On Pizza

One of the many irritations of life in Holland that I have yet to write about is pizza. Over the past few months I've had to work very late on many nights and have gotten to learn a lot about the state of pizza here. When we work really late, we order pizza for dinner because it's easy to eat, almost everyone likes it, and it's easy to order a bunch of. There are two main pizza chains in the area, however only one delivers to work. Their pizza is pretty bad, very frugal on the cheese (shocking thing in the land of cheese), expensive, and tends to cause me to have very weird dreams after eating it. Another serious pizza problem is that it is difficult to get at night. Many times I've been at a party or at someone's house and 10pm comes around and we're starving. The immediate reaction is to order some pizza. Dominos stops taking orders at 2145. All the other pizza places are closed by then also. We have found some places open later, but they serve cardboard with cheese on it instead of pizza. Obviously this is a cultural thing, because who would order pizza late at night? A couple weeks ago, we had a large number of visitors at work for some meetings on a day when the cafeteria at work happened to be closed. No problem, we'll just order some pizzas for lunch. Wrong. The pizza places do not open until 1600. Who eats pizza for lunch? We eventually remembered that pizza hut was open at lunch (but doesn't deliver), so we ordered from there. They don't even ask for your name when you order four pizzas, and they hand them to you when you walk in without even having to ask. Nobody has pizza for lunch, so when you walk in, you don't have to tell them your name, they know the pizzas must be for you. It's all very strange and it makes me wonder if people are missing out on the joys of spontaneous and/or late night pizza. I never knew pizza could be so hard.