Like i said before, the trains just kept on getting worse and worse. This time it felt like we were all sleeping on stone w/ itchy wool blankets like the ones your grandma knits for you but without the love in every stitch that makes them tolerable. Anyway, we only got about 2-3 hours of sleep and terrible sleep at that then found ourselves in Prague.
I found the hostel that we stayed at here to be the most boring aesthetically. It was basically just a flat of an apartment building that they transformed into dorm like rooms. This place was weird too you had to unlock the door with a key on the inside in order to get out. So hypothetically we had the capability of locking ourselves in. Dumb. But the location was absolutely prime, pretty close to new town square and had a great view of the huge river which runs through the middle of Prague.
We took another free tour by a guy named Paul at new town square. This is where i started realizing that tour guides can pretty much feed whatever they want to their audience and they'll probably believe it. Kinda caught wind of this when he took us to a church and tried to explain how one of the relief sculptures was of a priest who had just been castrated by his dog. Needless to say I enjoyed the Berlin tour a lot more and found it a lot more believable, but regardless, tours are still awesome in taking you around the basic mainstream attractions around any city that you can explore in depth later.
The St. Charles bridge was probably the most impressive piece of architecture in Prague. It's one of the bridges which spans across the river with 40 unique statues flanking both sides of the bridge. Paul brought us to one of the more famous ones of one of the deciples with two gold relief sculptures on the facade. Everyone was rubbing the one of the right so i decided to go left. Apparently the one on the right was for good luck and the one on the left was supposed to make you pregnant within the next year. Lesson learned, go with the crowd. Another really cool thing was the John Lennon wall near the bridge. Apparantly immediately after John Lennon was killed people in Prague started flocking to this wall to write messages/draw portraits. People in Prague were that obsessed w/ the Beetles.
We eventually made it to one of the higher points in the city to this amazing Gothic Cathedral. I think this style is probably my favorite out of cathedrals with how much sharp intricate detail to compliment the smoother style arches and glassing. It’s amazing too how theses massive buildings in no way compliment the space they occupy. I had to lay on my back in the farthest corner I could find just to get a shot at the top half of the thing. Another 5 minute walk landed us at this amazing panoramic view of the city. The density reminded me a lot of San Francisco but there was defiantly a lot more red-orange tile going on than SF. Either way, absolutely gorgeous.
On the way down we stopped by this bar-grill type place that Paul recommended. The food was almost at cheap as Krakow but not $60 US meal for 10 bucks cheap. Ate amazing goolash, was very happy. A short power nap and rendezvous with Jeremy, Andrew, and Anna we cruised out to this 5 story dance club right by St. Charles that had a different style of music playing on each floor. Met some really cool French girls (The French apparently have this incredibly aggressive clicking sound to get peoples attention and get terribly offended if you don’t respond, believe me when I say this) and spent most of the night making asses outta ourselves on the 80’s floor staring in wonder at the multicolored disco-lit floor.
We spent the next day pretty much aimlessly wandering around the city. Prague is pretty much divided into old town and new town. You pretty much know what part of the city you’re in from the architecture (i.e new town is much more modernized than old town). There were the standard facilities in old town, big elaborate churches, cool looking statues. But at this part of the trip all that stuff was looking pretty similar to me. That night we ended up at this music club that was recommended to me by some locals named Lucerna’s that was throwing an amazing 80’s and 90’s party with a giant screen on the back wall and spent the whole time jumping around to Michael Jackson and White Snake.
On our last day we went up to explore inside castle, which really wasn’t as impressive as I had hoped. They turned most of it into museums full of art exhibits, but none of them were really anything I was interested in. Daniel did manage to catch the changing of the guard which from the pictures looked pretty cool. We did our fare share of acting like obnoxious tourists posing with them. I just found out too that if you touch them any way, shape, or form, it’s completely at their whim to beat the absolute hell out of you. I’m betting these people wait around all day for some poor guy to accidentally brush up against them and go ape shit. Anyways, we spent our daylight here, ate our final Czech dinner, and then took off for a night in the Airport and an early flight to Amsterdam to finally begin our semester.
