Tips for traveling to the US

It's strange that it has never occurred to me to give my friends from outside the US some tips on how to make traveling to the US a little easier. There are some hurdles to take and knowing what they are beforehand might not make them go away but it will make it easier to deal with them. First of all if you're traveling from Holland and you are Dutch you don't need a visum, just a valid passport. Secondly, there is only one airline that flies directly from Amsterdam to Philly and that, unfortunately, is US Airways. I know that everybody who travels on a regular basis has their travel horror stories and in most cases a least favorite airline. In my case US Airways is that airline. Their planes are old which I can understand given the economic hardships for the airlines nowadays but what I can't understand is why each and every flight attendant (stewards and stewardesses for the older readers) is grumpy. Okay, let's not linger on this since it's not really a travel tip. What is useful to know is that you will have to pay for head phones on the plane so bring your own. It's also useful to know that passengers on trans atlantic flights get preferential treatment. 2 bags or suit cases of 23 kg's each are free of charge and non alcoholic drinks are complimentary as well (that means free in airline speak). Just so you know how good you have it, when flying in the US water is $2. Oh, the meal is free for you as well and with any luck they will even have enough meals to feed all the passengers (again a luxury compared to US flights).

Aside from the movie on the big screen or on the twist-your-neck-in-impossible-angles small monitors the US government will provide some entertainment as well. With your boarding pass you will receive 2 forms. The Customs Declaration Forms just wants to know how much merchandise you're bring into the country and how much mad cow disease you're bringing as gifts to your friends. The Arrival Departure Record Form is the real kicker. This form wants to know whether you want to kidnap any kids, whether you are bringing illegal substances and even the question shown below.

Seriously though, it is important that you fill out an address where you will be staying in the US. I've been in the situation once where someone was picking me up but I didn't have an address. The immigration officer (I know you're not immigrating, but that's what it's called) was not amused and wouldn't let me pass. A helpful stewardess pointed out that each city has an Oak Lane and very probably a house with number 1 on that street. Luckily I did not have to resort to that since I managed to get in touch with the friend who was picking me up but it was interesting to see that the immigration officer was perfectly happy not to let me into the country. This brings me to my next tip. These officers are not picked for their sense of humor. In fact I get the feeling they're picked for their lack thereof. Don't try jokes on them. Just be polite and friendly.

And as a final final note keep in mind that although there are tons and tons of counters for immigration waiting time can easily be half an hour to an hour. The shorter, faster lines are the ones for US citizens and US residents. Just listen to the town criers who are posted at regular intervals to instill a sense of guilt into you as much as providing some guidance to the poor, lost sheep that just stumbled off the planes.

Phillies in the World Series

It's been pretty much a year since I posted some stuff here. It's not that nothing has happened but more of too much happening and never having the time to sit down and write about it. Okay, I admit, there's the motivational factor as well. In short, we've been busy. So what's happened now? Well, the Phillies (remember the 10.000 losses post a while back?) have made it to the World Series. Of course there's nothing that helps you bond more with a sports team then them actually achieving something. I now have a Phillies t-shirt (Chase Utley's name on the back) and I check their website several times a week.
The second good news is that they're facing the Tampa Bay Rays in the finals. The alternative was the Boston Red Sox but almost everybody here in the US will agree that the Boston sports teams have had entirely too much success of late. The Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007. The New England Patriots (american football) won the SuperBowl in 2001, 2003 and 2004 and what's more, they almost won every game last season. Only the last one in the SuperBowl prevented them from achieving a so called perfect season. And finally, the Boston Celtics (basketball) won the NBA championship this year.
It's not that I begrudge those teams their success but it makes dealing with people from Boston a bit harder in every day live. Whenever sports get mentioned they put on this air of false modesty.
To get back to the topic of baseball. I'm sure some of you are wondering whether I have something to say about the name World Series. Well, to be honest I used to think it was funny, but if you get into baseball a bit more you find that it's not half as funny as most of the other stuff. Teams that just pick up their stuff and move to other cities like the Brooklyn Dodgers who decided in 1957 that they could do with a vacation and became the LA Dodgers. The number of statistics that are being gathered in one baseball game. The seventh inning stretch. The Philly Phanatic shooting hotdogs into audience over loooooong distances. Oh, I almost forgot the guy who caught a ball in a Chicago Cubs game a couple of years ago. He was fan in the bleachers who reached down and caught the ball just above the glove of a player. He had to be escorted out of the stadium because some other fans took this the wrong way. Then the media posted his name and address and the poor guy couldn't even go outside anymore. Did I mention that the Cubs lost that game? Not because they played badly of course.....

