Friday Fails

Since it's just the two of us during the evenings; my wife and I spend the time talking about each other's day.  You know, like this Seinfeld clip....

There have been a few conversations where we'll describe a certain day as a "Fail Day."  Not sure how it started, but we just started using that term to describe a crappy day. Now, we all have bad days,  it's just life. But I got to thinking about how a "Fail Day(s)" might be different for an expat.  

It seems when you're living abroad the smallest stumbles can really break you down.  When something goes wrong, it just hits an expat harder. I think there are a number of reasons behind this:

1.) LIMITED SUPPORT SYSTEM.  My wife and I haven't been here long, so we really don't have a support network to share and compare our frustrations. It's just us. Blogging, expat websites (see below) and twitter, has allowed me to compile a small network, which has been useful for venting, sharing and learning. Thanks to @Momofthreeunder , @escapebrussels & @gjamh ! Give their blogs a read here & here.  

2.) EXPERIENCE.  You've done a task like the one before you hundreds of times back in your home country. So why is it so hard to do now?  Examples like: paying for groceries, making  bank transactions and doing the laundry are all routine things.  But for an expat these activities and others must be relearned all over again with the little nuances that come with your host country.

3.) FAST FORWARDING  While we were in Ireland, a co-worker presented a unique observation about the life of an expat.  When you are growing up, everything happens in stages. You learn to walk,  you learn to talk, you learn how to interact with others. Then you learn more complex tasks, like shopping, eating, banking, driving etc. All of these activities span the course of some 15-16 years.  However, for an expat all of these events occur again, only this time, they are in fast forward and you have to do them all in the course of a day or a week.

So I'm going to play around with the idea of a weekly post, called "Friday Fails."  But this post and future posts are not meant to be "whoa is me" like stories.  I'm not into that.  More like, here's where we screwed up and here's how we tried to correct it.  Hopefully there's something here that future expats can learn from.  Sound good?  Alright, here I go.  Hope you enjoy. 

This Week In Fail Days

• Learning that our Dutch bank charges €7 Euro for direct deposits.  I thought I was pretty clear in my question when we opened the account about any associated charges. And the Dutch banker was very clear in his response that there were no charges with the account.    LESSON: Always read the fine print, even if it's in Dutch

• Having your debit card denied at the Albert Heijn (grocery store) This has the be the worst, especially when the line behind you continues to grow and the stares feel like lasers on the back of your neck.                                                                                                                   LESSON: Make sure you have cash on hand at all times.

• Spending days and days researching; translating, and tweeting to figure out how to apply for a discount train pass.  Only to find out after purchasing your subscription that it's not valid until weeks later.                                                                                                                           LESSON: The National Rail Company of the Netherlands, NS (Nederlandse Spoorwegen) is extremely responsive and loving via twitter, @NS_online.  Just read their profile:  "This is the official NS Twitter account. We love you 24/7 at the height of the current situation. Monday / Friday from 8h to 18h we live for you."  For international rail travel questions try tweeting @NSHispeed, equally as responsive.  The funny part was I tweeted them both in Dutch with the help of Google Translate.  I never thought about writing them in English. 
  Another great reference for figuring out public transport is AmsterdamTiPS.com .  These guys run an up to date and well maintained site with helpful information for visitors and expats.  They were also very responsive through email to my questions.  

To the denied credit card user goes the whiskey.

• Watching powerless as your VISA card does not work at a restaurant that advertises they accept credit cards. LESSON:  This has happend twice and both situations really ticked me off.  When it happend the first time I begrudgingly accepted the machine failure and forked over all my cash. Even though I had used my card successful two days before at this very restaurant!  But I wasn't going down so easily when it happened again at another restaurant.  I noticed that a customer ahead of me paid with credit and it worked fine.  But when I confidently put my card in next, the machine decides to go on the fritz.  I was going to wait this one out and demand that they take the card.  Looking back, I felt bad for the young waitress, she did her best and was on the phone for 20 minutes trying to rectify the situation.  Seeing her struggle, my black heart softened and I told her I had enough cash to cover.  BUT!  "How about a glass of Jameson on the house?"  She obliged and proceeded to give me the largest pour of whiskey I'd ever had.  Moral of the story: If your card doesn't work, see if you can get something on the house!

• Thinking train tickets for a trip to Cologne, Germany would be cheaper if you buy them a day before the trip?                                                                                                                      LESSON:  Buy early and save.  This is sort of a universal truth right?   

Feel free to describe your own fail days in the comments below.  

Ending on a depressed note is NOT something I want to do on a Friday. So, to use another Seinfeld reference,  I'll try to "Always leave on a high."  So here's a picture of me and a giant Lindt Truffle.  

Cheers to the weekend!

Some Great Expat Websites:

The International Sign for Wine

"A bottle of red, a bottle of white 

Whatever kind of mood you're in tonight 

I'll meet you anytime you want In our Italian Restaurant. "

--Scenes from an Italian Restaurant, Billy Joel--

Yes, that's a chianti bottle candle stick holder

Well, it was more like a 1/2 liter of "rood" and a 1/2 liter of "wit" for my wife and I last night. That's what we ordered from our Italian waiter in "our Italian Restaurant" in the Netherlands. But our wine selections from last evening is not the interesting part, it's how we came about ordering them.

How you say....."carafe of wine" 
Photo Credit: Vicki Szostek

I got the sense that our waiter's comprehension of English was a bit shaky. Mix that with our inability to speak Italian or Dutch and you get a blog post.  When it came time to place our drink order we both tried ordering "a carafe" of wine.  We saw the puzzlement on our waiters face at first, then collectively my wife and I use our hands and make some type of gesture that in our minds was symbolic of a carafe.  Our hand motions must have worked, the confused glaze disappeared from his face and he asked us if we wanted a 1/2 liter or 1 liter of wine.  ALL RIGHT WE'RE IN BUSINESS!  Here comes my favorite part.  When we told him what kind of wine we wanted he was still a bit unsure, so just to confirm our selections with us, he pointed to the red table cloth and pointed to me, then he pointed to the white table cloth and pointed to my wife.  It was awesome.  

It got me thinking about communication and how when verbal means are not an option, we quickly adapt to find some type of non-verbal method to convey our message.  In our case, making a hand gesture where by placing our right hand about 8 inches about our left hands is obviously the international sign for a carafe of wine. And in the case of our waiter, pointing to the colors of the table cloth helped him confirm our order.

I've caught myself a few times since moving to the Netherlands making funny hand gestures when I sense the other person isn't grasping what I was saying.  Like the other night, when I asked the waitress for a jug of water, I made a similar hand motion to the one carafe of wine.  It's not often that I let my hands do the talking  because most folks we've encountered have an excellent grasp of English, but when it does happen I wish I could video myself to see how funny I look.  

Have you ever found yourself making (clean) hand gestures to communicate?