Haarlem Globetrotter

After my stopover in Amsterdam to finally visit Electric Ladyland, I went to the nearby town of Haarlem for another day trip. According to the always-reliable source Wikipedia, Harlem in New York City does in fact derive its name from Haarlem in the Netherlands. This relates back to when NYC was New Amsterdam. When it fell under British control, New Amsterdam became New "York" (like the English city of York) and Haarlem was Anglicized to Harlem. #TheMoreYouKnow

I got in around dinner time, which in Europe is convenient code for "nothing is open." My hostel was also located next to a highway, so I couldn't find any nearby restaurants. I sure as hell refused to pay 15 euros for the weird-looking vegetables and yogurt cups they served for dinner. However, I found out that breakfast was included in the price. I made the decision at that point to forgo dinner entirely, and instead subsist on the chosen nourishment of law students: a bottle of beer. Specifically, I tried the local variety Jopen which was quite good. Unfortunately, in order to get it, I had to interrupt a private party taking place in the hostel's bar. 1) Who throws a party in the bar of a hostel? It actually looked like a kid's birthday party. They had cake and light effects, and the 10-year old kids set up a PS3 to play Call of Duty in the hostel's restaurant (where I had to sit to drink the beer) while the adults had their fill at the bar. 2) My hair is too long, my beard looks scruffy, and I was sitting alone with a bottle of beer in a room full of kids...something was wrong with that picture.

When I got back to my room, I met my bunkmates, who have the honor of being the first Americans (aside from Marta and my roommate) I have encountered during my time here. They were extremely nice and outgoing...but also had a very stereotypical reason to be in the Netherlands. Translation: two college-aged stoners from Los Angeles who came all the way to the Netherlands to participate in the High Times Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam and went to smoke a joint about once every hour.

The next morning, I had a pretty typical Dutch breakfast courtesy of the hostel: hagelslag (bread with butter and sprinkles), bread with coldcuts and cheese, muesli with yogurt, hard boiled eggs, and some OJ.

I also made an extra sandwich and grabbed a roll with some spread to have as a quick lunch later on. Afterwards, I grabbed the bus to the city center to check out the local Grote Markt. Like every other Dutch city, Haarlem holds a Saturday open air market, selling groceries, snacks, and various wares. I noticed a toy store nearby and decided to see how it compares to Toys R Us back in the States. You cannot tell the difference between the two. The two stock the same exact items, made by the same multinational companies probably employing the same Chinese slave labor (maybe the Dutch slave-labor items are more eco-friendly...), and most of the packages were in English.

After being numbed by post-apocalyptic visions of globalized consumer culture, I thought I'd get a reprieve by going to visit the Ten Boom Museum, a house that the Ten Boom family used to hide Jews during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II. I did not anticipate that it would be one of the more awkward experiences of my life. The first hint of something not quite right was that in the museum you can take pictures in general but not of any photographs that line the wall. This made kind-of sense for family privacy reasons, but the "tour guide" claimed that it had to do with the photos being used for commercial purposes. I don't understand why someone would be inclined to use the family photos for commercial purposes rather than the main attraction (the fake wall that hid people). Okay, I can live with that policy, whatever the justification.

But then the real fun started. My "tour guide" revealed she actually volunteers to give tours of the house. I quickly understood why - the lady is an extreme Christian fundamentalist to the nth degree. Apparently, I had missed a key point when reading about this place: Corrie ten Boom, the lady who wrote the book The Hiding Place about her family's activities hiding Jews during the Holocaust, was super Christian and went on to "spread His word" around the globe. This didn't exactly gel with what I thought was more Holocaust-related story than missionary extravaganza. I appreciate the selfless act of the Ten Boom family, who should be commended for risking their lives (some of them actually giving their lives) to protect Jews from the Germans and Dutch collaborators. But wow, I have never been so heavily evangelized in my life. The lady kept rhetorically asking me variants of "You believe Jesus Christ is your lord and savior, right?" "You know He died on the cross for our sins, right?" "You know there's a Third World War coming because of Muslims and secularists, right?" Wait, what? Yes, this lady was convinced that we are a stone's throw away from all-out religious war that will result in the fulfillment of the Book of Revelation.

