Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Navigating Among Trees

The Dutch are a tall people. If you are a Filipino of normal height, you will probably notice this from your first day here. How do we short people cope here in this country full of "trees"? Well, for starters, not all of the Dutch are tall. Generally, people of my age (i.e. around 50 years old) or older are not as tall as the younger ones. And women are also generally shorter than the men, even the young ones.
But this still leaves a lot of tall people.
Well, we just have to live with it. Most of the year, it is not too bad; but in the summer, you should watch out. Because at 165 centimeter (5 feet, 5 inches) height, my nose would just be about the height of the armpits of the taller Dutch. If they don't use deodorant, and it is warm in the summer, you will be treated to their "nice" natural odor.
Being rather small, it is quite uncomfortable when you find yourself in a crowd. You can't see a thing, since there are lots of people taller than you. You have to make sure that you are able to worm yourself to get to the front row, so that you can see things. It is even a problem in places like the movie theater, because the heads of those in front of you gets in the way; you're lucky if a child or a smaller woman is in front of you, otherwise, you have a problem following the show.

But there are advantages. For one, the leg room in the trains and buses is quite spacious; they have to be. Then the doors and rooms are also spacious; since they should accommodate all the tall Dutch.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

Taking down our "Easter Tree"

Yesterday, I finally decided to do it - to take down our "Easter Tree".
Easter Tree? Yup. Well, at Christmas, there are Christmas trees, which for us here means freshly cut pine trees that we place in our living room and decorate. Here, in the Netherlands at least (I'm not sure if this is done in other countries), we also have a tradition of Easter Trees. Technically, an Easter tree isn't a real tree; it is just a bundle of willow tree branches which you place in a pot in your living room. You then hang decorations on the willow tree branches. These decorations are mostly miniature easter eggs, or easter bunnies - with the color yellow predominating. Since willow branches start to bud at this time, the small green buds blend quite well with the yellow decorations.

In our case, I planted the willow branches in a pot with soil some years ago. It has grown a bit over the years. Every Easter time, I bring the willow mini-tree into the house, and decorate it. I do this at about Palm Sunday, and then keep it in till one week after Easter - a decent 2 week presence in our living room. My problem this year, was that I was a bit sick when I should have taken the decorations down, so I kept postponing when to do it. And as I procrastinated, the willow's buds became a profusion of leaves. This made it even harder to take the decorations out - the leaves came in the way.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

Talking to the Natives

People in the Philippines often get surprised when I tell them that English is not spoken widely in the Netherlands. This is different from what we have in the Philippines, where despite our having our own languages, we use English in school, at work, in the newspapers, even when writing e-mails to each other.

Anyway, when I first arrived in 1983, I had to learn the Dutch language in one year. My permit to stay was dependent on my passing a Dutch language proficiency test within a year. So, I really did not have a choice but to learn the language. And not only learn it, I had to learn it to university level. That was quite a task.

So, my wife and I set out to really learn the language. We took a subscription to the Volkskrant, a daily newspaper said to be aimed at those who are relatively highly educated. We regularly watched Dutch TV, especially the news. The nice thing about the Netherlands is that they don't dub English-language movies, but put subtitles. So, we could hear the English original text while reading the Dutch translation. This was quite helpful.
And we took Dutch lessons at the university; where students would also help tutor us.

It was good that we were based in Tilburg, especially at this time. Very few people spoke English then, so when people noticed we were not good in speaking Dutch, they spoke slowly.. in Dutch.
It was not like what would happen in Amsterdam or Utrecht... there the people would shift to English, when they notice that you were a foreigner. So, we were forced to talk to people in Dutch; which is great, when you have to learn a language in a year.

To make the long story short, I passed the language exam, and was thus qualified to enroll in the university here. (I will go more into that in another post.)

A few years later, our first child, Ligaya, went to school. She started to play with other children after school, either at our house, or in the houses of her friends. The funny thing was that when we would converse with her playmates' parents, they would sometimes suddenly shift to the local dialect, and all of a sudden we could not understand what they were talking about. Yes, Tilburg has its own dialect, which is different from the standard Dutch language in some words and expressions, but the main difference is really the pronunciation. When people really feel at home with us, they shift unintentionally to the dialect. We had not experienced this earlier - I suppose that this was because we used to speak to people in formal or semi-formal situations, where they make sure that they speak in standard Dutch.

As our children grew up (we have two daughters: Ligaya, and Elena) we did our best to ensure that they learned Dutch well. We brought them (when they were small) every week to the library, to borrow books; we read stories to them every night, etc. We are proud to say that their Dutch language proficiency is excellent. When they were in high school, we would often ask their help when we encounter problems with formulating sentences in Dutch.

Now, after 24 years here in the Netherlands, I describe my Dutch language proficiency as "good". I can express myself orally, and in written form. However, people will notice that I have an accent. Of course, I have an accent; and I am not really trying to get rid of it too much. (only when it hinders understanding) After all, if people understand me; they should appreciate the fact that I took all the trouble to learn their language. It takes so much less effort on their part to bear with my accent.

Tuesday, April 1, 2008

Tilburg

Tilburg is a city in the Netherlands. If you have never heard of it, that's alright - most people in Europe haven't heard of it either. Many people even in the Netherlands only have a vague idea where it is: "somewhere in the south". So, I'm not surprised that you never heard of this place before.

Despite its being not very well known, Tilburg is the 6th largest city in the Netherlands (with more than 200,000 people).

I like it here. It is urban enough to provide you with the conveniences of city life, while it retains a kind of "village" character. Like, if you ask somebody in a bus for directions, many other people will pitch in. Or, you can be late up to 15 minutes for an appointment, and people don't complain too much (in the Netherlands, they are quite punctual). And the youth are less rough than those in other big cities.

I have stayed here since 1983, which seems like ages ago. Then, it was more "village"-like than now. When we were new here, and couldn't speak Dutch well; people accomodated you by speaking Dutch slowly. In cities like Amsterdam or Rotterdam, they would shift to speaking English if they find out you don't speak Dutch well.

Tilburg is rather unique as Dutch cities go. It is probably the only big city without access to either a river or the sea. It is relatively "new" - it really only became a city in the 1830s; while most other cities were there already during the 1600s. Tilburg became a city because it is surrounded by sheep country - the sheep needed to go somewhere central to get their wool sheared, and this turned out to be Tilburg. We had a thriving textile industry here till the 1960s. But this ended when cheap imports from Asia replaced the Dutch textile products. Because of this, Tilburg used to have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

But Tilburg is busy re-inventing itself. Now, it hosts a lot of higher-educational institutions, with a renowned University, and various colleges. It has also developed into a distribution hub for all sorts of products. And Tilburg is definitely an "in" city for the youth. It has the famous "013" pop center, has a pop academy; it is also the place for big festivals e.g. the "Festival Mundial" featuring rock bands from all over the world (mostly Third World). Tilburg is also the nearest city to the "Efteling" amusement park.

There are not too many Filipinos in this city. I think that there are less than 30 of us here. Every first Sunday of the month, we have a Filipino mass here in Tilburg in which about 30-40 attend. However, most of those who come are Filipinos from surrounding towns.

In a sense, it is rather strange to have ended up here in Tilburg. I didn't plan on doing so; hell, I never even heard of the place before I came here. But here I am... and I am trying to make the best of it. And you will now be with me, as I bring you along with me through this blog.