wed 20 feb 2008 10:50:53 — witte de withstraat
not starving
so my new application for residence permit is in. tuesday morning i took tram 7 to the spiegelgracht stop, which is right in front of my immigration lawyer's building. i went in and met ania the secretaresse of my new lawyer hermie, who has taken over from my old lawyer stans. i signed a couple of papers, including the application form itself, and handed in all my little scans and photos and uittreksels and stuff, which i've been collecting over the last few weeks.
then, since i was standing there by line 7 to weesperplein, i decided to go see hg. on the phone he was like, yeah come on over, we can get lunch.
so i was waiting peaceably at the tramhalte, just looking at the buildings and thinking about things. and i turned and saw a gang of at least 40 small children marching straight toward me along the narrow island, led by a young woman. they looked like nice enough kids. but i knew at this was not my scene, not just now. so i escaped them. i started walking along the weteringschans, and took a later tram from frederiksplein.
i really had trek in an uitsmijter. you know, the three fried eggs on bread with ham and cheese thing. but i didn't know where we could find one anywhere near weesperplein. surprise, it turns out the new "cafe noir" on the corner, which has replaced the old "marebela", serves a day menu starting at 07.00u -- including uitsmijters. damn good ones too, i thought. so that worked out pretty well didn't it.
over lunch, somehow we got on the subject of albert heijn supermarkets. hg told me about how one day he was shopping there, and one of the vakkenvullers rudely crashed into him with a big cart, and instead of excusing himself, became aggressive and indignant, as if it were hg's fault for shopping there. feeling insulted, hg went to report this to a store manager. he found a door where he'd seen managers coming and going, and pressed the button by the door. ("sometimes i am a little too strong, i may have broken some glass to press this button", he filled in later.) ok it turns out that wasn't a doorbell, it was a deafening calamity alarm that brought the whole security staff down on poor hg. after a few tense minutes they finally got the alarm turned off, and hg was able to tell the manager about how one of the employees had been rude to him.
"they looked at me like i was nuts", he said.
then we had cappucinos, then hg went to an appointment, and i went ... to the albert heijn! for the first time in a month. i've been weaseling out of it but i thought now i should pitch in a little. i brought home two bags of stuff, and had a hard time fitting it into the fridge.
late afternoon i met pani in kinkerstraat, we ate paprika soup at a place called "gary's muffins". and also i ate a piece of believe it or not, carrot cake, which i haven't seen in years. i saw that across the street there was one of those "simon levelt" coffee winkels. i thought of going in and buying a huge bag of coffee. but they close at 18.00 so i was too late. we walked back to wdw, noticing how strange the dusk sky was, lead with lemon juice, and by now it was quite cold outside. back here we loaded photos from her camera onto my computer, then loaded some video she had shot in november. marina had come home and made dinner, and invited us to dine with her even though we had already eaten. what she had cooked was delicious -- i think she called it kaverma -- so we couldn't resist.
seems like without even trying, i ate more yummy food in one winter's day in amsterdam, than the average amsterdammer ate during the whole winter of 44-45.