. Couldn't help it. The addiction is permanent.

Time for a Change | The Favourites - continued | The Differences | The Downsides

Part 2 of a 4-part series on being an expat

Istanbul, Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, London, Provence... all places that held an exotic, if remote, place in my brain before leaving Canada. Add in Lisbon, Lithuania and Malaga - respectively, two places I never thought I'd see and a place I'd never heard of, and, well, I've been very fortunate. More photos to come later this week.

Above - within minutes of arriving for the first time in Malaga, a place I had honestly (shamefully) never heard prior to four months before arriving. A late afternoon in March brought with it a warm sun, beer, and pure simplicity. And it's become an all-time favourite and somehow a place where I will end up, sometime.

Below (2) - more Malaga, more simple perfection.

Above - a favourite piece of art from the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Europe fulfills every cliché in the book, in the best way. You breathe in more culture here, and appreciate the finer things. There's a lot going on in this painting, as a young man goes off to war.

Above - Amsterdam's Leidsestraat. A burst of sun every 2-3 weeks or so seems to serve like a massive magical eraser for the wintry gloom. Ditto below, in London's Kensington Gardens.

Below (2) - Barcelona's La Boqueira market and a Gaudi building. If northern Europe is all to grey and muffled in the winter, Barcelona (and Spain in general) is the antidote - full of colour and energy.

Below - April in Amsterdam. No one shakes off a long dark winter like Amsterdammers, and the plants and birds are in on it too.

Istanbul (3) - on the Galatea Bridge at sunset, and more. Amazing history in this city... but, with the tourist trap feel and constant hustle, overall it seems somehow better suited for the camera than the soul.

The Favourites

Time for a Change | The Favourites | The Differences | The Downsides

Part 2 of a 4-part series on being an expat

So this is perhaps a little like a holiday-time clip show, where the writers take a break and run their favourite episodes of the past year. But some sunshine is in order, no?

I caught myself wistfully looking at photos from the past 2 years of travels and realized that there is no way I would ever have seen even half of these places if not for taking the initial big leap and leaving my old nest consisting of equal parts comfort and deep dissatisfaction. I still hope that at least one person who checks out this blog is inspired to do the same if they're stagnating or seriously bummed.

So here goes - places, moments that have left a permanently pleasant imprint on my brain since leaving Calgary in late 2009:

Above - U2 in New York at Giants Stadium, September 2009... Bono's voice has gotten pretty un-Bonoish, but still it's quite something to share a peaceful evening with 70,000 people and your oldest friend (not Bono, but a guy named Jason).

Below - The Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. It was walking here for the first time in July of '08 that I first knew my days back home were numbered; that there is such richness and beauty and culture to discover (these photos are from a subsequent visit) October. I kinda want to make a joke here to make this sound less sappy, but, well.

Below - Vondelpark in Amsterdam, the city's version of Central Park. Essentially, it's the main artery of the city that connects south and north, east and west. Baked (not from sunshine, I assure you) tourists wobble on their bikes, dogs run amok, and bikes and barbeques are everywhere. Picture-perfect ponds and canals snake their way throughout, and there are some cafes and restaurants too. Impossible not to relax when coming here.

On to the coast north of Lisbon - away from the hustle of big-city Europe, it's almost like discovering a secret time capsule as you take a train along the ocean away from Lisbon's Cais do Sodre station. Carcavelos, Cascais, and Estoril are the stops here, in some cases just a few steps from the ocean. The sun beams down here like it's giving Portugal too much and not saving enough for the rest of Europe sitting further inland.

And more favourites to come soon...

Expat Experience - Part 1

The first of a four-part series on being an expat

Time for a Change | The Favourites | The Differences | The Downsides

We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them

Einstein

It happened about three to five years ago. Somewhere between justifying to myself the purchase of a pair of jeans that exceeded $300 and reading about a security guard who was killed in a shopping stampede in some non-descript North American city as part of its annual Black Friday insanity.

It was between those two events, punctuated by hundreds of similar ones and accompanied by my own mild-to-less-mild forms of restlessness and depression, that I decided that a change was in order. My society and I were focused on the wrong things.

In brief visits to Europe (I'll exclude the UK if it's OK, as it is as bad as the US) in 2003 and 2008, I was struck by the smaller size of houses, food dishes, and stores, but mostly by the seeming contentedness of everyone I came into close contact with, be they relatives or relative strangers. People seemed less restless, more content.

I began to long for the absence of big box stores and ripped moms patrolling the aisles of the Apple store; for a lack of discussions about the next addition to the deck or the latest Wii. I wanted to say non.

Of course, I am still not immune to desiring nice things; nor is Europe some bohemian, egalitarian utopia full of happy people and devoid of consumerism. It still helps to have money, no matter where you are. And there are plenty of people here who are trying to keep up with the Joneses, or les Jones or the van Jonesenburgs.

