Our Lovely Neighbor, "That Doesn't Sound So Good," And Eating Delicious Baked Treats

So things around here have been going absolutely swimmingly, as indicated by my lack of recent blog posts. However, "swimmingly" as this week has gone (overall) it has been marked by some very "un-swimmingly" events. If such a thing as "un-swimmingly" exists.

The first half of this week was going by without a hitch. I was biking around, cooking, and planning my work. On Sunday, I went to this delightful tea party/luncheon, hosted by the International Neighbor Group (like, an international club associated with the university), and met some really nice, friendly people, who fed me delicious fussy sandwiches. The whole thing was run by a little Irish grandma - I almost melted when she opened the door for me, and in her sweet little Irish accent, was like, "Ohhh, deareh! Come on in, now, don'tcha be catchin' no colds!"

One of the people who attended this luncheon was this absolutely uproariously funny (Swedish? Dutch?) man, who, completely seriously, told us all about how you can get rid of spiders by putting gasoline into a nasal spray bottle and then lighting it on fire as you squirted it...supposedly at the spiders. No laughing, just very earnest that this was a good idea "But, be careful, my roommate accidentally got a nose full of gasoline one day!!" I don't know that anyone else quite understood how funny this whole dialogue was, but I was laughing so hard I almost fell off my chair.

So, Wednesday rolls around. I'm in the kitchen, cooking delicious coconut curry chicken, in my nice big, stretchy black sweatpants, generally thrilled to be alive. Someone pulls on the bell chain to my front door. I go to investigate. It's a tall man, skinny, with crisp blond hair, and a starched, obviously very expensive shirt, in his mid-late 40's, looking at me like he just found something nasty on the bottom of his shoe. I mean, you've got to love interactions that start like this.

He asks me, angrily, "Do you live here?" To which I respond, kindly, "Yes, I'm a new resident," while thinking to myself, "No, I came to the door with a spatula, in my sweatpants. I'm just passing through!"

"Is this your bike?" Angrily points to a bike leaning against the fence between our houses. "No," I say. "I don't know whose bike it is."

Sneering, as if I'm obviously lying to try and save face, he quips, "If someone doesn't remove this bike from my fence within an hour, I'm going to cut it off, and file a formal complaint against your house for encroaching on my property."

At which point, I'm thinking to myself, "What in the blue blazes did I do to piss this guy so royally off? Not to mention, we SHARE the fence. It's not like it belongs to either of us. One side is his, and one side is ours."

I say, "Okay, well, I will try to find out whose bike it is so that he can move it."

Sneering Mean Neighbor nastily replies, "Well, yes, I suppose that will be good for HIM, but I could care less if he loses his bike. I'm cutting it off if it isn't moved. This isn't how we do things around here."

"This isn't how we do things around here." If this man had slapped me, I might have been less offended. As if, because I am a student, because I don't own this house, because I'm only renting it, I have no standards, no way of comprehending the magical hierarchy of this stupid, rich set of houses.

"Okay," I say. "I'll try to get it moved."

He looks like he's about to leave, and then he comes back. "And, whose idea was it to leave garbage like this (points to the garbage bag sitting next to the compost bin) out in the open, all week, for everyone to see?"

I'm so ready to be done with this awkward, mean conversation. "Well," I say, "We have more than one bag of trash a week, so I've been setting the extra one outside."

He laughs to himself. "You've been setting the extra bag outside? It's disgusting. This is really rude that you would leave it for everyone to see like that. Around here, we have standards. I understand that Anne and Robert (the landlords who own the house) have decided to turn their house into a hotel, but that doesn't mean that you can just live however you like."

"Okay, fine! Noted. I will keep the trash in the back hallway from now on."

He doesn't seem mollified, but he does seem to feel that the conversation is over, and he turns and leaves. I close the door, fuming. I call upstairs, and the person who left his bike against the fence comes down and moves it, having heard the entirety of this lovely conversation. I wander away, muttering a lot of nasty curse words I really wish I could have unleashed during our very unpleasant conversation. So, we've moved the extra bag of trash to the back hallway, where it doesn't offend anyone, and the bike is now kept in the backyard, where it isn't err, leaning against any questionable barriers.

Honestly, I've seen things like this happen in TV shows, where Homeowner's Associations get really upset when your grass is just a quarter of an inch too long, but I NEVER thought it would happen to me in real life. The odd thing is, this man's attitude, that they have "standards," that I will "never understand," is so bizarrely at odds with the situation of our neighborhood. He's saying, in effect, that he is wealthy, and we, of course, are not, and therefore we don't belong here, and never will, and he's incredibly pissed off that he has to live next to a bunch of un-classed cockroach-resembling students. And yet, we live in Lombok, the multi-cultural, immigrant-filled, poorer corner of the city, where right down the road from us (literally three or four houses from this man's front door) is a homeless shelter. We are surrounded by people of lesser means, who probably have no idea what the "standards" of this man are. It's like he's that guy in the ocean, desperately flailing, refusing to acknowledge the boat or the plane that comes to help him, insisting there's "something better on the way." My neighbor clings to his standards, and continually hopes for "something better," because acknowledging that he might have to settle for anything different from what he expects would just kill him. Such is the limited life of people who insist on living within a selfish bubble. Sorry mate, I think my life is more fulfilling. But that's just me.

