Integration through osmosis

By On June 17, 2008 · 3 Comments

I think perhaps after nine years living here in The Netherlands that I might actually have been passively integrated into Dutch life. I was watching the UEFA Cup football match between The Netherlands and Romania with genuine excitement and hopeful anticipation that my team would be the winner at the end. This from someone that proudly didn’t know jackshit about football when I first turned up here. Football to me meant rugby league; soccer was a game for girls who couldn’t play rugby league; and The Netherlands definitely wasn’t my home team. Tonight I knew all the names of the players, and could even name the coach. Amazing really because I don’t watch football at all except for UEFA and World Cup, and I defintely don’t watch the sports news, or read the local metro newspapers, so my guess is, it’s something in the cheese!

Now if only I could finish learning dutch language the same way!

Andy.

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The Integration through osmosis by Mentalechoes, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
 
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  • http://coffee.faragon.org Faragon

    “Een andere keer misschien
    dan blijven we wel slapen
    en kunnen dan misschien als het echt moet,
    wat over koetjes, voetbal en de lotto praten,
    nou dag tot ziens, adieu het gaat je goed.”

    Ik zou graag een keer met jou over koetjes, voetbal en de lotto praten.
    Misschien zelfs over konijnen, voetbal en de Postcodeloterij :-)

    (The verse is from a song, by Herman van Veen, which I loved as a kid. I even did a performance of it during a school thing, dressed in a sari. In retrospect it was something to laugh about I guess)

  • http://www.mentalechoes.org Padwanna

    What the hell does all that mean? :)

    Andy :)

  • http://coffee.faragon.org Faragon

    It means:
    “Another time perhaps
    then we can stay the night
    and perhaps when we really have to
    talk about cows, football and the lotto
    well goodbye, see you and fare well.”

    Talking about cows takes some extra explanation. “Over koetjes en kalfjes praten” is “Talking about cows and calves”, which is making small-talk. So basically it means that we can make small-talk and talk about football and the lotto, some other time, when we will stay the night ;-)
    Is that explanation enough for you?

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