Most guidebooks that cover the Netherlands really only cover Holland, and to be honest, really only cover Amsterdam. Den Bosch isn’t on the tourist map, which is why ignoring guidebooks completely was such a good idea for this trip. I booked my week-long rental via Google Maps, and it turned out to be the nicest place I had ever stayed.

The apartment is so pretty, a photo tour is in order. I took so many because I hope to have my house look like this some day! I am in love with Dutch design, and this place had all the elements that make it seem both fresh, modern, and classic. When I walked in and saw this living room, I was instantly happy:

Plenty more photos of this fab Dutch apartment after the jump.

The apartment has a kitchen nook, dining room, living room, and two bedrooms. What the what?!? I couldn’t believe it. It was also about $100 a night because I was staying for a week. Talk about a goedkoep.

View of the beautiful trees in the courtyard outside:

The owners were on vacation, so their upstairs neighbors took care of me while I was there. They were so friendly, and helped me practice my Dutch. The husband, Tony, explained that the house used to be an old brewery 300+ years ago, hence the beautiful wide-slat wood floors:

I loved how the TV was almost an afterthought, instead of a giant flatscreen. It was nice that they had it, though, to watch the World Cup on.

My little fridge was restocked with an incredible number of treats, including the Dutch sprinkles you put on toast. Yum.

I actually never slept in this bed:

I chose this one, which was more tucked in to a little nook (and therefore quieter, darker, and more gezellig):

The nighttime reading I have there, by the way, is Dutch Ditz: Manners in the Netherlands, which came in such handy while I was there. I picked it up at one of my favorite bookstores in the world.

Because this was such an old building, the second bedroom and bathroom had been tucked into a space that had been created to divide up these beautiful, huge rooms. While I was showering, I noticed this window (and air vent) that showed how truly tall the floors really were:

I also liked that the bathtub had astroturf next to it. Quirky design thing that you’d only see in a hipster house in the US:

If you want to do something like this yourself, wherever you’re headed, I can’t recommend it enough. Here’s how:

Go to Google Maps. Enter your location and a phrase like “hotel” or “B&B”. Here’s the search results for “B&B near Den Bosch, Nederland”:

View Larger Map

The truth is that my first choice had been “bed and breakfast Achter de Kan,” which shows up in this map. But that place was booked that week. So then I just googled “Achter de Kan B&B,” to find somewhere similar, which led me to this awesome list, which included a listing for In de Witte Laars. If it’s good enough for the Dutchies, I figured, it’s good enough for me!

I did the same thing with my time in Texel–using Google maps to find a place–and had fantastic results. Because then, having already seen a Street View of the place, I had a sense when I was near the right spot. Aren’t the interwebs incredible?

I zoomed around the city, using Street View to see this this place was in the heart of the town.

In general, while I was there, I just felt incredibly lucky–lucky to have found this place, lucky to be able to stay there for a whole week, and lucky to be surrounded by such style and elegance.

I searched the Google maps nearby towns looking for a B&B, and mapped out my route using Google street view. It looked like the total commute time by bike would be 30 minutes, 45 tops. After my freakout about how it would work and my test drive in Delft, I found out that the Netherlands really makes biking easy, no matter where you are.

Video of my daily ride after the jump.

I’m hoping the cute song makes the bumpiness charming, rather than nauseating.

I live in Seattle, and we have nothing like this. We have someone who seems to be an ineffectual mayor (my skeptical friend nicknamed him Mayor McCheese). He actually complimented my own Dutch bike when I saw him in my neighborhood, which is nice. But what would be nicer is a plan for a real biking infrastructure like the kind in this tiny town in the Netherlands, so small it barely has a wikipedia entry. Does this plan exist already? I don’t think so. And if not, Mayor McGinn, could you create  it? Because the video above shows how fantastically great that was for many reasons.

In case you want to enjoy some much-more-professional videos (sans rockiness and something on the lens), try out these favorites sites that always inspire:

• Cycle Chic
• Amsterdamize
• Let’s Go Ride a Bike

What the hell am I doing? Who studies Dutch…for fun?

And did I also mention it cost thousands of dollars?

I had plotted out the route to the school the night before, winding my way through a series of wrong turns and construction zones until I found a reasonable path and knew that it would take me roughly thirty minutes to get there.

But the bigger question remained: Why wasn’t I on a beach somewhere, rather than heading to a classroom at 8 in the morning?

