Congrats to Elliot and Colin!

Elliot gets one more tagged mention in our blog. Congrats to Elliot and Colin whose civil partnership ceremony Charles and I attended in England this past weekend. We were too jet lagged to take pictures, but there are some here.

Seattle House Pics

We're no longer in the Netherlands, folks. As of July 14, Charles and I are residents of Seattle. We've found jobs and last week we moved into a house in West Seattle. We bought a tonwhouse on SW Avalon Way which is about a 10 minute bus ride into downtown

I don't have a good picture we took ourselves of the outside, but this is from the builder's web site...



We live in the green unit in the middle of the picture which is the second townhouse. There are four units in total, each with slightly different layouts. Two women live in the unit facing the street and someone just bought the third unit in which is red and cannot really be seen in the photo. The last green unit is still for sale. When you walk in on the ground floor, you see something like this...



In the hallway, you'll see our snazzy new washer and dryer...



We have a guest bedroom for those who might want to come to Seattle and visit (it doubles as a poodle room, but we'll move them to the office if we have guests)...



The guest room opens into a little backyard...



The guest room also has its own bathroom



Next you'll find our bedroom (no bed frame yet)...



The bedroom has a door..



With a porch (we need a little table and 2 chairs maybe)...



And a view of Seattle...



There is also a master bathroom...



Upstairs...



Is the top floor...



Where you'll find our kitchen...



Living area...



With swanky fireplace...



Dining room table...



My office...



A place for poodles to perch...



And a view (you can see our bus stop)...



Just for kicks here is the view the other way...



OK, I know that was a lot, but I like the house. If you want to see the rest the set is here.

Before we leave...apartment pictures!

As some of you may already know Team Vaughn has recently decided to cut our stay in the Netherlands a bit short. After a year in Holland and living in two cities (Rotterdam and The Hague) we've decided we're moving to Seattle!

We'll keep the blog going to detail our adventures there, but we figured we owe everyone pictures of our apartment in Den Haag. We will only have lived there for 3 months, but it provided us with a great view of the city...



Here is our main room...



Kitchen...



Bedroom...



This place is generally smaller than our place in Rotterdam, but the bathroom is much bigger...



You can see the rest of the tour here. And we'll end with a picture of me crashed on the sofa with poodles...

Koninginnenach 2008

After my last post, I thought it was time for a more positive one so here's the photo tour of the Vaughn celebration of Koninginnenach (the night before Queen's Day).

The night before Queen's Day, The Hague offers lots of free concerts and other activities in the city. We had a couple of friends over beforehand for drinks and appetizers (Charles made guacamole!) and then we hit the town. Here are some highlights.

Before having friends over, we visited the Kermis or Carnival in the city center...



Charles won me some stuffed puppies so hopefully Remus and Berlin won't be jealous...



We also encountered a giant order of fries...



After some homemade guac and wine, we hit the streets which were crowded and full of drunk people wearing orange (the national Dutch color)...



But we were in good company so it was a fine evening...



You can see the rest here.

For the actual Queen's Day, we avoided the crowds in Amsterdam, stayed home and played Grand Theft Auto 4.

Our worst customer service experience to date

Since moving here we've had to put up with non-attentive wait staff and often had to be a bit obnoxious to flag someone down to get a refill on a drink that's been empty for over an hour or a check that's already been requested twice.

Yesterday was a new low for Dutch customer service. Charles and I decided to take the poodles to Scheveningen which is a small beach town near Den Haag. After letting the little guys run around in the sand (dogs aren't allowed on the beach after May 15) we decided to have dinner at Strandrestaurant Blue Lagoon.

We sat down and ordered drinks and bread right away which came out quickly. After a few attempts to flag the waiter down we made out dinner order: kip (chicken) sate for Charles and sashimi with a side order of french fries for me.

Over an hour later: I had my sashimi but nothing else. We flagged down our waiter to get refills on our wine, but didn't want to be rude an ask about our meal. We waited about another thirty minutes and then asked our waiter when he thought the fries and kip sate would be coming. He said did not hear us order these so he didn't hear us order two out of the three items! This was crap because I ordered my meal and Charles ordered his. So he just didn't hear Charles at all? And he heard half of my meal? Be real and admit your mistake.

So about fifteen or twenty minutes later we had out food (how long does it take to make fries and chicken on a skewer?), but were tired and wanted to leave so we asked for the bill. The bill, of course, charged us for every single item (even the mayonnaise with the fries which proves he heard the fry order!). No discount.

So we're in a country that doesn't tip as much as the US does and we feel like we had a terrible dinner experience. We decide not to tip at all. The waiter also left his little card reader machine on our table so Charles hand it to him on the way out.

He gets all moody and says something to the effect of "No tip? Were you not pleased with your service here?"

Us: "No, we weren't."

Him: "Well then, I'll never serve you again."

We walk away because we don't plan on coming back and don't want to start a scene. It ruined our evening and I am now a bit weary of going to beach restaurants.

Southern Biscuits, dutch style

Coming over to the Netherlands was tough on my recipes. It seems like the things I enjoy cooking always require an ingredient that's damn hard to find here. Perhaps most difficult is my family's biscuit recipe. Similar to an unsweetened scone, this marvels of soft and flaky deliciousness, requiring both baking powder and vegetable shortening.