But it's still nowhere near as all-consuming as the all-consumption of North America. You can still wedge some fresh bread, some cheese and a $5 bottle of wine (and it's pretty good wine) under your arm and sit in a park and have a great afternoon with friends. Try doing that in Toronto or Calgary and see how many people join you.

You do feel it immediately here - that you can get by with less and somehow live more. In Amsterdam, a cramped apartment and a bike and bus pass are all seen with unjudging eyes, and it sure doesn't impact your romantic life much. I'm not sure how many girls would have been keen to jump on the back of my bike back home, but in Holland it's common to see - and pretty damn fun, for both parties.

Contrast that with discussions with friends from Vancouver, Dallas, New York... all have told me tales of woe where they're regularly asked (within minutes of meeting a woman) "What do you do?" or worse "What do you drive"?

Places like Vancouver and Calgary are loaded with eligible girls and guys, none of whom can seem to get satisfied with one another as relationships today match the consumption patterns of regular products - each one is waiting for the next iPerson upgrade, even if the current model works great. I was as guilty as anyone.

And so, the life of this expat for over two years now has been a revelation. Call them expat eyes - a way of seeing things from a different perspective. Here it's about focusing on more important things, while at the same time not needing to live like a monk either - there's plenty of nice stuff to acquire if you want, but it doesn't define you as much. There is a better balance, a sort of permissible contentedness with however much or little you have.

I would paraphrase Einstein's quote to add that we cannot solve problems while being in the same place where the problems began. I think this kind of changing of perspective is only made possible by changing one's physical location entirely, if even for a few months.

The expat experience has made a firm enough impact to ensure that this new perspective will stay with me wherever I go from now on, as expat or ex-expat.

Longer time between posts these days folks, as work has taken root and free time has eroded considerably.

Next up: What it means to be an expat.

Euro Neuro Scan

All this Euro fuss is quite interesting to an inside outsider.

To get a handle on it I read the news, and hear some people's opinions, but I am no economist. I do know the situation is dire.

What I also know is that the idea of the various 27 countries in the European Union thinking the same way about anything is flawed to begin with. They wouldn't agree on how much butter to put in a pan, much less sort out a complex economic inferno.

It'll never happen either. A Spanish person's mindset is as different from a Dutch person's as bullfighting is to bicycling; the Greeks retire in their early fifties while the Germans do so in their mid-sixties. Where some are warm, passionate, not rich, and unhurried, others just 90 minutes away by plane are chilly, economically comfortable, and always on time.

A wise friend and writer named Stephen (follow him @BogusBobby) sums up Europe very nicely:

"Above the line, it rains, they drink beer, the indigenous food sucks, they work like here [North America], and the trains run on time. Below the line, the sun shines, they drink wine, the food’s great, the trains run late, and nothing the f&$# gets done all day."

In Amsterdam, in my limited experience, it rains so much and the winters are cold and dark enough that staying in the office for lunch and an extra hour or two at the end of the day hardly seems to make a difference in the bowels of winter.

Whereas if you are sitting in Malaga, and the sunshine is beckoning you each day for what seems like 10 months of the year... well, you'd want to get out of the office too.

To try to mash these lifestyles and mindsets together, along with a dozen other ones, is a fool's errand, as it has been since the first arrow landed in some king's paella, the first boulder in some keizer's schnitzel.

I just hope it all somehow works out, so I can get below the line as often and as safely as possible.

Sunny Days

What to do on a warm, sunny day in Amsterdam, with the limited daylight hours of late November and your last few hours as a freelancer ahead?

1. Hop on the bike. The tram is for days of rain and snow, and for wimps. (Which I am for about 10 days each winter).

2. Head to Anne&Max or Cafe van Zuilen. Better coffee at the first place, better ambience at the latter.

3. Run errands, no matter how far across the city. The next 10 days call for rain, so you won't soon get this chance again.

4. Stop in at Mint Hotel's SkyLounge for the best views of the city in all directions. 6 Euros for a cup of tea = well, steep. But still worth the views.

5. Walk the dog. All the way down to the massive beach pictured here, in the leafy, mildly ghetto-y area of Slotervaart.

6. Buy fish at the Wednesday-only outdoor market on Sierplein also in the same neighbourhood. Friendly fishmonger will provide a bit of free fish for your furry friend.

7. Read online about the blast of winter that friends and family are receiving back home. Pretend as if this past summer never happened. (Which it didn't, actually).

8. Prepare for next day of sun, perhaps somewhere in mid-January.

Gym Dandy

Squash City. Health City. Fit for Life. Fitness First. The preponderance of English-only names of health clubs in Amsterdam seems curious.

