I cannot believe how long it takes to get services in the U.K. and Europe, but after almost a month we have internet, TV and a phone! It has been one month and two days since we last blogged. I have to say that I love our last post of Scotland. I love watching the slide shows and reminiscing about all the places we have been to and the people we have met. Now it is time to make new memories in Holland!
I wasn't sure I would like living in the Netherlands. Scotland is so beautiful with its rolling hills, Highland mountains, stone fences and the green! Everything is so green. Holland is flat. We joke that the speed bumps are the highest elevation in Holland. However, the sun shines - pretty much all the time! We have had a few overcast days as it has been a colder spring and a slower summer, but we have sun! It is fantastic! I have found that for the month that we have been here I love it.
We live in
Wassenaar. The population is 30,000 people although it seems smaller than that. This is where the royal family and a lot of the diplomats live. It is also the most English speaking part in the Netherlands, hence why we live here. The center of town is cobbled stone streets. The main shopping area is closed off to traffic. We live about two blocks from there. The whole town shuts down about 6:00 pm and becomes soooo quiet. In that respect it feels a little bit like country living. However, the weekends are bustling with shoppers.
We have decided that we don't need a 2nd car because I can pretty much do everything I need to do in Wassenaar and never have to go anywhere else. There is every type of store and restaurant in Wassenaar. (I walk to the grocery store every day or two. A little different for me but I like it. Winter might be another thing though.) Of course, I will go to other places but with the public transportation I can get wherever else I need to go to - I just have to get it figured out. Plus I can always use Bud's car. I am a little nervous to drive here. Haven't done it yet. Bud keeps offering to let me and I always say "Not yet." The bicyclist and pedestrians have the right of way here (like most places) but they don't hesitate to plow through the intersection without any pause. You always have to be looking for the cyclist and scooters to be coming out of nowhere. This sounds like it is something you should already be doing, and it is, but its different over here.
Another factor about driving over here is that our Europe Garmin chip doesn't work. It is faulty and trying to get customer service is like trying to tell the sun not to rise. Imagine if you will that you live in a country with street names like Adriaan Pauwstraat, Van Oldenbarneveltweg, Van Hogendorpstraat and my personal favorite Van Zuylen van Nyeveltstraat. These are just a few streets in Wassenaar. Since our Garmin is ineffective, Bud has been Googling directions and printing them out. Then the adventure begins - you drive around trying to find the street signs (often not there) and then quickly (because you're driving) trying to decipher what you are reading. It has been a challenge to say the least. We do have the basics down though. To and from work, church and some of the shopping areas. I emailed Garmin's customer support three different times and never got a response. So I decided to call them and after holding for 57 international minutes (since I don't speak Dutch and had to use the US support) the customer support hung up on me because she said she couldn't hear me ( I had her on speaker phone). She didn't give me a second to see if the phone was accidentally muted, which I concluded it wasn't. JERK! So then I called again and held for 56 minutes more and got through to someone who helped us. Sort of. He emailed us a new file of what we had on our chip. We downloaded it and we get the message that it can't be downloaded because we are missing a previous map. Urrrgh! Of course we have this guy's email address and have emailed him but he is either on vacation or ignoring us. We now have a $300 + Garmin with $150 chip and it is worthless to us! We keep hoping that we will get an email from Gerald at Garmin. That failing we will be buying a Tom Tom, paying out close to what we paid for our Garmin. GARMIN YOU SUCK! (If you have a Garmin connection, please have them email me!)
The fact that we don't know Dutch is a little bit of a challenge. A lot of the Dutch do speak English but its not like there is a lot of English info out there. Most websites don't have a conversion for English. You can use Google translator, which helps but makes it tedious to figure out what you want. Thank goodness its there though. When you go to the shops they of course speak their native tongue to us. If you answer them with "I only speak English" most of them are nice about it. Some, however, glare at you. Some will only speak Dutch and you pretend you don't notice and just pay for your purchase and leave. Bud was told that you need to say, "Do you speak English?" because if you just say, "I don't speak Dutch" they think you are being rude. I suppose that makes a wee bit of sense. We also wonder how long it will take us to start recognizing words of names and places, instead of hearing "blah, blah, blah." It will come eventually. On a side note - spell checking this blog in Blogger is kinda funny - it thinks all my English words are misspelled, even though everything on Blogger is in English - the tabs, icons, buttons, etc. Its confused!
Our house is mostly put together but it needs some fine tuning. I don't have a lot of storage space here and need to find some under the bed storage boxes so we can put our shoes up, etc. I will try to get some pictures up in the next few days.
Good to be back!
Our living room.
This is the left side. 
