I went to Holland in August of 1988 and the eighteen months that I lived there remain unsurpassed in terms of sheer fun and good times. Almost everyone in Holland speaks English so there was no real need for me to learn Dutch.
Then I met Randolph, my driving instructor who, driven to exasperation with my careless disregard for looking over my shoulder before changing lanes, shrieked at me one day: “Sushila, you are not good looking; you are NOT GOOD LOOKING!” Noticing my considerable bewilderment, he modified it to: “you are not looking well!” I discovered much later that he was translating literally from the Dutch “goed kijken” (which means “look carefully”)
Having assured myself that I may be good looking after all even if I wasn’t looking well, I decided to enroll myself in a course for learning Dutch. Once I got over the amusement of having a teacher named ‘Vermin’ (even though pronounced “Fermin”), I settled down to learning the language.
The first few lessons consisted mainly of staring at a bowl of fruits. We would be asked: “Is dit een banaan?” and everyone would chorus in response sounding like lisping school-children: “Ja, dit is een banaan.” There was always room for hilarious mistakes and once our own vocabulary had progressed from fruits to other pleasures of life, a student was asked: “Heb je een fiets?” (fiets = bike) She responded instinctively with “Ja, ik heb two fiets!” (thinking of course of feet). The whole class collapsed wth laughter including the girl with “two fiets”.
My favorite phrase, inspired by everything and everyone in Holland was: “Hoe vreemd” (pronounced “who framed”) meaning “how strange!”. It became a joke between my husband and me – anytime one of us would say “hoe vreemd”, the other would say “Roger Rabbit”. It made us laugh every single time.
Even today, after all the years that have sped swiftly by – I just have to hear somebody speaking in Dutch and in a magical instant, I am transported back to that beautiful country – with the lazily spinning windmills, the market-place with fresh vegetables, the hot cashew vendors on the streets, the French-fries with mayo (really does take it to a whole new level), the cheese stalls, the quaint streets of Amsterdam, the canals, the bikers, the beaches, the tulips, the pannekoeken, the rijsttafel – but best of all – the friendliest people in the world.