October 20: Gent, Belgium

The semester here is split up into two terms so rather than midterms, we had finals in mid-October. In the week leading up to finals week, I had a major presentation so I spent the weekend in recovery. I didn’t have a final exam until Friday, though, so on Monday morning I departed for my first solo backpacking trip. I had acquired a train ticket to Bruges, Belgium from a friend and it expired on Friday, so I might as well use it.

I arrived in Gent, Belgium on Monday afternoon and hit up a few tourist destinations. I started off in the Belfort en Lakenhalle (Belfry and Cloth Hall), a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I climbed 215 feet up the 298 foot Belfry and got a great view of the city. I was at the top with the gargoyles when the bells chimed the hour, and I watched as the automated gears began to turn to ring the bells.

Just next door to the Belfry is Sint-Baafskathedraal (St. Bavo’s Cathedral). The exterior is a mix of Romanesque, Gothic, and baroque and the interior is filled with paintings, sculptures, screens, memorials, and tombs. The main “attraction” is Jan van Eyck’s 24-panel altarpiece The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb. I stood staring at the detailed piece as at least two tour groups walked through.

My final stop was the Gravensteen (Castle of the Counts). I didn’t arrive in time to go into the castle, but I wandered around the outside looking at the architecture and the fortifications. I also wandered along a pretty stretch of canal before heading back to the train station – I had a hostel booked in Bruges and wanted to find it before dark.

I just barely caught the train to Bruges (saving myself a 30 – 60 minute wait for the next train) but it was so crowded that after walking through 3 train cars, I did like the other students and sat on the floor in the entry/exit part of the car and listened to my Dutch language podcast.

After a bus ride and a great deal more walking than necessary, I was able to find the hostel just as the sun went down. I checked into my room, left my bag in a locker, and followed the directions of the receptionist/bartender to the nearest grocery store to buy dinner. Pizza and juice seemed like a good enough choice until I returned to the hostel’s kitchen to find that there was no oven and the microwave appeared to be broken. Luckily, the microwave only appeared to be broken so I stuck the pizza in and figured soggy pizza was better than frozen pizza.

As I waited in the kitchen I talked to the other backpackers and ended up eating dinner with a Canadian who just applied to medical school and decided to travel Europe while waiting for the decisions of the schools. We wandered around town that evening finding some nicer pubs and some pretty shady ones. I was amazed at how silent the town was at night. After the cobblestones began to wear on our feet, we headed back to the hostel for some rest before the next day’s adventures.

October 11: Katwijk Beach

After 7 weeks of living just 6 km away from the North Sea without having actually seen it, I decided it was time to experience the beach! I had a free Saturday afternoon so I drug my housemate Toby away from his studies and we glanced at a map and jumped on our bikes. There’s a nice little bike route that guided our way (thank goodness because we only had the vague idea that we needed to head North) and took us along the canals, fields of sheep, and through town. On the way, we saw a couple driving horses from their carriage – Toby thought they might have been Gypsies.

We stopped at a grocery store along the way for picnic food – bagels and lox, chips and salsa, baked goods, and grapes to give the illusion of a healthy meal – and continued on our way. We did find the beach and I finally saw what the infamous Dutch dikes that I’ve been hearing about in class look like. Much of the country is actually below sea level. In fact, 60% of the population lives at or below sea level. So along the North Sea, they built up the coastline to keep the sea from ruining the cities. There was a large hill that resembled the grassy sand dunes of west Michigan along with an overflow dam in case of a particularly strong storm.

It wasn’t a typical beach day, but the weather was nice, the sun was out, and in the evening a light jacket was warm enough so by Dutch standards, it was a gorgeous day. As we picnicked, we watched a wedding party take pictures and horses walk up and down the coastline. After the picnic, it was time to frolick! We wandered barefoot along the beach, waded through the cold water to a sandbar, watched a fisherman at work, posed in front of the sun and left cartoon drawings in the sand. The trip took a bit longer than the anticipated 2 hour study break, but was well worth it. I only wish we could have stayed the last hour until sunset. But now that I know how close it is and how easy it is to get there – just about 20 – 30 minutes by bike – I plan to return when I have a free day, even if it means I’m all bundled up in my winter clothes. I’m only here for the cold season, so I have to take advantage of it warm weather or not!