At this point in the trip having been in my 4th country in a week with 3 different currencies and was completely exhausted. I was really pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed this trip considering I had planned to go to Spain originally for the 10 days. I think I’ll be able to weather the cold a lot better after this trip too considering most of the time it was between -10 to -15C. One things for sure though, this 6 month trips gonna destroy the bank account.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Krakow
So we noticed a little fact that the farther east we got in Europe, the crappier the transportation seemed to get. This train was definitely smaller than the last one we were on and the best less comfortable also. But we did manage to get a booking so that we got into Krakow at a reasonable hour unlike our trip into Berlin. We stepped off the train and it looked like we were in the third world. There were a bunch of street vendors at the bottom of the platforms, birds flying through the station, and a creepy guy following us the whole time we were there offering to give us a better exchange rate for the Zlotty. Anywho, we went straight to the ticket booth to confirm our next train out so as not to have another mishap like Berlin then checked into our hostel, which was named Tutti Frutti, and the decor defiantly fit the name. We managed to get all six of us into one of the 8 person rooms (plum room) which made it a lot more comfortable to just kick back and unwind while we were in the actual hostels. And it was a really nice place overall, the bathrooms were the cleanest I'd seen in a while but you did have to hop up and down every 5 minutes if you were taking a shower because the lights were on a timer.
After dropping anchor we set off again to explore the city. Krakow was exponentially smaller than Berlin, and most of the metropolitan part was concentrated in what i would say a 1/2 square mile area full of normal looking shops. We wandered around until we found this guy in a beer mug costume that gave us coupons for free beers at this restaurant by the Royal castle towards the southern tip of the city. This is where we fully began to appreciate the power of the dollar. I ate the equivalent of what i would say is a 60 dollar meal in the US for about the equivalent of 10 bucks. Nathan and Daniel got it even better. They ordered this plate of every type of fish you could imagine that could feed 4 people easily for about 23 bucks US. After gorging ourselves like kings we wandered around the castle and church for a bit. Like I said i'm not really able to describe fully how magnificent and elaborate the church was, but take my word for it, the thing was marvelous. There were a bunch of decorative caskets inside commemorating some of the polish nobility that died during the crusades and other historical periods and of course almost everything had some kind of gold inlay in it. We witnessed some kind of ceremony occurring at John Paul II's (yes the former pope) grave and then headed back to the hostel to watch Obamas Inauguration. Good ol W looked pretty miserable.
We went to a Chopin/Mozart concert around 8 and I realized that although I appreciate classical music, i'm not too much of a fan, but I did enjoy "The Tango". We had another amazing Kebab on the way back towards the hostel at this cool kebab shop/hookah bar. Its great how food always turns out better if you're the only people in the shop. Somehow that night we started a running joke that it was Julians birthday which somehow attracted the girl that was working at the hostel that night. We managed to convince her to come out with us instead of studying for her exam so she took us around a couple clubs then took Julian to the dance floor. This girl ends up being one of the creepiest people i've met in a good long while. Manages to friend all of us on Facebook by looking up our names in the Hostel registry, then relentlessly messaged us for the next couple of days until i decided to defriend her and never have anything to do with her again.
The next day was the real heart of the Krakow experience, the Auchwitz-Berkanow tour, and I can honestly say i've never been more scared to be in any place my whole life. I don't even think scared is the right word. It seemed as if the life had been sucked out of me while i was inside the gates. Our first stop was Auschwitz where they took us around some of the old barracks and holding cells for prisoners. We passed by rooms the size of my parents bed room at home where 30-40 people were forced to sleep. One building had a bunch of different exhibits of belongings which the Nazi's confiscated from those interned at the camp. One room had a few tons of hair belonging to prisoners that the Nazis cut off to make blankets and socks. Another room had thousands of shoes, another had pots, pans, and other China, and yet another had eyeglasses. Just to see all these dilapidated possessions that once belonged to people who were senselessly murdered, the feeling is indescribable. Next we went to a building full of cells for defiant or difficult prisoners, which included standing cells no bigger than 3 feet by 3 feet which held 4 prisoners at a time. We actually stood in one of these cells and I had probably one of the most claustrophobic experiences of my life. The last part of the Auschwitz camp involved actually walking inside the only remaining gas chamber and oven (the nazi's burned down most all of them as they fled). I actually stood in a room where thousands upon thousands of innocent men women and children were gassed to death, then cremated next door. Birkanow was an expanse going off to the skyline filled with single story buildings that looked like stables because frankly, they were stables. Our tour ended in one of these that was designated as a shower/toilet room where on occasion, prisoners were allowed to shower and use the toilet (which was essentially a long concrete block with holed down to a trough) but only for a total of 5 minutes. We heard her recount prisoners fighting each other just to be able to use one of the holes, some having to simply choose whether it was more important to shower that day or use the bathroom. Absolutely horrible. I think everyone needs to see this place once, but having done so, i never want to go back again.
