Choices, Choices

After months of weighing our options, we've settled on a destination. Really, when it comes down to it, there's not all that much of a choice. With Jason working 2 1/2 hours away from Amsterdam, commuting was out of the question. We toyed, off and on, with the idea of moving to Dwingeloo, a village of under 3000, half an hour away from the nearest train station but within biking distance of Jason's work. If there's one thing I'm certain of though is that I'm not a country-livin' girl, so however picturesque Dwingeloo might be, it had to be veto-d.

This left two towns of any stature left within reasonable traveling distance, Groningen to the North, and Zwolle to the South. Of the two, Groningen is certainly more appealing. With a major university, the city is the only major center in the North of the country, making it one of the more youthful, active cities in the country. Zwolle, by contrast, is an unremarkable, smaller city an hour and a half North of Amsterdam.

Our first instinct was immediately Groningen. However, thinking a bit more critically, it became less clear that this was the obvious choice. While certainly a happening city, it's by no means got all that the South has to offer. Two and a half hours away from the international airport can make a huge difference when you've already spent 15+ hours on a plane, and this goes for both us as well as any visitors we hope to tempt into visiting us. The issue of visitors applies too to simply visiting the Netherlands. While I'd like to think that family and friends making the trip over here are here simply for us, the majority of the major tourist destinations are in the South, which would require them to stay in a hotel away from us, commute five hours a day, or simply forgo the pleasures that Delft, Gouda, Amsterdam et al have to offer.

Furthermore, even family relations within the Netherlands would likely suffer. Jason has a large and close-knit extended family here and like most Amsterdammers, anything half an hour or more away is simply unimaginably far. Which is fair, in the case anyway, as I certainly wouldn't be too pleased to be making a five hour round-trip for a three hour dinner.

And then, there's the question of work. While I have a contract in Amsterdam that will go until the 1st of January, I'm crossing my fingers that it'll be renewed. Even if it isn't though, I've started to create a small but growing network of contacts down here that would be less effective in the North. All in all, while Groningen sounds like a great place to live, it doesn't seem to fit our particular needs.

And so, by process of elimination, we've arrived at Zwolle.

My favorite Dutch word

I started intensive Dutch lessons yesterday, putting on hold the job search for the next month. I've been in the Netherlands for a little under two months now and have managed to pick up a few essentials but they tend to be a hodgepodge of nouns with very few conjunctions, verbs or adjectives. Basically, I can point and name vegetables, fruits and beers.

The next month will find me in class from 9.30 to noon everyday and studying at home from 12.30 until the wee hours, cramming in over three thousand words. It sounds impressive and I can already attest to the amount of work involved, but this weekend, Jason stole their thunder. He taught me the greatest Dutch word in existence.

We were at an outdoor field hockey match on a rainy cold Sunday when I learned it. I was wet and chilled and as we walked past a french fry stand, the smell of warm, greasy potatoes wafted over, filling the air with one of life's sweetest smells. And, you gotta love them, the Dutch have a word for it -- pataatlucht, or 'sweet potato air'.