How I spent my Easter vacation, part 1

The best thing about having a break is going out without the sense of urgency I normally feel. I do not have to hurry. I can take my time, walk slowly.

First I booked an appointment with a health spa in town for next Tuesday. That’s a first for me, a result of my rather severe upbringing. That kind of self indulgence was considered ‘common’. Consequently my muscles ache with stress related knots. Time for a 60 minute pounding.

I spent the rest of my first day off taking it fairly easy, doing some light shopping: A Jamie Oliver cook book for a family member, a new soundcard for myself (to be installed in a new computer to be bought later this year or next year), a ‘rocket air blower’ to clean the dust off my camera’s sensor. Looked at boots and sneakers, none took my fancy. Looked at jackets, none fit.

In my quest to test all the Japanese sushi places in town, I settled at Tokyo Cafe on Spui. I think they fancy themselves a rather chique ‘grand cafe and restaurant’, with the staff in traditional black and white clothing. But my overall experience was less favourable. It’s hard to see inside from the outside, and the first impressions were ‘tacky’ and ‘stuck in the 70s’. A waiter told me to shut the door behind me. I thought he sounded a little rude, but I did as I was told.

Someone had parked their Vespa in the front bar and the place looked like it hadn’t been open in a while. I was shown to my table where, once seated, there was a distinct whiff of the sewer.

All the staff were Chinese. Is there ANY Japanese restaurant in town where the staff isn’t Chinese? Have Japanese people all been deported? What’s the story there?

I ordered edamame, sashimi sake, sashimi hotategai, nigiri hokegai and nigiri ebi. And some sake to drink.

The sake tasted a little funny, but it may have been the cup they served it inl. The edamame was fresh and warm, but I wasn’t sure of their sashimi sake (salmon), and I definitely didn’t like the slices of lemon they put between the hotategai (scallops). The lemon just didn’t taste very nice in combination with the soy sauce and wasabi. I wasn’t impressed with their nigiri sushi either, the rice wasn’t sticky enough.

The rest of the day I spent encoding videos to upload to youtube.com. You can check them out, but it’s all old people’s music.

Stan Smith in the house

Last season I noticed my (Fila) tennis shoes were getting a bit tight. As you grow older, your feet keep growing. Whether they actually grow, or just get flatter and thus longer and wider, I don’t know.

fila.jpg

I’d never been keen on them anyway, these ‘modern’ tennis shoes are higher around the ankle and heel. The faux leather edge feels uncomfortable.

I had looked around for a new pair, but they all had the same modern cut. Again and again I’d walk into shops to see if there was any shoe I liked. But I’d come out empty handed, or with a pair of yet another pair of sneakers for everyday use. Oh, how I yearned for a pair of old fashioned Adidas Stan Smith tennis shoes.

Stan Smith tennis shoes were the norm in the late 70s and 80s when I played tennis regularly. Adidas were big. Brands like Fila and Tacchini were starting to become popular, but Nike had only just become known in our country. Kappa was cool, but not for tennis. Diadora, of course, was for girls. Asics’ design was just too ‘busy’ with its tangled swooshes – and in any case, Asics was a badminton and volleyball brand.

I played a lot of sports in school and my friends and I were Adidas ‘fans’. We’d scrounge sports shops for bargains and bought their cotton soccer shorts in every colour imaginable. We were buying them bigger and bigger, too. Baggy had become popular. Those bargain hunts were also good for scoring ‘rare’ items – odd colour shirts and designs. We worshipped the three stripes.

I coveted Stan Smith tennis shoes with their pure white leather and green finishes. (If you wanted to be different, you bought them in France, where they had red finishes.) They were cool and they were comfortable.

They were, however, too expensive. My parents weren’t into the whole sports thing anyway and money, at the time, was tight as my dad had decided at 42 he wanted to go to University and study law. 80/90 guilders was deemed too much for a pair of tennis shoes.

They got me a pair of Ilie Nastase shoes (here shown in black – they were bright blue back then.) I think they were around 50 guilders. I was happy with them at first, but after a while the mesh finish began to look a little tatty (after a softball training session on black gravel) and I wasn’t keen on their thick slick soles. I didn’t feel like I had a good grip on whatever floor I was playing on.

They didn’t last long either. I got another pair of Adidas shoes in a bargain sale. I don’t remember what they were called. They were similar to the Stan Smith, but the leather was off-white and apparently made of kangaroo skin (which made them very supple and comfortable) and they had a red finish.

I wore them out quickly (I played every sport imaginable in them) and for my graduation I asked for a pair of Nike shoes, Nike having become a big hit with us ‘jocks’. Again, I opted for a Stan Smith look-a-like. A plain white shoe with a light blue swoosh.

When they went I got an even simpler pair of Nikes in a bargain sale in a Danish supermarket. I batted my eyes at my very sweet uncle who forked out the equivalent of 15 dollars. They were cloth-top tennis shoes with a dark blue swoosh.

I didn’t play tennis that much anymore, so they lasted me a long time but eventually died a sneaker’s smelly death.

When I picked up the sport again around 1998, I bought the Fila shoes mentioned before. And then my feet ‘grew’ and this season I got tired of the shoes being too tight. I’d also come to realise that of every brand shoe I’ve put my foot in, Adidas comes out the most comfortable.

With some glee I noticed ‘retro’ shoes coming back in fashion and a lot of brands bringing their 80s models back on the shelves. A further check brought a real smile to my face.

There they were, real Adidas Stan Smith tennis shoes. Priced at 75 euros they were cheaper than most current sports shoes, but still twice as much as back in the day. I didn’t buy them. I went back, didn’t buy. Went back again, didn’t buy. Picked them up, cooed over their absolute shinyness, but didn’t buy.

‘Maybe they’re cheaper in France,’ I thought, thinking back on how it used to be ‘cool’ to get a French pair. But when I got there, I didn’t want to carry another pair of shoes around. ‘I’ll buy them when I get back to Holland,’ I thought, thinking I didn’t want to play the tournament I’d committed myself to on shoes that were too tight.

But when I got back, the Stan Smith shoes were sold out everywhere. Which is why I turned to online shops. I had some Amazon vouchers left, enough for a pair of shoes, so that’s where I started and found Champs.

I didn’t know exactly what size to get — there are such big differences in sizes between countries and brands. So I checked all my other sports shoes and chose the average.

The shoes were cheap: 54.99, but the p&p brought it back into perspective: 87 dollars in total.

Today my shoes arrived from the USA, with 20 Euro customs tax on ’em, too, but since I don’t count the vouchers as money, I figure that’s just what they cost me. 20 Euro for a brand new pair of Stan Smith, as coveted for the last twenty years.

stansmith.jpg

And I picked the right size too.

Comfort shoes

sebago.jpg

Like a lot of women, I have a thing for shoes. But strange as it may sound, I think I inherited this particular obsession from my father.

Growing up in WWII he did not have any shoes, so he developed a fetish in later life. My parents would, and I believe they still do, fly down to Lisbon for the weekend to buy shoes. Shoes are cheaper in Portugal.

Ever few weeks my father, a rather conservative man with 15+ pair of shoes — can you imagine? — will line up his collection and he will clean and polish them all. I never did pick up that part of his habit.

There are 30+ pairs of shoes in my closet right now. A few years ago, I threw out a lot of older ones, but kept enough so as not to make me nervous. I’ve stopped buying new pairs regularly, mainly because most of my money goes on computer stuff and music. But lately I’ve felt the old itch coming back.

Continue reading