We’re in Paris. More about that later. For now, a quick post about reciprocity.

As we left the Louvre, a guy was selling Eiffel Tower keychains and other souvenirs. I tried to steer the kids away, and told the guy that we weren’t going to buy any, but he saw how much Henry wanted a keychain and he insisted on giving one to Henry.

Of course, the law of reciprocity kicked in. We got about 30 feet away and I felt compelled to return and give him some money.

I tried to overpay. He was charging 1 euro for a keychain. I gave him 5 and told him to keep the change, using the extra to help other kids.

He wouldn’t accept. Instead, he insisted on giving us another 2 keychains and a larger statue. I even tried walking away but he chased us down and forced it on me.

So, double law of reciprocity? At this point it was truly altruistic, since I already had all the souvenirs I wanted, and I had already given him money. Why didn’t he just accept my 5 euros? He and I would have both been happy. He would have had a great sale, and I would have felt good about being nice to someone else.

Oh well, it all worked out for good.

The bureaucratic system in the Netherlands is quite efficient. They asked for a lot of documents (including apostilles for everything, which was a huge headache), but they were pretty fast on their end. We got our residency cards on Tuesday, so we are legal to stay here for the next year!

We did have a moment of panic though.

Most of the family had brand new passports when we made the trip. Mine was getting towards the end of its life. Set to expire in June 2023. I thought about renewing it in the US, but passport application times in the US are ridiculous. Even expedited they can be 2+ months. I had some international travel scheduled in July, so I couldn’t risk it.

So, I knew I’d have to renew my passport while in the Netherlands.

Luckily, there is a pilot program for Americans to renew their passports with the embassy in the Netherlands, and it’s only 3-5 weeks rather than the 5-12 in the US.

Looking at my calendar and planned international travel over the next year (there’s a lot of it), the best possible time to renew my passport was early October. However, we didn’t have residency cards yet. But, the person at the expat center said that our residency applications were complete and we’d get the residency cards in the mail.

So, I decided to renew my passport.

I filled out the paperwork and went into a DHL location to send it via certified mail to the embassy. The employee explained that they were only a package dropoff point. My item was more like a letter in size, so they couldn’t take it. The employee recommended I go to the post office. She directed me to one, but it was actually closed.

So, I googled another one and went there. It was actually just a grocery store that sold stamps, not a real Post Office. As such, they couldn’t take a certified package, but they could weigh my envelope and put stamps on it. Then they said I could drop it in the mailbox in the parking lot.

At this point I had been wandering around downtown Tilburg for over an hour and decided to try it.

I stuck my passport and the renewal forms in an envelope, sealed it, addressed it, put on stamps, and dropped it in a random mailbox in a grocery store parking lot.

I was now in a foreign country with no passport and no residency permit. I was just a little bit nervous. What if my passport didn’t make it. Sometimes mail gets lost/stolen after all. What if war broke out before I got my new passport back? Would I send the rest of my family home? Or could Linda get me into the embassy? Ok, just don’t think about it too much. It will all be fine …

Yesterday my new passport came in the mail. 2.5 weeks after I sent it in (compared to the 7+ weeks for each of my kids’ passport applications in the US).

So, I have both my passport and my residency cards. I’m legal again. Just in time for us to go to France for the kids’ school break next week.

Sometimes habits and automatic technology features are good. They make things efficient, save on processing power.

However, sometimes habits and technology cause problems when they don’t work right in a new setting.

For example, suppose you have automatic lights on your car. That is very convenient. No need to turn them on and off. Saves time. Unless of course you switch to driving a car manual lights, you forget to turn them off, and your battery dies.

Or, suppose that gas pumps are always a certain color and on a certain side, while diesel pumps are always a different color and a different side. That makes it really easy and automatic to fill up your car with the correct fuel. Unless of course you are in a different country, are distracted from running behind and having to get your car jumped, and you forget to read the sign and grab the wrong handle. Then you fill your car up with diesel instead of petrol.

In short, we had some car troubles this weekend.

We are very grateful to our Bishop and his inspired son. Our car battery died in Belgium, very close to where stake conference (a church meeting for a large geographical area) was going to be. We called the bishop. He said that his son had told him that morning, “you should take the car jumping stuff to stake conference.” The bishop doesn’t normally have that stuff in the car with him, but he listened to his son and brought it. As a result, he was able to give us a jump!

P.s. we actually pay for breakdown insurance, but for some reason when we called they said “nope, you don’t have that insurance.” I need to get that sorted out.

UPDATE: turns out we didn’t empty the fuel tank soon enough (or maybe the mechanic messed something up when draining the fuel lines). The car worked great for 2 days. Multiple uses including two trips of 40+ miles. However, today it was idling for a minute while I was waiting to pick up Timmy from school. Then it shut off. When I tried to start it again, gas started leaking out the bottom. Niet so goed.

UPDATE PART 2: We called the breakdown insurance number. They sent a tow truck. The guy came, saw the leaking gas, crawled under the car, said a hose was disconnected, and reconnected it. Then he had me start the car. All fixed! Drove home just fine.

On Monday I had a great workshop visit at Radboud Universiteit (Nijmegen).

Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands (Maastricht claims that it’s actually a little older, but either way, both cities are close to 2000 years old). I thought I would catch an early train in so that I could see a bit of the city. I made the train, but unfortunately it was pouring rain when I got there.

So, I skipped the tour. Still, I got fairly wet transferring from the train to the bus and walking to campus. So, I got to present a workshop in wet clothes (my top half was dry thanks to my umbrella, but my shoes and bottom of my pants were pretty wet). First time for that!