October 9: Weather and News Update

It's been rainy a lot here lately, but yesterday afternoon and today the sun came out! I have a lot of reading to do, and some papers, but I have finished enough on the computer that I can go out and read in the sun before I go rowing this evening :) The weather is usually in the high 50s or low 60s during the day - though it changes three times daily. So everyone is wearing jackets and lots of layers to adapt to the various temperatures throughout the day.

The election news is very popular here. I actually feel quite well informed on US politics, though I know little about the current events in the country in which I live. Last night I watched the Presidential debate online with 3 of my housemates - one is American, one is Bulgarian but studied at De Paw and Georgetown, and one is British. For the first debate since it was a Friday night we had a gathering of about 50 international students all sitting around the television watching from 3 - 4:30am! It was hosted by Leiden Univ Students for Obama (I believe the group is headed by non-Americans) and only a handful of the attendees were actually American. It was quite impressive to see how interested they were in politics. Many students here are studying politics, law, and international topics, so it's nice to be in an environment where I can have in-depth intellectual conversations with people who are actually well informed.

That's all for now - back to the books!

October 3: Leiden's Ontzet / The Seige of Leiden

Preface: I am adding a whole bunch of new stories all at once. I’m trying to catch up because, being me, I can’t put up stories out of order. Thus, they may not all be as creative as they could be, but you’ll get the idea.

October 3: Leiden’s Ontzet / The Seige/Liberation of Leiden

My high school friend Philip came to visit on October 3rd from his study abroad post in Madrid. He chose a great weekend. October 3rd is Leiden’s Ontzet (in Dutch) or the Liberation or Siege of Leiden – I’ve heard it translated both ways. It’s a huge festival celebrating the defeat of the Spanish in 1547. Think the 4th of July meets the Iowa State Fair.

The whole city was transformed almost overnight. There were carnival games and rides everywhere: roller coasters, a Ferris wheel, and various other highly entertaining Adventureland-like rides appeared in and around town square. Cotton candy stands and fruit-filled doughnut stands and stroopwaffels (a Dutch delicacy of a warm thin waffle – similar to a freshly-made waffle cone with a caramel-like syrup in the middle) beckoned on every street. Vendors called from their games to knock down bottles, shoot darts, or play bingo to win a stuffed animal. Heineken and other beer stands found every few feet had lines of customers waiting. Herring stands – the tradition food of October 3rd – had shorter lines, but lines nonetheless. Amongst all of the food and games vendors were stands selling anything else you could possibly want from scarves to raw meat or cheese to electronics to customized street signs to decorative toilet seat covers. Restaurants extended their storefronts to include tents to form outdoor patios and added Hutspot to the menu for the day – a meal of mashed carrots and potatoes served with beef. The streets were packed and it was nearly impossible to walk a bike through, let alone ride it.

The whole town closes on October 3rd. Shops and grocery stores close early the night before and the University cancels all classes. Festivities focus around the night of Oct 2nd. I’m not sure why, but I suspect it’s because everyone has Oct 3rd off, but not the 4th, so they celebrate all night Oct 2nd and recover on Oct 3rd. This year, however, the 3rd fell on a Friday so festivities ran all of both days.

Philip arrived around noon on Friday (Oct 3) and we walked around town for a bit, collecting my bike from the opposite end of town in the process. I managed to ride it in the previous night before the crowds got too large, but wasn’t able to get it home. My basket was a little bent, but the bike made it through the night in fine form overall. We got an appeltaart to go – the standard Dutch dessert – before I biked him back to my house to drop off his bag.

Philip had never ridden on the back of a bike (or at least not in the last 18 years) and I had only chauffeured Gul, my 110-lb, 5’1” housemate who is able to straddle the bike for even weight distribution. Philip doesn’t weigh much more than Gul, but his backpack did and he is significantly taller. It took a few initial attempts, but we finally made it home without any crashes, scrapes, or bruises the first time or any other time throughout the weekend, including when Philip took a turn to bike me. I live about 10 minutes by bike from the city center (15 minutes with a passenger) so I got my work out as we went back and forth all weekend.