The most awkward part was that the other guy on this tour with me also happened to be a mega-fundamentalist and was privy to the Christian overtones of the story, and all of the things I just described happened over a half-hour "conversation" where me and this other guy were sitting directly across from the "tour guide" in the living room of the house that once housed clandestine Jews during the Holocaust. At one point, she wouldn't accept my polite nodding to her rhetorical questions and outright asked me if I praise Jesus. I couldn't hide my Jewishness anymore (ironic - and she couldn't even guess from my Jew fro??), and said that I'm Jewish. She gave me the stock Christian retort ("You know, Jesus was Jewish and the Old Testament laid the foundation for Christianity."), but every time I hear that, I can hear the implicit follow-up ("...but you know non-Christians are going to hell, right?"). She ended up giving me a book in Hebrew which she made clear discusses why Jews should become Christians to be saved from the End-Times. Again, people can proselytize if they want (pretty wasted effort on me), but I feel like it's inappropriate to do so in the context of a museum tour, especially in a house that protected Jews during the Holocaust (you know, the attempt to eradicate Judaism). Ironically, I've never felt more proud to be Jewish than after the "tour."

After what seemed like a never-ending half-hour, the "tour guide" finally took us around the house. By that point, the cat was already out of the bag, so she tailored her overt Christian fundamentalism to the slightly more nuanced Judeo-Christian v. everyone else message. This resulted in many interesting contrasts. For example, when we got to the actual hiding place, she made sure to mention that the Ten Booms were imprisoned by the Dutch collaborators for protecting Jews (eventually leading to Corrie's father's death from illness) and Corrie's sister died in Ravensbruck. Unspoken narrative: Christians died for your people. How very Jesus-like. At another point, when she pointed out the yellow "Jood" patch worn in the concentration camps, the "tour guide" told us the story of how Corrie somehow procured and hid a New Testament, which she read aloud to Jews late at night to give them some sort of spiritual uplifting. Unspoken narrative #2: she was proselytizing Jews in concentration camp.

Once the tour of the house was over, the "tour guide" gave me a bookmark which reads "We have an Almighty Father in heaven. Trust Him and He will do great things in your life." Then, the other guy on the tour  bought me the DVD of The Hiding Place "to learn more about Corrie's message of hope and forgiveness." I forgive you, crazy tour guide lady.

I guess a Higher Force was at work, because immediately after that transcendental experience I ended up at Cathedral of St. Bavo. As I've said in the past, I belong to the "seen one, seen 'em all" category of church visitors in Europe. Admittedly, St. Bavo is an impressive church as far as churches go. It had an extremely-oversized organ (compensating for something??), intricate stain-glass windows, ornate ceilings, and...user-submitted artwork?

Maybe this is supposed to be the new, hip side of the church? I don't really see the connection between Christianity and Family Guy, except all of the times Jesus does non-Jesus things on the show, or in relation to the use of giggity vis-a-vis my organ joke. I feel like these pictures also deserve a caption contest. Send me your best, Internet!

After the church, I made my way to the Teylers Museum, which combines an odd mix of natural history, art, science, and coin collections. One neat collection they had there consisted of Rembrandt etchings. My favorite, however, was definitely their exhibit on luminescence, i.e. round 2 of Electric Ladyland:

I also discovered that I have an unhealthy fascination with uranium (timely yet unintended Iran nuclear deal reference!), seen below in the greenish glass forms and the bright green cube:

From the Teylers Museum, I headed to the Molen de Adriaan, an unusual windmill built on top of a fortification. 

You can see the innerworkings of the windmill as part of a guided tour. I learned a lot of neat stuff about windmills from the tour, including how millers position the sails to send a certain message to other millers (such as signaling malfunctions, weddings, deaths, etc.) and the various uses for windmills (water regulation, milling, oil manufacturing, and sawing wood, among others). I also learned that once upon a time there were over 15,000 windmills, now reduced to approximately 1,100 - according to the tour guide, the biggest cause of the windmill's decline was the growing influence of power utilities in the 19th century. The best part was seeing not only the windmill in operation (unlike the ones in Kinderdijk) but also the sails up close when the miller decided to change them. 

