Being back in N. is like having an endless Pamela Barnes Ewing moment. I am in this never ending dream, about 180 episodes long, but when I finally wake up, I just dozed off on my bed and Bobby is still taking a shower. It’s not that I am not realizing that things have not changed, I mean, they have. When I left, the mobile phone still had to be invented, and now, every second shop in the main shopping area is owned by either Vodafone, Telekom or E-plus. On a street that is not even 200 meters long, I counted about 15 (!!!) different shops trying to sell you a new cell phone. The mono structure is just broken off by a gazillion Kamps-bakeries and some pharmacies. Obviously the needs of the citizens of my hometown are perfectly met with telephones, bread and drugs. When I meet up with my friends, which we do most of the times at home (back then, because we did not have money to go to bars, now, because we lack the energy), we still overeat on sweets, but we dropped the dope, which eleven years ago would be most of the times a part of the evening routine… So, things have changed, but still, it feels like I am re-inhabiting a still life, a still life that by lack of beauty, grace and charm is so damn real that at times I start to wonder if the ten years in Amsterdam have not been anything, but a dream. My first home in Admiraal de Ruyterweg with my dope-smoking, gambling addicted flat mate, who used to f*ck his girl friend (a street hooker from Columbia who tried to get her ex-partner killed) at four a.m. under the shower, to fry some “borrelhappjes” at 5 to finally snooze of at 7, in order to wake up around noon and steal my money, when I was following lectures at UvA; my second house in 2de Hugo de Groot Straat that I shared with about fifty mice families and a hygienically challenged Italo-Dutch guy; my short time in the Jordaan; the apartment in Orteliusstraat, with Goran, the mental tenant from the second floor, Dries, the pimp like house owner with his monthly visits, not to forget all the great people I used to live with there over the years; van Walbeekstraat, my very own personal and exclusive experience of 1001 Arabian nights; and finally Paramaribostraat, again flat-sharing, but this time on yuppie level and with two very good friends. Did it all happen, or did I just snooze off on the sofa to wake up and hear Bobby under the shower???
Strangely enough I start to like it here, and that not only because of the beer and the bread. I recognize that N. is “Heimat” (what an untranslatable German concept that is), and that’s what it will always be and what it has always been. I grew up here, people speak my dialect and I know how they tick. However, if it will become home (Zuhause) again one day, only the future can tell.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Impressions of N.
I met Ms. L. in the staircase yesterday. I am starting to cherish conversations with the hard of hearing:
Ms. L.: I saw you in your mother’s car the other day. The bars in the trunk, they must be for a really big dog.
I: Oh, you mean the car of my sister’s boyfriend?! My mum does not have a car.
Ms. L.: Must be one piece of a dog.
I: There is no dog, you see, it’s a second hand car. It came with the bars.
Ms. L.: What?
I: It’s a second hand car. It came with the bars.
Ms. L.: Ah, … you know, I like dogs, especially big ones.
I: Yep, well, have a nice day.
Ms. L.: You, too.
I am sitting again in my bedroom, trying very hard to ignore the chaos around me. I will continue to write my e-mails here and then burn them on floppy disc for the time being. As I already mentioned, the local internet café costs a fortune, and I am usually the only mentally sane person in the place. Most of the guys hanging out there are into games, judging from the sounds that come from the computers around me, it’s all about the art of killing before the invention of the machine gun. It’s all sword fighting, hacking and stabbing people, chopping them up, decapitating them etc. I have to admit that those people who developed these medieval shockers did some impressive work on the sound. Yesterday I was sitting in front of quite an advanced player, he basically cut up five to six people a minute, and when I left the place, I felt a little bit noxious from all the hacking and stabbing, the groaning and the moaning.
Actually my bedroom looks a little bit like if an early medieval tribe had paid it a visit. I got the second wardrobe yesterday, and after the disaster with the first one, I am acknowledging the fact, that figures with two people on it in the bloody installation manual, actually do mean that two people have to install the damn thing together. Until I will have found that second pair of hands that is into installing Ikea closets, I will have to continue to live out of boxes and have like 100 pieces of wardrobe lying around in the room…
As the car of my sister’s boyfriend, the wardrobe was a second hand bargain, and when I closely think about it, almost every piece of furniture in this house is, too. I managed to buy basically the complete kitchen, including a dishwasher and a microwave for 300,- Euros. In the meantime, by the way, all of my friends good bye gifts have found their place, if not somewhere in my apartment, then in my stomach…
Tomorrow, I have another appointment with the “Arbeitsamt”. With approximately 5 million people being on the dole, going to the “Arbeitsamt” is the ultimate German experience at the moment. Pale people in bad fitting clothes in winter colors from ‘C&A’ and ‘Kaufhalle’, busy reading depressing headlines (“AEG will have to fire 1.000 more people” etc. ) in depressingly colorful newspapers as ‘Bild’ and Express’ are sitting in overheated, neon-lighted corridors to wait for hours. Now add a couple of kids playing in a loupe all the ring tones of their parents’ cell phones and your picture of the “Arbeitsamt” is perfect.
