So what does this post’s title mean? No, I’m not going to talk about Vanilla Ice. (As far as I know he has absolutely nothing to do with The Netherlands or Amsterdam.) Rather, it’s a clever play on words. Today, we’re talking about ice cubes, specifically the lack of ice cubes available for purchase in large quantities at the grocery store.

You see, historically, Holland (and western Europe as well) doesn’t really believe in drinking beverages too cold. This has been changing in recent years, and cold beer is now common.¹ Ice in a drink, though? Yeah, you’ll get ice: 2, maybe 3 cubes. Bars just typically don’t need a lot of ice as their clientele doesn’t expect it as they’ve grown up not really using it.²

Case in point: We had a party at our place a couple of weeks ago to celebrate Staci’s graduation. We live above a bar. (Yeah, it’s kind of awesome. You can be jealous.) I went downstairs to see if we could get a small bucket of ice. First thing the bartender says is “Ice?” as though he had no idea what I was asking for. Turns out he just couldn’t hear me, but I thought it was funny that that was initial response given the lack of ice to be had. Anyways, when he grasps what I’m asking for (a small, hotel-size bucket of ice,) he begins to try and figure out if giving me that much ice will leave him without enough for the night. (It’s ~6:30P on a Friday night, there were 4 women sitting at the bar drinking wine and the bar crowd won’t even start trickling in until ~10P.) That’s when I realized that their ice making machine was under the bar counter, and the tub it dumped into was maybe 12″d x 18″w x 12″h. My little bucket was going to take ~1/2 that. He gave it to me anyways, and even offered to let me come get more later if I needed it. (We did, but opted to not go get any. I didn’t want to screw him over.)

So the whole point of this post was to give you a little background and show you how things we take for granted in the U.S. can be a big deal here. Also, it clues you in to why I’m excited to find out that I discovered that the liquor stores sell ice and that I was way to excited when I confirmed it wasn’t just a rumor. I saw it with my own eyes yesterday. Granted, anything resembling warm weather is gone until May, and we have no space in our freezer for a bag of ice, but I still feel like I won $10 on a scratcher ticket.

1. Cold beer is found in bars. Beer is not refrigerated at the store. It’s your job to get it cold, not theirs, which really sucks when you have a refrigerator the size of a hotel mini-bar. Think I’m kidding? Click the picture to get a full-size view. I’m standing next to it to give you perspective. My inseam is 36 inches. (Sorry ladies, I’m married.) It’s about 2ft wide inside. Remember when you were in college, living in the dorms and you & your roommate shared one, but it mostly just contained beer and soda because you had the dorm cafeteria to eat at and no place to cook anyways? Now imagine using that dorm fridge to store food that you cook and still having the roommate share it. Yeah, it sucks. The first thing to lose fridge space? You guessed it: beer.
return to story

2. My polling sample is some of the students from western European countries in Staci’s master’s program. ~15-20 people were polled at a party while I was drinking, so the data may not be as conclusive or accurate as it could be.
return to story

Anyways, for Trivia Time #2 we’re going to talk about fall weather, location and daylight.

Fall Weather

In the fall, it rains. A lot. Not torrential rains or constant down pours, though that happens, but more light rain and drizzle. It’s overcast most of the time, too. It’s a lot like Ohio, but not as crazy. Where in Ohio it’ll go from 40°F to 65°F to 38°F over the course of 3 days, in Amstelveen it’ll go from 6°C & overcast to 7°C & sunny to 7°C.

Location

On the globe, Amstelveen is located:

Altitude: -4m (-16') ¹
Latitude: 52° 17' 60N (52.3000)
Longitude: 4° 52' 0E (4.8667)

Latitudinally (yes, that’s a word), Amstelveen is roughly the same as Berlin, Germany; Shannon, Ireland; Warsaw, Poland; and Birmingham, England. Longitudinally (yup, this is also a word), Amstelveen is roughly even with Brussels, Belgium and Lyon, France.

