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...)