I tend to lose things more often than I like to admit. And when you have this tendency, you can either let yourself go into a full-blown panic or, as I have learned to do, retreat into an almost eerie calm. It’s happened enough times that I’ve learned to whip through a hyper-accelerated version of …
If, like me, you are living in Europe for the first time in your life, you have certain daydream images of how you will spend your afternoons. This was particularly true when I first arrived in the dead of winter with no schedule to adhere to but Albert Heijn’s. I had generous stretches of time …
I confess: it’s my second spring here, and I’ve still never done an official tulip outing. The closest I’ve come to celebrating the annual Dutch ritual is seeing fleeting snapshots of tulip farms I pass while I’m on the train. I catch them in a blurry whiz of vibrant colors, but seeing them this way, …
Sometimes The Hague can be a cold and lonely place, especially for an expat. Many of us are far from home, family, and friends. And while there can be an endless and exciting prospect of meeting new people, it’s not so easy to build up an abundance of close friendships. On any given night, The …
A.O. Scott’s New York Times movie review of Woody Allen’s 2005 tragicomedy “Melinda Melinda” begins with: “Lingering over dinner at Pastis, four marvelously articulate New Yorkers debate the interpretation of an anecdote, unheard by the audience, involving an unhappy young woman named Melinda.” I remember feeling like I was in a tragicomedy of my own …
I moved to The Hague on a pitch-black, pre-dawn December morning (when dawn arrives reluctantly and stingily). It was just before the winter holidays, and I’d made the homesick-inducing mistake on my flight over of reading cooking magazines that highlighted holiday comfort food traditions. Like many people who read cooking magazines, I didn’t actually spend …