Llama lo?

Well, the Jewish holidays are over, which means I can finally start traveling on the weekends... Over the course of 24 hours, I made arrangements to travel to Brussels, Bruges, Chicago, Minneapolis and London all within the next month. Can’t wait!

Simchat Torah was not very impressive over here. It basically consisted of people standing around in a circle and singing hava nagilah. But at least they tried. Work wasn’t very exciting this week either, but I just got assigned to a new case (currently in pre-trial), so hopefully there will be exciting developments ahead.

Last week, I attended a one-day conference on international criminal law at the Royal Netherlands University of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam. Some of the speakers were a little dry, but it was kind of amazing to see some the best minds in the world in this field come together in one room. For example, there was a panel focusing on a specific law that’s been causing some confusion. At the end of the panel, they gave the microphone to a man in the audience, who then stood up and explained what he had in mind when he wrote that law. It’s kind of fun to be working in a field that’s relatively new and relatively small... we’ll see where this takes me...

By far the highlight of the week was biking to Wassanar, a small town about 15 km (about 9 miles) from The Hague. On the way there, we biked through the forest, which was absolutely beautiful, filled with canals, ponds, and the occasional secluded residence. We also passed a number of grazing animals along the way, such as cows, sheep, and what appeared to be llamas. The town of Wassanar itself is a quaint little town that slightly resembles Newton, Massachusetts, if Newton were built around a historic windmill. It has more American expats than anywhere else in Holland, and has a lot of expensive stores to cater to that crowd. We stopped off for bagels, which took about two hours (Dutch service is not terribly impressive), and walked around for a bit.

On the way back, we biked along the ocean; apparently, the bike path goes the entire length of the Netherlands coastline, and can be traversed in about two days. We biked through dunes (who knew they had dunes?) and stopped at a number of scenic points. As I biked along the trial, I passed a couple of horseback riders galloping through the sand next to me. It was a bit surreal, but a beautiful scene. And it was sunny all day, quite a rarity around here. I regret that I haven’t explored more of the Dutch countryside, but we’re already planning to do another bike trip to the town of Delft sometime soon. There’s so much around here I haven’t yet seen – but in the meantime, I have a few other countries to explore as well. It’s going to be an interesting month...

Oh, and my most exciting achievement of all this week: I finally found pulp-free orange juice here! Yay!