Netherlands!

EYE Film Institute Netherlands in Amsterdam

As my work schedule changed, I now get a 4-day weekend every two weeks (woohoo!). Since everything seems to happen at the last possible minute here, I was told about my schedule JUST with enough time to still get tickets to the Netherlands (although by that time, the tickets had become very pricey). But since Amsterdam is my favourite city, and I was staying with a friend I'd met in South Africa, I was still pretty excited. I was even packed and ready to leave early (but I didn't becaue there are always a million other things to do).

I took the usual train into Paris, took the RER (like a metro, but further undrground and heads further outside the city of Paris) to the Gare du Nord, and waited for my train to Rotterdam. By that hour, all of the decent-looking baguette sandwiches had gone, so I stepped outside and decided to try food from the Quick across the street. When I first tried Quick, I was 16, and I hated it. It was significantly worse than McDonald's. But I was hungry and people seem to like the chain, so I thought I would give it another shot.



Me and Mathilde outside the film museum



First, the salads here are a joke. You either get straight lettuce with a balsamic vinaigrette or fat on top of fat with a side of fat on lettuce. If you order a salad, you probably don't want breaded goat cheese with bacon and a cream dressing. At that point, you might as well have ordered the burger. So I did, and it was awful. I ordered a breaded chicken sandwich with fries and the barbecue sauce was terrible, the breading on the chicken was a joke, and the fries weren't salted and they actually advertised that fact. Who wants tasteless, fatty fries?



Anyway, so I got into Rotterdam on a nice train, and found out that my train to Leiden had been cancelled from a kind man on the train. My friend had warned me that there was still snow on the ground and that the train service was interrupted (as in some lines had service cut in half), so I just told her and took the next one. 





A canal in Amsterdam

 

Me in Amsterdam

  

Magna Plaza shopping centre in Amsterdam





Houseboats and canals in Amsterdam

 

 




Amsterdam

 

In Paris, I had stopped to buy some chocolate from a cute store (HEMA) in the train station to give as a hostess gift, and when I got off the train in Leiden, an open HEMA store was the first thing I saw. My friend told me that it was actually Dutch, so my brilliant "here are some chocolates from Paris" gift didn't work! :p



10 minutes later, we had already walked past a windmill and reached my friend's apartment. I conquered my fear of Dutch stairs and stairs where you can see in between the stairs all at once when we got in.




Dam Square in Amsterdam

 



The next day, we toured around Amsterdam (yikes these Dutch trains are expensive!), and took a free ferry, checked out the film museum, attempted a terrible lunch in the Chinatown area, had tea on Dam Square, had a great Tex-Mex dinner of fajitas in Leidseplein, walked through the Red light District, and looked at a billion tourist shops (that last one was all me...I can't get enough of them!). And we ate stroopwafels in between. It was a perfect day. (Except for the freezing cold nights and the Arctic-like winds as we trudged back to her apartment)








Leiden under the snow



The next day, we checked out Leiden, bought the most delicious old gouda, and took a tram through Rotterdam to get to my friend's grandfather's birthday party. What I should explain (or rather, maybe what should have been explained to me!) is that my friend's family is very religious and that they have no TV, there are 7 children in her family, 7 aunts and uncles on one side, and that the women were probably mostly going to be wearing dresses. With a family that big, the gathering was in a church. I had had a nice quiet afternoon party at someone's house in mind, and I had certainly not brought a dress. When a man (whom I later found out was my friend's father) stood up to speak after sandwiches had been passed out, my friend told me that it was the prayer, and I quickly tried to put my sandwich down, hiding the bite I'd already taken out of it. Luckily, my friend's un-religious boyfriend had to do the same. As her father spoke, I figured it was the prayer (since I don't understand a word of Dutch), but when my friend said "Now the prayer starts", I realized that it was just the intro. Everyone's heads went down, and only the table full of kids and I seemed to get tired and start looking around (at least I had the excuse that I had no clue what he was saying). ;)



 

When I first opened up my sandwich, I noticed that the meat was really red. I asked if it was cooked (no) or if it had been dried (no). It was just sliced raw red meat. As much I was turned off, I tried it, and it was... edible. I did have to make a joke that if we collected all of those sandwiches, we could make Lady Gaga's meat dress, though. It seems that the Dutch force you to choose between meat or cheese sandwiches, and that they can't coexist. Well, luckily, I found a pack of cheese slices, and slipped one into my butter and raw meat sandwich. When dipped into the Italian wedding-type soup, it was pretty good.







Cheese shop in Leiden



Anyway, then we went out in The Hague, first to an overcrowded lounge/bar. Great way to meet Dutch people, right? Wrong. It turned out to be ex-pat night. Haha. Then we ended up in a club with 80s music and people who had just become legal. So we left and went across the square to a pub which was more my scene, but some of the group wanted to go clubbing, so me and my friend left to grab Turkish pizzas on the way home. What we ended up getting was what neither of us remembered as Turkish pizza, and we missed the train and had to wait an hour in the restaurant until the next one. Though I hadn't had enough alcohol to have any impact on my body, I was dead tired and napped on my purse...on the table. (I was never going to see any of these people again, right?) At 2 am on a Saturday night, I couldn't stay awake any longer. I am clearly a party animal.



Utrecht



Sunday, we slept in and then went to Utrecht to do a walking tour. While the walking tour was of alleyways and some uninteresting sights ("This is where something uninteresting used to be and is now a normal house"), we got to see the city on-foot, which was nice. Then we saw Life of Pi at their theatre (I smuggled in a McFlurry under my arm), and as we were waiting for it to start, my friend suddenly realized "since the character is Indian and coming from India, what if there are parts which aren't in English, and the subtitles are in Dutch?". I hadn't ever thought of that. My friend was nice enough to jump up and ask the staff, who said that while they hadn't seen it, it should be fine. And it was. There was only one scene like that, and I could guess what happened. And then, in the middle of the movie, it paused and the lights turned on. My first thought was "oh crap, technical difficulties", but it turns out that they have an intermission for movies. When I was in the bathroom, they even announced that "Life of Pi" would now resume, like at a play. Anyway, it was a beautiful movie, although I didn't feel that it needed to be in 3D.



Then we went for tapas! Garlic butter shrimp, bread with dips, chicken wings (her fave!), and ribs. It was exactly what we needed before heading home for the night.



Leiden on the day I left (when it warmed up a bit)



Sadly, I had to leave on Monday morning after we went to our beloved HEMA (like IKEA, but smaller and found in the cities) for a 1 Euro breakfast (ham and egg-stuffed croissant, a bacon and egg bun, and a tea), before parting ways at the train station. I finished off Amsterdam all by myself, which was perfect, because I could stop at all of the tourist shops and shops in general without guilt. Then I embarked on my 7-hour journey home.

Next week, I'm headed to Caen with some other assistants and then apparently I have the next week off because all of the English teachers are on training the week before our holidays when I go to Spain and Portugal! I really am working to live here, not living to work :)