My Man in Amsterdam

First, my most exciting news – I finally have a bike! This may not seem like a big deal, but Dutch people go just about everywhere on bikes, so I’ve really been wanting one. Bikes have the right of way just about everywhere, so they’ll mow you down if you’re not careful... At any rate, now I have a rickety, rusty piece of junk ladies bike – but someone gave it to me for free, so I really can’t complain.

My first real weekend in the Netherlands was a good time, which kicked off with drinks on the ICTY terrace after work on Friday. It was a lot of people drinking beers and blasting Donna Summer – I'm sure it's exactly how you’d picture working for the UN... The next night, I went out to a pub with a bunch of other interns. It was a random group, including a German, a Ugandan, an Irishwoman, a Lebanese-American, and another UCLA student. We ended up having a lot of fun, and ended the night at a nearby bar where a lot of Dutch foreign ministers and reporters hang out.

I spent the next day in Amsterdam with another intern, and it was a great time! Here’s what we did:

- Van Gogh Museum: Pretty impressive, I really liked how clearly they laid out the place. It was kind of surprising how a lot of his paintings don’t seem that great, but what do I know; I probably need to see a few more art museums before I’m allowed to have an opinion.

- Flower Shops: Not my idea to stop by there, but some of the flowers were quite interesting. I’d never seen orchids quite like that, so that was nifty...

-Heineken Brewery (see above picture): A major disappointment. I felt like we were in a US frathouse the whole time, and I probably would’ve gotten more out of ordering Heinekens at a pub (or perhaps doing something else entirely).

- Ann Frank House: I thought it was very well done and extremely moving, though seeing it after the Heineken Brewery and before the Red Light district gave the day a very strange emotional progression.

- Red Light District: A small, seedy area packed with men and sex shops. And a lot of prostitutes in the windows trying to get you to come inside, which was a strange experience. I’m glad we went – there’s definitely nowhere else like it – but I can’t really say I found it terribly sexy. (For example, instead of port-o-pottys, they just had these open urinals for use on the street in full view. Awesome.)

- Food: Dutch food isn’t terribly exciting (the French and Italian guys at the office hate it with a passion), though we did find some good cheese. We also tried fries with mayo (meh, too bland – and they drown the fries with it, just as Pulp Fiction warned) and Dutch pancakes (which were awesome – they’re thin and gigantic, like crepes).

Anyway, it was a very full day in Amsterdam, so I slept very well at the end of it, and now it’s back to work...

Punching Out War Criminals

It’s been a full week, so I’ll just mention a few new developments:

Work: I started work on Monday, and it’s going well so far. I’ve been assigned to a trial team for a trial that’s currently in progress, so I’ve been watching the proceedings on the intranet each day. There’s not a whole lot of work I can do right now, as I haven’t actually been trained on any of the software yet, so it hasn’t been anything too exciting. I did get my first assignment today, so it’s good to have something to do. I share an office with a few investigators (ex-cops) and analysts (ex-Yugoslavians), so it’s an interesting atmosphere. It’s a bit more exciting to be working at the trial level, unlike when I worked in appeals over the summer. Also, over the summer I worked on cases such as vehicle burglary, whereas now I’m trying someone for a massive campaign of thousands of deaths. So, it’s an interesting change of pace.

Social: I started work with about 14 other interns, though there are also a few dozen interns already working at the tribunal. They seem like a good group: mostly American, and almost all the rest are from Western Europe. We all went out last night to a square in the city center – next to the Dutch Parliament - where there are a lot of bars and restaurants. It was a lot of fun, except that it was raining the whole time (as it more or less always is). Still, I met some new people and got to learn a little more about Dutch nightlife. It’s fun having Heineken as a domestic beer, and I also tried “white beer,” which is a little bit sweeter. I wasn’t such a fan – but then again, I’m not such a fan of beer in general.

I also took the tram for the first time last night, but everything is a 20-minute walk anyway. Besides the bars, everything closes down by 8:00 or so, so the city is absolutely dead quiet in the evening. I know it’s supposed to be a very safe city, but it was still a little eerie to walk down so many empty streets.

Religion: There are three synagogues in The Hague – one liberal (i.e. reform) and two orthodox (run by Chabad). I went to the liberal shul on Saturday, since it was the biggest and the closest to my apartment. In some ways the service was very reform: changes in liturgy, triennial torah reading, and the complete excision of the musaf service. On the other hand, they did do the full rest of the service in Hebrew and the service was non-egalitarian, which I was not expecting. (It switches between non-egalitarian and egalitarian every other week). The sermon went back and forth between English and Dutch, but the parts that I understood were interesting...

The building is an 18^th century Portuguese synagogue, and as with every shul in Europe, I found it by looking for the armed guard outside. There were about 25 people there, though no one in my age range. They gave me an aliyah (being called up to say a blessing during the torah reading), and everyone seemed interested in meeting me, especially all the American ex-patriots. Seems like a good crowd, and I think this place is probably where I’ll end up for the holidays.

That’s it for now.... I’m probably going to Amsterdam with some of the other interns this weekend, so we’ll see how that goes. (As a side note, whoever told me that pot is illegal outside of Amsterdam was grossly misinformed – they sell it in shops on every corner around here. What a fascinating country...)

Spreekt U Nederlands?

It's my first full day in the Netherlands, and my first chance in some time to relax without any impending packing/preparing/applying hanging over my head. After a 2,300 mile drive from LA to Ohio, a few short days at home, and a transatlantic flight, it's good to be in one place for a bit.

The flight over was not bad at all. A friend who works for the airlines helped me get standby tickets to Amsterdam. I'd never flown standby before - and I'm someone who gets nervous about making flights even when I actually have the ticket - but it worked out fine. I was supposed to fly through Atlanta, but the flights were looking full, so I flew through JFK instead. And better still, I flew business class, which was fantastic. It took incredible willpower not to stay up the entire flight watching movies. At any rate, I fear my father is right - I'll never be satisfied flying coach again...

I took a train from Amsterdam to The Hague, with a transfer in Leiden. Outside of the university in Leiden, I saw more parked bikes than I’ve ever seen – a few thousand – and not terribly many cars. I’m definitely out of the states.

Upon arriving at my new apartment, I had to wait on the street for about an hour before someone let me in. (However, since I took a different flight than expected, I wasn’t too surprised that this happened.) The apartment is nice, and I get the whole third floor to myself. The back of the apartment looks into an enclosed area shared by several other buildings, which looks oddly like the set of “Rear Window.” The only downsides to the apartment are that the stairs to the third floor are absurdly steep (if I don’t kill myself on them, I’ll consider the semester a success) and there’s no bathroom on my floor. Oh, and there’s a loud construction site across the street, where the previous building recently burned down in a massive fire.

I spent today walking around the center of the city, where there are some amazing historical palaces and museums. I went to two museums today: Escher in Het Paleis and the Gevangenpoort. The first museum displayed the works of M.C. Escher, and it was pretty amazing – and besides the drawings, it also had a virtual reality exhibit and a mirror labyrinth that was pretty trippy. The second museum was the old prison, so it’s always fun to see some old torture and execution devices…

Anyway, I’m going to go, as I’m still a bit jetlagged. (I slept 14 hours last night, which may be a new record for me…) My laptop still doesn’t connect to the internet – bah – but I’ll try to post again next week…