Afterwards, I wandered a bit around the city. I eventually found my way to Jopenkerk, a former church that now houses the Jopen brewery. I can think of no better contrast/poetic justice to the Ten Boom Museum experience than ending my day in Haarlem drinking a beer (Jopen's Mashing Pumpkins, a delicious pumpkin beer) in a former church. To top it off, I grabbed some Oliebollen (large puffy donuts covered in powdered sugar) nearby. To doubly top everything off, a parade of Zwarte Piets marched right by me playing Zwarte Piet tunes. What a send-off!

  

Today's Dutch word: kerk (church). 

        

Utrecht and the Amazing Technicolor City + The Electric Ladyland Amsterdam Test

This post is a double feature: my day trip to Utrecht, and my journey to finally see Electric Ladyland in Amsterdam.

I recently came across an article about lesser-known towns, "off the beaten path" locations that are overshadowed by their well-known neighbors. Though I generally end up being a city slicker for ease of planning, Utrecht has definitely opened my mind to expanding my travel options.

After doing nearly all of my traveling via bus, it was a nice change to take a train to Utrecht. In fact, the train ride was only about 35 minutes long. I noticed that immediately as the train started moving, people frantically switched around their seats to face the forward-moving direction. I can totally relate though. Any time I'm riding backwards on a train, I might as well stick my head in a garbage can, because it feels like I'm trying to watch a 3D movie in a washing machine while drunk.

Immediately after leaving Utrecht Centraal, I encountered a massive parked-bike bonanza. Little did I know that this foreshadowed a day of constantly dodging parades of bicycles coming at me at 50 bajillion km/hr. I didn't think I'd find a place more inundated with bikes than Rotterdam, but Utrecht makes Rotterdam look like a slow-motion tortoise race, if the two tortoise participants were already dead. This city has some serious Formula-1 bikers. Even Lance Armstrong on steroids would be like WTF.    

I made my way to Stone Hotel & Hostel, which I recommend if you ever make your way to Utrecht. After checking in and speaking with the front desk staff about places to visit in a day, I started my tour around town with Domtoren (Dom Tower). Domtoren is the tallest church tower in the Netherlands, at 368 ft/112 m high. You can only ascend the tower as part of a guided tour, so I ended up with some time to kill and decided to grab a quick lunch. I kept hearing the locals talking about the "broodje Mario" (the Mario sandwich). Lesson #1 about traveling: trust the locals when they recommend something. The excitement with which I heard about the Mario sandwich made me imagine a sandwich that travels through green pipes, has mushrooms in it, sits on the back of a green dinosaur, and gives you coins. Unfortunately, you'll have to settle for a pretty-good salami sandwich:

After lunch, I met up with the tour and ascended Domtoren, which was built over a 60 year period in the 1300s. I didn't grab a picture, but the steepness of the stairs is an even more near-vertical ascent than my apartment in Rotterdam. My favorite part of the experience was that the tour guide had to conduct the tour in both Dutch and English. The Dutch part would take about 10 minutes to explain while his English version was condensed to about 1 minute. I couldn't help but wonder what was being lost in translation, so I kept imagining him recounting his epic bike conquests. I assume that these things are passed down from generation to generation, perpetuating the Dutch biking epidemic. Anyways, pictures:

Across the street is the Dom Church which, if you don't know, is a place where people worship a God named Jesus H. Christ. It's a church; church things happen there presumably. I always find it funny how Europeans get really excited about the grandeur of their local churches. For instance, the people I spoke with in Utrecht bragged about how awesome their church is compared to other places in the Netherlands. This while statistically speaking, half of the country is non-religious. I guess everyone really likes architecture? Or they've adopted Bike as their new lord and savior (okay, I'm enrolling in Bike Jokes Anonymous right now...).