A few months ago the super market we lived above had Crisco in the American section. I bought 2 of the tubs. Then, this last Friday a friend of ours let me know she had spotted baking powder at a high end grocer Gransjean.

This morning, 10 of these bad boys popped out of my oven:

Het Strijkijzer

A quick follow up on the last post

Rachael did have an adverse reaction shortly after writing her previous blog post. After the sugar effect wore off, she slipped into a coma, that was quickly upgraded to "light nap". TeamVaughnBlog (a subsidiary of Peauxdellco) does not endorse the recreational use of Tressor. If you or someone you know has a cereal addiction, please seek professional help.


So after 8 months of Rotterdam, we're packing up and moving out to Den Haag. Het Strijkijzer is the largest residential tower in Den Haag (the tallest in the netherlands is Montevideo, which is in our current neighborhood). Construction just completed. It's so new Google Earth doesn't even show a building there.

Here is what the tower looks like now:

The bad news is it'll be smaller than our current place, so no separate guest room. We actually lucked out, most of the floor plans are 1160 sq ft, but they had a handful of odd ones that are 1,270, which we managed to get. We're on the 35th floor, so I'm also concerned about the elevator situation. It's a new building so the elevator capacity could have been overlooked. There is student housing in the bottom of the building, but there should be enough distance floor wise so that won't be a problem.

Good news is Rachael will be a few tram stops from her work. My commute will change by at most 10 minutes a day, but I won't have to rely on a metro. My rail ticket also will be the same, as I've got a network pass anyways. There's a pretty big gym in the building under construction. The Hague is also an easier city to live in if you are an expat. There are more bars there that cater to a mostly foreign clientel. In Rotterdam, we haven't really found a place we can just go for a drink with friends.

We'll be moving in either around the 1st of April or the 15th. Pictures of our new digs will follow shortly.

Knoflook and Tresor

I think it's about time for a food post.

Last night Charles and I went to Knoflook which means garlic in Dutch. As you can see from the web site, the items on the menu which do NOT contain garlic are specially marked. For dinner we had...

Creamy garlic soup to start
Bread with garlic spreads
Charles had lamb cooked in garlic
I had salmon with garlic pasta
For dessert we split chocolate cake with garlic ice cream which was fantastic

Needless to say we both had to brush our teeth twice this morning.

Another interesting culinary discovery we have made is this fabulously delicious cereal called Tresor. It is made by Kellogg's and as this blogger states, it "can't possibly be legal anywhere esle but Holland." However I do think they also have it in France and Germany. It's basically crispy yummy caramel flaky things with chocolate and caramel pudding in the middle. This cereal actually gets more tasty as it absorbs the milk. I am putting a limit on the number of times we're allowed to indulge in this treat.

Perfect example of bad Dutch customer service

I hate to complain, but here is a good example of how customer service can sometimes be difficult in this country.

In early January, I brought my racing bike to MegaBike to have it repaired and to purchase a more city friendly bike. I had the hardest time dropping the racing bike off because all three repair shops claimed they would be closed for varying periods of time ranging from 2 weeks to permanently. Charles was with me so he remembers the craziness of running between the different shops and hearing this weird story about them closing.

Finally the guy in the Shimano shop says he will take my bike, but because of the closing it will take about a month to repair. I say I am fine with that because at the time I had my broken elbow and wouldn't be riding my racing bike anyway. So I leave the bike and get a receipt.

In mid February I call the bike shop and they tell me they can't find my bike! No apologies or suggested solutions. It is just gone. The guy working that day took down my number and told me he would call me back. I never received a follow-up call.

So this weekend Charles and I go down to the shop and hand the ticket to the guy working there who happens to be the same guy who was there when we dropped the bike off in January. He immediately knows where the bike is and makes a comment about how it has been there for a long time. I say something about having to wait because the shop was closed in January. He laughs and tells me that the shops never closes!

Hmmm, then I guess I just imagined being told that by multiple employees who almost refused to take my bike because of this mysterious closing.

I can go on and on with similar examples, but I have realized that living in America has spoiled me. I am used to the customer always being right and getting some kind of freebie when the vendor doesn't realize that quickly enough. You just don't get that here.

Except at this bagel place. I was pretty impressed with them after a visit this weekend. Good bagels too.

Obama-rama in the Netherlands

It's fascinating to watch how another country views our elections. In particular most dutch people like Obama, and it's bizarre to see the front page of the news papers here, about once a week covering the primaries.

"What will Obama really change?"


















"Hillary wins, Barack loses: Why smear tactics work"


















I've learned more about how we elect people this election from simply explaining to colleagues how the system works. Texas is a perfect example, and I've had to explain to people how Obama probably actually won the state as a whole, even though he lost the primary.

The biggest confusion, when it comes to a dutch person, is the federalist system, and how America uses some very weird ways to insure proportional representation.

I will leave with these, and the comment that as far as I can tell, these aren't meant to be racist.















Graffiti seen on my train to work at Rotterdam Centraal station.