I Accidentally Shot Myself in the Face (Twice)

Yes, this is the best I could come up with for Halloween; I was never very good at this stuff. Interestingly, I did not see a single other person in costume outside of my friend’s party, so I got a lot of strange looks when I went out last night. I would have thought there’d be more celebrations in a city with 40,000 expats, but apparently not so much. After the party, we tried to go out on the town, but we were rejected from all the clubs because my Dutch friends’ water-polo uniforms didn’t meet the dress code. Even on Halloween, the bouncers had no sense of humor... ah well.

I’ve spent most of this week recovering from my brief trip back to the United States. My journey to the states didn’t start so well, but it got better from there. First, while I was waiting for my flight in the Amsterdam airport, the brakes broke on my plane, and I was placed on a different flight three hours later. Then my delayed connection in Detroit was kept in a holding pattern for so long, the pilot actually started flying back to Detroit because he was afraid of running out of fuel. Eventually I made it to Chicago, only to get trapped on the metro between stations due to a mechanical problem. Later on, I got stuck in a rainstorm while waiting for a cab, as well as a freak hailstorm with ice the size of marbles that sent everyone running in panic. Chicago seems like a lovely town.

Anyway, things picked up from there – I was in Chicago for a job interview, which hopefully went pretty well. (I’ll find out in a week or two.) I interviewed with four sets of people (for one job), and each time, the first question was “Are you in the Netherlands right now?” So, I think my flying in from abroad scored me some points. Still, it was only my first interview of the year, so we’ll see. I stayed with a friend near the University of Chicago, and it was good to catch up. It was also kind of fun to look out on Lake Michigan from my friend’s apartment, after looking out on the North Sea from my office the day before. Life is strange sometimes.

After my day in Chicago, I headed up to Minnesota to be in my friend’s wedding. (Congrats, Joel!) The wedding was a lot of fun – everyone was genuinely excited, and kept up dancing for much longer than is probably physically advisable. I even jump-roped with a person as the rope, something I don’t normally get to do. Being back in the states to celebrate with my friend reminded me that my life is over there (or in Israel), and that I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again when I return. I even saw some old Camp Ramah friends and ate lots of Kosher meat – all in all, a successful weekend, and I’m very glad I was able to make it back.

This week thankfully hasn’t been too crazy, as I’m just trying to get back on Netherlands time before I fly off again this week (to England). We just changed our clocks this week, and I know that change hasn’t happened in the states yet, so that’s going to mess me up. I made it back to shul this week, though pathetically few people were there. (It took us until 10:30 to get enough people to start services.) In fact, the Jews were outnumbered by all the Sufi guests who came to observe us. I talked to one of them for a while about Sufism, which I don’t really know anything about; it focuses on embracing the similarities between religions, or something along those lines.

Just now, I returned from an afternoon in the city of Delft, which was quite nice. The center of town is full of canals and a historic square, and it’s just a pleasant place to spend a day. (It feels like a mini-Bruges...) At any rate, I’m fairly exhausted from the day, so I think it’s time to sign off...

Homer, that's not God, that's a waffle that's stuck to the ceiling.

I’m back from my weekend in Belgium, which was amazing! We had Friday off of work, so I headed down with another intern to Brussels for two days and Bruges for one day. (We got Friday off for the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Fitr, yet didn’t get any days off for High Holidays. Gotta love the UN...) There’s a direct train from The Hague to Brussels, so it only took us about two hours to head down there. Traveling to and within Belgium is incredibly cheap if you’re under 26, so we took full advantage. I figure if I still have to put up with looking like I’m 19, I might as well reap the benefits, too...

Our hotel in Brussels wasn’t terribly impressive, but the location could not have been better. We were a block from the train station and a block from Grand-Place, the central square of the city. Over two days, we covered a lot, including: the Atomium (kind of like the Eiffel Tower of Brussels, if it were a nerdy science project), the Royal Museum of Army and Military History (with both Napoleonic and Nazi artifacts, and not much transition between the two), Arcade du Cinquantenaire (a giant arch that we climbed), the European Union headquarters (we work in international law, so we had to stop by), and much, much more. Mainly, though, we just strolled through the narrow streets in the center and hung out in cafes. The street-side cafes were definitely my favorite part of previous trips to Europe, so I was quite content to frequent them again for the weekend. We also found a bar called Delirium Tremens, which had 2,500 types of beer available (and matching glasses for most of them). I tried some very random beers, including cherry (kreik) and grapefruit, but I’m still not a fan of the taste...

