The Netherlands - Amsterdam and The Hague

I'm in Holland, isn't that weird? If you've never seen Austin Powers: Goldmember, then you have no idea what that joke is a reference to. Sorry about your luck. Anyway, I know it's been a couple days since I last blogged - I told you that was to be expected now that I've started my travelling trip. I'll do my best to recap the past few days, but I can't talk for too long. It's gonna be a busy day today and tomorrow. I'll get to that later.

First let me start out with my last night in Florence. I told you that exams sucked. But the party afterwards was pretty sweet. The weather was a little warm and the party was outside, so that part sucked. The food was good though and there was unlimited wine mixed in with a little champagne. There did end up being five to seven courses, I can't recount the exact number though. The pasta courses were really good. The meat was okay. The dessert was tasty. Overall it was a pretty darn good time. Unfortunately, we didn't end up getting home afterwards until about 1 a.m., which is way too late when you have to get up around 4:30 a.m. to go catch a flight. To make matters worse, we had to finish packing and getting things ready for the morning, so we couldn't even go to bed until around 2:30. Needless to say, we were exhausted on Saturday. Here's the only picture I managed to snap of our group eating under the shelter, or whatever you want to call this structure. Sorry it's blurry, but that's probably close to what I was seeing at that point anyway. For good measure, I've thrown in a picture of David that I promised I'd show you someday.

So, bright and early Saturday morning we got up, caught a taxi to the airport, and then were loaded in a plane to Amsterdam's Schipol airport. The flight wasn't too bad. I didn't manage to get much sleep, or at least not nearly enough to make up for my serious lack of sleep the night before. I did manage to peer out the windows over the Alps. They were very impressive and I'm quite excited to see them again in a couple weeks. We arrived at Schipol around 9:30 a.m. and decided to catch the train to the Hague to try to check into our hotel and leave our bags. We arrived around 11 and were suprised to learn that we could check into our rooms. We did so, ate a quick lunch, and then went back to the train station to visit Amsterdam. Oh and for lunch I had a glorious burger and steak fries at our hotel. The burger was huge and was topped with melted cheddar cheese, cucumbers, onions, pickels, tomatoes, and a fried egg. It was delicious and a welcome change from the traditional Italian fare I had eaten for the last four weeks. Viva Den Haag!

Before I tell you and show you about Amsterdam, let me relate the sad story of one of my classmates here and another reason why I'm glad to be out of Italy. My classmate is also in this program and thus had to travel to The Hague from Florence. To save money he decided to catch a train to Pisa and fly to Brussels. Well, turns out that was a bad idea. He lands in Brussels, but his luggage doesn't. Nobody's does. What the hell happened to everybody's luggage coming from Pisa? Well, mid-shift the baggage handlers decided that they were gonna go on strike. So his luggage remained in Pisa and was supposed to be making the trip either today or tomorrow. See why I don't understand Italy and am glad to be gone? Striking in the middle of the day and seriously disrupting service is not a good way to get what you want because it angers customers, pisses off management, and loses the company money. I know that it would seem that this is the goal of a strike, but I can't envision giving anybody anything if they caused my company that kind of anguish. I'd fire them all and hire a whole new crew.

Okay, onto Amsterdam. First, a couple quick observations about the Netherlands in general. The weather here is beautiful in the summer. Or at least it's to my liking. It gets up to about 65 in the middle of the day and cools down to a brisk 50 degrees or so late at night. But the nice thing is that the country is so far north of the equator that you get a ton of daylight. The sun doesn't completely set until after 10:30 p.m. and rises again around 5 a.m. If I lived here, I can't even imagine all the golf I'd play with those extra hours of sunshine. Plus, unlike Florence, the cities of the Netherlands have many green areas and trees throughout the cities. Because of this, the air is much cleaner and it's a more pleasant experience walking around.

Okay, now it's really onto Amsterdam. One of the first things we noticed when getting off the train was the tremendous amount of bicycles parked outside the station. There was literally a bike parking garage with three levels. The people here love to bike and the country has thousands of miles of well-developed bike paths. If I had more time here, I would definitely rent a bike and take advantage of these paths. As it is, I'll just have to leave being jealous.

Amsterdam is definitely a cool city to experience. The people here in Holland seem to be generally happier and friendlier than in Italy. And I don't think it's just because marijuana is more available. There is definitely a fair share of Dutch people who partake in the coffee shop experience, but I think it's a bigger number of Americans. We went into a coffee shop, but I'll have you know that I didn't smoke anything. It's definitely weird though going into a place where marijuana is not only openly smoked, but also sold. Important fact that is not well known: marijuana is still technically illegal in Holland, it's just that selling it in small quantities for personal use and smoking it within the confines of a coffee shop have been decriminalized and are not pursued by the police. I just always thought it was a legal drug. Maybe I'm the only one.

Another thing about Amsterdam that is really awesome is that it is also a city containing a network of canals and hundreds of bridges. At times it feels a little like Venice, except that there are also roads, cars, and trams. But there are still plenty of people taking boat rides around the canals. It really is a beautiful place to see. We also walked through the Red Light District. This was cool, but I wasn't as shocked as other people in our group. I guess that seeing porn shops just isn't that appalling or new to me. However, it was a little weird seeing women in lingerie behind glass windows beckoning you to come in and play. We did visit the SexMuseum while in Amsterdam. Again, nothing too appalling, but very explicit. They had many interesting items including pornographic playing cards from the early 1900's, pornographic pictures from the late 1800's, and an array of erotic statues and art. It cost 3 euros and I don't think it was worth it. Pictures were allowed inside, but I only snapped a photograph of facade outside. Here is that photo along with a few others of Amsterdam.