My ticket for the Domtoren tour came with admission to the Speelklok Museum. I had no clue what Speelklok meant, so expectations were non-existent. As I came to find out, the museum displays automatic musical instruments from throughout the ages. Simply put, this was one of the better museums I've been to during my travels. It gives you a great overview of why they're historically important (short version: they brought music to the masses), how they developed, and how they were progressively killed off by new technologies. One of the main highlights of the exhibit was a giant carnival organ that the museum programmed to play Gangnam Style (a video of which can be found here). Another highlight was the "Phonoliszt violina," which combines a player piano with automatic violins. They also had a great special exhibit on automatic music in the 1920s. Moreover, you get a good idea of how integrated automatic music became in the household, from grandfather clocks to pre-phonograph record players and even decorative musical bird cages. However, I have no explanation for this:

After Speelklok, I ran over to the Utrecht Centraal Musem. Buying a ticket to it lets you access the main museum as well as the Dick Bruna house (more on that in a minute). The Centraal Museum portion represents an odd mix of various art forms, ranging from classical to modern art as well as "applied art." It has 11 or so rooms that revolve around a certain theme. Since I was short on time (everything seems to close at 5pm), I picked the ones that sounded the most interesting. The most notable exhibit was called "ARRRGH! Monsters in Mode (Fashion)" which sounded suspiciously like Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. I generally don't "get" fashion, but the Nickelodeon-esque naming piqued my interest enough to try it out. Let's just say I don't expect a "Who wore it best?" segment on these articles of clothing...Here's a sampling (note also the strange face decals on the floor):

To be fair, I might be amenable to watching Joan Rivers critique these outfits. I personally think the purple sponge suit would flatter anyone's figure, but I'm more partial to the orange puffball. However, I got a little creeped out thinking I was surrounded by dozens of Lady Gagas.  As a result, when I noticed it was 4:45pm I decided to take a quick run through the Dick Bruna house across the street. Dick Bruna created a popular Dutch children's book character, Miffy, and the house chronicles Bruna's career. Most of the exhibit is situated in the attic of the house, and includes little kid stuff like a McDonalds-esque tube slide and a comfy reading perch. Between that and the Centraal Museum, I'd say 5 euros well spent. Yet, I find the best part to be how I went from creepy needle man (second picture, on the left) to small child land within the span of an hour. Hooray, adulthood!

This would generally be the point where I say since everything shuts down at 5pm, that's the end of my story. First of all, I still have the Amsterdam story to tell. Second, (I guess technically first because I'm going to talk about it first), I must tell you the tale of the most amazing urban planning success story of the modern era: Trajectum Lumen. Whoever came up with this idea is my hero and must be a legend in the city planning world. I hope you have strapped yourself in to whatever comfortable study space and/or chair and/or car seat while driving and using a cell phone, because this will blow your mind...

Trajectum Lumen is essentially a city-wide, nighttime treasure hunt. Someone had the brilliant idea to build color-changing lights into the sidewalks. These colorful lights are interspersed with illuminated arrows to guide you through the walking tour of the city center. At certain points throughout the walking tour, you'll come across blue lights with an eye design, letting you know to look around and see something cool. For example, at one point you encounter a sidewalk lined with trees that light up according to a pre-programmed melody. This tree pathway leads you to the side of a church which is glowing with various shades of purple and blue. If you have a smartphone, you can even download an app that gives you details about the landmarks you see along the way. Ultimately, you end up walking throughout the entire city center, all the while seeing the city light up like a psychedelic show. Quite awesome. 

 

Trajectum Lumen happens to provide the perfect segue to my next adventure: a return to Amsterdam. Specifically, Electric Ladyland...

After searching online for places to stay in Dusseldorf or Cologne (my original second-day destinations), I realized that for some odd reason all of the places were booked. I immediately remembered that I had unfinished business in Amsterdam, Electric Ladyland, so I made a last-minute change of plans and caught the train there. I got in around 12:30pm, and with a 25 minute walk from the train station to Electric Ladyland, I figured I'd make it just in time for the opening. However, when I had been standing around for about 15 minutes and it got to 1:10pm, I noticed a sign on the door that said "Summer hours: 1:30pm-6pm." For some reason, running on summer hours seemed like a normal Amsterdam thing to do, so I grabbed a quick lunch to kill some time. I got back precisely at 1:30pm but there were three people waiting outside. They also were confounded about the lack-of-being-open. We rang the door bell, knocked, called, nothing. I was getting pretty upset that this would become the second time I unsuccessfully attempted to see this place. Then suddenly, at 1:45pm, a guy with a long gray beard, long hair, and a vest that identified him as a stereotypical hippie that never in his mind left the 1960s, casually showed up to let us in. This all seemed very normal, at least as justified in my head, because Amsterdam. 