Peace on Earth

No really, I mean it, peace on earth. The slogan is of course courtesy of Christmas ™, but I just watched an amazing display of peace and it gives me hope for the middle east.


To be honest, less than 5 minutes after I took this picture I heard Friday hissing and hostilities resumed per normal programming. It reminds me of the story of how the French and German troops celebrated Christmas together in the trenches during World War I. After that was done they went back to lobbying mustard gas and what not at each other like it never happened.

It's good to keep the definition of peace in mind at times like these: "A temporary cessation or suspension of hostilities". I guess that concludes my Christmas thoughts for the season. You can resume being jolly now.

Halloween 2

It's been pretty quiet in our little corner of the US, but now things are picking up a bit. The holiday season is in full swing. We've just had Halloween, Thanksgiving is right around the corner and all the shops scoured their warehouses for Christmas decorations weeks ago. I have to admit that I'm not one for all this jolliness. Halloween especially scares me. In the Netherlands there's a similar tradition called Sint Maarten, but it doesn't quite have the same following as Halloween here. Last year was the first year I got to endure the local Halloween festivities. At 4 o clock the doorbell rang. Kids dressed up as spidermans and pirates were holding up their bags for the candy that I did not have. Parents were looming in the background with double frowns on their faces. The first frown said "Don't touch our kids!" and the second one said "What? No candy? Outrageous!". Meanwhile Maria was racing home with newly purchased bags of candy. Once she got home I cowered in the corner and let her take over. She has much more experience with this and even engaged the little ones in some harmless banter that seemed to lighten the frowns on the parent's faces a bit.

Oh, almost forgot, the fact that one of the left over bits of candy broke a filling completed the traumatization process.

This year I was slightly better prepared. Bags of individually wrapped candy, check. Bowl for easy grabbing, check. Clocks synchronized, check. Maria was still not going to be home before 5:30 so that left me a good 90 minutes of dealing with looming parents in the fading daylight. I decided to take the initiative and not let the kids grab but just dump a handful of candies into their bags. My first clue that this approach was flawed was a fairy walking away with a whispered "Wow!". The parents were not going to like this. When maria came home and took over she did the same and got a complaint from a tiny Dracula that she was making his pumpkin too heavy. The looming and frowning seemed to drown out what was left of the daylight at the that point. Maybe we need to book a vacation next year around Halloween.

Birthdays galore

Again I have to admit that it's been a while since I posted anything. We seem to be busy a lot. Part of it is good old fashioned procrastination, but we also do have a lot of stuff going on. Busy at work, finishing up taxes, preparing a trip to the old home country...... did I mention birthdays? I guess that probably has to do with the fact that we like our birthdays quiet. So don't worry, you did not miss a party. However, I have to say that it's pretty cool to have a baker in the family. Danny, Maria's brother, came by last week with some goodies for Brent's birthday (family in Maryland) and gave us this cake.


Sorry, I'm not done with the subject of birthdays just yet. I just learned a new bit of americana. My brother-in-law, Brent, whose birthday I just mentioned was celebrated with a crab boil. For those of you who don't know what this is (like me before last weekend), a bunch of crabs get together in jolly celebration in a huge pot of boiling water. They have a luscious bath of vegetables and then are helped onto a large table where they have a huge hangover. For those crabs who don't have a hangover there are helpful assistants seated around the table with mallets who will pick out a poor hangoverless crab and spread the cheer.