I do need to show you one more picture from Amsterdam. What you're seeing is an outdoor public urinal. Apparently they had quite a problem with public urination, so they built these little numbers. It's pretty weird to just be walking along the street and be able to make eye contact with a person urinating in broad daylight. I'm used to seeing that in a dark corner at night, but not in the middle of the day right next to the street. I myself didn't get a chance to use one of these facilities, but they sure looked fun.

This may be a little surprising, but far and away the best thing I did in Florence was to visit the Anne Frank house. I've never actually read her diary/book, but I really want to now. Unfortunately, they have a strict policy against taking photographs inside and it seems like a more sacred place than some of the others where I've snuck pictures, so I didn't challenge the law. It was a really powerful experience being inside the house. There is a self guided tour whereby you slowly work your way around the lower levels as you ascend toward the attic where her family and another hid from the Nazis.

All of the original furniture is gone as it was either lost or destroyed sometime not too long after World War II. Along the walls they have inscribed short passages from Anne's diary and it really makes the journey through the house a powerful experience. Most of the quotes are in chronological order and thus as you ascend toward the top, you get a feeling that you are getting closer to the end of not only the tour, but of her stay in the house. Inside the house there are many display cases containing documents and other items from the period, including some of the pages from Anne's diary. Along the way there are also video interviews of people that survived the war such as her father and one of the ladies who lived in her house during the war. It was really sad to hear them talk about Anne. Her and her entire family were hauled off to the concentration camps after their hide-out was discovered and her father was the only one to survive. Anne died merely weeks before her camp was liberated. Anyway, if you ever go Amsterdam...no, change that, if you ever go to Europe, make sure you visit this house. It's worth it. Next to actually visiting the concentration camps, I'm not sure there can be a more visceral reminder of the horrors of World War II.

After getting our fill of Amsterdam, we headed back to The Hague to catch the end of the Russia vs. Netherlands soccer match. We went into the center of the town to watch the game with the rest of the fans. There is this area around a square that houses several bars and restaurants with tons of outside seating. All of these bars had televisions set up outside, none larger than 32 inches, and most were much smaller. There were hundreds of people gathered watching, twenty or more deep in places. Holland actually managed to score in the last five minutes of regulation to tie it up 1-1. That was quite exciting to be around. Unfortunately, they ended up losing in the second overtime period. So that ended all the fun for Saturday night.

That of course brings me to Sunday and another fabulous thing: breakfast. Our hotel in Den Haag has a beautiful breakfast buffet with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, pancakes, and so much more. This may not sound like anything special, but for the past four weeks the best breakfast I've had was a cup of corn flakes and bad Italian milk. I was so excited to be eating these foods that I had three plates. Amazing. I love the food here so much more than Italy. Burgers, french fries, and delicious breakfasts. What else can I ask for? After breakfast we had four fun hours of class...which of course weren't fun, especially when running on less than a total of 8 hours of sleep over the last two nights. And after that was a walking tour of The Hague (which of course in Dutch is Den Haag, in case you hadn't caught on yet and thought I was moving from city to city). Here are some pictures from that experience.

Then on Monday I had another long day. We had to get up early for class again (but got another delicious breakfast). After class we did get to visit two important international courts: the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTY). The ICJ is a court with authority granted by the United Nations to dispute conflicts between nations. Currently there is a case pending in that court between Mexico and the United States concerning the execution of Mexican nationals within the United States criminal justice system. We didn't get to see any actual proceedings, but did get to visit the building which is housed in the beautiful Peace Palace (which was interestingly enough built with funding from the Carnegies). They don't allow pictures inside, but I was able to sneak one.

The ICTY was established to punish international criminals that are indicted for committing war crimes or genocide in the conflicts within the former Yugoslavia (e.g. Bosnia, Serbia, and Kosovo). This is where they tried Slobodan Milosevic. Unfortunately the trial took four years and he died before he was convicted. The ICTY had much tighter security than the ICJ and thus we weren't even allowed to take our cameras in. Thus, I only have this one picture of the outside of the building.

My final adventure for the day was to walk out to the beach in Scheveningen. It's been an awfully long time since I've last seen a beach and this one was beautiful. They have an amazing boardwalk along the beach. To my suprise, there were also surfers at this beach. The waves weren't much bigger than those you'd find off the Atlantic Ocean in the U.S., but there were tons of people trying to catch waves anyway. We walked along the beach and snapped quite a few pictures. Here are a few that I'll share for your viewing pleasure.

I want to share two more pictures with you. First is a sign for a concert coming up in The Hague. Notice the group slated to play in the bottom left-hand corner. Yep, Tom Crean is bringing the boys over to Europe for a little basketball demonstration. The second picture is a bottle of shower gel that I purchased from a supermarket here. Um, you'll get the joke when you see the picture (or you may not, but I'm not explaining why I think it's funny).

Okay, I gotta run. Today I have class, then we are visiting the International Criminal Court. Immediately after our visit to the court we are heading down to Brussels. The rumor is that we don't have internet access in Brussels, so there's no way I can blog again until Luxembourg. The good news is that we will be in Luxembourg on Wednesday night (good news for you; bad news for me). I've enjoyed my short stay in Holland, especially the food (which is unbelievably satisfying after four weeks of pasta, paninis, and bad pizza). Anyway, we're going out in Brussels tonight to celebrate a classmate's birthday so I should have fun things to talk about when I return. So until next time, uh...I don't the Dutch word for goodbye. I guess I'll just have to end it like that then. Sorry.