Nee/Nee, Nee/Ja, or Ja/Ja?

Den Haag, Nederland

We don't get junk mail here in the Hague. We have this little sticker on our post-slot that tells the delivery person that we want nothing to do with junk "Nee/Nee." This seems like something the US Federal government should take on as a reform. "Nee" or "Ja"?

Article: Bill Gates on Where Progress Comes From - WSJ.com

I have the same feeling about Bill Gates (more or less) that I have with Andrew Carnegie: not quite sure I like their business practices but I really like their philanthropy. For example, Carnegie, aside from suppressing worker's rights, funded the Vredespaleis (Peace Palace) here in the Hague, the "seat of international justice."

Anyway, a good book review by Gates in the WSJ if you feel like some Saturday morning reading.

Bill Gates on Where Progress Comes From - WSJ.com

Loving Coffee Without Being a Drip - NYTimes.com

Very fun article from Frank Bruni. I can sympathize with breaking the beaker on the press pot. I think that is how Bodum makes all of their profit.

Loving Coffee Without Being a Drip - NYTimes.com

Success! (at Submitting an Application)

Den Haag, Nederland

We had our penultimate visit with the Dutch Immigration (IND) last week. We knew going into it that they were simply going to accept our application and thank us for our 300 euro application fee. I think we were both secretly hoping that they would say something like "everything appears to be in order and you are, after all, a handsome american couple so you should expect your permit in a few weeks." Of course, that did not happen, but, the IND did give me a fancy temporary visa stamp in my passport that will allow me to return after Christmas for up to six months.

Fingers crossed, in that period of time the IND will approve my application and grant me a 12 month visa. Then we'll figure out what and if I need to reapply to extend that 12 months later.

Thanks to everyone who helped take the survey and/or review the business plan. Maggie pulled out some really great editing at the last moment for the business plan and it is something to be proud of, even if a Dutch bureaucrat is the only one who has the opportunity to read it. Now I need to execute on some of it.

Washers and Dryers Only the Pharaohs Could Love

Being a “cabaña boy” is not all piña coladas, tanning beds, and hot oil massages. Sure, that's what everyone sees, but there's a lot more to it than that. Like doing the laundry. One small wrinkle: the clothes washers and dryers here in Europe, for convenience to the manufactures, do not have any words on them. They are all hieroglyphic-like symbols, that, in fact, do not always mean what I would guess them to mean. This leads to a lot of confusion, especially among American expats, and because I have expressed my bewilderment aloud, I have gotten emails from other expats asking me to tell them how to operate their washing machines, as if my bewilderment had gone away...

You might ask, “why not read the manual?” I have. Besides being utterly confusing with eight, interspersed languages in the same manual, not written by a native English speaker, and named but unexplained buttons, the settings are completely different from washing machines in the United States. Yet the machine has the same inputs: water, electricity, soap, clothes. Where's permanent press? Where's cotton /sturdy?

Take, for instance, the “wrinkle guard” setting on the washer. On my Candy 1225T, that apparently means: at the end of the cycle, after four hours, the wash will remain soaking in water, and you won't be able to open the front loading door. The only way I could figure out how to remedy this was to remove the power, turn off the “wrinkle guard” and set the wash for a different, new, wash cycle. I can appreciate European washers being more “gentle” on clothes, but after four hours, I expect a complete cycle.

The dryer is interesting. Ours does not have a vent to the outside. It has a built-in condenser that stores the evaporated/condensed water in a small tank. The tank needs to be emptied just about every time you dry a load. If you forget to empty that, forget your clothes ever drying. I usually set the dryer on the icon with “3 suns.” This gets my clothes to the partially damp state. Then I set it for another 15-30 minutes on the timed setting or I place them on the heated towel warmers. You may not run the washer and the dryer at the same time. There is an electrical switch that has three positions: “washer”, “dryer”, “off.” This has the side-affect of wearing clothes much past their "sell by" date.

Every time, I wash the clothes, I reminded of trying to order from a Chinese restaurant in the Hague. Choose from numbers one through one hundred, and if you don't like the result, try something different next time.

Empirical Analysis of Dollar to Euro Conversions

Looking back at our bank statements, calling a few banks, and doing some web research, I found that Cambridge Trust and Fidelity give the best deals on foreign currency exchange, specifically when you pull money from the ATM. Those two repeatedly charge at the “benchmark” rate, including all fees, and I highly recommend you check-out setting up account with either one to use when traveling abroad.

30 days of charges relative to the benchmark USD/EUR benchmark rate Sources: ECB, personal financial statements, sendmoneyhome.org (Accessed 2010-02-11)

One of the best feelings I have had since we moved to Holland was the day I got my bank account! Not having a bank account means that you carry huge wads of cash around, get rejected when you try to use your silly american credit card, and wait in long lines at the train station to buy a ticket (the machines don't take Visa or American Express.) In general, you feel like an idiot all day.

Getting a bank account is not a simple matter. You have to have a dutch social security number, a job contract, and proof of owning a dutch oven. It took us five weeks to get everything we needed to get the bank account running! That's a lot of awkward situations at the kassa.

Once you have the bank account, you might wonder, “how do you get money in it to pay something like the rent in euros when all you have is dollars?” For me, moving money to the Netherlands boiled down to five options:

	+'s	– 's
Bring Loads of $'s	Easy to pull out of your bank You get to finally carry a briefcase taped hand-cuffed to your wrist	Insecurity Unfavorable exchange rates at Travelex and other Taping it to your person hurts to take off
Bring Loads of €'s Bank of America will sell you currency, usually requires advance notice	Hand-cuffed briefcase-factor	Poor exchange rate, typically a 2% “fee”
Use foreign ATMs Most commonly recommended by travel guidebooks	You get to feel like a dutch-pimp with giant 100 Euro bills	Limit of 300-400 Euros per day Hit or miss fees Insecurity
Bank Exchange + International Wire	No need to profusely sweat as you pass through a train station	Bad exchange rate/fees Fee also charged by receiving bank
Exchange Bank MoneyCorp All these guys do is exchange money so it's a “volume, volume, volume” business	More reasonable rates/fees	Sketchy feeling Still pay the fee to your receiving bank Unregulated bank-entities

After looking at my statements, calling my banks for quotes, and researching online, I found the best way to a lot of money is to use an ATM. This creates a ridiculous, insane ritual: (1) I go to the ATM put in one card and take out 350 euros everyday and (2) put in a different card and put the money right back into the same exact ATM machine!

Fidelity, Cambridge Trust, and CapitolOne (sometimes I wonder how fidelity makes money) all do not charge foreign exchange fees. Fidelity, I have been with them for years, they have low fees on trading and banking. Their web UI is very very bad though and not nearly as clean as ING's. Cambridge trust charges a whole dollar per non-CT ATM, but that is a small price to pay and they have really personal customer service. Last time we called, there was no robo-answerer, a human simply picked up the phone after two rings.

ING Direct and HSBC – usually the go-to banks for the thrifty, definitely loose on international purchases. This is especially frustrating since ING is the national bank of Holland and HSBC is supposedly “The World's Bank.” The straightforward 2% these guys charge accumulates fast. Save these guys for emergencies.

The takeaway – call your bank before you go on your next trip and find out what their foreign withdrawal fees are even if you have done this and think you know the answer. A lot of banks changed their fee schedules over the past 12 months in reaction to the new consumer finance "reforms" in the US. If the fees are around 2%, consider calling Fidelity, CapitolOne, or Cambridge Trust and setting up an account.