Category: Blog Posts

Various new and, above all, older posts from my blog. I’m leaving these up as an “archive.”

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We can't escape it here either

Sure enough, we couldn’t escape it here either.

Moving 650 kilometers away doesn’t mean we have to miss out on the most important man of the year: St. Nicholas. As it turns out, he’s perfectly capable of making his way to Berlin.

Whether he made his way over the rooftops or maybe just hopped on a train, or whether it was actually just a Dutch guy in disguise who does an incredibly good job—fortunately, it doesn’t matter, because my child doesn’t ask about such things yet.

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School

Every Tuesday is a school day.

Maybe that’s nothing special, but for a 4-year-old boy who has recently moved to Germany, it’s actually quite unusual here.

In Germany, children don’t start school until they’re 6. Before that, they don’t go to preschool, but to a “Kita.”
(A few months ago, I thought that word was really silly, but as we all know, you get used to everything, and now I find myself saying it more often than I’d ever like. “Kita” is short for “Kindertagesstätte.” And that, in turn, is a very long way of saying “Kindergarten,” as it was still commonly called in my day.)

So, childcare.
Not school.

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Berlin expert

I’m no expert.

Not a connoisseur. Not an expert, insider, or insider tipster.

In fact, many tourists know Berlin better than I do.

I noticed that even back when I was still living in the Netherlands and my coworkers first heard where I was from. “WOW! Why did you leave THERE??? Cool city!!” Yeah, Berlin is undoubtedly a cool city, but from the time I was five until I was 19, I was mostly focused on school.

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The Netherlands, oh the Netherlands

So off we went. A whole week in “Holland,” as Max calls it these days. Everything was the other way around. We boarded the train in Berlin, got off at the border, and then drove on to Drenthe, where our guest beds are.

We’ve only been gone two months, but it already felt a little strange. From the North, I board the train to the Randstad, and the polders passing by outside suddenly seem less familiar. I’m walking through Amstelveen, on my way to see my friend L., and it occurs to me: just two days ago, I was still teaching at a school in Falkensee, a town west of Berlin, where I’d never been before. From Falkensee to Amstelveen—it doesn’t seem all that obvious to me.

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Work

I’m now officially a freelancer. And as the word suggests, freelancers have a lot of free time.

Or maybe not, because it only seems that way.

Every spare minute and hour I spend here at home, a little cog starts grinding away in my head. “You have to find work, you have to find work, you have to find work.” Oh yeah. I really do.

So I decided to go ahead and do just that.

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Urlaub

It’s a blast from the past.

Two weeks on the white beach. Playing volleyball. If you feel like it. Reading a book. If you feel like it. An almost turquoise sea, blue sky above. And besides that, seashells and little white balls of salami. And a slice of cucumber.

That’s how it always was. Back then. When I was little.

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Arrived

We’re here.

Four days of packing with the sweetest in-laws (because let’s be honest, who wants to help with something like that? Well, they did.)

One morning, we loaded up the truck with brother-in-law A. and cousin R. The latter ended up driving it partway through the day, so we never would have made it without him either.

Arrival in Berlin: 11:15 p.m.

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