Our last day, like in Berlin, was souvenir day. I got my Polish flag while the rest of the guys bought Chess sets for some reason. Our last tour was of Krakows famous salt mine which was 400 meters below ground. We first had to take the stairs down to the actual mine. I can't even remember how many flights there were, but there were a lot. Essentially our guide told us that when the mine was first opened, salt was worth more than gold because of its value as a preservative, and miners were filthy rich. These same miners managed to carve elaborate statues of the most random things while they were on their breaks. The pictures on my photobucket'll show you what I mean. There was even a church down there with salt chandeliers, and even a copy of "The Last Supper" done with impeccable detail. And apparently, I am one of the privileged few that used the lowest toilet in the world. After we got out, we at some traditional polish food which were these mediocre dumpling type things, hung out for a bit at the hostel taking in the last of the Polish sights, then jetted off to Prague.
After dropping anchor we set off again to explore the city. Krakow was exponentially smaller than Berlin, and most of the metropolitan part was concentrated in what i would say a 1/2 square mile area full of normal looking shops. We wandered around until we found this guy in a beer mug costume that gave us coupons for free beers at this restaurant by the Royal castle towards the southern tip of the city. This is where we fully began to appreciate the power of the dollar. I ate the equivalent of what i would say is a 60 dollar meal in the US for about the equivalent of 10 bucks. Nathan and Daniel got it even better. They ordered this plate of every type of fish you could imagine that could feed 4 people easily for about 23 bucks US. After gorging ourselves like kings we wandered around the castle and church for a bit. Like I said i'm not really able to describe fully how magnificent and elaborate the church was, but take my word for it, the thing was marvelous. There were a bunch of decorative caskets inside commemorating some of the polish nobility that died during the crusades and other historical periods and of course almost everything had some kind of gold inlay in it. We witnessed some kind of ceremony occurring at John Paul II's (yes the former pope) grave and then headed back to the hostel to watch Obamas Inauguration. Good ol W looked pretty miserable.
We went to a Chopin/Mozart concert around 8 and I realized that although I appreciate classical music, i'm not too much of a fan, but I did enjoy "The Tango". We had another amazing Kebab on the way back towards the hostel at this cool kebab shop/hookah bar. Its great how food always turns out better if you're the only people in the shop. Somehow that night we started a running joke that it was Julians birthday which somehow attracted the girl that was working at the hostel that night. We managed to convince her to come out with us instead of studying for her exam so she took us around a couple clubs then took Julian to the dance floor. This girl ends up being one of the creepiest people i've met in a good long while. Manages to friend all of us on Facebook by looking up our names in the Hostel registry, then relentlessly messaged us for the next couple of days until i decided to defriend her and never have anything to do with her again.