Touring the Glen

Yay, another road trip! This time we went to Watkins Glen in New York for a so called Driver's Ed event. This is what the Porsche Club here calls track days although, to be honest, there is definitely a lot of education going on. While the track days were on Monday and Tuesday we went up on Saturday to have a look around the area and enjoy the wine festival that was being held at the track on Saturday and Sunday. Because of this festival most hotels were already booked for Saturday and we had to settle for an Econolodge. If you think that sounds cheap you're right. However, they had overbooked 14 of their 22 rooms and redirected us to the Relax Inn around the corner. The name might sound a little better, the rooms definitely weren't. I woke up several times to look outside if the car was still there. Another immersion into American culture for me I guess.

The good news is that the days after that we stayed at a winery inn which was overlooking lake Seneca. Very nice indeed. The day you arrive you get a bottle of wine, a glass of champagne and a glass of port. Not really necessary after the wine festival but nice gestures nonetheless. The wine festival was a bit of a disappointment. In the Finger Lakes region in New York there are a lot of wineries, but we really did not find anything that we considered worth buying. It was relatively easy to leave the festival sober, which was a good thing considering they had police officers posted at the exit with breathalyzers. Amazingly enough I appeared sober enough (a miracle after sleeping at the Relax Inn) to be let through without a test.

Next day, track time! Compared to what we're used to at Zandvoort and Spa this was organized in a very relaxed way. Most people knew each other and everyone was friendly. There were lots of instructors and classes for the people who were interested. The other facilities were a bit minimal, but considering there were less then 100 people I guess it did not make sense for lots of catering stands and shops to show up. So we did what we usually do:


We were promised the use of garages, but the people from the wine festival did not put any effort into clearing out their stands. At the end of two days they were still not done. Apart from the rain at the end of the first day everything worked out fine. Maria went about with the new camera shooting over 800 pictures and I went about trying to keep the Porsche in one piece. It's a pretty cool track but you do need to know how to drive it. There are guardrails close to track almost everywhere which doesn't leave much room for errors. Oh, almost forgot, the Porsche rocks! :-)

The ancient art of losing

And there I was thinking that America only celebrates winners. Last weekend the Phillies (the Philadelphia baseball team) lost their 10,000th game. No, it's not a typo, ten thousand! Amazing as this is to Americans it's even harder to comprehend for non Americans. Major League Baseball teams in the US play over 160 games a year. That means they play pretty much every other day. Still, if you played 160 games a year and lost them all you would be playing for 62 years. Fortunately for the Phillies they've been around since 1883 (Phillies) so they actually had enough time win a couple of games every year too. Mind you, the average is not great. So far they've won only 8,810 games versus that magical 10,000.

And here comes the weird part. The fans have been loving it. Everybody wanted to be there at the historic game so the last couple of games have been completely sold out. We went last Friday for the first of 3 home games against the St Louis cardinals. They won that one 13-4 and managed to win on Saturday as well. Sunday, however, was the historic day that everyone had been waiting for. Here's some of the signs that fans were holding up.


Finally a little update about the feline situation. Friday has take several deep breaths and calmed down a little since Denny came in. They haven't really had a chance to introduce them selves since Denny is now in quarantine. After sneezing for 3 days we decided a trip to the vet was in order to make sure it was nothing but a cold. It turns out it's an infection and we have to keep the two apart for a little bit. Not a big problem as far as Friday is concerned but Denny definitely wants to go exploring by now.

A new family member

I know it's been a while since I posted and there have been many things that would have made good posts. Maybe I'll get to those later, but for now I feel obliged to introduce the newest member of our family, Denny. As a co-worker called her posting of pictures of a cute little puppy puppy-porn I guess what follows now should be called kitty-porn.