In comparison, Columbus, OH is located:

Altitude: 234m (770')
Latitude: 39° 57' 40N (39.9611)
Longitude: 82° 59' 56W (-82.9989)

Daylight

Because Amstelveen is ~12.5°N of Columbus, in the summer we enjoy more sunlight. However, as expected, we get less in the winter. A comparison² of the longest and shortest days of the year reveals:

And that concludes today’s lesson on fall weather, location and daylight. Next time, we’ll be talking about recycling, marijuana laws and booze.³

1. Yes, that’s a -4m (-16') for altitude. Below sea level. When global warming melts the ice caps and raises the oceans, this place will probably be underwater baring some great engineering achievements. ↩

2. Information found at sunrisesunset.com ↩

3. I’m pretty lazy, as you can tell from the length of time between each of the trivia posts thus far, so don’t think that I’ve actually planned out the next Trivia Time post. Those might be the topics or they might not. (Ooh, suspense!) You’ll have to come back to see for yourself. ↩

1. work
2. play tour guide to our first visitors, Andre and Amber
3. stay up ridiculously late so I can watch the Yankees lose to Cleveland in the baseball playoffs live
4. not leave the apartment for days on end
5. play with my new iPhone (no, that’s not a euphemism)

1. So this month work finally picked up, which is good, because it gets hard keeping myself occupied sometimes. I have personal projects to work on, but I was getting a little burnt out on the one I’ve been developing lately, so work was a nice change of pace.

2. Some friends of mine came to Amsterdam and Brussels for a couple of weeks for vacation, and while they were in Amsterdam I got to hang out with them for a couple of days. Andre is the creator and administrator of an online community I’m a part of, and Amber is his soon to be wife, who is perhaps one of the nicest people I’ve ever met. I had a really enjoyable time crashing their vacation. It’s too I didn’t think about dragging them down to Amstelveen for a tour of the suburbs. Actually, it’s probably a good thing.

3. Games were being shown live here, which means they started at ~2:00A. One night I was up until ~6:15A. I don’t think my body is as easily prepared for such late bed times. (I don’t want to talk any about the games. They weren’t interesting.)

4. I seem to be going through stretches where I don’t leave the apartment for 5-6 days at a time. When you work at home, it’s kind of an occupational hazard. Fortunately, trips to the grocery store to mingle with the old ladies and watching them participate in their national sport: Sudden stops in busy walkways. Doesn’t matter where you are, grocery store, mall, train station, airport. They’ll be walking along and then BOOM! dead stop. This country is full of potential Hall-of-Famers and World Champions.

5. My new iPhone. Jon & I both got one. They’re not available in Europe for a couple more weeks, and haven’t been planned to be released in Holland or Belgum, and they’re going to cost way more than back in the U.S. even with the cost of over-night delivery, so last Friday I had my friend Andrew if he would be willing to go pick up two iPhones and ship them to us. Andrew, being a like-minded geek like Jon & I, gladly said yes and went that morning and picked them up, then took the time on his lunch break to ship them. (I can’t thank you enough, Andrew. Lunch on Jon & I when we’re home in December for Xmas.) After the an extremely long weekend, the package arrived Monday morning. Needless to say the rest of the day was pretty much shot while I played with my new toy.

Now some of you may be wondering (though not likely): If the iPhone isn’t available in Europe yet, and it’s not going to be any time soon in Holland or Belgium, and they’re locked to specific carriers (AT&T in the U.S., for example,) how are you going to use it in Europe without signing up for AT&T and incurring huge phone bills? Well, that’s what I was doing on Monday: unlocking the phone so I can use any carrier that uses SIMs, and putting 3rd party software on the phone so it has way more cool features. I won’t go into details, mostly because the process is long and boring and already spelled out in great detail on the Internet, but I have to say, I LOVE my iPhone. It’s just such a slick device. iPod and phone all in one. Aside from having less space than a traditional iPod Classic or the iPod Touch, it’s so worth it. (Thanks, Andre for having one and bringing it with you while on vacation and letting me see it in action.)

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the month of October. I’m positive there will be more posts from me in November. It’s stacking up to be a busy month. We’re heading to London for a weekend, going to see Silversun Pickups and Kaiser Chiefs in Antwerp, Belgium with Jon & CJ, Ohio State plays Michigan and Thanksgiving. Stay tuned!

Amstelveen (pronounced Am-stel-vein) is a suburb to the south of Amsterdam. It is the international headquarters for Team McLennan, as well as professional services firm KPMG and communications technology giant Cisco Systems.

It’s a small, quiet community, with just 79,000 inhabitants, but it’s close proximity to Amsterdam and Schipol airport, it’s an ideal location. We’re located ~2min (walking) to the nearest Metro line, which makes getting to and from the city relatively easy.

External Resources (all links open new windows):
http://www.amstelveen.nl/ Amstelveen’s Official Website (mostly Dutch, some English)
http://www.amstelveenweb.com/english An Amstelveen Website with more information in English
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstelveen Amstelveen’s Wikipedia page