The night before, lying in bed, I thought: Maybe I’ve hit my novelty wall. Maybe going to a town you’ve never been to, to speak a language in the most intensive immersion environment possible, is actually beyond the pale. Maybe it was actually a bad idea.

Flipping through Facebook to distract myself from a rising tide of panic, I clicked on a piece posted by a friend. She liked this fascinating article on how rough it is to parent from New York magazine. It spoke to my exact thoughts about this adventure I was about to start the next day: Maybe doing something only for fun isn’t the point. Maybe it’s actually possible to have a difficult thing bring you happiness, or at least contentment.

Consider this excerpt:

But for many of us, purpose is happiness—particularly those of us who find moment-to-moment happiness a bit elusive to begin with. Martin Seligman, the positive-psychology pioneer who is, famously, not a natural optimist, has always taken the view that happiness is best defined in the ancient Greek sense: leading a productive, purposeful life. And the way we take stock of that life, in the end, isn’t by how much fun we had, but what we did with it.

People ask me how it went at language school, and I struggle to give a simple answer. It was 11 hours of mental bootcamp. My brain got mushy around the edges. I’m still working out how to talk about it on this blog. And yet it was experience I will remember for my whole life, and it made my life the better for it.

So another article about happiness in today’s New York Times was especially relevant to me as I sort all this out. The piece by Stephanie Rosenbloom, titled “But Will It Make You Happy?” talks about what kind of purchases add to our longer-term happiness:

“One major finding is that spending money for an experience — concert tickets, French lessons, sushi-rolling classes, a hotel room in Monaco — produces longer-lasting satisfaction than spending money on plain old stuff.

‘It’s better to go on a vacation than buy a new couch’ is basically the idea,” says Professor Dunn, summing up research by two fellow psychologists, Leaf Van Boven and Thomas Gilovich. Her own take on the subject is in a paper she wrote with colleagues at Harvard and the University of Virginia: “If Money Doesn’t Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren’t Spending It Right.” (The Journal of Consumer Psychology plans to publish it in a coming issue.)

Thomas DeLeire, an associate professor of public affairs, population, health and economics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, recently published research examining nine major categories of consumption. He discovered that the only category to be positively related to happiness was leisure: vacations, entertainment, sports and equipment like golf clubs and fishing poles.

Using data from a study by the National Institute on Aging, Professor DeLeire compared the happiness derived from different levels of spending to the happiness people get from being married. (Studies have shown that marriage increases happiness.)

“A $20,000 increase in spending on leisure was roughly equivalent to the happiness boost one gets from marriage,” he said, adding that spending on leisure activities appeared to make people less lonely and increased their interactions with others.

That said–and not to put too fine a point on it–but these happiness studies often seem to recommend a life spent living in a yurt, not enjoying Prada’s 2010 orange lipstick, for example. As someone who continues to find happiness in a yellow hard-sided suitcase, I was glad to see the point made, that it doesn’t have to be either-or, as well:

Spending money on an event, like camping or a wine tasting with friends, leaves people less likely to compare their experiences with those of others — and, therefore, happier.

Of course, some fashion lovers beg to differ. For many people, clothes will never be more than utilitarian. But for a certain segment of the population, clothes are an art form, a means of self-expression, a way for families to pass down memories through generations. For them, studies concluding that people eventually stop deriving pleasure from material things don’t ring true.

“No way,” says Hayley Corwick, who writes the popular fashion blog Madison Avenue Spy. “I could pull out things from my closet that I bought when I was 17 that I still love.”

She rejects the idea that happiness has to be an either-or proposition. Some days, you want a trip, she says; other days, you want a Tom Ford handbag.

Interesting stuff, especially for the travel-minded, I think.

First, the rationale: When I worked for the Travel Company That Shall Not Be Named, the ideology was to take an Exacto knife and cut out parts of the book that researchers wouldn’t be visiting. Since these books were generally 500 pages and heavy as a brick, any weight to not have to lug around all day, every day, was a good thing.

The problem, of course, is that half a book wants to lose pages over weeks of use, and I’d often end up with a mess of loose sheets containing critical information. But I still like the idea of taking only what I need. Here’s how I did it.

