a small request. Also, commonalities across the pond

I have a considerable amount of credit at Amazon UK, some left over from Christmas and some from my birthday, and would really appreciate suggestions on ways to spend it. As far as important SFF books of the past year go, I already have Farthing, The Privilege of the Sword, The Android’s Dream, and Three Days to Never. I also have The Unfolding of Language on historical linguistics. Suggestions don’t have to be for recent books; I just thought those listed above were likely to be suggested. Oh, and Alma Alexander’s Gift of the Unmage is already on my list. Her Worldweavers books sound like exactly my cuppa.

London was strangely comforting for us. Of course it was nice to be able to speak English to everyone, though I still believe that people who speak the murkier shades of Estuary English ought not to be allowed to make announcements in places like airports, where a large fraction of their audience is likely not to be British. It’s not the pronunciations like “anuvver” (for another) that bother me, just that the words are so swallowed and mashed together they’re hard for me to understand. (I can think of a few US accents that ought to be similarly restricted.) It wasn’t just that, though, or having all the signs in English. And of course there are obvious differences, like having the traffic driving on the left or having the Tube, unlike subways in most US cities I know, be as busy during weekends as during the week. (Odd thing about driving on the left; in Sydney, we found that people mostly walk on the left, too. In London, sometimes they do but more often they walk on the right, which left us totally unsure of where to walk to avoid running into people.)

Most of the things that made us feel at home there were related to eating. Big cups of tea in the morning, for instance, instead of the tiny ones we get here. Big cups of water, though granted that’s only on request, not automatic as it mostly is in US restaurants. Quick service, which would be rude in a Dutch restaurant, because customers would feel they were being rushed. That’s fine if you only go out on rare special occasions, as is traditionally true here, but when you eat out most days, it gets very old to have dinner take 2 hours each time. I think it may change to some extent as the Dutch begin to eat out more and more, but it hasn’t yet. Menus had “jacket” potatoes; baked potatoes are very rare in the Netherlands, where you get fries with everything from fancy dinners to Chinese food. Thy also had hamburgers, which (at least in the Railway Tavern where I ordered one) proved to be overcooked and fairly tasteless but mercifully lacking in that odd sweet-ish taste Dutch burgers have. Also, it was large enough that Rudder wouldn’t have complained, though food quantity is very rarely an issue for me anyway. And Harrods even had soft pretzels! (oddly, as one of the choices of bread to accompany soup.) Sadly they were out of them so I can’t report on the quality. It’s probably just as well; I’m picky about my pretzels.

I really enjoy life in the Netherlands, but it is astounding how many things you’d never even think of are different here. I mean, even the moving boxes I was issued for a recent office move (all the way across the hall, about 10 feet away) folded together in a completely different way than any I’d even seen in the US. It was a sensible way, and no harder to more wasteful, just totally different. Who knew there were so many ways to assemble a cardboard box? And of course in an environment that different than the one you’re used to, you’re always a little extra alert to see what else is about to happen that you didn’t expect. So it was relaxing to be in a place that felt halfway closer to home, just for a short break.