Funny things about other countries

A special little post I'd like to call

"Funny things about other countries".

We'll start with food. And to kick us off (well, we really kicked things off with the buttermilk-on-museli dillema the other morning, but we'll move on), a collection of images from a recent trip to the supermarket.

WHAT WHAT WHAT

There were a lot of giggles about Hazelnoot Pasta on toast.

They're freeze-dried? They expand in water? Tiny can?? (and it's all dan's fault, see the brand)

Hilarious! My personal favourites include Choco Creeps - what parent is going to offer that to their child? And I don't think I'll quickly forget Jes yelling "Anti-Klit Spoeling!!" across the supermarket.

Big fried sticks of potato, and polysterene chips

The Dutch are very big on mayonnaise, which suits Jes and I very well. You get mayo (or, as the locals say, maa-yow) with fries at Burger King, and you can also buy cones of chips with maa-yow on them. It's pretty amazing, I had two cones yesterday alone. The maa-yow is so thick and cheesy and creamy. With the cone-fries, it comes out of a big vat with a giant nozzle on it, and it's so exciting to think about all that maa-yow just sitting there waiting to get into my tummy! Om nom nom. Jes and I have twice gotten this amazing artichoke pizza from this little dude whose shop is just around the corner. It's so tasty and somehow spicy, but we can't work out what it is from the ingredients. It's been really hard to work shit out, actually, even just at the supermarket, you have to really LOOK at food for ages and ages and then try to open the packet a little and smell it and if no-one's looking you just taste it, because half the time you have no idea what you're about to put on your mashed potatoes. I can't believe it's not butter indeed.

Other funny things are toilets. (This bit contains wee and poo, if you don't like them stuffs just read it anyway. Don't judge). Americans have big toilets filled at least half way with water, resulting in what my parents once tastefully referred to as 'shit soup'. You kinda look down at it all and it's a bit yuk, but then you have a giggle because you think of soup. The Dutch are pretty interesting, too - they have a dry little shelf where your bits go (so you can look at them?) and then when you flush, a giant waterslide comes down and picks everything up and washes it away on a fun little ride like at Wet'n'Wild! The wilderness toilets in Rotterdam were just big holes in the ground with a whole lot of blue disinfectant poured over the top, no sawdust or sand or nothin. In France there are kick-flushes, which mean you step on the flush button which is on the ground, so there's no need to touch the little germ-infested button. Remember when Jes snuck into the men's loo in London? That was another adventure. And of course, being in Europe, we've had to fork out a bit for toilets - usually just like a Euro, or fifty cents. The price you pay, funnily enough, has no bearing on the quality of the facilities. The French cleaning ladies are pretty cool about wandering in while you're weeing, too, which is slightly unnerving. Let's not forget the outdoor urinals on the street here in Holland, either. And now for a few real-life stories. Read on for hilarity.



I'm in London. I think Jes had arrived by this stage. Beth and George's place is kinda old, I guess, and a bit faded at the edges, so I wouldn't say the plumbing is amazing. So if you were to, like, use too much toilet paper or something, and the S-bend was only real little and and the water pressure wasn't too good, you'd have a problem. Not a 'problem' like a maths problem, you don't need a calcultor for this one. More a problem like 'the too-much toilet paper gets stuck in the little S-bend and the toilet gets blocked'. So it's at this point of the story that we find Dan, in his stupid pyjamas, looking around the bathroom for ... something, anything, a calculator. He jumps about like he's in a French farce and just worked out his boss knows about the thing and he's going to be in trouble, jumping here and there, looking, looking. And then he sees... his arm, his right arm, to be exact. Ok, let's all laugh at Dan with his arm up the S-bend, but the moral of this story is, Dan washed his hands very thoroughly many times and it's allllll ok now.


Another time, Jessie was at a toilet in Le Paris, at the Louvre. After she made her gold coin donation, she went and was about to sit when she saw a pube on the seat, so she jumped up and grabbed some toilet paper and started to clean it but the very-21st-century toilet automatically flushed itself and the water got all over her hands. She also washed it alot, etc etc.

Lastly, but certainly not leastly, Maud's house is equipped with a bidet, the little shower for your bum that's next to the toilet ... except I, obviously confusified over the constant translationing in my head, called it a bain marie.

There's no pictures to go with the above statements. Sorry? Or not.

I think that's all. I don't know what the Germans are like, but who knows, there's still a lot of toilets to be visited in the next few weeks.

Top five or thereabouts funny things about places that aren't Australia.

1. There are Australians everywhere. (This isn't funny in the traditional sense, more in the way that Ally McBeal is funny.)

2. Dutch people say 'fink' instead of 'think', and use a lot of 'actually's. So:

Me: Where is the train station?
Dutch person: Oh, actually okay, yes, I fink actually it is, if you actually turn left I fink, and follow the canal actually, I fink you will find it.

That's probably not amazingly culturally sensitive, I know it's pretty low to make fun of people for the way they speak, but it's Holland! And funny. And Jes says don't ever watch Goldmember before coming to Holland because it ruins Dutch people. Also funny is the way that all Dutch words COULD be English, except for they're not. One of the bands we saw at the music festival we went to yesterday in Rotterdam was called Jeremy's and the lead singer was a girl and she was wailing and whining a whole lot and I heard whole sentences of lyrics - really, I thought it was a love song - and then when it finished she was speaking Dutch. I was so disillusioned.

3. The orange juice we just drank, called "Cool Best! - because we keep it cool, you get the best!" Jes thinks some homeless man was just paid 50Euro to come up with that because it's the worst bit of marketing ever. I am now acutely aware of the fact that we've made fun of the Dutch and the homeless, so I think we'll leave it at 3 funny things instead of 5.

That's all for today, really.

For the homefolk, it looks like every flight home after the 24th of July is booked out, so I can't extend, which means I'm still coming home on the 27th. Unless Maud's housemate Jiva decides to move out, in which case I'm staying here.

love from Dan and Jes

PS. As for the holiday itself ... we're doing lots of cool stuff and lots of sitting around watching Ally McBeal. Moral of this story is not ' don't go to Holland and watch TV', but 'don't ever watch Ally McBeal ever, even in Melbourne or Adelaide'. It's terrible.