There is this pathetic campaign going on to reinstall good old German values into the heard of this states’ citizens. A slogan was created: “Du bist Deutschland”. After “we” have been pope in the summer, now, during the winter, we have to work on the hard part: Be Germany! Pope was easy, Germany, that’s a different kind of job. Just buy a leaf of bread and your patriotic feelings will be triggered. “Du bist Deutschland” is on every bloody bread bag in the country. Some of the young and fit, but workless people that Germany is rich of, thought to make some money out of it, and since a couple of days you can buy a ring tone, saying: “You are unemployed. You are Germany.” If only I had the money to afford a cell phone…
(In my opinion the campaigners missed the right season, I mean, “pope” that’s a strong topic, you know, not very weather dependent, but “Germany” come on, that’s a weak theme, it could use a little bit of sunshine. I do not understand why they did not start the whole thing in late spring or early summer, just around the time, when every German male is about to free the barbecue from dust, when for a couple of weeks on every Saturday the balance between man and woman is re-established, the guys taking care of the fire and the chicks chopping up the vegetables, the time of the year, when the “Biergärten” open up again, which even puts some people back into employment. I hope you see where I am going, “Germany” is a theme for the sausage season and not for late fall and winter. Maybe the whole thing will take off this year around the world championships, our team might be damn lucky enough to make it past the first round again, and in this generally felt excitement, it will become a little easier to be Germany, and should we make it against any better judgment into the final, man, you never know, we might even be able to repeat the 50s and the “Wirtschaftswunder”. But man, should we not even make it past the first round, I recommend to get the campaign off the air at least for a couple of weeks, just to make sure that some poor kids with unemployed fathers will at least be able to watch Sesame Street, because, I can just see a certain amount of feet, axes and baseball rackets ending up in TV screens, when their owners are reminded: “Du bist Deutschland!”)
My first visit at the “Arbeitsamt” though actually held a surprise. After I waited for half an hour at the reception and managed to kill afterwards the first 60 pages of ‘De engel van Amsterdam’, I was finally called in and greeted: “Wat kan ik voor u doen?”
Figures that the guy working on my case had a Dutch grandma and is the world’s biggest Bløf fan ever. To help my case I pretended that I am, too. (Since I do not really dislike them, I was not totally dishonest.)
After we exchanged details about our Bløf love,
Mr. T: I saw them in concert in Vlissingen last year, awesome.
I: Well, I saw them back in the days, when they still played small local festivals, in Colijnsplaat, must have been in 96.
Mr. T.: Wow!
I: I really like this song about Zeeland.
Ms. T: Oh yes!
Me and Mr. T. together (singing): Hier aan de kust, de Zeeuwse kust …
…and entertaining the unemployed masses for a bout 20 seconds, he was really nice and helpful, but although I got the impression that he liked me, at the end Mr. T handed me a gazillion forms to fill in and scheduled an appointment for tomorrow. I am considering to have a drink before I’ll go there. I seriously wonder if it’s the unemployment itself or the “Arbeitsamt” that makes people start drinking…
Ms. L.: I saw you in your mother’s car the other day. The bars in the trunk, they must be for a really big dog.
I: Oh, you mean the car of my sister’s boyfriend?! My mum does not have a car.
Ms. L.: Must be one piece of a dog.
I: There is no dog, you see, it’s a second hand car. It came with the bars.
Ms. L.: What?
I: It’s a second hand car. It came with the bars.
Ms. L.: Ah, … you know, I like dogs, especially big ones.
I: Yep, well, have a nice day.
Ms. L.: You, too.
I am sitting again in my bedroom, trying very hard to ignore the chaos around me. I will continue to write my e-mails here and then burn them on floppy disc for the time being. As I already mentioned, the local internet café costs a fortune, and I am usually the only mentally sane person in the place. Most of the guys hanging out there are into games, judging from the sounds that come from the computers around me, it’s all about the art of killing before the invention of the machine gun. It’s all sword fighting, hacking and stabbing people, chopping them up, decapitating them etc. I have to admit that those people who developed these medieval shockers did some impressive work on the sound. Yesterday I was sitting in front of quite an advanced player, he basically cut up five to six people a minute, and when I left the place, I felt a little bit noxious from all the hacking and stabbing, the groaning and the moaning.