Electric Ladyland is a two-part "attraction." On the first level, the owner/CEO/chief resident hippie/artist stuck in another time like Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris - runs a fluorescent art gallery. This room gives you an introduction into the psychedelic eye sex you're about to have in his basement. He constructed small models of the "museum" and displays them alongside numerous fluorescent artworks which he does in fact sell (if he understands the concept of money). 

The museum itself is like a mini (and by mini, I mean one basement room) theme park of black-light inspired psychedelia. Like the overall structure, the downstairs area is divided into two main segments. When you first enter, you can check out all sorts of neat fluorescence-related things, ranging from science hobby kits to luminescent stones to the special glow paint the owner uses to do his work to pictures of animals that have been genetically modified to glow. He explains everything in great detail and gives presentations on the different color effects of long-wave and short-wave UV lights. He makes it very clear, through examples, that the standard black-light cannot capture all of the potential colors embedded in stones. He even has "paintings" that are meticulously constructed out of stones that glow different colors based on the type of UV light. One really cool example was a painting by an artist named John Ludlum, who made the normal light version look like a sunny day on the beach, but when you turn the lights off and put UV lights over it, you can see a sunset which quickly turns into a nighttime scene. Another cool point was the law enforcement application of black lights. If you run a black light over your driver's license (or a residence permit), certain credit cards, or money, you will see an invisible watermark that can be used to identify forgeries. 

  

The rest of the museum is best told through pictures:

    

After passing the Electric Ladyland Amsterdam test, I started heading to the train station to make my way to Haarlem, a similar town to Utrecht from what I've read. However, I got significantly delayed by the fact that I found the Amsterdam Christmas market. 

It had all of the Christmas market standards: gluhwein, handicrafts, fried food, etc. Most importantly, it had a stand that was selling churros y chocolate. I took it as a sign that I made the right decision in skipping Germany and in going to Spain next week. 

Today's Dutch lesson: kleuren (colors). 

       

   

Sex, Cries, and Videotape

If my brain were a train, it would be on a return voyage right now. This blawg's stop: Amsterdam. In fact, after my Block I exams, my brain immediately started to see the endgame here. One month from today, I will be done with classes at Erasmus (except for two take-home exams and a paper in late January...) and preparing to head home. I plan to ultimately do a final write-up summarizing my overall experience on exchange, but one bit of learned-ness I take away from this experience is that homesickness is inevitable. It does not have to take the form of a full-blown desire to leave but rather gnaws ever so slightly at your feet. Moreover, expectations can change - quickly. The moment I left my final Block I exam, I felt not only a sense of relief, but also a desire to do things differently for the rest of my time in Rotterdam. I dropped out of a more time-intensive class for one that is not related to international law but frees me time-wise to do other things. Although school is the principal reason I'm here, I want to take full advantage of my remaining month to experience more: more travel, more events and activities, more socializing. Simply put: more fun. (Easier to say without exams looming on the horizon...)

So, Amsterdam. I took a day trip to Amsterdam right before finals to get some fun in before the exam period (which here takes place in one week with no official study period). My trip started in an interesting manner. I've mentioned it on Facebook, but just to flesh it out a bit... I took a morning train out of Rotterdam Central Station and had the "pleasure" of "meeting" two guys who were still high on ecstasy from the night before. I was trying to figure out the train schedule when they came up from behind me and loudly yelled "Hey you!" I thought they were going to ask me for money, but they just asked me how I was doing. We started talking about the States, because one of the guys told me he's going to Las Vegas to party sometime soon. At some point during the "conversation," one of the guys asked if he could touch my hair. He began by lightly patting me on the head but then rapidly devolved into an awkward shampoo commercial-style rubdown: 

  --->

Meanwhile, the other guy wondered aloud whether, since I'm from the United States, I might be half black. Maybe mixed-race people in the Netherlands are like unicorns, or as numerous as Dutchmen who think Zwarte Piet insensitively reduces skin color to a costume. Anyways, after a good minute of having my hair manually exfoliated, I told them I had to catch my train. This prompted a two-minute long handshake where the two fellows couldn't recall if they had further questions for me. 

