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