Stepping into any of them (I'm a proud Squash City member) reveals a few local habits that are even more curious, at least to the North American gym-goer:

• Shyness: I don't think there is a word for it in Dutch. (Well, technically it is verlegenheid, but you get the idea). Whether it's the girls from reception entering the men's room regularly (and unannounced) to sweep and tidy up - pausing only to get you to step out of the way - or the spandex-clad guy splayed out on the incline bench press as though he's seeing a gynecologist, it seems modesty is for wimps.

• Nudity: In the same vein - varicose or otherwise - the sauna area is co-ed. This means that the person next to you on the treadmill or the yoga class may well soon be next to you in the shower, steam, or sauna as well. This can either be a pleasant experience or a "my eyes, my eyes!" event that haunts your dreams.

• Hygiene: everyone on the weight room floor has a towel with them to put between themselves and the apparatus they're working on, and you quickly feel strange without one. However, ten minutes after the workout you'll see fully naked people plunk themselves down on a bench in the steam room, sans towel, with only a quick squeegee sweep performed beforehand.

• Effort: At least twice per visit, I hear the loud, repeated exhalations of PHHHEWW or WHHOOF from a guy as he enters the men's locker room, as if to announce: "I have worked out hard... behold me, the hard-working worker!"

• Service: As with most establishments in Amsterdam, it is real hit and miss. The hit is fine - cordial, normal, helpful people - some exceptionally so. The miss, as I've seen around town on occasion, is a real miss, on a level where you want to either strike the person or ask them why they decided to work at all with other humans. A recent encounter:

Me:

Can I leave my bag here for 10 minutes (behind the trainer's desk in a corner of the gym, nowhere near any person or traffic)?

Meathead (actually the Fitness Manager, in a tone with an unreal jerkiness that is difficult to convey in print):

It's not for nothing that we have lockers, you know.

Me: (stunned silence, shaking head)

• Tanning beds: These still exist in abundance at many gyms, and they're being used all the time. You can use the fitness benefits to fight off the melanoma.

So, come join a gym in Amsterdam - there are definitely some good ones. Places like Health City include free coffee and juices; many have a buikspierkwartier, 15 minutes of core strength that will help bring out the abs; there are lots of excellent group fitness classes, spinning in particular; and most places still emphasize Dutch gezelligheid, the coziness that has been mentioned in this blog a number of times.

There's a wide range of prices, from David Lloyd's preposterous 85-100+ Euros/month to the bare bones Fit for Free's 10-20Euros/month (which, technically speaking, doesn't sound very free).

True to Dutch form, there is nothing free in any gym though - the trial workout does not seem to exist here, though most places will refund you the cost of a day pass if you join.

And wherever you go, remember to bring your towel, your spandex, and your systematically beaten down expectations of customer service.

Movie Mania

It's that time of year again, when the days darken early and Dutch parents still don't put hats or gloves on their kids.

It's also time once again for the International Documentary Film Festival, the best 10 days for movie geeks to sneak some peeks at the world's best un-Hollywood films.

I'm now on my third year of this cinematic feast, and as a seasoned vet I am all over this like Herman Cain on an assistant.

Want to make the most of the festival? Here's the lowdown:

- Get on the mailing list for the festival; they are not spammy, with only a few emails sent throughout the year, and you will get ample warned well in advance of the ticket sales and the overall program.

- On Day 1 of the kaartverkoop, go online and buy tickets for all your favourites. I bought 5 tickets this year, and it wasn't easy whittling down the choices. But waiting until the day before or day is risky. Although last-minute no-shows do happen; if you really want to see something, head to the cinema about 30 minutes before the show and talk to a ticket-taker or wait for a seller to start hawking.

- Bring your smartphone to the show - no need to line up to pick up pre-bought tickets this year, as the organizers have gone all smartphone-friendly.

- If you have any questions, be patient. The volunteers range widely from friendly and on the ball to friendly and way off the ball. It happens every year - some of them seem genuinely surprised to be there.

The lineup for the 2011 version is much the same - many with a very strong social message, some with serious stomach-churning violence and sadness; some with beauty as their main feature; and others that are light and a bit wacky. Virtually all of them look great.

This year, I've got tickets for:

Cave of Forgotten Dreams

Just came back from this; it's a fascinating movie about the discovery of cave drawings in France dating back 32,000 years, directed and narrated by Werner Herzog - in 3D no less. This movie expands your brain, largely (I think) by making us realize how short a time we're really here and how close we are to messing it up.

Desert Riders

The very sad story of camel jockeys (yes, actual camel jockeys) in the UAE.

Happiness... a Promised Land

A look at a simple question posed to various people on a hike: What makes you happy? (These days? An awesome fiancee, dogs, Guinness, playing squash, and movie festivals. I suspect this movie will delve a little deeper).

