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Monthly Archives for May 2005

Dutch customer service?

The Dutch customer service philosophy is simple and elegant: “that is not possible”. I take back everything I ever said about Telstra, compared to anything Dutch they are Gods of efficient and friendly service.

This rant was sparked by our need to get ADSL. Currently we are stuck on dialup and both of us need broadband to be able to do our work. We called the phone company (KPN) to connect our phone on the 27th of April. During the same call they advised us that the fastest way to get ADSL connected was to go through them. It would take two weeks instead of the usual three. Time being of the essence, I signed up through them for one of their resellers, planet.nl. The phone line will be connected the next day, our modem and welcome pack will arrive within a week and we will be connected to ADSL in two weeks.

Our phone line was connected 5 days later.

Today is exactly two weeks since that call, and no modem has arrived. We called planet.nl to find out what was going on, they had us in the system (at least) but were waiting on KPN. They connected us to KPN. Yes, we are on the system, they can see that we applied on the 9th of May, and we will be connected on schedule in 3 weeks or so. Aargh! To clarify, the 3 weeks doesn’t start until our phone was connected and the PHONE COMPANY was not notified of that until the 9th of May. We pointed out that we were connected long before then, surely the phone company knew that? Can we talk to a supervisor?

“Dat kan niet” (that is impossible). Apparently they do not have supervisors at KPN, and the person on the phone (Barbara Groen) does not have a boss. I guess she is the CEO of KPN.

She gave us her name and a contact phone number, and suggested we call back in one week if nothing had happened, and then terminated the call. I immediately called the number: it was a fake number.

So I have that familiar feeling, making me a bit homesick. That Telstra feeling. My chest is tight, my hands are shaking, I want to hurt things. When I complain about this to a Dutch person they don’t understand. What had I expected to happen?

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Written on 12 May 2005 by darryn under Uncategorized with 7 Comments
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Fantastic*

Lions vs Midgets

*not necessarily fantastic

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Written on 07 May 2005 by darryn under Uncategorized with No Comments
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Delft

Kip and I awoke to an empty house, Michel and Marjolein having gone to work. We didn’t feel like going straight back home to Zutphen and agreed that another trip to Delft would be worthwhile.

We arrived in

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Written on 07 May 2005 by darryn under personal with No Comments
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Den Haag and Delft

I was woken by Kirsten at about 8am, and got up to watch the snow outside. Ahh, springtime in Holland. Back to sleep for a few more hours and then we were outside for a walk. We went to the Panorama Mesdag, which is a massive (120m wide) panoramic painting of Scheveningen, painted by Hendrik Willem Mesdag in 1881. It really gives you a feeling of being there, a glimpse of life over a century ago. The fact that I had stood on the same spot in reality the day before helped. The rest of the museum housed many other paintings by Mesdag (a few of which I really liked) and a number of panoramic photographs.

Next we walked, through the rain, over to Binnenhof (Parliament) to meet Marjolein. We made sure that we did not walk through the main arches as this is unlucky, although this tradition is possibly of Michel’s invention.

Next stop was the Mauritshuis, a museum that is chock full of Rembrandts and Vermeers. We spent a few hours going through the many rooms. The recently famous Vermeer “Girl with a pearl earring” was on display, but my pick of the day would have to be Rembrandt’s “Anatomy Lesson”.

We went for lunch at a deli that Michel assures us is where the Queen gets her krokets. The brootje kroket was pretty tasty, it is true, but I am not sure it was royally tasty. The deli sells meats, and I noticed that lamb chops were €38/kg. Sure they were leg chops but that is ten times the price back home. Guess I won’t be eating a lot of lamb here.

We went through these medieval streets browsing expensive shops and occasionally looking at a gallery. Chris will be pleased to know that many of the gentlemen’s outfitters featured a good selection of pink shirts.

A stop at the supermarket for supplies before coming back to Michel’s for a traditional Dutch dinner. They slaved away for some time, eventually returning with a big pot of Andijvie Stamppot, which is basically a dish of mashed potato with chopped endives in it. Endives are a kind of bitter leafy herb sort of like cabbage crossed with rocket. It was a very filling meal and soon we were relaxing in the loungeroom with some more tasty beers.

Michel put on a DVD documentary about Andre Hazes, who is a recently deceased Dutch folk singer/serious drinker. His funeral was held at a packed Ajax stadium and his memory is cherished by millions of Dutch people. The music doesn’t really do a lot for me, perhaps because I don’t understand the lyrics but I suspect perhaps not. The highlight of the DVD is when we see Andre at his creative best, using a rhyming dictionary to write a song. Please use the feedback/comments link below to flame me.

