It took a while to make friends in Holland. The Dutch are not the most outgoing, and I wasn’t either at the tender age of 18. There were these two metalheads in my art class, Ruud (typical Dutch name), and Bart (character from The Simpsons). Their English sucked, and so did my Dutch, but we bonded by comparing band logos we’d drawn, and reciting random lines from metal songs in a deadpan voice. Like this…

RUUD: Mark.
ME: Ja.
RUUD: You will die. You will fry.
ME: You never learned, so now you’ll burn.
[RUUD and BART nod approvingly]Read More »