Day 24 – June 30, 2011 – Averting a midwife crisis…

A peak in the pantry... Pindakaas, anyone?

Number of days in Amsterdam – 24

Number of days without a bike theft – 20

Days left until the close of the Kickstarter Project – 19

Days since it last rained – 0

With now less than 20 days left until the close of our Kickstarter pitch, I’m starting to get a little nervous. Your overwhelming generosity thus far has raised over $2,000 for our cause to generate production costs to make this site richer and much more in depth than we could home for otherwise, but we still have a long way to go. To all our backers so far, I’m offering a heartfelt thanks, and asking you to take it one step further – let your friends know the project you’ve signed on to support, and ask them to as well. Hell, if just one of you were to convince 3,800 of your closest friends to just donate $1 each, we’d be golden, and almost 4,000 people would be able to see the I’ll Eat That For A $1 video, which is more people than ever watched the Joey spin off after Friends went off the air.

For those of you who read and haven’t donated, I ask you to consider. It will help make this site a lot more fun.

OK, on with the show…

For those of you who saw the original version of yesterday’s post, before the great server crash of of 2011, there was an additional section mentioning that Nicole was in search of a midwife (that particular paragraph was a later addition to the post, one that was not recovered by the Google cached version). In any event, it’s no longer an issue, as Nicole has made it through her midwife crisis, and we now have acquired the services of someone to help the Kitten transition from her tiny apartment to the big world (but not until her current lease is up in a few months).

If that were the only thing that had been accomplished yesterday, it would have been a pretty good day. But other events transpired to make it a great day.

The final box (as well as the final customs bill) arrived safely in the mail. It was one that we worried about, as it had Nicole’s winter coat as well as a raincoat (essential in the ‘Dam) that is cut in a way to accommodate the increasing size of the Kitten.

OK, great news, but something even better happened.

You remember how I’ve been fretting on the importance of friends, and how much we really wanted to establish a network here. Well, it’s started, and it’s paying off in the way that friends help each other out.

I got an email yesterday afternoon from one of our expat friends. It simply read:

Subject: Record Player
Body: In the shop next to hema

And attached was this photo:

One turntable, no microphone, but it's where it's at!

So not only was our friend able to locate exactly what we were looking for, but he found it in a shop a few hundred meters from the apartment. I quickly ran out, and the record player is now in the apartment. That exact one in the photo actually, as it was the last one they had.

My birthday present has arrived!

So now, our list of currently unfulfilled quests in this city stands as such:

1. Find a suitcase turntable
2. Procure some hot sauce
3. Get English children’s books to read to the Kitten
4. Find a midwife
5. Go record shopping

I’m adding as we go.

I’ve also started seeking out what’s going on in Dutch music, and the internet (That thing is great! If you haven’t tried out the internet yet, I suggest you giving it a spin) hasn’t disappointed. Today’s discovery was an all-girl punk band from here called De Fatwa’s. I wrote a post on them, along with posting a link to some free music, over on my music website.

We paid our first month’s rent here, which also included utilizing online banking through our Dutch bank account for the first time. Online banking is done a little differently here, but it’s pretty cool. You need your bank card to do it, because in addition to simply logging into the account, you actually plug your card into the computer with this system:

It's amazing how easy it's getting to spend money...

If I can just teach my computer to spit out Euros now, I’ll never need to go to the ATM!

There was an interesting bit of Dutch bike news in the US as well, as it was reported that the manager of a Dutch bicycle company, Jasmijn Rijcken, was pulled over in NYC for riding her bike in a miniskirt. According to the article, the officer told her that it was “very disturbing, and it’s distracting the cars and it’s dangerous.”

I know that wouldn’t fly over here. I’m not saying that women ride bikes in really short skirts, but that everyone does it in all attires. On a typical morning, you have people in business attire, moms taking kids to school, people out bumming around and even the occasional spandex-clad racer on an ultralight bike. In this heavy bike culture, people don’t really notice what you’re wearing.

The company that Rijken manages, VANMOOF, really makes some gorgeous bikes. If I saw one of them going by, that would distract me! You can see them on their website, but they’re unfortunately out of my price range. I’ll stick with the Purple Pony for now.

And that story ties into today’s travel tip…

If You Go:

Don’t get distracted. Tourists who lapse in their attention often wander into the bike lane. That’s like stepping into traffic in Amsterdam, except that the driver can get just as injured as the pedestrian. It’s also the main reason we all have bells on our bikes here.