The workshop was great though! I got some good feedback on the paper from a diverse audience (econ, finance, and accounting are in one large, combined department there, so all three groups were at the workshop).

I’ll have to go back to see the city with the family sometime it is dry.

After visiting Odense, I took a train back to Copenhagen. There I got to see the church where my great-great-grandfather was christened, the church where his mother was buried, the Christus and 12 apostles statues in the Church of Our Lady, and the Copenhagen temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Overall, a great experience!

The Copenhagen temple.

I had a great visit to the University of Southern Denmark last week. The night before I got shown around the city by Andreas Ostermaier. The day after the workshop I stayed and toured the Hans Christian Andersen museum and house. Lots of pictures below, but first my thoughts on the museum.

Hans Christian Andersen is famous for his fairy tales: The Ugly Duckling, The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes, etc. I grew up hearing some of those stories from my mother. We have ancestors from Denmark, so we always felt like we had a special connection with the stories.

I expected the museum to have a similar inspirational theme: our potential as individuals, self-confidence, focusing on what really matters, etc.

The museum was nothing like that. Instead, it was quite dark. It portrayed Hans Christian Andersen as a dark, brooding, conflicted person who was filled with self-doubt and felt like he needed validation from others.

I wouldn’t have minded one portion of the exhibit exploring those feelings. For example, the argument that “The Ugly Duckling” is an autobiography, is compelling and can be inspiring. However, the museum made everything be on that theme. Even little side exhibits had to have that same theme. They had souvenirs arguing about who was more important and the inkwell and pen fighting over who was the muse.

They even had an exhibit speculating on his love life, his multiple failed romances, and the possibility that he was gay, simply because he had some male friends and left his estate to one of them (he had no children). Personally I don’t really care about his love life or his sexual orientation.

I would much rather have had exhibits focusing on his rise from poverty, his overcoming obstacles, and the positive effect that his works have had on millions if not billions of people. Instead, we had a dark, depressing museum that left me feeling ill and grateful that I didn’t bring my children.

That being said, I loved seeing his childhood home and town and thinking about the inspiration he has given to the world.

When we arrived in the Netherlands, I started asking people what we should go see on the weekends. The number one answer was Efteling. A random stranger even told us about it on the train from the airport our first day here!

When we asked, “What is Efteling?” we were told, “Disneyland, but better.”

That pretty much sums it up. Great rides and adventure areas, all based on folk stories. Some you know (e.g., Little Red Riding Hood, The Frog Prince), some you’ve probably heard of but couldn’t recall (e.g., Sinbad and the Valley of Diamonds, The Wolf and the Seven Kids), and lots you’ve never heard of (e.g., The Indian Water Lillies, The Troll King).

It was a grand adventure! We happened to go on a rainy day (which are fairly common out here), so crowds were quite small.

In spite of the rain, Timmy insisted that we do the water rapids ride. Linda chose to do it with the umbrella open to keep both the rain and splashes off of her and Sarah.

I made it to Denmark! On the train to Odense to present at the University of Southern Denmark. I’m very grateful for Andreas Ostermaier and the faculty at USD for inviting me.

Not a great picture from the train, but the views are great! I’m going to stay an extra day after the workshop to see the Hans Christian Andersen museum (in Odense, by the University) and then go to the church where my great, great grandfather was christened and the church where his mother is buried.

I’m heading to Denmark for a workshop at the University of Southern Denmark. I hopped on my bike at 6:35am to head to the train station. Train to Breda, then Brussels, then flight to Copenhagen and then train to Odense.

I didn’t think about how difficult it would be to balance a suitcase on my bike though. I tied it on, but that added a few minutes I didn’t have. Missed my first train.

Luckily I built in a little bit of a buffer in my schedule. As long as I can make the train transfer in under 5 minutes I’ll be okay.

UPDATE: I made it to Breda and waited on the platform my app told me my train was on.

The app was wrong. The train left from the next platform over. I missed my train and will likely miss my flight.

UPDATE: I tried calling my airline (KLM). They said the hold time was over 45 minutes, so they were going to disconnect me. I called Delta (KLM partner where I have platinum medallion status). They said there was nothing they could do.

My original flight was Brussels to Amsterdam to Copenhagen. From my house it’s about the same travel time to Brussels or to Amsterdam. However, the Brussels train is once per hour whereas trains to Amsterdam are every few minutes. I was flying out of Brussels rather than directly out of Amsterdam because (1) it was cheaper and (2) the Amsterdam airport has 4 hour security lines.

When I missed my train my first thought was to call my wife and ask if she could drive me to Brussels. She said she could, but as we worked out logistics we realized I would still miss my flight.

So, I’ll try going straight to Amsterdam to see if a KLM desk agent can fix things for me and get me on the second leg of my flight. Wish me luck!

While on the train to Amsterdam, I tried calling my wife to update her on the plan. She had dropped off the call early with me because one of our kids was calling (Timmy and Sarah are both home sick). She didn’t answer when I called her back a few minutes later.

I tried calling Timmy. He said that the call dropped while he was talking to her. 30 minutes passed and neither of us heard from her. It’s only a 15 minute drive from our home to where she was going to pick me up, so Timmy and I were both confused and worried. I was thinking maybe I should get off the train and go home. Maybe there was a car accident or something.

Luckily, before the next stop I got a message from her. Turns out she had run out of data and gotten lost. But, she’s home safe now. Phew.

UPDATE: KLM let me modify my flight. They didn’t even upcharge me. I’m on the plane now to Copenhagen, about to take off. We’re a bit delayed. Hopefully I don’t miss my train there too …

Nice morning for a bike ride. Too bad it’s supposed to be raining this afternoon. So, bike to the train station and take the train the rest of the way.