Once I finally got on the train, I soon realized the trip would not take 28 minutes, as my Amsterdam-Rotterdam ride at the start of my exchange did. Apparently the high-speed rail to Amsterdam only goes to Schipol Airport and not Amsterdam Central Station, so the total travel time ended up being 70 minutes. One thing I also did not consider is that trains can get very, very crowded on a relatively-busy route. By the time the train arrived in Amsterdam, the place was standing-room only. I had someone's Dutch butt in front of my face for a significant portion of the trip. 

I decided first to get a 24hr "travel pass" since I was running a bit beyond my anticipated schedule. It seems like most major European cities have "travel" and "city" passes that give you unlimited public transportation and/or discounted to free attractions. However, most of the attractions attached to the (40 euro) Amsterdam city pass are museums, and learning is boring...plus I didn't anticipate spending 40 euros on museum admission in ~8 hours. 

Ironically, I began my Amsterdam adventure at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam's modern art museum. To add a further delay to my plans (which didn't really exist because I didn't go to Amsterdam with a plan, so I'm essentially complaining about nothing), the line to get into Stedelijk was massive. In fact, it was almost as long as an average pair of Dutch legs. So, about a city block. For reference, it took at least 30 minutes to make it to the ticket counter. The museum itself was fairly representative of modern art as I see it: a mixed bag of amazingly colorful and surreal/abstract pieces and ... trash cans next to lava lamps.  

 vs.

Maybe the trash can exhibit was meant to symbolize how we see some forms of art as garbage. The lava lamps then represent how our opinions are artificially molded, but can be deconstructed with a little energy. Or perhaps, some homeless guy found this stuff in a dumpster behind a vintage shop. Whether you're on Team Art or Team Trash, what's important is that these trash cans and lava lamps are open to interpretation...right? There was even an exhibit on the design variants of household goods. Translation: look at some plates and furniture - it's art! However, whoever designed this "dat ass meme" boombox wins:

After Stedelijk, I headed back towards the train station to find a place called Electric Ladyland. Apparently, the owner of a fluorescent-art gallery built a fluorescent-art museum in the basement of the gallery. Full disclosure: I have a major obsession with psychedelic color patterns and neon hues. I had basically made my decision to travel to Amsterdam premised on seeing this place. Of course, I had miscalculated yet again: the museum is not open on Sundays. I was left to simply look through the window at what might have been, the one that got away, as I saw every sad clown picture flashing before my eyes, felt the panoply of emotions experienced by watching the ending of Marley and Me on repeat, and imagined the collective pain and suffering of humanity. 

Like any good lawyer-to-be, I decided to drown my sorrows in alcohol. Genever/Gin, to be exact. I made my way from the north end of town back to the south end, which houses most of the city's museums as well as the "I amsterdam" statue:

Even though the temperature was hovering around 50F/10C outside, I kept my promise to myself to eat waffles and ice cream for lunch:

After "lunch," I went to the nearby House of Bols, which is a genever museum/shameless advertisement for Bols brand genever. I learned all about the history of Bols, the process of making genever, yada yada yada two main points. 1) Two gin tastings and a custom cocktail are included in the admission price. 2) The largest part of the exhibit is a "smell tasting" room, where you sniff various scents to discern the sensitivity of your nose to subtle flavors:

As expected, I would fail miserably as a gin-maker, because I have almost no sense of smell. If I were blindfolded, and someone shoved an orange slice up my nose, I would probably guess I was smelling stale old people. If someone asked me to describe the smell in a room full of roses, I would probably say I smell a lot of nothingness. If someone locked me in a room filled with gasoline and told me my life depended on identifying the smell, I would probably say "Why are you doing this to me?"

