Things That Aren’t as Bad as I Thought They’d Be

Question 7: Everyone has worries about leaving a familiar environment. What worries turned out to be okay in the end?

Title: Things That Aren’t as Bad as I Thought They’d Be

1.      1. Fries with mayonnaise.

Now, I hate mayonnaise as much as the next sane person (except for the delight that is tuna salad), but I do like making the effort to try local foods. Many people here seem to survive by putting mayonnaise on their fries. After keepings careful tabs to ensure that this assumption was correct, I gave it a try.* Honestly, they were almost good. Is it something that I crave? Absolutely not. Is it something I will willingly decide to eat again if the opportunity presents itself? Probably.

2.      2.  Student Teaching

It’s a terrifying concept in the best of situations. Suddenly, after years of sitting in a classroom learning about teaching, coupled with some shorter stints of time in a classroom heavily supervised, you are supposed to teach young people something. And keep track of them. And learn about them. And make sure they do not harm each other or themselves during class. All at once.

Luckily, I am now aware that students make no sense in the Netherlands in the same way that students in the United States do not make any sense. Ergo, if there is no alternative, I cannot worry.

Scenario that supports my theory:

Setting: Student teaching in the Netherlands, Week 1. I am observing a class.

Teacher: *makes several funny jokes*

Students: *blink*

Teacher: *teaches something about the material. Uses the word, “adolescence”*

Students: What does “adolescence” mean?

Teacher: *Describes the words and explains that every student in the room is an adolescent*

The students begin cheering and clapping delightedly.

3.      3.  Finding peanut butter and coffee

Everyone has favorites and staples when it comes to consumption. Coffee and peanut butter happen to be mine. Staying alert throughout a whole school day without coffee seems like an unfortunate undertaking in which I do not intend to partake.

I am happy to say that both of these are both readily available and commonly consumed in the Netherlands.

*Careful tabs: I noticed many living bodies and zero bead bodies near the snack stands. I did not notice any body bags or people who might be employed with the task of quick body removal.

Eating

Question 6: If I want to eat like the Dutch, how might I do that?

Perhaps because I am an American, I have always valued Europeans as being of a significantly healthier group of people when it comes to dietary habits. I am here to show you just how you can eat to improve your health and begin acting like the vogue European you’ve always secretly wanted to become.

Breakfast

We shall start with breakfast. To begin, you will need Hagelslag. This is an extravagant word for chocolate sprinkles. While you might have previously though that chocolate sprinkles were reserved for young children eating ice cream, you’ll be pleased to know that you can actually eat it on sandwiches. My personal favorite is combining pindakas (peanut butter), Nutella, and Hagelslag. A more common approach is to eat just Nutella and Hagelslag or butter and Hagelslag on a sandwich.

Understandably, eating chocolate sprinkles for breakfast may not be your thing. You may also take some bread with cheese. This is a cheese sandwich. You may not do anything absurd, such as putting meat on the bread or toasting it. Bread and cheese is to be eaten cold and as-is.

You have no other options for breakfast unless it is Sunday. To simplify, let us focus on the majority of the week. So, for simplicity, you may have chocolate sprinkles or you may have a cheese sandwich.

Snacks

Much of Dutch culture is spent enforcing social norms. This involves ensuring that you know when you are wrong. Thankfully, as a foreigner, I am wrong on many things, so I get to experience this aspect of Dutch culture at a nice, constant rate.* In this section, I shall focus primarily on what not to do.

First, do not put peanut butter on a banana. Do not put Nutella on a banana. Do not defend yourself, describing the perfect balance of fiber and protein for a snack. It is not done. It is not Dutch.

Second, do not bring pretzels as a snack. Pretzels are a food one should eat late at night while drinking at a party. To bring pretzels to school for a morning snack signifies that you would like to party at the moment in which you are eating them.

Please combine my first and second instructions to infer what happened the day I put peanut butter on my pretzels.

Acceptable snacks include patat, which are the Dutch version of French Fries that they pair with mayonnaise (more on that another day). Sultana are these delicious sweet crackers that come individually packaged, but be warned that they are not particularly filling if you are looking to battle hunger.

Lunch

For lunch, you might consider consuming cheese on bread. Having this for breakfast is no reason that you cannot repeat this food for lunch. You can even have the same type of cheese on the same type of bread.

You might also indulge yourself and have a lunchmeat on bread. However, do not, under any circumstances, put more than one type of meat on bread. Furthermore, do not mix your meat and cheese on one sandwich. This is blasphemy.

Sandwiches

Even though I have discussed sandwiches during both the breakfast and the lunch categories, I feel strongly enough about sandwiches that they deserve additional mention. In the Netherlands, everything goes on a sandwich. I so badly wish I could tell you that I am exaggerating, but I am not. This becomes excessive (from my perspective) at times. For example, I was once eating a cookie, and I was asked if I might like a sandwich for my cookie. The proper way to eat cookies is my pairing them with butter between two slices of bread. A second example is that a few days ago I was walking through city center and saw a Chinese restaurant that offered to put the lo mein noodles onto a sandwich for customers. This, of course, does not mean that you can create any combination of sandwich. As stated above, meat and cheese combinations are not acceptable. In addition, pairing peanut butter with jelly does not fit within social norms. It is more appropriate to pair peanut butter with butter and cheese, obviously.**

Dinner

Dinner is smashed, generally speaking. This often includes a potato base and some vegetables. Sauerkraut and spinach are common here. Various meats may also be present. Sausage is popular.

If your dinner is not smashed, but you would like to smash it, you must wait for your host to first smash his or her food before it is acceptable for you to do the same.

Dessert

Stroopwafels. This is the only dessert that matters. It could stop wars and create world peace if everyone had enough. They are also highly addictive. These tasty round sugar circles are made of a type of caramel and hard, thin waffles. Finding them fresh is an even better treat. Fresh and slightly overcooked is my next goal.

*This is not negative, it is merely somewhat, sort of, moderately, a little bit factual. Maybe.

**While I still prefer my peanut butter with sweet foods, please keep in mind that the Dutch peanut butter is wonderful in that it does not have any sugar in it. By itself, it is not a sweet food.