Being a kitten Denny can't help being cute and adorable. Friday, our other cat, is not fooled however. This is an intruder and she's been betrayed. Never mind that she's bigger and older, since we brought Denny home she's gone underground. Our latest reports have her behind the couch but below is a spyshot from last night. Her protest also includes a hunger strike and lots of hissing and growling. I'm hoping that she'll pick up a guitar tomorrow and start singing protest songs. Just in case she wants to do a picket line I'll leave out a marker, a board and a stick tonight too. Let's see how creative she gets.

The score so far

Time to recap some pro's and cons of moving to the US. They are pretty much in random order.

Pro: They bag your food for you in the grocery store.
Con: You have to wait while they do it for the lady in front of you who managed to get three full carts to the cash register by her self.
Pro: You can pretty much return any item to the store within 30 days without hassle or explanation (try going back to store in Holland saying you did not like the product).
Con: Any time you order food be prepared to answer 20 additional questions about your food (what kind of dressing, bread, sauce, toppings, cheese etc.).
Pro: You can legally turn right through a red light (they actually leave it up to you to be sensible about it..... hmm, sounds more like a con now that I think about it).
Con: Nobody around here is aware there's a world outside his or her own car (trust me, it's worse then in Holland).
Pro: Clothes are lots cheaper (no, not for everything, but jeans are definitely a lot cheaper).
Con: The banks are severely outdated. Everything still revolves around checks.
Pro: Commercials for medical drugs are funny ("side effects may include vomiting, toppling over and cancer")
Con: (A)DSL sucks (bad cabling)
Pro: Fiber optics are available (not sure if that's a pro actually.... let's wait and see)
Con: Service intervals on cars are 3 times more often then in Europe on the exact same cars (I really don't get this one).
Pro: Gas and oil are dramatically cheaper.
Con: Labels on products really don't give information (try to find the alcohol percentage on your beer bottle).
Pro: Contrary to popular belief there are actually quite decent breweries around here (Yuengling, Sam Adams and of course lots of microbreweries).
Con: There is no countrywide public transportation planner website (try planning a trip from New Jersey to Rehoboth Beach, DE).

Photo opportunities

Here's just a couple of pictures I've been meaning to post. The first one is just for dutch people. I took this picture in a cemetery in a mission in San Francisco. Is it a sign?


Next is the Subaru. Now that we're in the land of Pimp-My-Ride we can't fall behind, can we? We decided to go all out. A 6-layered, fully adjustable spoiler.


Oh, did I mention we went to San Francisco for our first anniversary? Work got me there but it was an excellent opportunity to do something special for that weekend. Of course it sounds a bit strange to say that you went to prison on your first anniversary but in this case I highly recommend it. Alcatraz was pretty cool.

In the following picture you can see why the prison was closed. Some of those prisoners are just too dumb to notice that the door is open. They were all just relocated to post offices and told that these were the new maximum security prisons......

May I present to you......

The Cherry Hillton is now open

We're pleased to announce that after months of intensive renovations and watching lots of HGTV the guestroom is now officially done. Tada!


Just in time considering the first guests will be arriving tonight. A lovely young couple with 2 kids from Maryland have picked our guest house for their weekend getaway. We also received our first new reservation yesterday. The first week of May is now booked too (hi mom).

Now, as for the rest of the house......

Well, actually, there is the garden. Since our guests have been complaining about the trees or, to be more precise, about dead squirrels thunking out of those trees, we decided to do something about that. I dare those damnably cute squirrels to thunk out of this tree!