I wasn't sure what to do with myself afterwards. I could blame it on the a-a-aa-a-al-cohol. Or I could blame it on my la-a-a-ack of upfront planning. Either way, after doing the stereotypical lawyer activity of drinking, I recalled that men stereotypically think about sex every six seconds. Putting two and two together, makes four, but also reminded me that I heard about a sex museum in Amsterdam. Turns out there are two of them. Since one of them is in the Red Light District, I reduced the overall sketchiness of a guy going to a sex museum on his own by opting for the other choice. Needless to say, I can't exactly post too many pictures from my visit there. However, it is a very interesting museum. If you thought late 19th-century porn was all lady ankles, THINK AGAIN. The museum houses all sorts of antiquated pornography, as well as old-timey sex toys, sex marketing and other sex-related stuff. One thing that was particularly strange was this weird bird bath/odd bronze statue composed of penis sculptures arranged in a circle (fair warning, the picture below, which you have undoubtedly already seen with your peripheral vision, shows anatomically-detailed phalli):

Now that I have shocked my audience, time to detail the last bit of my trip. There's only one place to go after a visit to the sex museum: the Red Light District. There's really not much to say about it. If you expected the Red Light District to be full of windows surrounded in red neon lights where you can legally "window shop" for prostitutes, you were correct. You can't take pictures or record video in the Red Light District because, hear this crazy story, prostitutes are unionized and actually have certain protections from exploitation. Gasp! I spent my last few hours wandering the city streets near the Red Light District and the train station, and checking out the National Monument nearby. I tried a beer from the local brewery, Brouwerij de Prael, and grabbed pizza and frites for dinner. Very healthy end to a very healthy day.  There was also a small fair randomly outside of De Bijenkorf (the Harrod's of Amsterdam), which was a nice send-off:

That's all for my Amsterdam trip. Hopefully, I will get to my Berlin write-up within the next week.  

Today's Dutch lesson: ruiken (to smell). As in, I am completely unable to ruiken anything. 

Euro-Maast

It has been too long since I last updated this blawg (over a month). Between school assignments, final exams, and a new internship, I kind of got swamped and put this to the side. I've decided to write in reverse chronological order to catch up. This blawg entry covers my trip to Maastricht, and subsequent posts will deal with Amsterdam and Berlin. I think this will maximize my memory of little trip details, but this also means that by the time I write about Berlin I'll probably think I was someone else during a different century.

Maastricht is a quaint Dutch town in its own right, but when I heard that the Erasmus student group was arranging a day trip there, all I could think about was Maastricht's place in European Union history. For the uninitiated, the Maastricht Treaty played a defining role in establishing the EU as we know it, including the creation of the euro and the Europeanization of policy areas beyond economics. For Euroskeptics, I guess this makes Maastricht the scene of the crime. For Europhiles, Maastricht is like a mecca. So consider this my hajj. I've probably offended someone.

I want to preface the rest of this post by saying that I generally avoid tours. I don't like the idea of being on someone else's schedule. To me, tours are like being a passenger in a NASCAR car during a race: you know you're being guided by a professional, but you also know best case scenario that you're playing vehicular ring around the rosie for a few hours. I don't really recall where else I was going with that simile. Relatedly, I have an irrational fear of European bathroom breaks from my travels. I seriously had to pee the first day of my Brussels study abroad trip, and at that moment I discovered the horror of priced facilities. Pay-to-pee services. This was at a McDonald's no less, and I had to wait in line to ask for change to pay the precise 50 cents in order to access the bathroom, which was being guarded by a cleaning troll. Then, during my Munich study abroad, I seriously had to pee during the entire 45 minute metro ride back from Hofbrauhaus (a bar that serves 1-liter beers) and I had to pay 50 cents at our metro stop to go through a turnstile to get to the urinals. Connecting this all back to tours, I don't trust that bathrooms will be easily accessible or even available, and being in a tour group hinders your ability to run off and find that one magical place where humans can freely relieve themselves. Have you no shame, Europe?  

