Zeist is a town in the central part of Netherlands having more than 60,000 residents ( source from wikipedia ) and this is the town I am living for more than a month now.
This town is a typical dutch environment wherein you hardly see foreigners. This fact is really interesting to experience the culture and also a chance to practice talking dutch. Zeist is beautiful with many traditional churches, having a fresh atmosphere, spectacular nature with the forests and its surroundings.
I have been going to a Dutch church called "Nieuwe Kerk"for the past two weeks .It can be translated as "New Church" in English. It was a very special experience for two reasons. One was the love of God which was attractive, as always and the second one was the first time I was in an Dutch setting to hear everything in the local language. The pastor spoke slowly and thus it was easier to follow the preaching. It actually is better if the topic is quite familiar because you can relate to the topic even if there are some words that are not understandable. I was also familiar with the Biblical terminology like grace, love, compassion, sin, repentance, heaven, Lord, Cross, Creator in dutch so that helped me to connect easily with the sermon. I also carried a Dutch-English dictionary which was handy at times during the service. The best part was the evening service last week where the church was singing opwekking songs ( 'opwekking' is a commonly followed dutch gospel song collection, a lot of which are translated from well known english ones). You can google from utube and get a lot of them. Most of the songs were familiar as I have them in my iPod. It was definitely a great experience to connect and praise God there.
I am living in an apartment on the first floor in an area which is predominantly a shopping centre. My house owner who has a cloathing store below speaks only dutch. I remember having a tough time trying to explain the correct word for electric fire lighter over the telephone. It was also because my vocabulary is not that good in dutch. I used a different dutch word "brand" and started the conversation which is used for an emergency fire situation and we had a good laugh after he understood exactly what I was trying to tell him.
I am using a bicycle to travel to office as the weather is getting beautiful. I usually go to office wearing my shorts and T-shirts and take a bath at the office campus. Trust me, a lot of dutch people come to office by bycycle ( some travelling 50 kms everyday). I had fun fixing my flat tyre on a couple of occasions as well.
My work is going on good. I was selected for this project mainly because I speak a bit of dutch. It is indeed a requirement in my current project as I am projected as a dutch speaking employee :-) However I am doing my best everyday to learn it better. Everyday when I try to watch the news, dutch programs or read the bible I feel that my vocabulary is not very good enough. Practising dutch can be very tricky because a faint wierd accent or a language hiccup from your side can make the dutch try to switch in English because they want to practise it. So sometimes you find me as an Indian talking in dutch whereas a dutch person would reply back to me in English . An outsider looking at the the conversation would be confused as to who is the dutch or Indian among the two ;-)
So as the dutch say "It doesn't hurt to try" (Baat het niet dan schaadt het niet) , I keep going on...
Nou doe maar gewoon, dan doe je gek genoeg ( Just act normal, then you are acting smart enough ) explains a whole lot of dutch culture !
