Inaugurate This!

Laughing Through Language and Embracing Dutch Nuances

Have you ever found unexpected humor while learning a new language or adapting to a different culture? Share your funniest, most eye-opening moments!

I’ll go first…

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I really didn’t want to think about a certain very small indoor ceremony, nor did I want to spend my whole day bogged down in a mire of cable news snippets, witty Notes & Blueskies, and the general dread that precludes the official return of the circus to Georgetown. We just moved to a new country so that we wouldn’t have to listen to all of that, and so, it is fitting that we spent the better part of today making the trip to The Hague for our biometrics appointment.

William and I are fighting the time change hard.

Somehow on all the other trips we’ve made, it was never this powerful. I suppose it is partially because we have been living in a strange limbo for the last few weeks, between homes and nations. We’ve not been observing the usual ways of organizing our days, eating a big meal in the middle of the afternoon and sleeping whenever we felt like it. But William is currently sacked out next to me on the sofa and will probably be wide awake again come 3 or 4 am…meanwhile, I’ll hit a wall of fatigue at 9 pm but wake up at midnight for a couple of hours.

Ships in the night in a tiny apartment.

The Dutch immigration service is, like most things in this country, very specific. Our appointment was for 1:49 PM and the letter indicated that we should be “right on time.” Honest to goodness, Goldilocks language: if we were more than five minutes early, we should wait outside. If you’re more than five minutes late, you will reschedule.

Being close to two hours early, we made sure to find the office we needed before we took a look around town. It was another cold and grey day, the wind finding a way right through our warmest layers and taking all the joy out of an exploratory “wandeling.” After an unsuccessful attempt to find a restaurant that is inside the food court that is closed on Mondays, we ducked into Granny’s Corner.

While we weren’t decided on emigrating to the Netherlands, I have spent the past couple of years studying Dutch. I started because we were making a scouting trip so that I could see more of the country than the airport (all I’d managed to visit in my travels). I like to learn a bit of the local tongue before a trip, even if it is only hello, goodbye, please and thank you because it makes a difference when meeting locals.

I did, however, make an exception for Icelandic.

After our trip to Amsterdam, I tried Irish and Spanish on DuoLingo, only to walk right back into the guttural tones of Nederlands. Having not really succeeded at becoming fluent in another language despite many tries (and even Rosetta Stone!) and even though we were only toying with the idea of moving abroad, I wondered how hard it would be. I’ve read plenty about brain plasticity and aging, so it seemed as though I might need to actually put myself to the test.

I couldn’t hack Spanish (too many years of high school French, I think) and there’s no point in learning any more Russian (despite the semester I studied abroad more than twenty years ago) but something about the Dutch language makes sense to me. There are more than enough cognates with English and I like to call it the Lego language since there are compound words galore. A favorite: the word for rhinoceros, neushoorn, is a combination the words for nose and horn which just makes darn good sense.

Since we’ve landed, I have been reading everything I can just for practice, like this sign I spotted near our apartment that says, “If everyone comes from somewhere else, then no one is a stranger.”

Whether it is an infographic or cute advertising slogan, I have been trying to puzzle it out and I probably sound like I’m due for a specialist appointment, muttering to myself in the aisles of Kruidvat and HEMA with an extra consonant caught in my throat. Our apartment even has a few books in Dutch which I have aspirations of cracking open…though I expect the David Sedaris will win out over the book on pubescent psychology…or at least that’s what I think it translates to…

The thing I haven’t been doing enough of is speaking. Besides the pronunciation pitfalls, there’s the taxing thought process of breaking down a possibly complex thought into simple enough words that I can fill in all the blanks. I’ve been speaking English all my life and I know almost all the words so it comes very naturally. Still, I studied for a long time and I can talk to myself in Dutch, so why not actual Dutch people?

I swear, they must have some sort of nose for it - they can tell the difference between someone hesitating because they haven’t decided what they want to say next and someone who is trying desperately to keep from melting into a puddle because they are too nervous to know where to start. Our first couple of days, I was too tired to push back and William is so gregarious, he’s usually started in English before I can get my words arranged in the correct Dutch order…think of Yoda, you should.

But today, I was taking a step towards becoming a Dutch resident.

So, at Granny’s Corner, I deliberately told the waitress that I need more practice (Ik heb meer praktiek nodig) and would try to order in Dutch. I correctly opted for no tomatoes (zonder tomaten) on my sandwich. I was even able to ask her preference between the white or brown bread - bruin, natuurlijk. For all the times I heard the Dutch were stiff and gruff, she was delighted and commended my skills.

I’m sure she was being nice, but it made a difference.

There was no chance of speaking Dutch while at the IND. Besides the blue passports in our hands, there’s no hiding that you’re not from here when you are at the immigration office. Our 13:49 appointment time still had a small wait before we began the process of recording our biometrics. That isn’t a word I’ve heard used very often and I really hoped it would include retinal scanning…alas, a picture, a signature and all ten fingerprints.

Speaking of, when was the last time you were fingerprinted?

Maybe I’m bragging, but I haven’t been arrested before and that’s the only time I imagine they do it? I remember specifically having mine taken by a police officer or sheriff when I was in the second or maybe third grade. They came in our classroom and collected the prints on little cards—because I’m old enough to remember the days before digital scanners—and that ink does not come off!

The woman at the IND marveled at that fact since the Dutch have to have all ten prints made every few years at the longest. Dear readers, I will keep a running of how many times I am fingerprinted here, just for sport. She was very pleasant, giving us a chance to take the best pictures possible and laughing with me over how it would be impossible for me to take a picture worse than my current passport photo.

In less time than it takes for an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon to make a mockery of the presidential oath of office, we were heading off towards east Rotterdam where we would do some shopping. The Netherlands still operates on a more traditional model wherein you go to a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker rather than one trip to Target. While we love the pet store close to us because the owner is so friendly and helpful, we also are ridiculous American cat dads who have unbearably high standards for what our little fur balls will and will not be fed so we had to try the larger pet store at least the once.

I am exceedingly proud of my improvised conversation where I was able to ask the young cashier for “something that could go on top, like a lid” for the cans of cat food that William has selected and mixes with vitamins. She led me directly to the plastic discs we needed and proceeded to say some other things to me. They flew by too fast to parse so I’m telling myself it was all celebratory for how hard I’m trying to integrate into a new society and not some sort of pitch to join their rewards program.

Laden with cat food, litter, a yoga mat, and a new tea kettle, we squeezed in among the folks returning from work or school and made our way back to the cats. We tried to cook dinner on our stove last night, but discovered it is gas powered and requires matches or a lighter, which the previous tenant must have used for other purposes and lost.

Thankfully, they sell lighters everywhere here.

Stuffed full of pesto and tortellini that I boiled on a Dutch stove after lighting it with a small blowtorch, it’s now well past time to move into the bedroom. William has lost the battle and Bear and Guillermo are adding to the symphony of snores from the cat beds that we brought all the way from America. I’ve got about another 30 minutes before the magical wall of fatigue slaps me into unconsciousness, but hopefully by the time I wake up three hours later, a couple of you will have liked this…

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