Hypocrisy

Wow. This has been such a busy week. I finally finished the design for the wedding invitations and sent them off to the printer. I hope to get them back next week, addressed and in the mail! Tick-tock --time is going so fast. I'm really starting to feel the wedding countdown stress.

Thursday was dedicated to shopping for P.'s wedding suit. We finally found the suit in a small town named Goor. The name of the town literally translates to 'dirty' or 'mud'. Isn't that sad? "Hi, I live in Mud." It's actually a cute, small village.

I shopped for my wedding dress in the months of January-February this year and out of the 9 dress stores I made appointments with, only 3 actually let me take photographs of myself in the dress. What is up with that? And this is not an abnormal Dutch thing. I also heard from several American girlfriends that they had the same experience when shopping for their wedding dress. The stores will only let you take a photo of yourself in the dress that you are going to buy. I had wanted to be able to compare myself in pictures before making the final, expensive decision of a wedding dress. But no, for the most part, it is not allowed. Why? I have no real idea. I received several reasons from a variety of wedding store clerks:

1. They don't want you to take a picture, then take it to a seamstress and have the dress made --they don't want their designs to be copied. I don't believe this, because most places have photos of their best dresses, if not all of them, in catalogs or advertisements.
2. They don't want you to doubt yourself in pictures later. You may love the dress in the store, but if you go home later and look at the photos, you won't love it anymore. Well, duh - that is why you take pictures. A photo tells a thousand truths.
3. They don't want potential brides to post pictures of the dresses that didn't look good on them and write rude things about it on the Internet. It may be someone else's dream dress. I guess this could have happened.

I had a variety of wedding dress shopping experiences in stores all over the Netherlands. I had several really great experiences and one really, really horrible one. I have never in my entire life been treated so rudely while shopping. When I picked up a decorative hair ornament, the woman literally said to me (in Dutch) while shaking her finger, "No, no, no. Don't touch that. If you break it, than you have to buy it." Like I'm four years old. I won't share the expletives that were exploding in my head at that moment. There were many moments while wedding dress shopping where I felt like I was in a movie -- it was so script-like --the hoity-toity, snobby saleswoman looking down her nose.

The dress I finally bought, I chose because I fell in love with it and felt like, "this is it" when I put it on. However, the store where I bought it is also a small establishment with an extremely sweet saleswoman. We chatted and she really worked to accomodate any need that I had. I felt comfortable with her and she let me take as many pictures as I wanted. I think that played a large part in my decision as well. I would much rather hand money over to someone who is pleasant and nice and respectful.

Come to find out three weeks after I bought my dress, that the woman who owns the store is also from the same background and good friends with my hairstylist. Anyone who knows me, knows I am extremely picky and extremely loyal to my hairstylist. Whenever I move, the hunt for a good stylist begins and once I've found her, I stay. They are both Assyrian and claim their heritage from Mesopotamia or something bizarre like that.

Anyhow, the title of my post is 'Hypocrisy' and here is why: The EXACT same store where I shopped for my wedding dress that said "No pictures allowed" said, "Sure, no problem" when I asked if I could take pictures of P. trying on suits. The EXACT same store. We were just in the men's area instead of the women's. Can you believe it? Hypocrits. It truly made me feel that they think women are untrustworthy --that whole Eve ate the apple first and fed it to Adam thing. And the whole store was run by women!! Why? Why, I ask you?















New topic: There are no fast food drive-thrus in Enschede, other than McDonald's. As I am not a big Mickey D's fan, this is great for my diet. It would also look really stupid to be going through the drive-thru on my bike. Actually, come to think of it, there are no Dutch drive-thru companies at all --no drive-thru banks or ATMs. Must be something to do with pollution and a waste of gas... But, I digress. Lest you think, "oh those healthy Europeans", the Dutch do specialize in their own special deep-fried version of junk food, for example: bitterballen (a thick gravy-like taste and glue consistency, breaded and deep-fried), kroket (a large version of bitterballen), frikadel (fried sausage), berenhap (fried meatball and onions on a stick), saucijzenbroodjes (sausage in pastry dough) liham boutje (fried meat popsicle) and the infamous patat friet (french fries --usually served with mayonnaise on top). They also have a varied menu of fries...my friend A.'s favorite is 'patat oorlog' (meaning war fries) which is served with a large helping of mayonnaise and peanut satay sauce on top.

In the middle of downtown Enschede is De Muur (meaning The Wall) which is literally a long wall with little glass windows featuring all of the above sorts of Dutch fast food. This is a very popular attraction around 4 a.m. as the bars and dance halls are winding down. Kitty-corner to De Muur is an artsy little pub where I found my girlfriend A. early Thursday evening. She had been there for awhile and made friends with a group of singers from the U.K. One of the guys popped out while I was there and returned with a papercone of patat friet for A. Everyone laughed and I assume this related to some inside joke that had transpired earlier. Only the bartender was not amused. Upon witnessing the consumption of the tasty salty fried potatoes in his establishment, he promptly told us that french fries were not allowed inside the bar. The British guy apologized and said he wasn't aware of that rule, to which the bartender said there was a sign on the door. Sure enough, there was indeed a sign with what at first glance seem to imply: no ice cream, but in actuality was a big red circle with a picture of patat friet in a papercone and a red line through it. I found this very amusing because one of P.'s funny things about America is all the 'Do not' and 'No' signs...no parking, no cycling, no skateboarding, no shirt - no shoes - no service, no dogs, no cats, no - no - no. I've even seen a 'Do not shake the vending machine' sign with a little picture of a machine falling over on a dead guy. It's kind of a game between us while traveling in the USA to point out funny new 'No' signs. I got to report back to P. the next day about the bizarre 'No french fries' sign --only found in Holland. :o)