The next day was the real heart of the Krakow experience, the Auchwitz-Berkanow tour, and I can honestly say i've never been more scared to be in any place my whole life. I don't even think scared is the right word. It seemed as if the life had been sucked out of me while i was inside the gates. Our first stop was Auschwitz where they took us around some of the old barracks and holding cells for prisoners. We passed by rooms the size of my parents bed room at home where 30-40 people were forced to sleep. One building had a bunch of different exhibits of belongings which the Nazi's confiscated from those interned at the camp. One room had a few tons of hair belonging to prisoners that the Nazis cut off to make blankets and socks. Another room had thousands of shoes, another had pots, pans, and other China, and yet another had eyeglasses. Just to see all these dilapidated possessions that once belonged to people who were senselessly murdered, the feeling is indescribable. Next we went to a building full of cells for defiant or difficult prisoners, which included standing cells no bigger than 3 feet by 3 feet which held 4 prisoners at a time. We actually stood in one of these cells and I had probably one of the most claustrophobic experiences of my life. The last part of the Auschwitz camp involved actually walking inside the only remaining gas chamber and oven (the nazi's burned down most all of them as they fled). I actually stood in a room where thousands upon thousands of innocent men women and children were gassed to death, then cremated next door. Birkanow was an expanse going off to the skyline filled with single story buildings that looked like stables because frankly, they were stables. Our tour ended in one of these that was designated as a shower/toilet room where on occasion, prisoners were allowed to shower and use the toilet (which was essentially a long concrete block with holed down to a trough) but only for a total of 5 minutes. We heard her recount prisoners fighting each other just to be able to use one of the holes, some having to simply choose whether it was more important to shower that day or use the bathroom. Absolutely horrible. I think everyone needs to see this place once, but having done so, i never want to go back again.
Our last day, like in Berlin, was souvenir day. I got my Polish flag while the rest of the guys bought Chess sets for some reason. Our last tour was of Krakows famous salt mine which was 400 meters below ground. We first had to take the stairs down to the actual mine. I can't even remember how many flights there were, but there were a lot. Essentially our guide told us that when the mine was first opened, salt was worth more than gold because of its value as a preservative, and miners were filthy rich. These same miners managed to carve elaborate statues of the most random things while they were on their breaks. The pictures on my photobucket'll show you what I mean. There was even a church down there with salt chandeliers, and even a copy of "The Last Supper" done with impeccable detail. And apparently, I am one of the privileged few that used the lowest toilet in the world. After we got out, we at some traditional polish food which were these mediocre dumpling type things, hung out for a bit at the hostel taking in the last of the Polish sights, then jetted off to Prague.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Berlin
After our exams on the 16th, Nick, Mike, Daniel, Nathan, Julian and I headed out to the train station for Berlin. We decided to take the night train to each city to save the money on hostels, and surprisingly, the bunk I had on the train was more comfortable than the bed that I had in Utrecht.
We arrived in Berlin at 4:30 in the morning and got completely suckerpunched by the cold as we walked off the train; it was a good 5 degrees C colder than Utrecht. Better yet,the busses didn't start running till 6 so we decided to take the hour long walk to our hostel which was a really cool bar downstairs w/ cheap jager shots and then the hostel upstairs, then found out that our rooms weren't gonna be ready till 2 so we just all crashed on the couches in the lounge for a couple hours, ate the free breakfast and took off to explore the city. We took the free walking tour with a riot of a tour guide that showed us Brandenburg Gate, The Richdag, The Holocost Memorial, The Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and some other random lil blurbs about the city like the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his kid off the balcony a couple years back. The Holocost Memorial probably had the most impact on me in Berlin. It's made out of a square blocks worth of concrete pillars which get taller towards the middle while the ground gets lower. When you're in the center of it, u get this really claustrophobic and lost feeling, which of course is the point of the memorial. Because of its construction, a lot of the ice that covers the ground inside the memorial doesn't melt, so we ended up slipping and sliding around the whole thing too. The Richdag (the parliament building) also had a lot of meaning in the design. There's a glass dome on top which people can walk around on which is directly above the parlaiment room, and it was constructed this way so that whenever parliament members needed a reminder of who they worked for, all they had to do was look up.
The architectural layout of the city was absolutely gorgeous. I wondered for a while why buildings aren't built in this classical style anymore until i realized that gold inlays and michaelangelo status statues all over the place aren't the most cost efficient way to build. And despite the fact that most of the city was destroyed in the 20th century, most of the buildings were rebuilt extremely similarly to their original looks. I really wish I paid attention in AP Art History so I could better describe everything.
