February 12, 2012
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Amsterdam, Netherlands
Eleven o'clock in the morning. I had just finished drinking a couple of mugs of coffee and reading the Sunday Herald on my iPod and was sitting at my computer when the doorbell buzzed. Sigh. Not really in the mood to deal with anyone right now, and mostly I dreaded something related to the scaffolding that's still in front of the house. I waited a bit, trying to decide whether to answer the door or not. OK. It took me a while but then I pressed the intercom button and said "Hello?"
"Salvation army!" a voice bellowed up through the intercom.
Ah. Ok, good folk. This wasn't someone from the Salvation Army (good folk as well, I presume) but Paul, who's been using the same announcement every since I moved here basically. Paul is one of the few people who actually rings my doorbell spontaneously, and that's a good thing but also a very un-Dutch thing to do. I'd hate to speak for all 16 million of us, but typically Dutch people don't like people coming into their houses unannounced. Fortunately I don't mind (and I had cleaned the place at least on the surface yesterday) so it was all good. As soon as Paul had sat down on the sofa though, I proposed to go out for a coffee somewhere and it turned out that that was exactly what he had in mind as well.
We went to Bagels and Beans on Waterlooplein where I had a Latte (yes, another coffee so I nearly overdosed on caffeine this morning) and Paul had a complete breakfast including one of the weirdest drinks I've seen in my life. It was something to do with Green Energy, but I'm not sure whether that label was more inspired by marketing or by science. Paul is an absolute gym addict though, and it's been amazing to see him change over the past two years. He actually had to promise himself not to go to the gym today because he had overdone it this week. "I've overdone my visits to the gym" - now there's a phrase you will not hear cross my lips any time soon. As always it was great to see Paul though, so I was actually gratefull that he had dropped by and that I had decided to answer the doorbell.
Mind you, in the afternoon I did go for my share of exercise with a visit to the pool and once more I enjoyed it very much. I walked to the pool and part of that walk once more was over a frozen canal, Prinsengracht. Some people had even carried a cargo bike on the ice and they were selling all kinds of things to the people walking or skating by. It was once more a very special thing to see, so, despite the impression that I may have given on this blog yesterday that I'd posted enough wintery icy pictures... here's another one...
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