For my upcoming trip to Dutch Princess School–and the week beforehand, where I’ll be touring far-flung parts of the Netherlands–I pulled a list of a few locations I’ll be visiting. (None of which, it’s worth mentioning, are covered by the TCTSNBN.) The ingredients that went into this book are:

• An 8” mini-binder Russell & Hazel notebook with various inserts and folders to hold loose pages and an oversized rubber band to keep it together
• Maps from a Dutch cycling atlas ordered from an online Dutch bookstore that ships to the States
• A few pages of sites and restaurants from good guidebooks, but no hotel listings (since those are booked already)

Voilà:

The notebook is small enough to fit in my favorite purse (since I don’t believe in taking “travel purses,” “travel dresses,” or other monstrosities). I can open the binder up and walk around with only the pages I need for the day, including the cycling maps for when I’ll be biking. Between this and my my tricked-out iPhone, I’ll have everything I need for international travel to places I’ve never been before.

Hooray for the weekend! I have big plans. They include a three-day getaway to the Oregon Coast (whose virtues we’ve already discussed) and not wasting two hours at Sex and the City (which Betty and I expressed doubt and concern about, just based on the trailer). I’ll be trip planning for my upcoming adventure at Dutch language school.

Trip planning used to stress me out. Now, I love it, because let’s face it–when novelty is a key reason for why you like to travel, there are no wrong answers. Take, for example, the Dutch national park, which I may or may not include in this trip. It’s famous for its free white bikes, shown above. (Notice how they’re not locked to anything?)

But the first time I went, on assignment for the Travel Company That Shall Not Be Named, I wasn’t quite so sanguine.

I wasn’t sure to expect. The Netherlands is a tiny country, so I knew that it wouldn’t be Yellowstone.

I took the bus to Otterlo, the closest town to the national park, which didn’t seem all that remarkable at first glance.

Then I noticed this sign.

Except–hello, my fellow Americans–it dates from 1150. Eleven. Fifty. And that’s not even a big honking deal.

Anyway. When you’re paid to travel for a living, it can be easy to feel like a big shot. Look at me! I’m livin’ the dream!

This is absurd, of course. The downside of novelty-seeking is that everything is actually new to you. Which means, by default, you don’t know anything about it.

I had read about the famous white bikes of Holland’s national park. Walking from Otterlo in the general direction of the park, feeling a little uneasy, I decided that this place was probably where the white bikes could be found, since “fiets” is the Dutch word for bicycle:

Um, no. I hadn’t walked far enough. I didn’t want a sketchy little garage.

I wanted this:

Slightly different, no?

The park itself was amazing. What started out seeming like a forest became sand dunes, and then–even in the middle of summer–because something like the tundras and vistas I associate with Betty’s incredible photos of South Africa.

Does that look like northern Europe to you?

One of the best parts of the Hoge Veluwe national park is that it’s like a Kinder Surprise: Awesome candy shell with a shiny toy in the middle.

In this case, it’s the Kröller-Müller Museum, a temple to modern art dropped there by two Germans (hence the umlauts in the name).

Inside were stacks of incredible art, including the second biggest collection of Van Goghs (second only to the…you guessed it…Van Gogh Museum).

Sure, why not? Just another day at the park in the Netherlands.

Dappled sunlight, a bike ride or two, and a maybe a snack. Oh, and masterpieces keeping you company on your way out.

The Dutch really do have this quality-of-life stuff figured out.

I still haven’t decided whether to go back or not. It’s an incredible place, but the search for novelty might push me in new directions, rather than returning to the park. Stay tuned.

Hooray! My tax refund came yesterday, which means I’ll be booking my time at Dutch Princess School soon!

It’s probably worth explaining why on earth I’m going to spend thousands of dollars to get to fluency in Dutch. And most importantly–why Dutch? Literally every time I mention that I’m trying to learn Dutch, the person I’m talking to has a completely baffled look on their face. Why that language, of all things? I’ll tell you.

I am in love with the Netherlands. My time in the Netherlands made me rediscover my childhood love of biking, but more than that, I love the directness of the culture, how no-nonsense people are.

When I was researching the Netherlands guidebook for the Travel Company that Shall Not Be Named, I knew I could walk into any B&B and be in and out in five minutes, with very little back-and-forth. In comparison, the British (I also researched U.K. guides) are lovely, but seem ever-so-put-out if you don’t enjoy tea and a biscuit with them. In a series of 14-hour research days, the quick, efficient manner of the Dutch gradually endeared them to me.

