Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Mondays are Always Rough, alternately titled, Normally Embarrassing Things Aren't So Embarrassing in Foreign Lands

Banks in Holland are Liars.  It was very difficult to acquire enough Euro cash to pay the guy we're renting our awesome Dutch apartment from - he wants cash because he'll get in trouble if some mysterious random authorities discover that he's subletting it.  Well, long stories short, limits on ATM withdrawals and the suckiness of the Dollar made it so that on Monday, I could not withdraw any more money from my account during the day.  And I needed to go to the grocery.

Okay, whatever.  I have a Major Credit Card.

No go.  The grocery store does not accept Major Credit Cards, and I can't use my ATM card anymore today.  And all the cash I had at hand now belongs to a dude named Steef who is on his way to the mountains of Italy.  

So, I do the only thing that can be done.

I smile at the Dutch-only checkout girl, shrug my shoulders, say in English, "Well, I guess I'll just go," and leave twenty-three euros of groceries in the store, literally on the conveyor belt, and walk home.

Sad: stupid Dutch grocery store.










And, to top it off, the heel of my fab blue shoes fell off on the way to the Atelier on Monday.  Now I need to find Dutch Super Glue.  No doubt it will be spelt something like "Suuper Gluije".

I also had a fly in my wine.  Observe below.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

`Hi Jesse, this is Mary Ann M. and your mom gave me a link to your blog and I have been enjoying reading about your life in Amsterdam. It was a very sad story about the grocery store episode and the broken shoe, not to mention the fly in the wine. Tomorrow will be better. I do hope you ate and there is always the "Pancake Bakery." That sounds like a cool place, but you need to introduce some maple syrup. Later.