The next day we woke earlier, to a lack of snow and a bit of sunshine, raising the temperature to a ‘warm’ 9°C. We headed out to Het Palais Lange Voorhout, one of the Royal Family’s many palaces, which is currently being used as a museum to MC Escher who is definitely my favourite artist. I first encountered his work in 1986 when my teacher, Mr Hilliard, taught me about tesselations. So almost 20 years led us to this moment. Three floors of Escher! Oh my!

I have the pleasure to report that pretty much every one of my favourites was there and many more. The others were as happy as I to stay and savour the works and we spent a few hours. The last, um, exhibit, was a Virtual Reality Escher experience. This was the first time I had donned the goggles since the mid-90s, when VR was taking over the world. Unlike my previous experiences, the VR was excellent. The screens were high enough resolution and there was no visible aliasing, although there was a lot of ghosting when I moved quickly. Head movements were perfectly matched by the display. Apart from price, the only thing that stopped me going out and buying some that day was the weight. You get a sore neck after a while.

What a great start to the day! We then had lunch before catching the train to Delft, a picturesque and historic city to the south. Vermeer was from Delft, although the city is probably best known for its white and blue porcelain. Although a bit touristic the medieval centre is beautiful and the main square, dominated by the 14th Century Nieuw Kirk (New Church) is a sight to see. As it was Sunday all the shops were closed, ad we were a bit sick of walking by this stage so we found a nice cafe to sit in for a while. After a few tasty ones, Michel and Marjolein introduced me to borrelhapjes, tasty fried pub treats. One of the items is bitterballen, which are basically kroket nuggets. Happy with this discovery.

Back to Den Haag and the girls prepared a tasty Dutch style spaghetti bolognese. We all fell asleep full and happy.

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Written on 07 May 2005 by darryn under personal with 2 Comments
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Den Haag (Friday 8th April - Day 20)

Den Haag (The Hague) is the main government city of NL, like a Dutch Canberra, although Amsterdam is the capital city. It is about 30 minutes southwest of Amsterdam, i.e. halfway across the country. Den Haag is also where Michel, Kirsten’s brother, resides.

Kirsten and I arrived in Den Haag in the early afternoon and immediately headed for the nearest brown cafe for some refreshments and to plan our next move. The best and most popular beach in NL is Scheveningen which is just outside Den Haag and we decided that this would be our destination. 15 minutes on the tram and we were there. It was cold, raining and windy when we got there so I perhaps did not see it at its best, but still I could tell that it is no match for the beaches back home. There is a beautiful old palace that dominates the beachside and a long wooden pier, under which the raging uninviting waters churned. We went into the McDonald’s for shelter, where I ate a McKroket, which is a burger sized kroket pattie with mustard and bread. Apart from the shape, the McKroket is quite faithful to the original brootje kroket.

Outside again and something struck my mind. It is early April, which is 3 months warmer than early January, yet I am freezing my arse off. This could happen literally on New Year’s Day, when I will be joining thousands of other fools to go for a swim at this beach in the 4°C waters. I made a pact with Michel over a year ago that we would do this. I hope to survive.

We got the tram back to Den Haag Centraal station and met Michel, who took us by tram to his excellent apartment. After dropping our bags off we went off to the local supermarket to get some supplies. I was impressed with the selection of fresh, unfrozen, ready-to-eat meals on offer, not really something we have back home. I was also impressed with the beer aisle. It was like looking at the menu of Epoque in Cammeray, except that the prices were much, much lower. 4 times lower. We got 3 six-packs of different fancy Belgian beers and plenty of snacks. We were set.

Dropping the stuff at home, we put the beers in the traditional Dutch beer fridge, i.e. outside. After a tasty refresher we headed out onto the streets of Den Haag in search of food. We made it to a local pizza parlour that promises €5 pizzas. Although they stuffed up my order, the pizza was pretty good. I was a bit disappointed that they had omitted the promised prawns until I noticed that one of the small pieces of garlic was curved. It was a prawn! A 3mm long prawn! I am used to proper Aussie prawns (from Thailand) that take 2 bites to eat. There was a small girl that kept creeping up behind my chair and putting her hands in my pockets, and having just come from Malaysia I was still on full theft alert. In my mind the poor child was just a soldier in a junior thief army, perhaps comprised of orphans, who prowled the restaurants looking for loot. Then again, maybe she was just looking for lollies.

Back at Michel’s apartment we got stuck into the beers, drunk for Michel’s inspiring collection of beer glasses. I got to check out his DVD collection, which was very impressive. By impressive I mean that he has the same DVD’s that I do, plus many that are on my list. After a few beers (about the time that we started on the Quadruppels) Kirsten was a bit worse for wear and felt that the Dvorak we listened to was Star Wars related and began demonstrating her lightsabre fighting skills. I was disappointed to find that the glass she smashed was not the one that I had predicted.

The night ended with viewing of the classic Evil Dead: Army of Darkness. Kip and I slept in the loungeroom after drinking plenty of water. A good night.

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Written on 07 May 2005 by darryn under personal with No Comments
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