Every time I travel somewhere, I try to learn at least a little of the language. What surprised me about Dutch–as opposed to German, French, and Spanish, all of which I’d tried in a passing way–was how charming the turns of phrases are. As someone who likes writing, I love words themselves.

For example, the word “schoon” means both clean and pretty. Being a tidy sort, I found that funny. The word for frog is “kikker,” because, you know, they kick. “Snoepgoed” is candy, but “snoep” also means candy, and “goed” equals good, so I always think of this as “candy good,” which any five-year-old would agree with.

The Pacific Ocean is the “Stille” Ocean, because it’s quiet and still, compared to the Atlantic. Previous to learning this word, I had never once thought of “Pacific” as an adjective. Have you?

I get the same pleasure out of studying Dutch that I think other people do when they complete the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. It’s a mystery and a gift, to quote the poster above (which was pasted to a building in Amsterdam–mouse over the image to see the translation).

Here’s the thing about studying a language that not many other people in the world bother to study: The people whose language it is are amused, puzzled, and more often than not, delighted when you give it a go. It’s so much fun to be asking a stern Dutch old man something, switch to Dutch, and see his face soften. When I say I’m a novelty-seeker, I mean it–keep your French lessons.

Why I’m willing to spend so much money to go to school comes down to a life dream I have to be fluent, not just halting, in another language. I’ve never gotten there–and I don’t want to get stuck at the pigeon-language level I’m at now, even after three years of off-and-on study.

My goal to be fluent is why I found this Saturday Night Live sketch so funny. It’s a Law & Order sketch as if it was written by an elementary-school class studying Spanish. It’s not hilarious, but it is so true. I want to get beyond the “what time does the train come” / “do you have any pineapples” phase of learning a language.

If you’ve ever done a language immersion, I’d love to know about it: What you would have done differently? What you wouldn’t have missed out on for the world?

In the meanwhile, I’m studying my heart out here at home using websites and software programs to bolster my never-quite-good-enough knowledge base.

When doing my own internet research on this topic, it seems like everyone wants to know the same thing: which language sites are good?

Accordingly, I put these sites through their paces and came up with a highly-subjective-but -hopefully-useful list that exposes the good, bad, and just plain ugly in language-learning sites. (As always, no money exchanged hands for these reviews.)

Ready for the ratings? Let’s get started!

1) LiveMocha.com

Here was the first thing that struck me about  LiveMocha.com: It has a substantial language base. Most sites don’t offer more obscure languages like Dutch (boo, babbel.com!) or have only the basic pleasantries available for you to learn (as with the BBC’s rudimentary site).

LiveMocha goes way beyond the French-German-Spanish-Chinese axis and lists languages I’ve never even heard of. So add a point right there in its favor.

The downside to LiveMocha is a problem with its software’s intelligence–or lack thereof.

LiveMocha’s software isn’t sophisticated enough to adjust to your levels or prevent repetition. The software developers should look at freerice.com, which actively adjusts your difficulty level if you answer questions correctly or not.

Even with that flaw in mind, of all the online sites I tried, LiveMocha had the most variety in types of questions and the most ambitious attempt overall. GRADE: B+

2) Rosetta Stone

Rosetta Stone works for some people. I’ve spoken with them in various Dutch-language meet-ups and real-world classes. But two things about it I find super-tedious:

Unbelievably bad stock photography–from 1988. Seriously, Rosetta, spring for some new pics. The version I have isn’t that old, and yet everyone is rocking the acid-washed, high-waisted denim look. The Selleck ‘stashes on their subjects make it impossible for me to concentrate. I’m only partially kidding.

Click-and-click again interaction design. The foundation of Rosetta Stone’s teaching philosophy seems to be the same ideology that says reciting multiplication tables is the proper way for children to learn mathematics. It may very well be, but…blarg. This is not a fun, 21st-century way to engage with this material.

Once I’ve clicked on the white bowl, and the blue bowl, and the red bowl, and the blue car, and the red car, and the white car, I feel like it might be a perfect time to start watching back episodes of Lost. The last thing I want to do with my spare time is something so un-fun. Did I also mention that Rosetta Stone costs hundreds of dollars? GRADE: D-

3) FlashcardExchange.com

I thought FlashcardExchange.com was what I was looking for. Combined with the knowledge I have from books that explain grammar and colloquial sayings, flashcards would help me learn words in a quick, straightforward, self-paced manner.

The navigation and setup are simple: click “c” to continue through the card and see the answer, and you can also indicate which ones you got correct to shrink your pile. Genius!