After dropping off his backpack, Philip and I returned to town and explored the canals and enjoyed a couple of carnival rides. We also tried the herring sandwich. That is now crossed off my list and I need not do so again. The top of the tallest ride provided a great view of the city which I was able to capture on film, though I did fear for my camera as I took the pictures. We went back home for dinner then back into town for the evening. I was able to recover both my purse (left at a friend’s house the night before) and my phone (a friend had borrowed it and accidentally left it at a house party) and then met up with the gang at a pub whose name translates to “The Cow.” We stood under the tent there, specially erected for the Oct 3 celebrations, waiting for the downpour to subside before we headed back to town square for the carnival games and rides. Toby was determined to win a tiger, and I really wanted one as well, but we were unsuccessful. He was awarded a consolation prize – an oversized “Mr. Perfect” tie – for his effort. After exhausting the rides and our wallets, we turned in for the night. Poor Philip had been up nearly 24 hours because of his early flight but he was a trooper. We set the alarms for the next day’s Amsterdam Adventure and got some much needed sleep.

October 4: Amsterdam Adventure

Philip and I made our way to Amsterdam the next day a bit tired, but ready for some sightseeing. Knowing he would be visiting, I hadn’t done many of the tourist destinations yet myself. We started off the day at the Anne Frank House, grateful that the sun finally came out. The line wasn’t too long, just about a 30 minute wait, but since it was mostly outside, we were thrilled that it wasn’t raining.

Having acclimated to living 5 km south of the North Sea and being used to the temperate climate and frequent changes in weather, I was thinking how nice the weather was. Philip had also adjusted to his new country of residence and had been enjoying the warm Spanish weather. So as I basked in the sun, he bundled up in several layers, gloves, and even purchased a hat to keep warm as we toured the city. It was then that I realized that I no longer judge weather so much by the temperature as by whether the sun is shining and whether the sky is clear. The city isn’t so bright that you can’t see stars here, but the skies are rarely clear enough.

The Anne Frank House was fascinating to see. It’s a former warehouse that’s mostly the same as it was when she was living there, but the furniture was removed long ago and Otto Frank (Anne’s father) didn’t want it to be replaced – a symbol of the emptiness and loss. Nearly all Jews in the Netherlands were exterminated during WWII. The NL declared neutrality early on so the Germans stormed in and set up camp right in 1940. The completeness of the eradication of Jews was due in part to the Dutch bureaucracy’s detailed records and in part to the fact that there’s just nowhere to hide. It’s a densely populated country (population density = 480 persons/square mile) without mountains or a vast unpopulated countryside. The Frank family was discovered in August 1944, over two years after the family had gone into hiding. Anne died in March 1945, just weeks before the camp was liberated by the British in April 1945.

After visiting the Anne Frank House, we caught the tram to the Van Gogh Museum. I decided that I like the portraits done in Belgium and the paintings of Parisian scenery best. Then we walked through Dam Square and had a nice dinner at A-Fusion in Chinatown, including bubble tea – one of my favorite drinks back home. Philip hadn’t experienced bubble tea before and expected hot tea with fizz. The poor guy was so excited about a warm beverage on such a “cold” day rather than a cold drink of smoothie-like consistency with tapioca pearls inside. After dinner, we wandered around the Red Light District for a bit then headed back to Leiden.

The following morning we headed to Den Haag for mass at the English speaking church there before he headed back to Madrid in the afternoon and I went home exhausted. I’d been jealous of my European friends whose friends were able to visit so easily and it was fun to get to have a friend in myself too. It was a quick trip, but we did a lot and had a great time.

