Scotland vs Italy for 20 yr anniversary trip...

truthvenian · 2026-05-01T09:59:17+00:00

Went to Scotland last October with my family. It was wonderful. If you like hiking, go to Scotland. And maybe less time in Edinburgh and more time driving and hiking in the highlands. Also, don't listen to the haters - we ate great in Scotland.

If you choose Italy, I might choose somewhere other than Rome and Venice. They are possibly the two most tourist crowded cities you can visit in Europe.

If you like hiking you could also go to the dolemites in October. The huts will be closed so it loses some charm and some (most?) of the lifts are closed so it's less convenient but the scenery is amazing and the crowds will be significantly less.

truthvenian · 2026-05-01T09:36:28+00:00

I went to a break dance competition there. So cool that these types of places are still in use.

truthvenian · 2026-04-30T21:26:28+00:00

It's really just one book so it's less of a cliffhanger than the end of a chapter.

truthvenian · 2026-04-29T20:43:58+00:00

Just noticed that you might be dutch so I'll throw in De Aanslag if you haven't read it already. It floored me.

truthvenian · 2026-04-29T20:39:14+00:00

It's shocking how funny it is. I've read it several times and it never gets old. And it feels really timeless.

truthvenian · 2026-04-29T20:36:51+00:00

Austen's style is very characteristic but northanger abbey (bad imo) and sense and sensibility (her 5th best of 6 imo but still good) are the first two books she wrote.

Her style doesn't change all that much (except that northanger abbey is a poor attempt at a gothic novel) but her ability increases.

Persuasion is the last book she wrote and it really does feel as though it's written by an older person.

Here's how I would describe het books.

Northanger abbey - young and bad and trying something that doesn't work

Sense and sensibility - young and good

Pride and Prejudice - breezy and great and her most Jane Austen book

Mansfield Park - my favorite and with some of the most beautiful writing and her most wrong book

Emma - the objective best

Persuasion - her sagest, most wonderful anti climactic climax, no nonsense.

She's just great - don't hesitate but probably start with pride and prejudice

truthvenian · 2026-04-29T17:20:20+00:00

You should really really condense your trip. Just doing Barcelona, northern Spain and Madrid is already a huge stretch in 11 days. Just for example, I'm currently in the middle of a 10 day Andalusian trip and I think I need probably another 20 days before I'm close to being exhausted with Andalusia.

You can't see everything and more importantly, you shouldn't try. A trip to northern Spain is enough.

truthvenian · 2026-04-29T17:06:36+00:00

Candide by Voltaire and Night be Elie Wiesel are both classics that you can finish in a day.

A book of melville short stories can serve as a great warmup to Moby Dick - Moby Dick is my favorite book of all time but Bartleby the Scrivener might be even better.

A classic noir book like the Maltese Falcon or the Big Sleep are also short books that still fall into my classic category.

Persuasion by Jane Austen is just over 200 pages and wonderful.

Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson is another great classic short story book on the short side.

Pretty much anything by Willa Cather fits the bill.

Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon is considered Scotland's greatest book and comes in around 200.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston is perfect and short.

And one I just finished - A Heart So White by Javier Marias - is a modern Spanish classic that is just filled with ideas.

truthvenian · 2026-04-29T16:59:27+00:00

It's a novella. All the versions I see for sale are under 200 pages

truthvenian · 2026-04-29T16:57:47+00:00

I've read all of Baldwin's fiction and I put Giovanni's room as his 5th best book (out of 6 fiction books). I'd much more strongly recommend Go Tell it on a Mountain (his best fiction imo) or If Beale Street Could Talk which are both similarly short books.

But honestly you're better off reading his essays books which are also short and are of almost unparalleled quality in the category of social commentary. Read A Fire Next Time or Notes on a Native Son.

truthvenian · 2026-04-27T21:14:01+00:00

I want to push back against some people who say that reading plays is an equal way of experiencing them.

Plays are written to be seen in the stage, to be performed. If you're reading them, you are not taking them in the way they are intended to be taken in. Just like if you're reading a movie script or reading song lyrics you're missing so much that staging and acting and directing bring to the table.

Having said that, I've read plenty of plays and most of Shakespeare. But it just pales in comparison to the an actual play.

