Number of days in Amsterdam – 135
Number of days without a bike theft – 131
Days since it last rained – 0
Our wet weather has returned with a vengeance. Today we were treated to not one, but FIVE bouts of hail, some as big as peas!
I shot a few seconds of video of, but I didn’t really want to go out there. I opened the balcony door for a second and had little balls of ice flying into the dining room!
I’ve come to the realization now that if I’m not shooting all these posts up nice and regular-like, folks are wondering if Nicole has had the baby. But rest assured, we’re still waiting. We’re just sitting home most days, hanging out, watching movies and waiting.
So far it’s all gezellig.
Wait, what?
Gezellig.
Gezellig is a term the Dutch love, and I think it’s mainly because it’s a term that’s so distinctly Dutch that it has no translation. It’s a guttural word, unpretty to my ear, that encompasses something very beautiful.
My buddy Google Translate tells me that it means “sociable,” but that barely scratches the surface.
It can mean sociable. Like when you have friends over for cocktails, coffee or cucumber sandwiches, and treat everyone very well, that’s very gezellig of you.
But it can also sort of mean that everything is copacetic. Or zen. Or cozy. Or quaint. It’s so all-encompassing that it could be a modern Dutch religion – the pursuit of all things gezellig.
So Nicole and I, sitting tight, tucked away from the weather in a warm flat watching movies and waiting for a new baby – that’s gezellig.
But so is going out to an outdoor cafe with our good friends on a cool fall night.
Gezellig-ness is a pursuit akin to the Dali Lama’s pursuit of Nirvana. It’s something the Dutch aspire to, and really, it’s something that we all aspire to, even though we don’t have, know or share the words for it.
So for now, all is gezellig. When the baby comes, while we may be sleep-deprived and frazzled, all should be gezellig then as well.
The closest approximation I have to it is one of my favorite quotes from the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. For what it’s worth, I hated that book. I though it was a painful, overrated, pointless waste of paper and reading it is time I can never get back, but for all that’s worth, it did have one of my favorite road quotes, one that I wrote on a Post-It note that I stuck to the dashboard of a truck that Nicole and I drove to North Carolina years ago – the trip we came back from engaged to be married:
We want to make good time, but for us now this is measured with emphasis on “good” rather than “time” and when you make that shift in emphasis the whole approach changes.
That shift in emphasis? That’s what I understand gezellig to be.
For those in the know, how far off am I? Could you give me a clue as to whether or not I’ve become to comprehend the concept?
That would be very gezellig of you.
Wow, that is a neat description of the word ‘gezellig’. As a Dutchman it’s always difficult to explain this word to foreigners, but this is really good. As a matter of fact there is a dutch expression that says: ‘gezelligheid kent geen tijd’. It means ‘gezelligness’ knows no time.
I was born and raised in Amsterdam. Surfing the Internet I stumbled on your blog and was intrigued by it. It really enriches my view on the roots of my life in Amsterdam looking through the eyes of you, a foreigner in touch with the dutch way of living.
It will be an honor to welcome your Dutch baby in our midst. Good luck!
Okay! Now, instead of feeling pressured to read a book everyone else has read, I feel free to scratch it off the list. Thank you!