I moved to Utrecht in January this year. At the time it was cold, I was wearing a thick Norwegian made winter coat (so you could survive in Antarctica with that basically). After a few weeks, the coat was definitely too much, so I bought a thin jacket. Even so, I was surprised at how I was sweating basically everyday. Almost everytime I left the house and wanted to take care of business (at my pace), I was sweating. I know I'm in bad shape, but is it this bad? Well, I got used to it.

But now that I got in less than three days ago, I am definitely feeling the difference. The humidity here is ridiculous. People are wearing pants and sweaters, whereas I'm in shorts and a t-shirt and I'm still sweating when I'm out there. There is no way I would come home sweaty after some quick business in town in Trondheim when it's 16 degrees out, this is not normal.

Relative humidity for September 5, 2006:

• CNN weather
• Utrecht 95%, Trondheim 79%
• BBC weather
• Utrecht/De Bilt 75%, Trondheim 89%
• kweather desktop applet (source unknown)
• Utrecht/Soesterberg 93.8%, Trondheim 76.8%
• goutrecht.nl
• Utrecht 73%
• weather.com
• Utrecht 94%, Trondheim 82%

So trying to find out from established sources fails spectacularly. All I know is, the humidity here is way too high. So I either have to move very slowly or I have to prepare to sweat. :lazy:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is something I noticed in Italy. I'm not saying it's an Italian specific thing, but that is my association at least. See, Italians are temperamental. If you make a mistake, they won't gently tap on your shoulder, whisper "I'm terribly sorry to disturb you, sir" and *then* tell you what you "could have done differently". No, they will come right out and say it, yell it most of the time. If you make a small mistake in traffic, you get car horns going off all the way around you, because order must be preserved.

Here's the rub. Italians will stand in line at the post office or the check out line in the supermarket for an hour without issuing a hint of complaint. They will happily blather on with their friend (or on the cell phone) without the slightest sign of alarm of urgency. This is what I call Italian patience, because in spite of being so impatient in some contexts, they can be incredibly patient elsewhere. Why get pissed off about waiting in line? There's nothing you can do about it anyway, this is just the way it is.

I had a long list of things to do today, and I haven't done any of them, because I don't have Italian patience. At the student desk, you take a number and wait your turn. My number was 30, t-h-i-r-t-y, numbers beyond the current number being served. At a processing rate of about 5 minutes per person, that means I would be waiting 2.5h. It would probably be closer to an hour, because of all the people who took a number, realized how long they would be waiting, and went home. They open tomorrow at 10, I intend to be there at 9.50.

At the bank there was a similar line, and at the train station, ditto. I do wait my turn when I don't have a choice - waiting to board an aircraft, waiting for a bus, waiting in the check out line. But I refuse to waste time waiting when it's completely pointless. And it's not because I manage my time so efficiently that it would set me back, I just cannot accept that 5 minutes worth of business requires waiting 45 minutes in line, it's a matter of principle. If I accept these ridiculous waiting times now, I will never get anything done efficiently ever again, it's all a question of mindset.

Adding to my woes is the delightful ever-present wind that totally sucks blows the fun out of biking and the fact that UU is increasingly a messy construction site. Not only did they not finish anything before the new semester, they have stepped up the degree of chaos since I was last here in July. Since the book I needed wasn't in the store, I went to the library. Well, I tried. It turns out the entire stair case of the building that houses used to house the computer science department is closed off for asbestos removal. So the elevator works, but most of the floors have been shut down entirely as well, including the top floor where the library is once was. There is a note in the elevator about where the various departments have been moved to, but no mention of the library.

Is there such a thing as Polish temperament? I think I may have it.

disturbed. (Yes, I've taken a leaf out of Ash's blog and opened with a song title.) Disturbed at how ridiculously seriously (how do you like the double adverb?) people take the biking regulations in this town. I've known it from day one of my biking here that I would eventually get in trouble for not paying much attention to the make belief, fairy tale rules they try to enforce on bikers.

• Biking in the city center. Fine.
• Biking at night without a light. Fine.
• Biking at night wtih just a front light. Fine.
• Biking on the pedestrian sidewalk. Fine.
• Running a red light (not the real traffic light, the little bike lights for kids) across an intersection where there's no traffic because a) there are no cars in sight or b) everyone is waiting for a green light for 3 minutes. Fine.