German Get-away Weekend

Gutentag! I have just returned from a great weekend in Germany! The description:

It started off at 5pm when I got out of class and rushed home to pack for Oktoberfest! A large group of us were planning to go – catching a train at whatever time the ringleader figured out. That ended up falling through (trains too expensive, people old enough to rent a car didn’t have licenses, people with licenses not old enough to rent the car…) so Gul, Nickoletta and I headed to Rotterdam for the evening. I came back early to catch the Presidential Debate from 3 – 5am at a party hosted by Leiden University Students for Obama. I was impressed – there must have been 50 people there watching! And not just 50 people around, but actually watching the debates, occasionally throwing in their own editorial comments (moreso to McCain than Obama). I’d say no more than 15 of the people there were American. It continues to amaze me how engaged Europeans are in American politics. We had food and drinks and couches and there may have even been good conversation afterwards, but I headed home before I could find out – it was about a 20 – 25 min bike ride back to my room and I had a train to catch in the morning!

Saturday morning I awoke having missed my train, but feeling kind of rested at least. I had planned to get in to Essen, Germany around 1pm, but ended up not leaving until nearly 2pm. I texted Katharina on the way saying it was an easy journey. Then she called to say that there was an accident on the rail and that none of the trains were going to Essen. Unfortunately, my phone ran out of credit after that and I was left in Germany to find my way to Essen. I wasn’t too far away and found a girl who spoke great English and was also going to Essen. We got on the train and she guided me through the subway system until we arrived at the main station in Essen. I found a pay phone, called Katharina, and she and her father picked me up shortly after that. It was only a bit of an adventure and not too bad at all, other than the stress on the Jenni family as they worried about the American lost in Germany!

We got back to the house and I met the whole family. K’s parents were so warm and welcoming and I finally got to meet her brother Alex – he was nice enough to share his hair straightener with me all weekend! K’s mom made amazing dinners all weekend. As we sat down together on Saturday night, I folded my hands to pray and Katharina caught me – it’s just so natural to me when sitting down to family supper – and asked that I lead the family in prayer. She remembered it after I started it and I promised to say it more slowly next time so the rest of the family could follow the English. Dessert was an apple cake that was, of course, fantastic.

That evening K and I met up with two of her friends (the ones who would be willing to speak English, she said it would be weird for her other friends to come because they would speak German the whole time) for cocktails at Salsarita’s – they swore it was the best place in town. Afterwards, we called it a night – I was tired and we had some exploring to do in the morning!

Sunday morning Katharina and I went to Dusseldorf. We saw the Benrath Palace which is, as a friend described, very pink. Pink is the color of happiness, so all of the exterior of the building are pink. The interior had themes of hunting, the sun, and the seasons. There were also doors to nowhere – they didn’t actually function – but were placed in the location to give the appearance that the house was larger than reality. The entire palace was architecturally symmetrical – his and hers sides since they didn’t like each other that much anyway. Their marriage had been arranged when they were 9 by their families – back in the days when marrying cousins was the thing to do.

After touring the palace (K translated for me), we walked back to the train station and took it into the center of Dusseldorf to see the shops on the “Ko.” The street has all the high end stores: Gucci, Louis Vuitton, etc. It also had a Starbucks, so we got coffee and lemoncake to keep us going for the rest of the tour. The sugar helped wake me up enough to believe that there was actually a dress with a E2,500 price tag and a ring priced at E16,999. As we drank our coffee, it was fun just to people watch and see how dressed up they were on an unusually warm September day. Of course, no one was shopping since the stores were closed on Sunday, but they certainly matched the street they were on (and we did not!). We finished the Tour d’ Dusseldorf with a stroll down the Rhine, making our way through crowds of people out for a stroll on a nice day and jealously watching the jet skiers race by.

Sunday night brought more wonderful cooking and mousse du chocolat. K and I were pretty tired so we had snacks, watched a movie, and conked out early in preparation for the next day.

Monday morning, I enjoyed Cinnamon Toast Cruch for breakfast (the cereal I get here in the Netherlands just cannot compare to the taste or breadth of selection in the US). K’s mom drove us to Cologne to see the sights and I took my first trip via the Autobahn. We toured the Dom Cathedral – a church that has been standing for over 1,000 years – an impressive building by any standards, likely difficult to construct even with today’s technological advances! It has beautiful stained glass windows inside and provides a home to the remains of the Three Wise Men. We also walked through St. Andreas across the street, home of the skulls of the biblical Maccabee brothers as well as the crypt of Albertus Magus (St. Albert the Great). I love seeing how old Europe is and how much history there is to experience, especially compared to life in America where my aunt and uncle’s 100+ year old house is an anomaly.