That night on our way to a pub crawl we discovered the greatest food known to man, the kebab. Its this turkish pita type thing filled w/ veggies, meat and spices, and only cost around 2 Euro. We pretty much lived off these things for the rest of the trip. While we were buying the tickets for the crawl some guy tapped me on my shoulder, turns out it was my friend from freshman year's ex-boyfriend who i hadn't seen in 2 years. Small world huh? The actual pub crawl was a lot of fun but really sketch. We started off at this place called Zepatas where they led us into a creepy back room, then led us out the back and started pouring premixed screwdrivers down our throats. Between pubs we would stop under random overpasses and do the same and randomly got into an argument with some British guys about how David Beckham is garbage. We ended up at this really eurotrash club (like girls dancing in cages Eurotrash) called Matrix which looked like it was carved out of a sketchy mountain. Apparantly there was a room in the back where people were breathing fire but i never made it back. Me and Nathan headed out back to the hostel but realized we had no idea how to get back on public transit so we ended up walking an hour and a half on completely iced over sidewalks back to our hostel doing charlie brown falls the whole way back. Pairing this walk with my vans slip ons that provide no support what so ever destroyed my feet and put me in a good deal of pain for the rest of the trip.
The next day we took another tour through the same company of the 3rd Reich which we actually had to pay for, which was kind of a waste of time. Our guide essentially took us through all the same stuff that we saw the day before but with a different lecture that went along with them. On the way back we stopped at this one deserted island themed restaurant and had a long interesting conversation with the waitress about her going into psychosis by age 16. That night we just stayed at the hostel bar to watch the playoff games coz we were so exhausted. The third and last day in Berlin we just took time to walk around and window shop. Bubbles gave me the idea to collect a flag from each country that I visit while i'm here which as expensive as its gonna be to do, is gonna look sick when I put em up when i get back to Berkeley.
When we got to the train station that night we found out that the person we booked our tickets for the train from messed up and we only had 3 tickets between me, Daniel, Julian and Nathan and the ticket office couldn't sell us another ticket. Weighing out our options between sneaking one guy on the train, or leaving a man behind, we decided that we didn't want to go to German/Polish jail so one of us was going to have to stay behind and catch the next train out. Because me and dan had the tickets on our cards, it was between Nathan and Bubbles. We flipped a coin and Nathan ended up getting assed out. Luckily, the train conductor was able to sell us an extra ticket. So 60 bucks and a near heart attack later, we were on our way to Krakow, Poland.
We arrived in Berlin at 4:30 in the morning and got completely suckerpunched by the cold as we walked off the train; it was a good 5 degrees C colder than Utrecht. Better yet,the busses didn't start running till 6 so we decided to take the hour long walk to our hostel which was a really cool bar downstairs w/ cheap jager shots and then the hostel upstairs, then found out that our rooms weren't gonna be ready till 2 so we just all crashed on the couches in the lounge for a couple hours, ate the free breakfast and took off to explore the city. We took the free walking tour with a riot of a tour guide that showed us Brandenburg Gate, The Richdag, The Holocost Memorial, The Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and some other random lil blurbs about the city like the hotel where Michael Jackson dangled his kid off the balcony a couple years back. The Holocost Memorial probably had the most impact on me in Berlin. It's made out of a square blocks worth of concrete pillars which get taller towards the middle while the ground gets lower. When you're in the center of it, u get this really claustrophobic and lost feeling, which of course is the point of the memorial. Because of its construction, a lot of the ice that covers the ground inside the memorial doesn't melt, so we ended up slipping and sliding around the whole thing too. The Richdag (the parliament building) also had a lot of meaning in the design. There's a glass dome on top which people can walk around on which is directly above the parlaiment room, and it was constructed this way so that whenever parliament members needed a reminder of who they worked for, all they had to do was look up.
The architectural layout of the city was absolutely gorgeous. I wondered for a while why buildings aren't built in this classical style anymore until i realized that gold inlays and michaelangelo status statues all over the place aren't the most cost efficient way to build. And despite the fact that most of the city was destroyed in the 20th century, most of the buildings were rebuilt extremely similarly to their original looks. I really wish I paid attention in AP Art History so I could better describe everything.