I've committed all of those heinous crimes. And then there's cops. Lots of cops. Walking the beat, in cars, on bikes even. It never bothered me to see cops in the past, I wouldn't see them often but when I did, they were just cops. Now I live with a fear that I'm gonna get a fine for biking. It hasn't happened, but at any time I see a cop when I'm on my bike, I immediately take stock of the situation "am I in violation of some mickey mouse rule right now?". Often I am, like biking down one street at night without a light (I always forget to take them) and a police car goes past me. But then at the end of the street, the light turns red, the car stops. By the time it will turn green, I will already be there too, so what if they notice then that I'm not using a light? So I turned back, went the opposite way.

The number of lives I've put in jeopardy due to my 'reckless' biking? 0. The number of people I've injured? 0.

Today I was off to the supermarket, I unlock my bike outside my house, get on it, ride for half a block and I see 3 wannabe cops approaching me. They're not real cops, they just write parking tickets. I pass them and one of them waves at me. "What's this, are they pulling me over to check my papers, is this Soviet Russia?" But they didn't stop walking, the woman waved at me and kept walking. I look back at them, the guy makes a gesture. I stop and try to find out what's going on. He starts talking in Dutch. I ask him to say it in English, he keeps on talking. I look at him point blank like what he's saying does not even sound like a real language. Then he says something about Engels to the woman and the 3 of them form a task force to squeeze out a sentence in English. "You are not allowed to bike on the sidewalk, you have to go in the street." They saw me unlock my bike, get on it and bike for 200m tops, this is where they choose to lecture me? I *was* going in the street, but since this particular stretch of street is trafficed, it makes more sense from a safety point of view to merge in further ahead. I didn't try to explain this as I think it would be lost on them, but in this particular case there's a sidewalk and a street, with no marking on it even, no section for bikes. No biker sidewalk either. Nor was there anyone on the sidewalk either, I guess the parking ticket people want to make sure they have the sidewalk all to themselves.

Narcotics and prostitution are both legal in this country, what the hell for? It doesn't affect me in the least, just like it never did before I got here. Make those illegal again and let me bike freely, you nazis.

Swiss German Dutch?? efficiency. That's what I encountered today at the Geemente (dunno how to translate this, 'kommune' for Scandinavians) when I went to report a change of address (yes, very promptly as you noticed, I actually moved to this house 25 days ago). Apparently, you are supposed to do this so the city can keep track of where you are. I walk into the building, up to the reception desk, the guy immediately tells me "end of the hall, up the stairs". I enter a big room with a looong desk and numbers at every place, like a bank basically. Lots of people seated and waiting so I'm thinking "well, this may take a while". But then I go up the stairs and there's just noone waiting there. I take a number and I get served immediately. I have to show my passport, my rental agreement, sign on a piece of paper, whole thing took 2 minutes. Amazing.

I was duped today, imagine with so much heat experience a person can still make a mistake like that. It looked like a normal day, people are walking around in pants and sweaters, but it's 16°C today and it's going to stay like this all week. I didn't realize I was sweating until I stepped into a bookstore where the concentration of people was about 1/m². You see, a new academic period is starting today and so *everyone* is out to get books right now. I knew this would happen, so I meant to be there at 9am, but it figures it was already 10 by the time I gained any kind of consciousness, and so I showed up right when everyone else did. It's not that it's hot outside, it's quite pleasant really, but in the buildings it's no good. Apparently they don't believe in ventilation or cooling here. I had to get 2 books and return one to the library, all of which of course happens in 3 different buildings. I also found out today the university is going to be a construction site until October this year :wallbang:, so getting from building to building will remain non-trivial. On the way home, I hear the faint noise of a fire truck and I'm thinking "there's no way Phil Collins put that in his song", so I take out one earphone and take a glance behind me. There is a fire truck advancing, it passes me and then... turns into my street. I pick up the pace on my bike (hell, you never know, right?) and I'm relieved to discover that it didn't park outside my house, it's gone. Once I got home, I started off with a summer classic: the cold shower. Oh you don't need shock treatment, just turn the dial little by little and it will feel perfectly comfortable. Then I see an ambulance racing through my street. It must be heat shock.