POM Wonderful presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold

Morgan Spurlock, the guy from Super-Size Me, casts a light on the prevalence and absurdity of advertising and insidious product placement. Which seems like a good time to mention that this blog is currently sponsored by Lithuanian garlic, Simon Levelt Indian Chai tea, Etos cough syrup and Hema's Ultra Soft nose tissues.

The Last Dogs of Winter

The Canadian Eskimo Dog is the only dog that can survive a temperature of minus-60 degrees. Only a few hundred are left. We'll see if it's chilling or heart-warming.

So a full agenda of movie-viewing is on tap, and I am overly, geekily, excited about it all. Some other ones that I may even try to see are Four Horsemen ("What is created by humans, can be changed by humans" - check out the trailer) and G Spotting: A Story of Pleasure and Promise (oddly, the identical working title of the first movie listed above). Just hope I find the damn place.

The Telltale Squeak

After a good 10-15 minutes of walking up and down the bicycle racks like a mildly insane person, looking for my trusty, rusty steed, I had finally given up hope. In a city of some 524,000 annual bike thefts (no joke), I had just experienced my first.

Or had I? Suddenly, faintly, almost plaintively, I heard the squeak.

Unmistakeable, as quiet as it was. I looked up to see a guy struggling to get on a bike while holding another one, getting ready to ride off into the masses that make up Amsterdam on a Saturday afternoon at the intersection of Spui and Kalverstraat, in the shadows of the American Book Center.

On any given weekend, this square is crammed with tourists and locals sitting on a bench, eating at a cafe, or heading to the shops nearby. Coupled with the messiest, most clogged bike parking areas this side of Centraal Station, it is the ideal place for a wannabe bike thief to go virtually unnoticed.

Enter the squeak.

I bought the cartoon dog horn several months ago for several reasons, practical and otherwise.

On the practical side, it helps me locate my own bike quickly in a sea of bikes. There are, perhaps unsurprisingly, very few white squeaky plastic dog horns adorning the handlebars of Amsterdam's cyclists. But this little dude had stood faithfully for months now, letting me zero in on his location quickly and efficiently.

On the intangible side, I decided to approach things strategically a few months ago; with almost everyone sporting a bell that rings at various levels of aggression in order to get people to move (trust me - a bell being clanged repeatedly right behind you on a bike by a cranky Amsterdammer is on par with a car horn bleating at you in your own vehicle while you are stalled in an intersection), a horn that sounds like a baby's bath toy is infinitely more pleasant. And more successful.

So why not defuse the everyday bike traffic situation by giving people (usually tourists) a little ee-oo instead? For months now, I have been able to delight these visitors while simultaneously getting them to move the hell out the way. It's been a win-win. A Schwinn-win, even.

In happier times

Anyway, back to the guy. Evidently, before biking off he wanted to take away any obvious markers, so the dog was the first to go. But little did he realize it was a squeaking dog, or that the squeaking dog's owner was standing there about 5 steps away.

So in short order he rips it off, the dog goes ee-oo, and I hear it, incredulous that my bike is right in front of my eyes. He is struggling to balance his bike with one hand while riding mine, and I dash over and pull the back wheel of the bike up.

It's a guy's bike, with the bar of the frame right there, and he is forced into a rather uncomfortable position. Suffice to say, at this moment we are both feeling testy.

He falls to the pavement, with both bikes clanging to the ground and some 100 onlookers wondering what is happening. I yell at him, something along the lines of "Hey man, this is my *(%@$#! bike" and he turns around, peering out from under a hood that was thus far obscuring what turns out to be the sad, sallow face of a junkie.

With his hands up in the international symbol for Ref, I didn't do it even though I clearly did it he says "Hey, I just bought this off a guy, I didn't know it was stolen."

Note that I was in the bookstore for maybe 10 minutes tops and certainly this was not enough time for the bike to have its lock picked, be stripped its removable parts, and then sold to someone else. So I doubted him.

I then said "I'll give you three seconds before I punch you in the *(%@$#! face" and he scooted away on his other bike right away, gone forever into the shopping and cycling masses.

Adding to my doubts about his innocence, I figured if he had just bought it from someone else, I highly doubt he would have let me threaten him into giving me a bike by words alone.

To be fair, I'm not sure I would have punched him in the *(%@$#! face, but it sounded impressive and sufficiently tough. It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly that I didn't think of all the things I could have done, but the end result was satisfactory.

In hindsight, maybe it was his sad, impoverished face that held me back from bopping him; or maybe it was the fact that he was the same height as me and I'm just not that tough; or perhaps it was the new jacket that I had on and didn't want to ruin. I'll never be quite sure.

In any event, I have my bike back and am very thankful that somehow this idiot decided to bike directly past the spot where he stole the bike from 10 minutes earlier.

Alas, in all the excitement, I forgot one thing. The dog horn.

Squeak on, little buddy, squeak on.

Sigh.