Actually my bedroom looks a little bit like if an early medieval tribe had paid it a visit. I got the second wardrobe yesterday, and after the disaster with the first one, I am acknowledging the fact, that figures with two people on it in the bloody installation manual, actually do mean that two people have to install the damn thing together. Until I will have found that second pair of hands that is into installing Ikea closets, I will have to continue to live out of boxes and have like 100 pieces of wardrobe lying around in the room…
As the car of my sister’s boyfriend, the wardrobe was a second hand bargain, and when I closely think about it, almost every piece of furniture in this house is, too. I managed to buy basically the complete kitchen, including a dishwasher and a microwave for 300,- Euros. In the meantime, by the way, all of my friends good bye gifts have found their place, if not somewhere in my apartment, then in my stomach…
Tomorrow, I have another appointment with the “Arbeitsamt”. With approximately 5 million people being on the dole, going to the “Arbeitsamt” is the ultimate German experience at the moment. Pale people in bad fitting clothes in winter colors from ‘C&A’ and ‘Kaufhalle’, busy reading depressing headlines (“AEG will have to fire 1.000 more people” etc. ) in depressingly colorful newspapers as ‘Bild’ and Express’ are sitting in overheated, neon-lighted corridors to wait for hours. Now add a couple of kids playing in a loupe all the ring tones of their parents’ cell phones and your picture of the “Arbeitsamt” is perfect.
There is this pathetic campaign going on to reinstall good old German values into the heard of this states’ citizens. A slogan was created: “Du bist Deutschland”. After “we” have been pope in the summer, now, during the winter, we have to work on the hard part: Be Germany! Pope was easy, Germany, that’s a different kind of job. Just buy a leaf of bread and your patriotic feelings will be triggered. “Du bist Deutschland” is on every bloody bread bag in the country. Some of the young and fit, but workless people that Germany is rich of, thought to make some money out of it, and since a couple of days you can buy a ring tone, saying: “You are unemployed. You are Germany.” If only I had the money to afford a cell phone…
(In my opinion the campaigners missed the right season, I mean, “pope” that’s a strong topic, you know, not very weather dependent, but “Germany” come on, that’s a weak theme, it could use a little bit of sunshine. I do not understand why they did not start the whole thing in late spring or early summer, just around the time, when every German male is about to free the barbecue from dust, when for a couple of weeks on every Saturday the balance between man and woman is re-established, the guys taking care of the fire and the chicks chopping up the vegetables, the time of the year, when the “Biergärten” open up again, which even puts some people back into employment. I hope you see where I am going, “Germany” is a theme for the sausage season and not for late fall and winter. Maybe the whole thing will take off this year around the world championships, our team might be damn lucky enough to make it past the first round again, and in this generally felt excitement, it will become a little easier to be Germany, and should we make it against any better judgment into the final, man, you never know, we might even be able to repeat the 50s and the “Wirtschaftswunder”. But man, should we not even make it past the first round, I recommend to get the campaign off the air at least for a couple of weeks, just to make sure that some poor kids with unemployed fathers will at least be able to watch Sesame Street, because, I can just see a certain amount of feet, axes and baseball rackets ending up in TV screens, when their owners are reminded: “Du bist Deutschland!”)
My first visit at the “Arbeitsamt” though actually held a surprise. After I waited for half an hour at the reception and managed to kill afterwards the first 60 pages of ‘De engel van Amsterdam’, I was finally called in and greeted: “Wat kan ik voor u doen?”
Figures that the guy working on my case had a Dutch grandma and is the world’s biggest Bløf fan ever. To help my case I pretended that I am, too. (Since I do not really dislike them, I was not totally dishonest.)
After we exchanged details about our Bløf love,
Mr. T: I saw them in concert in Vlissingen last year, awesome.
I: Well, I saw them back in the days, when they still played small local festivals, in Colijnsplaat, must have been in 96.
Mr. T.: Wow!
I: I really like this song about Zeeland.
Ms. T: Oh yes!
Me and Mr. T. together (singing): Hier aan de kust, de Zeeuwse kust …
…and entertaining the unemployed masses for a bout 20 seconds, he was really nice and helpful, but although I got the impression that he liked me, at the end Mr. T handed me a gazillion forms to fill in and scheduled an appointment for tomorrow. I am considering to have a drink before I’ll go there. I seriously wonder if it’s the unemployment itself or the “Arbeitsamt” that makes people start drinking…
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