Well It Must Be Thanksgiving

They don’t celebrate Thanksgiving in the Netherlands (no wonder the Pilgrims ditched this country...), but I took off a few days and had a very nice weekend nonetheless. On Thursday, my brother David became the first person to visit me in The Hague, and I took him around the neighborhood. Here are some of the things we covered:

In The Hague, we took a tour of the Ridderzaal, the 13^th century knights’ hall that was the first building in The Hague. Unfortunately, little of the original building remains; but the Queen still opens Parliament there every year, so it was an interesting place to see. We also saw the Mauritshuis, supposedly the best small art museum in the world. It’s best known for housing Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring.” That night, we had our Thanksgiving dinner at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant in Scheveningen. Once we figured out how the ordering worked (which took us a while), it was great. The fish was good quality, too; it probably helps that the restaurant was a block from the North Sea.

On Saturday night, we returned to the center of town, where we had pizza at an Italian restaurant and mojitos at a Cuban bar. I felt that would be fairly representative of what Dutch cuisine had to offer.

In Amsterdam, we went to the Jewish Historical Museum, which had a lot of interesting things to see. (And its café was my first kosher restaurant in the Netherlands! It was dairy, but you have to start somewhere.) I always find it a little strange going through Jewish museums in Europe; it feels like I’m learning about some extinct culture (especially as they took a school group through the museum). This was thankfully mitigated by the knowledge that the Jewish community has rebounded, including at the Portuguese Synagogue next door. We also went to Anne Frank’s house, though I decided to wait in the café rather than go through the museum again.

That night, we went out for pannenkoeken (Dutch pancakes), which were delicious as usual. We also went to a concert of a couple alt-rock bands from Oregon. As happens surprisingly often, I liked the opening band better than the headliner, but they were both pretty good.

We also spent a day in Leiden, home to the most prestigious university in the Netherlands. It’s a nice place to walk around and has a medieval fortress at the center. It’s also where the Pilgrims lived before they left for the new world, so it was a little bit Thanksgiving-themed. We were there on the day of the “Arrival of Sinterklaas,” so we got to see a few “Black Petes” rappel down the side of the town hall. I’m just glad that I had someone with me to witness the little kids running around in blackface; it’s a sight...

On the way back from the train station this morning, after my brother departed, a police car pulled in front of me in the bike lane. Before I knew what was happening, a second squad car pulled up behind me. (That’s never a good sign.) They kept asking questions about my bike, and it took me a few minutes before they told me why they were detaining me. Apparently, they saw me on the security cameras at Central Station and thought that I picked the lock and stole my bike. I’m not sure how that happened – perhaps my forgetting where I parked my bike made it look like I was scanning for a bike to steal. At any rate, eventually they just took my information and let me go. They were very polite, and I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but still a strange experience...

Dutch is Life

It’s been a good week, especially at work; I’ve been assigned to an investigation (to research what crimes we can charge), so that’s been fun. Yesterday, I watched a parade go by my apartment in honor of Sinterklaas. Though they celebrate Christmas in Holland, the bigger holiday is Sinterklaas, held on December 5^th. I didn’t take the attached picture, but that’s him in his bishop’s hat, along with his assistant Black Pete (Zwarte Piet). In fact, the entire parade was made up of men in blackface. I do believe it was the first time I’ve seen blackface when it wasn’t meant to be ironic; some of them were playing instruments and dancing around with jazz hands, as if straight out of a minstrel show. For a country that’s so progressive in so many ways, it was rather jaw-dropping to see how the Dutch think nothing of this practice.

Besides that parade, there wasn’t anything too out of the ordinary. Rather than recap the week, I thought I might note a few idiosyncrasies about life here in The Hague:

- I was on a roll for a while of getting in trouble every time I went to the supermarket. One time, I didn’t know you had to weigh your own fruit, so I held up the entire check-out line while someone ran back to do it for me. Another time, security surrounded me because I took a grocery bag without paying for it (as apparently you have to do here). I think I’m getting the hang of things now, though.

- The biggest difference about the Dutch grocery stores is that the food has no preservatives. Everything is probably healthier, but everything also goes bad very quickly. It’s already happened a number of times that I try to pour milk on my cereal and it comes out in chunks. Lovely. One time, I was eating a tuna sandwich, and a mealworm crawled out. I was so hungry that I almost finished the sandwich anyway, until someone convinced me not to.

- We don’t have a fire alarm in my office building. Instead, a woman’s voice politely asks over the loudspeaker for everyone to head outside. I’m pretty sure if that were our fire alarm in California, we all would have died a long time ago.

- “Cool Ranch” Doritos are instead called “Cool American.” (Do they not have ranch here?) The movie “Live Free or Die Hard” is called “Die Hard 4.0.” (I guess they didn’t appreciate the New Hampshire reference.) A few other things are tweaked like this, but not many.

- I am a big fan of the cheese here, and my favorite snack is a stroopwaffle. It’s basically a sandwich made out of waffles filled with caramel. So delicious...