And none of that had to do with Maastricht. Let's begin.

This was a very good tour experience overall. Maastricht is about 2 hours 15 minutes to the south of Rotterdam by bus. The student group gave everyone packed lunch (two sandwiches and a clementine) along with stroopwafels and a piece of cake. The bus ride passed by fairly quickly, partially because the student group decided to have a "speed date" session with people changing seats every so often to meet other people. It was a nice change of pace, and I ended up hanging out with one of the other students for most of the trip. Sometimes you just know instantly that you will work well together as friends.

First stop on our trip was the Caves of Sint Pietersberg. To make a short story short, there's an entire network of 20,000 subterranean man-made limestone tunnels in Maastricht, carved out over the span of 700 years.

This network enabled Maastrichtians (I'm making up that name) to smuggle things throughout the city during numerous sieges (modern day Dutchmen probably use it for Xtreme bicycle training). Our tour guide also informed us that the limestone was composed mostly of chalk derived from dinosaur bones, which made my constant touching of the walls slightly more macabre.

I'm now afraid to go to sleep because I fear that the ghosts of the Jurassic Park veloceraptors will come for revenge. Anyways, the tunnels being completely underground, you cannot see anything without a lantern. Which of course meant that at one point, the tour guide turned off all the lanterns and made us feel our way through the place (I sure hope that was your shoulder I accidentally touched, anonymous shadow person). I assumed this was the Maastricht equivalent of hazing, until we exited the tunnels and saw a bunch of girls standing around with broken eggs and banana peels on their heads. Worst sorority, like, ever, like.

We then proceeded to a boat tour of Maastricht. Not much to tell about it, other than it was a nice way to see the main parts of the city. I saw the building where the Maastricht Treaty was signed (the Limburg Provincial Government building), but I didn't know which building it was until about 5 minutes ago (this picture is from Wikipedia, since I had no effing clue at the time that THIS was THE building).

Also, the boat had a fully-operational café, so when I beheld the most beautiful of drinks, my beloved warme chocolademelk, in the hands of another, I had to get some. Apparently I am weird because I add sugar to hot chocolate. At least I can blame it on the American-ness in me, and our distinct love of chasing after Type II diabetes.  

The last sightseeing part of the trip was the Saint Servatius Basilica. As advertised, there was some church-type stuff, and Jesus-type stuff, and religious-type stuff, and bones encased in gold trinkets...-type stuff. Did I mention that there were human bones preserved in strange metallic objects?

In fact, one object looked like the championship trophy for praising god:

I'm very firmly in the "seen one, seem 'em all" camp when it comes to church viewings, but I can't recall human remains getting into the mix before. Either way, I'm still fairly confused as to the combo church-museum atmosphere. Were the church overlords unsure about what to do with all these random bones and golden pieces? Or did they just want to charge admission to church? It's kind of like Walt Disney World, except I don't remember seeing Mickey's bones displayed at the park entrance. And the only ride is the spiritual journey you get to take with Jesus. FEEL THE ADRENALINE.

There was a two hour interlude between the religiousy stuff and dinner, so my new friend and I wandered aimlessly around the city center and grabbed a chocolate-filled waffle and gelato. We stumbled upon two girls giving away free packages of cracker snacks, then noticed two guys on the other end of the courtyard giving out the same snacks. Needless to say, I'm Jewish, and free things, and I now have a bag full of crackers. (All religions were insulted in the making of this blog.) We also ended up at a souvenir shop, which apparently doubled as a party store, which apparently double-doubled as an Exhibit of Zwarte Piet's Racist Bonanza. It's okay though, because tradition.

           
     



Aside from all that, the only other parts of the trip were dinner and the bus ride home. Forty euros well spent, I would say.

In unrelated news, since I have now finished with finals for my Block I classes, I begin Block II classes on Monday. I'm taking EU External Relations Law, Law of International Institutions, and Alternative Dispute Resolution. I tried to reduce my weekly class time in order to travel more during my last month and a half here, so hopefully this will mean more blawg posts.

Today's Dutch lesson: reisleider (tour guide).