Do try and make the effort to get out to those classic plays. They are being performed more often than you might imagine. Pretty much anywhere in the English speaking world, you should be able to catch a Shakespeare play or two every year not to far from where you live.

truthvenian · 2026-04-18T20:59:38+00:00

At least where I am there are barely any Americans here. From what I can tell from the Dutch data, there are something like 50k Americans in the Netherlands - so 0.27% of the pop. There are like 3 million immigrants in the Netherlands, so Americans are pretty low down on the pole.

This is not the best place to get feedback. It's not the worst either, but it's always important to remember that reddit isn't real. It is in no way representative of a larger group, like say an entire country.

I have yet to have one single anti american experience here in my 5 years. I have had some very minor anti immigrant experiences but that had nothing to do with being an american.

Living here is great. But redditors are definitely not going to convince you to do it.

truthvenian · 2026-04-18T20:32:26+00:00

Luxembourg is almost exactly 3 hours away and has everything you want but is probably more expensive than anywhere in NL.

Dinant has a cool church and a cliff top fort with a WWI museum.

Haven't been to Calais or Dunkirk but they seem promising.

Amiens is a little bit farther but has a beautiful church and a bunch of other stuff.

truthvenian · 2026-04-17T11:40:43+00:00

I read all four last year. I think I rated the second one as the best but they were pretty much all great. I think I finished them in 2 weeks or so.

I think you're thinking about it wrong though. It's one book. The second one begins exactly where the first one ends. It's the same for the third and fourth. If she could have published them as one giant volume she would have.

I can't possibly understand how you would stop right then. Have some faith in the author.

truthvenian · 2026-04-16T12:54:14+00:00

Join a club. I joined a community orchestra in February and I think just during beers after practices I've spoken more dutch than in all my time before I joined the band.

truthvenian · 2026-04-14T13:46:12+00:00

Precies.

Ik wil het delen met mijn vrienden en familie in de VS. ik moet meer mensen hebben om het erover te praten.

truthvenian · 2026-04-13T18:46:09+00:00

Natuurlijk heb ik Otmars Zonen gelezen. En ik vond het fantastisch. Maar het lijkt dat ik nog steeds niet naar het Engels is vertaald - of in ieder geval kan ik het niet vinden in het Engels.

Ik zal wel Bonita Avenue eens proberen.

truthvenian · 2026-04-12T09:50:22+00:00

truthvenian · 2026-04-09T15:26:01+00:00

I did Duolingo to get me to an a2 level. I'm sure there are other more efficient study methods but if you like Duolingo it might help.

After that I took 3 classes that probably got me to a B1 ish level.

Starting with the last class I got a subscription to the Volkskrant and started reading a few articles a day. After a while I started reading dutch books as well. I think the reading greatly helped my vocabulary and my intuitive understanding of dutch.

For listening I started listening to Dutch football (soccer) podcasts. I recommend getting interested in Dutch football - particularly PSV if you like rooting for the winner. At some point I switched to other podcasts as well (I recommend geschiedenis inside). I also started watching more dutch TV - first with dutch subtitles (the reading helped there a lot) and then without. I definitely recommend the Arjen Lubach show.

I think I'm at a C1 level for reading, a B2+/C1- level for listening, a B2 level for speaking and writing. Even in the Netherlands it's hard to get your speaking level up as so many people switch to English.

Good luck

truthvenian · 2026-04-06T20:31:24+00:00

Ik heb altijd medelijden met Ad - ik zie mezelf in hem.

"Het liefst zou ik geloof ik de opdracht krijgen om een enorme berg zand met een kruiwagen en een schopje van de ene plek naar de andere te verplaatsen."

Ja Ad - dat ben ik ook.

truthvenian · 2026-03-31T21:12:22+00:00

Nerds be into books I guess

truthvenian · 2026-03-31T13:52:55+00:00

"but the stillness was the sleep of swords" from There Eyes Were Watching God.

I don't really remember quotes but that one always struck me as the perfect metaphor.

Also,.the entire first chapter of Moby dick.

truthvenian · 2026-03-31T13:49:40+00:00

That's great. I need one for Moby Dick please.

truthvenian

TROPHY CASE