The Patriot Inside Me

Cycling


How often have I thought of Holland while cycling up the hill. Every time I take the bike to the station, I ride through the lonely darkness of Mölndal. I feel the cold wind of the morning dawn while cruising downhill, see the depressed people waiting for their busses, trams or trains, and smell the night. The nights are long, cold and short (in my case). When I meet up with my bike in the day again, I already feel a bit deprived. That is because I life, of course, on top of a hill. The road is steep, long and trough fully depressing. And that is when I think of Holland and it's flatness.


Flatness


People seem to be shocked when they hear the highest mountain(or preferably hill) in holland is 332,7 meters high. When I mention the number of inhabitants, they stare at me, looking as if I just told them I like Bush(read it with or without capital, what ever suits you). Sweden is 11 times as big as Holland, though there are only 9,x million Swedes. Holland has 16,4 million inhabitants.


3-2


The wounds of losing from the Swedish national football team haven't healed yet. I feel ashamed of MY 'lions'. We were the 2th best team of the world. And we lost against Sweden. I remember sitting on the couch with my orange shirt on, completely confident that Holland would win. We would've humiliated them, played around with them, made fun of them. And, oh, I couldn't have been more wrong. The 3-2 gestures sting me every time. But let's forget about it, shall we?

70-year-olds

A thing that is often related to Holland is drugs. But somehow people think that the Dutch practice the art of smoking marihuana every single day, no matter what age. Like you will find 70 year olds walking down the streets in Amsterdam, left hand strapped tightly on their walker, right hand holding a joint. You won't. Well they are there, but you probably won't find them. Let's just say it's not that common. We're not druggies!

My name is Jelle and I'm an immigrant.

Though it might not be political correct, I am proud of what our tiny country accomplished a couple of centuries ago. And I find myself talking about it. Often. The thing is that I wasn't that proud of those accomplishments before. Somehow it feels comforting to hold on to your culture. And that made me realize something. I am foreign here. Wait, don't get me wrong, I knew that before. But here, I am the odd one, the minority. And that IS something new. I think that everybody should do something that resembles what I am doing right now. Cause it makes some things so clear. In Holland, we love to complain a lot. Especially about immigrants. 'They don't want to be part of the society, they won't learn the language, they form an own society within a society, etc'. But now I completely understand. I know.

Deutsch

People often confuse the fact them I'm from Holland, and therefor speak Dutch. Dutch sounds like 'Deutsch'. So some people think I'm german. And with such a bold statement, the patriot inside me rises. I remember them about Amsterdam, marihuana, the DJs, New York,(we found it!)[and sold it], bicycles, football. And they will never forget, but they will. The queen should be proud with me, defending one's country. Or at least attempting to.

Pick pick pick

I've been thinking about a lot of things lately. And nothing seems to be sure in the end. I guess it has something to do with myself, I want to do EVERYTHING. And preferably at the same time. You could say that patience has never been one of my highlights. And that doesn't have to be bad. But usually its side effects aren't that positive.

Every time I make a decision, I change my mind again. I'll go to Sweden! Oh no, wait I want to go to France. No let's go to Australia, China,Spain,Italy, or  you know what, I'll stick with Sweden . Guess that has something to do with the fact that I rush my decisions. Inevitably, that has to do with me having no patience. It makes things quite hard.

How regretfully this sometimes is, how good it is in some occasions. Like with shopping. With your girlfriend. Every guy that ever had a girlfriend, was forced to join in on ahuntforthatcutepairofjeans. And they want it exactly how they imagined it, perfect. They dream of that pair of jeans every single night. They can visualize it, see every small detail in their mind. And these evil female creatures aren't afraid to share this with you. And we don't want to know. Seriously, we don't care.

As we enter a shop together, I feel my brain going to sleep mode already. 'Yeah, that's cute, looks great', I automatically tell her, while watching at the mirror. 'But my ass is so huge...' You get the idea. And it makes no difference what you tell them. 'You always say it's cute!', is the accusation. Like guys give a shit. I really don't care wether those jeans mis a certain detail. I have no clue if this is universal, but I guess it is.