- Every one of the interns must go through two rights of passage: first, everyone at some point falls down the stairs, since Dutch stairs are absurdly steep. (As of yesterday, I’ve fallen down the stairs three times, which my landlady tells me is a new record here.) Second, everyone at some point gets their bike tires stuck in the tram tracks, since for some reason they are the perfect width to fit in the track. (Everyone also gets their bikes stolen – a booming industry in the Netherlands – though thankfully my bike is too much of a piece of junk to steal.)

Amsterdam: Take 2

Okay, technically last night was my fifth time or so in Amsterdam, but only my second time going out there for the night. And it was the first time I hitched a ride there with friends and didn’t have to take the train, so that was exciting. Squeezing six people into the car seemed like a good idea at the time, until we remembered how small the Dutch cars are. Even my civic would have been a step up. But hey, we got there.

Nothing too crazy happened last night – first, we went to a club where a friend was having a birthday party. (Always fun to have your name on “no cover charge” list.) The club was not very exciting – very expensive drinks, bad music, and a bunch of strange Dutch people who kept hitting on all my female friends (and asking me which of the girls were mine). We didn’t stay long. The second club was a little better; I think it’s a movie theater that turns into a club late at night. Each room had a different theme to it – one was hip-hip, one was karaoke, etc. It was a little more of a young tourist crowd (maybe the first time I’ve ever felt old at a club) and the floor was so sticky that I had to pull my feet off of it, but we still had a good time.

After the clubs, we went to an Irish bar, for the benefit of the Irishwomen in our group. (And I was getting myself acclimated, since I just made plans to go to Dublin!) Then we went to some Arab falafel store as an end to the evening. It was a fun evening out; the only time we entered the Amsterdam Central Police Station was to use their bathroom, so that’s always good. (I’m still not a big fan of the street-urinals.)

The most amusing moment of the night for me was when a Dutch friend suggested that we meet someone at what sounded like a “kike shop.” I was fairly certain he wasn’t aware of the slur, but it took me a good five minutes to work out that he was saying “kijkshop,” a tchotchke-catalogue type store. Good to know.

In The Hague, we’ve been hearing weather advisories all week. This weekend was apparently the worst storm in the Netherlands since 1953. Winds here have been about 60 mph (which makes biking to work take a lot longer than usual). So, we’ve been staying indoors a lot this week, but at least it’s getting me prepped for Chicago winter...

What would you buy if you were bored? Uh... a jar of calf's foot jelly.

First, my news: I have a job! In the fall of 2008, I’m moving to Chicago! I’m going to be a staff clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. (Basically, I’ll be helping to write case opinions in concert with the judges.) I’m really excited about the job, and I think it’ll be good to be back in the Midwest. I’ll miss California (in fact, this cold I have from biking in the rain is making me miss it right now...), but I’m pretty excited to see what comes next.

I found out about the job while I was in England for the weekend, and receiving that email definitely added to the fun. I went to England to meet up with a couple of friends from the states and crash on their hotel floor, which was surprisingly comfortable. Some observations from the weekend:

- We visited the Tower of London, where I ended up running into one of the other interns from The Hague. The tower had lots of fun stuff from famous people who were locked up there, many of whom carved on the walls in desperation 500 or so years ago. Across from the former cells, we saw the crown jewels and some of the largest diamonds in the world. It’s an interesting contrast.

- In further contrast, we also went to Windsor Castle, one of the queen’s official residences. (I live down the street from an official residence for the queen here, but Windsor was somewhat more impressive.) The castle was the home of all the monarchs who locked their family members in the Tower of London, so it provided a good balance to the day.

- Everything in London is absurdly expensive. The price would be normal if listed in dollars, but of course it isn’t. For example, a beer at the pub was 4 pounds ($8). On the other hand, the beer was called Old Speckled Hen, so at least it was funny.

- We went to the British Museum, which had a lot of amazing artifacts, including the Rosetta Stone and other items pilfered from all corners of the globe. It was pretty amazing, except that unfortunately the Holy Land section was closed. (Just like the British to keep us out of the Holy Land...)

- We went to see a show in a West End theater, which was fun. The show was called “The 39 Steps,” a comedic spoof of the classic Hitchcock film. It was a very British sense of humor, very tongue in cheek. I can’t say it’s the best play I’ve seen, but it was a unique cultural experience.

- We kept looking in the wrong direction when we crossed the street; the British system takes some getting used to. I definitely almost walked in front of a double-decker bus a couple of times, and you’d think I would’ve seen those coming. On most of the street corners, they’ve written “Look Left” or “Look Right” in front of the curb. It kind of makes you wonder what the pedestrian mortality rate had to be in order for them to write that everywhere. (Or it makes me wonder, as I’m just that morbid.)

- We found a vegetarian Thai all-you-can-eat buffet. I’ve never been so happy. (Finding out about the job made me happy too, but mainly in the sense that now I’ll have money for more buffets.)

The trip was much easier than my previous international travel. I flew out of Rotterdam airport, which is closer to me and only has a couple of gates. The flight was literally a half-hour; they played an episode of “Friends,” and then we were in England. This is the first time I’ve even been on an international flight that didn’t either land or take off in the U.S. or Israel. I was literally the only non-EU person on the flight. When we arrived at passport control, every single person from the plane got in one line except for me; I walked straight up to my own counter. It pays to be an American.