A well-done steakhouse

People who have gone out to dinner with me know I like good meat and I like it rare. In our search here for a good steakhouse we decided to go to a fancy place called Porterhouse. At least, it looked fancy and the prices were fancy. I got their signature steak for $36 and ordered it bleu as usual. That usually means slap it on the grill till the outside looks a bit brown and then serve it. The test is to see if they know the term bleu. If they don't, ask for medium. Anyway, 3 steaks were ordered, 2 bleu and one medium. All came out well-done. We complained and sent them back. Now I know the story so far does not seem that interesting but when we drove by the place last weekend and saw the following I just burst out laughing.


I call this a shining example of the dangers of overcooking steaks. Let this be a warning to other steakhouses out there. No wait, that sounds wrong. It wasn't me! I've got an alibi. Maria? Maria?........

It's Hummertime

As requested by many friends from the Netherlands before we left, I finally got a Hummer. Okay, so I just sat in one at the Philly Autoshow but that's as close as I'm gonna get to one of these monstrosities. Actually, I have to explain something here to both the Dutch and the American readers. The Dutch (and the rest of the world for that matter) think people in the US have invented several things, most notably the hamburger and cola and more recently, the Hummer. For non-Americans these things symbolize the US of A. For Americans however, they do not. For them these things are just products that happen to be made there. About a year and a half ago Maria and I went to a wine tasting club in Delft. It was Maria's birthday and our friends there surprised us by getting her a cake. The cake was in the shape of a hamburger which all of us thought was hilarious of course. It was a very good cake by the way :-) Anyway, I only found out later that Maria had no clue why the cake was hamburger shaped.

Okay, so much for the lecture. Some more stuff happened since the last post. I went on a fieldtrip to Chicago to finally meet my co-workers face to face. Actually we both went because we like Chicago. It's the city where we met. Yes, I know, very romantic ;-) It's also the place where Tracy lives who recently had a baby which we had to go and inspect. I declare it a baby indeed and give it my seal of approval. I also had to sing a little Dutch lullaby to her of course.

In the meantime the house is coming along nicely. Last weekend was divided between going down to Delaware to look at a very interesting Porsche and staining two floors upstairs. Now all we need to do is put a protective coating on it and let it sit for several weeks. Time enough to go skiing, do our Dutch taxes, prepare the US taxes, plan a worktrip to San Francisco and do some more stuff that I'm thankfully forgetting about now.

The Sandman (and his wife)

I know some of you have been waiting patiently for christmas stories. Family feuds, duels to the death and chases involving angry turkeys. Well, I'm afraid you're going to have to do without those. Let me tell you how it really went. In preparation for this dreaded feast I took a short trip to the Netherlands to say hi to some family and take care of some unfinished business. Walnut IT is now officially no more.... My arrival back in the States was carefully timed and I was taken from the airport straight to a family dinner. I have to say that some people do drink a bit more then they should and those same people do not necessarily become better narrators when they do.... I know, I'm being pretty vague about this but I honestly have no clue who reads this stuff and since I'm still on probation here I have to be careful ;-) Anyway, I was saved by my jetlag which provided a good reason not to make it a long evening.

Okay, Christmas day itself then. We went over to Lisa, one of Maria's older sisters where the whole family gathered. The number of presents for the kids was enormous. The amount of food for everyone was enormous too. After a couple of hours most of the people gathered in front of the tv to watch the football game. Luckily the Eagles finally managed to win a game and stay in the running so the atmosphere was good. There was also a nice little incident when Nicky (another one of Maria's sisters) was about to leave with her family. Her husband managed to lock himself out of the car with the engine running. Of course it was raining by that time as we used a wooden spoon to open the door a bit and a metal coat hanger to get to the unlock button. As easy as that sounds, I assure you, it was not. I managed to get whacked in the nose several times by one of the wipers.
All things considered, not a bad Christmas party. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. The big drama came later, because the day after almost everybody got sick. The opinions about the how and why are divided, even now, but I think somebody there was giving off the flue virus in generous amounts. The other school of thought points towards the food. Who knows.... fact is that as usual I got sick a day after Maria did and again as usual got better a lot quicker too.