In any case, the issue has been resolved, and I have not seen hide nor hair of this man since.

Wednesday evening, I went out for drinks with Mary, one of the other girls in Utrecht on a Fulbright, and I had en excellent time regaling everyone at our table of this tale. Everyone was appropriately shocked and offended for me, and we all agreed that we should return the favor in some way, perhaps by tying a delicious cake to the fence, and seeing if he's as offended by THAT.

We all agreed to meet on Friday for pizza, which was equally as fun as having drinks and building coaster-scrap towers. We have now established a goodly-sized friend group. Myself, Mary, a fellow named Ben, from England, a fellow named Daniel, from Germany (who is the spitting image of the young Mr. Incredible from the Incredibles movie. Honestly, the man's jawline could be the basis for every Prince Charming in existence) and a fellow named Clemens, from L.A. A motley and excellent group. Here is our delightful tower of drink coaster-scraps (obviously, we're all budding geniuses to create such a work of art):

Friday afternoon, as I was biking home, thinking about how nice it had been to get pizza with everyone, I stopped to get some things at a store which basically amounts to the home furnishings section of a Target. When I got back on my bike to go home, I accidentally left a bungee cord (that I use to attach my book bag to the back rack that goes out over my back tire) hanging down from said rack. And I got about three feet, before all of a sudden, I heard this nasty whirring noise, and then a crunch, and then my bike wouldn't move forward. Completely horrified that I had done irreparable damage to my bike, I got off, and saw immediately that the bungee cord had gotten stuck in the gear shift of my bike, and had gotten completely wrapped around my back tire. Pulling, and huffing, and getting mean looks from everyone who had to go around me on the sidewalk, I managed to get the bungee cord out. But the metal structure of the rack over the back of my bike was completely messed up. The two metal struts that held up the rack were bent in towards the tire, and the back covering over the tire was bent. Basically, the bike still wasn't moving, even though the worst problem was over. So, squeaking and straining, I managed to push it home. When I finally got home, I got out some tools, and used some elbow grease to move the metal pieces back to (roughly) where they were supposed to be. I tried the bike out, and low and behold, it seemed to work okay. I was so thrilled. And relieved. I really didn't want to have to take it to a store and try to explain, in my poor, broken Dutch, how I got a bungee cord wrapped around the tire. I mean, I don't even know how to say "wrapped!" Or "bungee cord!"

Friday night, I biked over to Mary's apartment, to have a glass of wine, and hang out, and maybe go to the city center and go dancing. Her bike tire was flat, so I offered to let her ride with me to the city center. In Holland, this happens all the time. People just sit on the back racks, like riding a motorcycle side-saddle. I should have known better. Well, she got on, and it was completely fine. And then we went over this bump, and my bike made the most horrible, shrieking, breaking, whirring noise, and then it was just completely dead. You could move the wheels, but the back tire was no longer moving with the chain. So, we wheeled my bike back to her apartment, I stayed with her overnight, and agreed to wake up early and walk both our bikes (since she had to get her flat fixed anyway) to the city center to get fixed.

Saturday morning rolls around, and we take our bikes to the repair shop. Mary brings hers in, and leaves it to get a new tube. We ask them to come outside and look at mine. He looks at it for a second, I kind of roughly explain what happened, he wiggles the tire a bit, and he just says, "Your bike has reached the end of its life." And I'm like, "Noooo! No! Oh, God, no! So, there's no way to fix it?!" And I'm kicking myself, inside. One stupid mistake, and the bike is completely done. It turns out, it would have cost over 60 euro to fix the bike, and since I only paid 50 for it, I felt like that wasn't a solid investment. So I took the bike to the bike graveyard (yes, they have one), and filled out some paperwork, and bought a new bike for 55 euro, because I figured I would have bought a second one sooner or later anyway.

The new bike is purple, and actually nicer than the old one (that died), so I'm satisfied, even though it really sucks to have to shell out money (like you have to do with a car) that you could have used on food, or a trip to Switzerland. You know? You know.

The new bike! In all its glory.

To comfort ourselves about the untimely death of my bike, Mary and I had breakfast (mine was an incredible sandwich with mozzarella, avocado, tomato, and cream cheese), and then bought delicious baked treats. Here is what the delicious treats looked like:

A "Hazelnoot" cream pie-thing (Mary's)

A Caramel delicious cream-puff thing (Mine).

Now, I'm back home, and I've just sort of been cooking, and reading Harry Potter. The other Utrecht Fulbright girl, Melissa, moved in yesterday, which is great! It's really, really wonderful to have two very nice, very awesome women living in the same city as me. It makes things a lot easier. Today, I may, if I feel so inclined, wander out to the really awesome pancake place I love, and get some for dinner. If I do, I will, of course, let you know. Because Dutch pannenkoeken deserve to be written about, that's how good (and bizarre) they are. Till then!