I worked my way through almost 200 adverbs. When I got down to the final three from the list (FINAL THREE FROM A LIST OF 200 ADVERBS!), I was stuck on the word for “false.” Because looking up words in my Dutch dictionary often helps me by showing me the root of the word or relationship to other, similar words, I headed there to get over my memory block.

It turns out, the word on my flashcard means exactly the opposite of what the flashcard said: the dictionary told me the word I had been studying means “true,” not “false.”

Grr.

The drawback of free sites, in general, is that they’re only as good as the knowledge members contribute. In this case, someone just sloppily entered a list of adverbs, and because the words are all new to me, I had no way of knowing that I was learning incorrect associations. The idea of this site was great, but without trust in the material itself, I won’t go back. GRADE: F

4) Wikibooks.com

Pretty pictures, clickable pronunciations, and clear write-ups. Plus, did I mention it’s free? Wikibooks.com, including the Dutch lesson series, seems like a winner at first glance.

What’s good on the site: Clear, concise descriptions of obscure, difficult Dutch grammar constructions, delivered with the earnestness of a kid collecting funds for UNICEF. But it’s almost too earnest, too authoritative for its own good, as in this example from the first lesson:

The above conversation utilizes the familiar form of the personal pronoun (je, jou) where English uses you. However, Dutch also has a polite or formal form of the personal pronoun for the second person (you), u. Many languages have this distinction. It is e.g. comparable with Sie in German, vous in French or Вы in Russian

Dude. I don’t speak Russian. Some days, I barely speak English.

Wikibooks can leave me feeling a little…dumb. But more than that, because it’s not interactive, it’s lacking the gameplay and quizzing functionality of sites like LiveMocha. Essentially, it is what it says it is: a book. And for me, it’s easier to work with an actual book (I like Bruce Donaldson’s Colloquial Dutch). But it’s still a great, thorough online resource. GRADE: B

5) Laura Speaks Dutch Podcast

Weird name, right? A friend pointed me to this free podcast in iTunes, named by a Dutch guy (Brenno de Winter) in love with an American (Laura) and teaching her his language. LauraSpeaksDutch is very sweet, and his enthusiasm for the subject bubbles over. Sometimes, he reminds me of a wedding DJ, happily taking requests from the crowd.

It’s a true labor of love, and while I don’t know that it could replace a textbook, with 55 episodes, he’s created more than I can keep up with. He seems to have stopped for now, but I hope he takes it up again.

His efforts are superior to anything that was produced commercially or by the collective, and while not every language is likely to have a Brenno, it’s worth looking at iTunes podcasts as an equal–if not better–source than many of the language-learning sites out there. GRADE: A

Have you found a language site that could school these five? Let us know!

If everything works out as planned, right around by July 1, 2010, I’ll be attending Dutch Princess School.

Its real name is Talen Instituut Regina Coeli, but really, who can remember all that?

Let me recap the situation.

Originally, I started learning Dutch for my job at a the Guidebook Company That Shall Not Be Named. Even though everyone told me that everyone in the Netherlands speaks English, I still wanted to get some niceties under my belt. Then I just fell in love with the language, and now it’s on my list of things to do before I die: Become fluent in Dutch.

For a few years, I have been studying here and there with a teacher in Seattle. When she decided to retire from teaching Dutch, we had this conversation:

Me: You know, since I won’t be able to keep coming to you for lessons but I’d like to become fluent in Dutch, I wonder if I should attend an immersive class?

My Teacher: That’s a good idea. If you do, you should go where the Argentinian wife of crown-prince Willem-Alexander studied. What’s her name?

Me (completely befuddled): Um, who?

My Teacher (as if every American should know the Dutch royal line): You know, his Argentinean wife.

(pause)

She studied Dutch at that school. And her pronunciation was quite good.

Me (weirdly enthralled by the idea of following in the steps of a modern-day princess): What’s her name?

My Teacher (thinking): Máxima. You should google “Princess Máxima language school.”

And here’s the thing about the story about an Argentinian soon-to-be-Dutch-princess’ language school, which sounds like it should, by rights, be an urban legend: It’s actually a true story, and Expatica confirmed it.

I did my research. There are other schools, and some of them are very good. But according to the reviews online, this one is supposed to be the best, or at least good enough for a princess.

That concept is just too fun to pass up. So look for updates during the countdown to Dutch Princess School.