Happy Place
*All he’s been doing for the last half hour is nodding and smiling.
Stuart
Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.
I thought I’d seen you there on that beach a time or two, Stuart! haha
At least your happy place is innocent enough to require nothing more than nodding and smiling. Could be worse and embarrassing!
PS: Like the pic! :-)
Aledys Ver – I go to a lot of circle parties so I spend a lot of time there.
Unexpected Traveller – You should have seen the first versions of the happy place cartoon. I’m not kidding. In one of them I was dressed as Han Solo.
PS: Thanks :p
I know these trips to happy places quite well. I get to visit with both Dutch and Italian conversations. Good times, good times!
Alison – Good times indeed. I must admit that I sometimes use them with English conversations but for slightly different reasons :p
Wait a second… are you NAKED in your happy place?!?
Dave2 – What happens in the happy place stays in the happy place!
I can recognize the “happy place” look any day. It happens to me when I have entered into the third hour of those endless French dinners and have had my senses numbed from all the food and wine consumed.
I have had a couple of happy places, I have also visited the Moon and the stars, Saturn and all its rings, rewinded to moments of my childhood and tried to figure out when/how/why all this stuff about living in Holland has begun.
Het zogenaamde binnenpretje (^_^)
So true!! Great blog, will come back more often!
Barb the French Bean – French dinners sound epic :o
Anita – You must go to a lot of circle parties too
M. Verhoef – Het zogenaamde binnenpretje=The so-called chuckle? I cheated and used google translate :p
Paolo – Thank you
Hahaha :) Nodding and smiling is my absolute forte when we visit my boyfriend’s Italian family!
Well… dear invader that is a way to learn Dutch too.
By the way, I like your site and it is nice to know what foreign people think about the Netherlands and these crazy people over there.
It is very amusing to read, also for the Dutch like me.
Besides that, some things you are used to do and find common, seems not so common in the eyes of foreigners and makes you think why you are doing it like that.
Keep up the good work and enjoy your stay in the Netherlands (^_^)
Sabrina – It’s good to know it can be used in all situations, not just Dutch ones :)
Martin – Thank you very much :) I experiences the reverse of what you just described myself this Christmas. The English tradition of Christmas crackers that is so normal to me was seen as such a strange and mad thing by my family in law. Hehe.