That night on our way to a pub crawl we discovered the greatest food known to man, the kebab. Its this turkish pita type thing filled w/ veggies, meat and spices, and only cost around 2 Euro. We pretty much lived off these things for the rest of the trip. While we were buying the tickets for the crawl some guy tapped me on my shoulder, turns out it was my friend from freshman year's ex-boyfriend who i hadn't seen in 2 years. Small world huh? The actual pub crawl was a lot of fun but really sketch. We started off at this place called Zepatas where they led us into a creepy back room, then led us out the back and started pouring premixed screwdrivers down our throats. Between pubs we would stop under random overpasses and do the same and randomly got into an argument with some British guys about how David Beckham is garbage. We ended up at this really eurotrash club (like girls dancing in cages Eurotrash) called Matrix which looked like it was carved out of a sketchy mountain. Apparantly there was a room in the back where people were breathing fire but i never made it back. Me and Nathan headed out back to the hostel but realized we had no idea how to get back on public transit so we ended up walking an hour and a half on completely iced over sidewalks back to our hostel doing charlie brown falls the whole way back. Pairing this walk with my vans slip ons that provide no support what so ever destroyed my feet and put me in a good deal of pain for the rest of the trip.
The next day we took another tour through the same company of the 3rd Reich which we actually had to pay for, which was kind of a waste of time. Our guide essentially took us through all the same stuff that we saw the day before but with a different lecture that went along with them. On the way back we stopped at this one deserted island themed restaurant and had a long interesting conversation with the waitress about her going into psychosis by age 16. That night we just stayed at the hostel bar to watch the playoff games coz we were so exhausted. The third and last day in Berlin we just took time to walk around and window shop. Bubbles gave me the idea to collect a flag from each country that I visit while i'm here which as expensive as its gonna be to do, is gonna look sick when I put em up when i get back to Berkeley.
When we got to the train station that night we found out that the person we booked our tickets for the train from messed up and we only had 3 tickets between me, Daniel, Julian and Nathan and the ticket office couldn't sell us another ticket. Weighing out our options between sneaking one guy on the train, or leaving a man behind, we decided that we didn't want to go to German/Polish jail so one of us was going to have to stay behind and catch the next train out. Because me and dan had the tickets on our cards, it was between Nathan and Bubbles. We flipped a coin and Nathan ended up getting assed out. Luckily, the train conductor was able to sell us an extra ticket. So 60 bucks and a near heart attack later, we were on our way to Krakow, Poland.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Utrecht
So like a lot of things I say that I'm going to do, i started this thing way later than I thought I would. I'm going to try to recap as best as I can.
I landed in Amsterdam on the 5th both excited and intimidated by being in Europe for the first time. Luckily in the Netherlands, everyone speaks English to a certain extent, which makes being an uninformed American tourist pretty do-able. Julian and I still managed to take the wrong train to Utrecht, end up at a different University than the one we we're supposed to check in to, and walk a completely unnecessary amount lugging around a 50 pound suitcase and a hiking backpack. We walk up to the school and its absolutely gorgeous. Everything is built out of brick (like the rest of Utrect and Amsterdam) and reminded me of a private boarding school for rich kids (which I later found out is pretty close to what it actually is). We check in and head up to our rooms which are absolutely gigantic due to the fact that the school used to be a barracks for the Dutch army and the room i was in housed 12-16 soilders. I would say it was about 25x15 at least, and was a single. Sucks being in the army huh?
The rest of the DLC people are pretty cool too. It helps having the luxury of one guy i've lived with for the past year and a half and knowing two others before hand in the whole venturing into unchartered territory thing. The school paid for dinner at this pretty mediocre Italian restaurant and afterwards groups of us split off, my group went to a coffeeshop (yes those things are all over the place), a pub, then turned in for the night. The traditional dutch food which everyone pointed us to were pancakes, which are a lot thinner than the ones in the states, more like a crepe i would say, cooked with everything from bananas to bacon in them. Besides this, none of the other traditional Dutch food I came into contact with was all that great, Fred Nandy warned me so. I spent most of the rest of the time eating at this one little cafe called "De Smurf" which was run by a Chinese dude; that fact came in handy considering he understood Chinese more than English, or just cooking for myself. Oh yea, and the big grocery chain in the Netherlands is Albert Heijn, so every time I introduce myself to a dutch person i get the "Oh, like Albert Heijn!" thing, har har.