I need just one shop to buy everything. If I see something I like, I buy it. I don't think about it, I just buy. I won't go to an other shop, to see if they have thatoneperfectpieceofcloth. If I can't find it in that one shop that I am in, it wasn't meant to be. It's just faith.

But I know it's stupid. But it's a guy's thing. I can't help it. Every time I went shopping, I realized that I missed all the 'sale' signs. And every single time I see an identical item, half the price. The reason for my impatience probably has to do something with evolution. I love the evolution theory. Imagine yourselves to go back in time a couple of generations, and you're hungry. So you pick up your spear, and exit your cave to look for some game. Why waste time on picking the most nutritious game? Just take the first rabbit you see.

And woman gathered plants, nuts, swamps etc. They had to be sharp. Dangers as poisonous swamps made them more aware what to pick, what to harvest. And now, in the 21th century, it pays of.

This was just some random doodling of the mind,

I'm off!

Introducing Me, Myself and I

You might have seen me, spoken to me, laughing at/with me. You might have seen me walking the streets of Amsterdam, New Castle, London, Rhodes, Berlin, Madrid, x^y, or my latest project, Göteborg of course. But I guess the odds are that you have never seen me. No hard feelings though.

So, do give me the chance to introduce myself. My name is Jelle, 17 years old. I'm from a shitty town close to Amsterdam. Nothing worth mentioning. I currently live in Mölndal, Göteborg, Sweden. I'm an exchange student in Sweden. Sweden? Yeah Sweden. That country next to Denmark(Denmark is next to Germany)[And Germany is next to France]. And all of those countries are in Europe. (Europe is not one country)[That was for the Americans]. 

The school that I'm attending at the moment is not considered to be an university. It's not a high school though, it's something in between. It's Swedish, it's different. Schools is Sweden are informal, one could give a teacher a nickname, and use it, for example. If you feel like getting some water, you can go get some water, without asking of course. That's quite a shock.

In Holland, we're obligated to address our teachers with either Sir or Madam, and if you're not sure which one to use, you would use 'U', the Dutch variant of the french 'Vous'. I forgot to use that once, which resulted in detention for 1 week. And detention in Holland isn't fun. I have a thing for being late. Not as in stylish late, but just being late in general. That didn't suit the Dutch school system, which means I spent lots of time cleaning my dear school. Now however, it's no big deal. Not even a comment. They don't care if you're late. At all. I love it.

My first day at school was epic. First of all, I was late. No surprises there. My host father was so kind to give me a ride to school. The level of stress was high, first days are always exciting. Did I mention that I knew nobody at the school? And had never been in Sweden before? Didn't speak Swedish? It was my first day? 

My school is located in downtown Gothenburg. It's build inside a building and it consists of a couple of apartments. Our school doesn't have a wardrobe or a lunch area and has kitchens in some of the classrooms. On the ground floor there's a bar. You could say my school is a bit strange. As I entered the school, I had to go to the 2th floor(which is the 1th floor of the school). Well, that's what I thought, after checking my timetable I realized I had to go to the 3th floor, and had to be in the 'Kemi' classroom. That was my timetable told me to do! I entered the class and somehow everybody looked funny at me. After this class, my principal told me I was in the wrong classroom. That explained a lot. Still feeling the thrill of being late, joining the wrong class, I meet my (real) fellow students.

Swedes like their space from monday to friday. On saturday they get nuts. When they get their medicine(alcohol), they loosen up. From monday to friday everybody tries to avoid as many strangers as possible, for example the seats in the trams are a battlefield. People don't prefer to sit alone, they DEMAND the seat next to them. Just put a bag next to your seat, and nobody will sit next to you. And if you end up sitting next to somebody, people actually brace themselves to get the first empty bench. they don't want to sit next to you. And that makes me uncomfortable. I mean, do I smell bad or something? Am I THAT scary?

I've been here for about 7 weeks now, and I like it. Got my shit together, starting to get used to the city. And the city, the city is great. Take a random tram or bus after 12 o'clock in the weekends, it's such a happy place. People singing, drinking, shouting. It's lovely

As I said, Swedes go mental on saturday. When they drink, they drink. Not for the refreshing taste of a lovely cold beer, no. That want to get so pissed that they are crawling on the ground, rolling around in their own vomit. That's the way they like it.

That's it for now, hope I didn't bore you too much!