Everywhere we went, the food was excellent. We didn’t each much traditional Belgian food, but had some very good Italian, Greek and Asian. Also, there were chocolate shops everywhere (literally every other store), which were quite lovely. And we bought a few waffles on the street, which were fantastic – they tasted like donuts in waffle shape. See above picture for one of the happiest moments of my life.

Everything in Brussels is written in both French and Flemish, two languages I should understand but don’t really. (Flemish is almost exactly like Dutch, but sounds more refined – like British English vs. American English.) I’m not used to seeing things in two languages and having neither be English, but between the two I could generally figure things out.

Bruges was one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever seen. All the medieval streets looked too picturesque to be real – it was hard to keep in mind that it was all hundreds of years old and not created for tourists. We climbed the belfry in the middle of town as soon as we arrived, where we could see the whole city laid out. We also took a boat tour through the canals with our trilingual tour guide and saw a few of the catholic churches. One church had a Michelangelo piece (the only one to leave Italy in his lifetime), and another had a vial said to contain the blood of Jesus. It was an interesting town. Mostly we just sat out in the sun and tried not to think about returning to work the next day.

The trip back was not so easy, as we had to take four trains to get back from Bruges. On one train, there was a little kid in front of me who kept screaming and throwing things at me, while the bells on the train rang incessantly. We just kept cracking up, as the experience was so ridiculous. At any rate, eventually we made it back, and now I’m off on another trip on Thursday. Hello Midwest!

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!

Zeven Dagen Soekot

Well, another week, another Jewish holiday. This week is Sukkot, where we eat all our meals in little outdoor booths. A family nearby has been letting me use their sukkah this week, which has been nice of them. (I had meat again!) Unfortunately, it’s been too cold and wet to eat any meals outside, so we’ve only been using the sukkah to say blessings. The liberal shul found a good way around this problem: they built their sukkah in the lobby inside the shul. True, that kind of defeats the point, but the congregants seem to love it...

It’s been a fun week outside of the holiday as well – my first attempts at going clubbing in The Hague. The first time I went out with all interns/students from the U.S. and Ireland, so we ended up at the popular expat clubs. They were kind of sad – in one, there were only about four people on the dance-floor when we walked in, and they were all making out with each other. Meh. But it started to get better after we arrived. Plus, our group consisted of me and five women, so I can’t complain. On the second try, we went to a local bar that brought in a DJ for the night. The average age was around 50, including the DJ, and it felt like I was back at a bar mitzvah in 1994. (The most recent song they played was probably “What is Love” by Haddaway, which led me to fond memories of high school.) While it was amusing to see people my parents’ age going crazy at 1 a.m., I don’t know that it was exactly my scene. Thankfully, we had some Dutch people with us that night, and they led us to a local club that was probably the most fun place I’ve found in the city so far.

I’ve also been exploring The Hague during the day, including going to Chinatown, trying a couple more restaurants, and biking along the coast for a couple hours. This coming weekend, I’m planning to go on a bike trip for a day to a nearby city in the Netherlands, most likely Delft. We’re making it a “rain or shine” trip, as probably both conditions will occur over the course of the day. And the next weekend: Belgium! My first visit to a neighboring country, should be exciting...

Work, meanwhile, was insane last week – we were finishing up the closing brief, and I would get a new assignment approximately every five minutes. Still, being part of that rush to the end was kind of invigorating, and we’ll see what they put me on next. The court delivered a couple of judgments this past week, including a few sentences relating to a massacre in Croatia. A lot of people were very upset about how lenient the sentences were, especially everyone in Croatia. My Croatian roommate’s (who also works at the court) family kept calling her and playing the national anthem over the phone. I wonder what the sentence will be in my case, and what the reaction will be then. It’s strange to think that entire countries are focused on the outcome of what we’re doing here.

As a side note, I’ve noticed that ever since I began keeping a blog, I’ve started narrating events in my head as they’re happening. Is that normal?