The three of us enjoyed lunch on the Rhine in between the sites and drank the Koelsch that Cologne is known for brewing. I shared lunch with K’s mom – a pretzel and sausage for me (a Bavarian specialty), and some sort of meat and potato and cabbage meal for her, more typical of Cologne. As we made our way through the city, we did a

bit of shopping for me (only 6 weeks in and I’m already tired of wearing the few clothing items I brought) and purchased some Berliners (jelly doughnuts) for the ride home. We also visited the 4711 Store, the famous location where American soldiers bought perfume to take home to their wives during WWII. It was a fun day, but a bit exhausting and I slept the whole way home.

Monday evening we enjoyed another amazing dinner – some sort of meat and sauerkraut and

mashed potatoes – and then K and I got started on dessert! We whipped up some American-style chocolate chip cookies using the English-system measuring cups my grandma had given her before K returned to Germany – a great idea! The first batch was regular chocolate chip cookies, but for the second round, we took some of the baked cookies and broke them up into the cookie dough and baked them again. The result: cookies that were partly crunchy, partly chewy, and entirely amazing! It was an idea from my roommate back home (her aunt makes them that way) and it’s brilliant. K’s friend came over and we ate the cookies and the dough and watched an American movie for my last night in Germany.

Monday morning, I got up, packed, and jumped on a train back to Leiden and reality. But only for a few days. Thursday is the start of the Leiden’s biggest festival of the year, celebrating the Liberation of Leiden from the Spanish several hundred years ago and Philip arrives on Friday from Spain to join in the celebrations! So today is for grocery shopping (the stores will likely close from Thurs – Sat, and are never open Sunday anyway) and studying before the weekend starts all over again!

September

So it's been quite a month. I am very settled in and can't believe that October is just around the corner. I have a ton of photos to share and am trying to figure out the best way to post them. I am well into my classes and am learning about Dutch Culture, Politics, and International Law of the Sea.

I'm off to Germany for the weekend to visit Katharina in Essen, see Cologne and Dusseldorf, and possibly visit Munich with some friends if the travel works out right!

I'll do my best to update it next week, just wanted to write to say I am indeed still alive!

August in Oegstgeest

I arrived safely in Leiden on the morning of August 22 and after a few days of adjustment, I think it’s safe to say that I’m really going to like it here.

I live in student housing in a city just north of Leiden called Oegstgeest (pronounced like oh-st-heist, more or less). There are twenty or so international students here. I have my own little bedroom and there is a shared kitchen, common room, and laundry facilities on the first floor. There is one (small!) washer and one dryer for the entire building. So far today, I did one washing which took a little over an hour, and have gone through 3 one-hour dryer cycles and am hoping that my clothes will finally be dry when I check in about 10 minutes. But it is free and in-house, so that’s nice.

Last night, we hosted a gathering at our house to get to know each other which was fun. People are still moving in and out, but with classes starting next week, it should settle down after Monday or Tuesday. I now have a pretty good idea of which people live here now and which people are frequent visitors. It’s nice to live with so many people because there’s usually someone to go with to University events, activities for international students, grocery shopping, or to a club activity like rowing (I joined the club today!).

Since I live outside of Leiden, where my classes are, I bought a bike which shaves about 10 – 15 minutes off my commute in and out of the city each day. It’s a city of about 70,000 but feels much smaller than that. However, I was corrected when I called it a town – the people are very proud of their city.

After a week, I finally feel like I kind of know my way around. I haven’t gotten out of Leiden much other than spending two hours in the Hague – just a 20 minute train ride away – and 6 hours in Haarlem yesterday at Ikea with my housemates. My room is much more organized now and I have a lovely Guzmania plant.

Tonight's plan is to see Mamma Mia! in the cinema - I've seen it a few times and love it. Several of my housemates are coming including Thanos, whose hometown in Greece was used as the setting of the film. I'm off to get ready. I'll try to update this blog at least weekly. Please keep me posted on your lives too!