31.07.07
school was alright today. nothing special. i didn't walk to school for the past two days. i took the bus since i was getting out of the apartment too late to make it to school on time. everyone on the bus route is in my course. pretty much every single person on the bus this morning was wearing the hague academy pass. funny. maybe real haguettes (like baguettes but different) can tell we're all dorky law geeks and decide to take a later bus.
the big news from today was that i went grocery shopping at a regular dutch grocery store and i found a really cute british ex-pat grocery shoppe. ye olde grocery shoppe. everything at the british place was super expensive (like 1 euro for a can of dr. pepper! what!!).
the other big news from today is that i finally went to scheveningen beach. we had a social event on the beach there. a night of dancing. to old music in a cheesy environment. but still. it was fun. before i launch into the actual party, here's a bit on scheveningen. it's actually a very interesting place, a place with a lot of history that has now been stripped of all that is interesting and inundated with burger king. ah progress.
and ah, the north sea. so inviting. so warm. so neither of those things.
apparently (according to my friends at wikipedia), the name "sceveninghe" dates back to 1280 (the first residents were either anglo-saxon or scandinavian or yeti.) there was a battle fought at scheveningen on the 10th of august 1654 between the dutch and english. apparently, thousands of peoples gathered to watch on the shore. but prior to that, in 1470, a heavy storm destroyed the church and half of the houses. this place is definitely the florida of europe, having been struck by storms in 1570, 1775, 1825, 1860, 1881 and 1894. in 1894, the residents finally had enough. after hearing from their great (to the power of 7) grandparents about the "big storm of [fill in year]", the residents got together and decided to build a harbour. things really picked up for the scheveningen-ians after that. jacob pronk built, in 1818, a wooden building on a dune near the north sea, from where people could bathe from 4 separate rooms. until herr pronk's innovation, scheveningenians could only bear to be near one another, as their noses were by then completely devoid of smell-cells due to the lack of hygiene rampant in the region. according to wikipedia, herr pronk's bathhouse marked the start of scheveningen as a bathing place. and "since then, scheveningen has attracted numerous tourists from all over europe, notably from germany." herr pronk is now burned in effigy by residents of scheveningen.
interesting fact:
the name scheveningen had been used as a shibboleth during WWII to identify German spies: they would pronounce the initial "sch" differently from dutch native speakers.
cool.
before i went to the beach for the hague academy party, i went to dinner at a nice indonesian restaurant with P-H and O. the food was delicious and plentiful. it was a feast. post dining, we went up to the beach party. the place was sort of weird. the place where we had party - it was actually a facility called "beach company" -- they organize events for groups. the place was very "on campus club"-ish -- mangy pool tables, foosball, weird festive decor, bad music, weak drinks. the whole thing. but everyone looked to be having fun. and that's the bestest part. getting back home afterwards was kind of bizarre though. apparently, there was a bus that left from the beach and came very close by my place, but i couldn't figure out where the bus stopped. so i finally gave up and took the tram into the city center. of course, since the public transport stops running at some time between 12:30 and 1:00, i missed the bus i needed to connect to and ended up taking a cab home -- a 14 euro cab-ride. the base price of a cab here is like 5 euro! so no matter how far you go, it's going to cost at least 10 euro. so annoying. i am spoiled by nyc cabs!! anyway, i made it home. and that's good enough.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
monday, i'm in school
30.07.07
back to school monday. not much to report today, at least not during school hours. we have two new lecturers today, professors onuma & lagrange. prof. onuma is cute-funny & has hand-outs! hand-outs! how long has it been since i got hand-outs! a very long time. prof. lagrange seems to be very theoretical in her approach, so i think it will be fairly challenging to unpack. prof. onuma will be lecturing a trans-civilizational perspective on international law and prof. lagrange on the effectiveness in domestic law of international norms governing the status of individuals. should be interesting.
monday night was the night that students from several countries (including canada) were invited to prof. daudet's (the secretary general of the hague academy) home for cocktails. i went over at 6:00 and it was a really fun night. prof. daudet and his wife are absolutely delightful, and so very down to earth. he teaches at the sorbonne and is really quite brilliant. his wife is beautiful, haitian and just generally a very good-humoured person. i threatened to show up at their paris apartment with a sleeping bag and they took it all in stride. impressive. also they had wicked tasty cheese at their reception. i took two extra pieces with me in a napkin. because i'm classy like that.
i befriended a fun group at chez daudet (2 french, 2 french-canadian, 1 mexican and 1 me). & then we went out for dinner at a place called havana for dinner, more drinks, conversation, flirtation with the waiter. i was, of course, the geriatric in the group. it's a little humbling to be surrounded by smarties in their early 20s. i guess being surrounded by them isn't humbling, what's humbling is realizing that you aren't 20 anymore and that you aren't doing a very realistic impression of being 30 either. fun times were had. i flirted with the waiter and we invited him to come out with us tuesday night (we have a social night planned through school). i won't keep you in suspense: the waiter didn't show.
in other news, i had to buy a jacket, a sweatshirt & a scarf because it is freakin' cold here in july! jeez louise.