I spent the rest of the time in Utrecht learning about a couple centuries of Dutch history, culture, and how to speak the language. It pretty much boiled down to the fact that the majority of the country is either in danger of flooding out completely or sinking due to peet land and gas extraction territories, there's been a recent string of ethnic tension from the 1960's where immigration to the NL was heavy which was recently ignihted by the murder of two prominant political figures both linked to Muslim motives, and Ik spreek een bitje Nederlands (I speak a little bit of dutch). I'm concurrently emailing my two professors to see how I did but i'm positive i killed both. Overall I thought I would have learned more about Dutch culture and history by actually running around the country and taking tours, which they did make us do to a certain extent. We got a nice free walking tour of Utrecht, and we had to travel to Haarlem (yes, the Haarlem in NY is named after the city of Haarlem, NY was once NA (New Amsterdam)) to do a presentation on the Teyler's Museum, but overall, the program was a Meh +.
The overall night life was also kinda limited considering the time of the year, this Dutch program happened before all the college kids came back, but I did manage to make it out to a club one night with the rest of the DLC kids. The Dutch are horrible dancers and I definatly have to learn to like house music. Colin if you're reading this, you'd love it here. This country is amazing
I landed in Amsterdam on the 5th both excited and intimidated by being in Europe for the first time. Luckily in the Netherlands, everyone speaks English to a certain extent, which makes being an uninformed American tourist pretty do-able. Julian and I still managed to take the wrong train to Utrecht, end up at a different University than the one we we're supposed to check in to, and walk a completely unnecessary amount lugging around a 50 pound suitcase and a hiking backpack. We walk up to the school and its absolutely gorgeous. Everything is built out of brick (like the rest of Utrect and Amsterdam) and reminded me of a private boarding school for rich kids (which I later found out is pretty close to what it actually is). We check in and head up to our rooms which are absolutely gigantic due to the fact that the school used to be a barracks for the Dutch army and the room i was in housed 12-16 soilders. I would say it was about 25x15 at least, and was a single. Sucks being in the army huh?
The rest of the DLC people are pretty cool too. It helps having the luxury of one guy i've lived with for the past year and a half and knowing two others before hand in the whole venturing into unchartered territory thing. The school paid for dinner at this pretty mediocre Italian restaurant and afterwards groups of us split off, my group went to a coffeeshop (yes those things are all over the place), a pub, then turned in for the night. The traditional dutch food which everyone pointed us to were pancakes, which are a lot thinner than the ones in the states, more like a crepe i would say, cooked with everything from bananas to bacon in them. Besides this, none of the other traditional Dutch food I came into contact with was all that great, Fred Nandy warned me so. I spent most of the rest of the time eating at this one little cafe called "De Smurf" which was run by a Chinese dude; that fact came in handy considering he understood Chinese more than English, or just cooking for myself. Oh yea, and the big grocery chain in the Netherlands is Albert Heijn, so every time I introduce myself to a dutch person i get the "Oh, like Albert Heijn!" thing, har har.
I spent the rest of the time in Utrecht learning about a couple centuries of Dutch history, culture, and how to speak the language. It pretty much boiled down to the fact that the majority of the country is either in danger of flooding out completely or sinking due to peet land and gas extraction territories, there's been a recent string of ethnic tension from the 1960's where immigration to the NL was heavy which was recently ignihted by the murder of two prominant political figures both linked to Muslim motives, and Ik spreek een bitje Nederlands (I speak a little bit of dutch). I'm concurrently emailing my two professors to see how I did but i'm positive i killed both. Overall I thought I would have learned more about Dutch culture and history by actually running around the country and taking tours, which they did make us do to a certain extent. We got a nice free walking tour of Utrecht, and we had to travel to Haarlem (yes, the Haarlem in NY is named after the city of Haarlem, NY was once NA (New Amsterdam)) to do a presentation on the Teyler's Museum, but overall, the program was a Meh +.
The overall night life was also kinda limited considering the time of the year, this Dutch program happened before all the college kids came back, but I did manage to make it out to a club one night with the rest of the DLC kids. The Dutch are horrible dancers and I definatly have to learn to like house music. Colin if you're reading this, you'd love it here. This country is amazing
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