itulpanensland

Kanske inte så roligt för er som inte har varit i Holland, men det är mer eller mindre så här det går till på kalas:

The Circle Game

So your Dutch colleague (or your girl/boyfriend) says to you, "Hey, why

don't you come over to my place on Saturday, it's my birthday"... And you

think great, I'm making friends here, this is really kewl. Yo, party with

the Dutch.

And like a good party-goer, you take a shower, put on a bit of cologne and

dress up a bit for that you-never-know-who-you-might-meet moment.

OK, so the party is called for five in the afternoon on a Saturday, but no

problem-o, that must mean dinner, and so you get a nice bottle of wine for

your host and head off, fashionably late. Bzzzz.

Enter the world of the circle party.

Circle parties are a uniquely Dutch version of hell - which level, I'm not

sure, but on the enjoyment scale they fit somewhere between doing your taxes

and going to the dentist.

Imagine if you will, a group of adults sitting in a circle on folding

chairs. You will be expected to shake hands and introduce yourself to

everyone of them. Who brought their grandmother, you might be thinking, and

why is she wishing me congratulations? Did I win something?

No, you did not. Take your gezellig seat and sit down for a cup of coffee.

Cold coffee. And a piece of could-be-cake, could-be-pie, sure-is-awful.

Respond to every cold fluid and sawdust-flavoured morsel with a grin and

mmm, lekker! Who brought their kids, and why are they running around? How

can there be so much smoke when the party just started? And the heat...

Where's the heat coming from? It's November and the bloody door is wide

open.

For the next two to six hours, everyone will sit in that neat little circle

and try to make polite conversation.

Do not try to impress them with your Dutch or knowledge of Dutch society,

because you will be wrong. Rather, talk about the quaint little things you

like here; mention your travels; discuss Seinfeld. Keep it light. Do not

mention that people are dressed as if in pre-1989 Poland; do not ask if you

were supposed to bring a gag gift costing less than five euro.

There is no food. You got your cake, so shut up. Though the clock is moving

slowly enough to prematurely age your twin on another planet, though it has

struck six, seven, eight o'clock, there is no dinner. Did they say dinner?

Maybe you were supposed to eat beforehand.

And so it goes. Even Dutch people hate these things, and how could you not?

How can you party with your new friends with Tante Helena showing you her

surgical scars and little Jan-Jaap sticking the raisins from his cake up

your nose.

It's not so much a party as an obligation; like flossing.

When Dutch people want to be friends with you or to entertain you, they

invite you out, or they will explicitly say dinner-party, barbeque...

anything but the dreaded birthday party.

You cannot be part of Dutch society and avoid the circle party, but I do

have some tips:

First of all, I limit my Dutch partner to six circle-party-credits per year,

each good for four hours of "fun" with the family.

An eight hour circle party (yikes, Christmas) uses up two credits; no more

credits, and gosh, we're so booked up!

The second tip is to set a time limit, say two hours - if you wait for the

party to break up naturally, you could have already developed stage ten lung

carcinoma, not to mention malnutrition.

Finally, don't worry about being an oddball-buitenlander. Pick up a magazine

and read, wander around and snoop, make calls from the other room. Trust me,

nobody will notice.

But don't forget on your way out to say goodbye to Tante and Oma and cousins

Jaap, Jan and Joris - all of them -- again with the handshake (or three-kiss

if they try) and the obligatory "wasn't this gezellig". Well wasn't it?

Until the next time.

P.S. The Dutch take an obtuse pride in saying gezellig is not easily

translated, but I find that it can easily be interchanged with "this sucks."

Try it, and you'll see what I mean.