Summertime

Hello from sunny Amsterdam - this is my attempt to keep a Helen Does Holland diary and let you know what I'm up to. I bought a new (small) digital camera in the Singapore airport transit lounge - more expensive than Auckland Duty Free it turned out - so will try and post daily pics.

I am staying in T's apartment on KNSM Island - it was once docklands, but now is an architectural housing showpiece. T's building is a 20 storied black stone tower, very gothic. He's on the 19th floor so the view is pretty spectacular. This work (above) is a sculpture near T's house which has real beehives suspended from underneath the top table.

Yesterday T suggested we buy me an old bike and ride into town, but I thought (wisely it turned out) that trying to learn about right hand/left hand while wobbling through inner Amsterdam might be a bit too much for culture-shocked me. So we took the tram and even on foot I was nearly killed (by cyclists) several times by looking right instead of left. The bikers here are wild - you would imagine people are dying every day but apparently not. Nobody wears a bike helmet of course and people carry their children, dogs and shopping in the same casual way, often chucked in a makeshift box attached to the front or back of the bike. I will begin my biking by practising around the local neighbourhood I think.

Our visit to inner Amsterdam yesterday was great. It is ridiculously pretty and because there was a World Cup match that evening, everything and everyone was orange. T took me to his favourite herring seller and we had pickled herrings eaten the traditional way. Delicious! Also explored book shops, toy shops and walked past lots of tempting sales (I'll go back when I'm by myself - far too boring for T).

The night of my arrival day we ate in a local cafe where, amazingly, people lit up fags during their meals and the table next to us brought their enormous dog in - it looked like a giant mastiff crossed with a lion.

T is off racing today. He won his race the day I arrived. Tomorrow it's national time trials somewhere in Holland - I am going too (might take a book). When it's over we are carrying on to my darling cousin Lindsey's house in Veen, beside the river, where she lives with her 'legal partner' Berendt and restores china and has chickens. Her daughter Vella will be there which is an extra bonus. Lindsey and I were like sisters when we were children, but now see each other only rarely as she has been living outside New Zealand for 30 years.

I am teaching myself Dutch from T's son's golden books including Sloffie Sleepboot and Die Hondenmatroos both of which I read to my children as Scuffy the Tugboat and The Sailor Dog. Well I have to start somewhere - it is embarrassing not speaking any Dutch at all.