Finally, to make good on the title of this little festive rant, we got around to sanding the floors in two rooms upstairs. It's amazing how much of a difference renting the right equipment can make. Even so, after two weekends of sanding we're both racked by muscle pains. The good news is that we're done with the sanding so all we have to do now is paint the walls, paint the ceilings, stain the floors and put a finishing on the floors (probably three layers). Pfff, one more weekend and we're done, right?

First Thanksgiving

This was my first Thanksgiving here in the US and we had the appropriate dinner here at our place. I wish I could tell you some interesting stories about it but there really aren't. The dinnertable we ordered arrived the day before the dinner as scheduled. Familymembers came over and the turkey refused to get up to temperature. Seems like a pretty regular Thanksgiving to me, but hey, what do I know about it? My only experience with this festivity is what I see on television and in tv-land Thanksgiving mostly consists of familymembers getting together over great distances to pick up old fights. The most humorous note here was somebody asking why we didn't have Thanksgiving in the Netherlands. Luckily, another familymember came up with the snappy reply that we were celebrating getting rid of those pesky, colonizing Europeans in the first place :-)

Pim

The Secret Language of Americans

Strange discoveries all around. Recently, a friend of ours, Tracy, became a mom. Nothing strange about that but then her baby made it on Oprah so we all had to watch. The item was called "The secret language of Babies" (http://www2.oprah.com/tows/slide/200611/20061113/slide_20061113_350_102.jhtml). The researcher involved claimed that all babies make the same basic sounds to indicate the same basic feelings. It kinda makes sense based on her explanations for these sounds. The explanations are all based on body reflexes which are in all probability indeed the same for babies the world over. Then yesterday we went to a Burger King drive-through to get some food. I pulled up to the speaker and heard a sound which I can only classify as "eeeow". I thought the employee was clearing her throat but Maria said that she just said "Can I help you?". I now realize that Americans have a secret language of their own which I have to learn. It's not because they can't speak yet like babies, Although a lot of them are not really able to articulate that well ;-) It's because soundquality of the phones is so bad. There's so much static that if you don't know in advance what somebody is going to say you end up asking them to repeat it 3 times. Not that anybody adjusts their articulation for that. If somebody asks me to repeat something I do it slower and better articulated. Not here. And obviously that gap is now filled with secret sounds. Look at the clip on Oprah's website and you'll know what I mean. And to link it back to the drive-through, if you think the quality of the phones is bad go check out a drive-through. It's a miracle you actually get what you want.
By the way, Maria says Tracy's baby is the 4th one.

Pim

Pim & Maria do America - The Season Premier

Pim & Maria do America - The Season Premier

Okay, I guess we have to start somewhere. After opening lots and lots of boxes we finally recovered the info to login to this blog. Lots of stuff happened since we last saw you guys. I won't bore you with telling you about all the paperwork but suffice it to say that they will let me drive now, they'll believe that I am who I say I am and I can pay for stuff ;-)
Let me pick out something to make you guys laugh. We bought a car for me on Saturday and it's everything I vowed never to touch: it's white, it's an automatic and, get this, it's a station. Sure, take your time. I'll wait while you finish laughing...... Anyway, as if that weren't bad enough, a warning light came on the day after we bought it. Did I mention we bought it as-is which means no garantuee? Not even to the door. To my surprise however the cardealer was prepared to fix it without charging us anything. So yesterday I got the car back again which was just in time to pick up our new almost-giant-size-which-could-never-fit-into-the-mazda-anyway tv. And here's the good part, the trunk wouldn't open so I spend a good 20 minutes in the pouring rain trying to get it open. That was fun ;-)

Welcome on your blog

Dear Pim & Maria,

We have created this blog for you to keep us up to date on your life from now on.
Please post all your ups and downs on this blog so that we all have something to talk about while you two are doing your "thing" in the States. We wish you the very best and will miss you VERY MUCH!!!!

Daphne, Juliette & Michiel