back to school monday. not much to report today, at least not during school hours. we have two new lecturers today, professors onuma & lagrange. prof. onuma is cute-funny & has hand-outs! hand-outs! how long has it been since i got hand-outs! a very long time. prof. lagrange seems to be very theoretical in her approach, so i think it will be fairly challenging to unpack. prof. onuma will be lecturing a trans-civilizational perspective on international law and prof. lagrange on the effectiveness in domestic law of international norms governing the status of individuals. should be interesting.
monday night was the night that students from several countries (including canada) were invited to prof. daudet's (the secretary general of the hague academy) home for cocktails. i went over at 6:00 and it was a really fun night. prof. daudet and his wife are absolutely delightful, and so very down to earth. he teaches at the sorbonne and is really quite brilliant. his wife is beautiful, haitian and just generally a very good-humoured person. i threatened to show up at their paris apartment with a sleeping bag and they took it all in stride. impressive. also they had wicked tasty cheese at their reception. i took two extra pieces with me in a napkin. because i'm classy like that.
i befriended a fun group at chez daudet (2 french, 2 french-canadian, 1 mexican and 1 me). & then we went out for dinner at a place called havana for dinner, more drinks, conversation, flirtation with the waiter. i was, of course, the geriatric in the group. it's a little humbling to be surrounded by smarties in their early 20s. i guess being surrounded by them isn't humbling, what's humbling is realizing that you aren't 20 anymore and that you aren't doing a very realistic impression of being 30 either. fun times were had. i flirted with the waiter and we invited him to come out with us tuesday night (we have a social night planned through school). i won't keep you in suspense: the waiter didn't show.
in other news, i had to buy a jacket, a sweatshirt & a scarf because it is freakin' cold here in july! jeez louise.
luie zondag
today was my first day just ambling around the hague, with no real plan for what i wanted to see or do. we all woke up late-ish, and then stumbled around until hunger forced us to leave the apartment. we had brunch along a canal at a very nice sandwicherie. i had a delicious combination of bread, brie, tomato & honey. i've had this particular combination three times already. along with my chorizo baguette sandwich at edgar's, this is my second go-to lunchtime meal. good times. delicious cheese. honey. what could be better.
so after brunch, i walked off in the general direction of "embassy row." it turns out that there is a sculpture / art installation exhibit going on down the center park running the length of embassy row. very contemporary and often bizarre pieces. very interesting to check out. at the end of the street is the escher museum. and at the foot of the musuem, an open-air antique market was taking place. some really amazing stuff. i think it's probably for the best (for my bank account) that the things i liked were big, oddly shaped & heavy.
as per the usual hague weather - it started to get windy, cold & rainy halfway through the day. i bolted to the mauritshuis museum, which houses a lot of flemish art - rembrandts, vermeers. the museum was great - it's the perfect size -- just enough without being overwhelming. there are two floors of art, and the museum is itself art. the audio guide is very comprehensive. i recommend this place, especially if it starts raining spontaneously, as it will. anyway, i saw the big piece that this museum houses - vermeer's girl with a pearl earring. i'm not a huge fan of flemish painters, but the girl with a pearl earring is really quite a remarkable piece. the light and shadowing is really quite amazing. the other museum i want to check out is the museum of contemporary art, which i think will on the whole be more my speed.
anyway, later sunday night, i went to see a movie at the filmhuis (art-y theatre) with C and her friend K. K is also from italy. K is also super! the movie we went to see is called "death at a funeral". it was in english with dutch subtitles. i really wasn't sure what it would be like. i had vaguely heard of it but really didn't know what it was about. i learned a bit more from 1mdb - enough to explain it to C & K before they plunked down euros for it. anyway, it turned out to be hilarious. and all three of us liked it. and then P went and saw it with his friend L, and the two of them liked it. so all in all, i can say that a canadian, two italians, a sri lankan & one person -- nationality unknown -- liked it. pretty good endorsement.
so after brunch, i walked off in the general direction of "embassy row." it turns out that there is a sculpture / art installation exhibit going on down the center park running the length of embassy row. very contemporary and often bizarre pieces. very interesting to check out. at the end of the street is the escher museum. and at the foot of the musuem, an open-air antique market was taking place. some really amazing stuff. i think it's probably for the best (for my bank account) that the things i liked were big, oddly shaped & heavy.
as per the usual hague weather - it started to get windy, cold & rainy halfway through the day. i bolted to the mauritshuis museum, which houses a lot of flemish art - rembrandts, vermeers. the museum was great - it's the perfect size -- just enough without being overwhelming. there are two floors of art, and the museum is itself art. the audio guide is very comprehensive. i recommend this place, especially if it starts raining spontaneously, as it will. anyway, i saw the big piece that this museum houses - vermeer's girl with a pearl earring. i'm not a huge fan of flemish painters, but the girl with a pearl earring is really quite a remarkable piece. the light and shadowing is really quite amazing. the other museum i want to check out is the museum of contemporary art, which i think will on the whole be more my speed.
anyway, later sunday night, i went to see a movie at the filmhuis (art-y theatre) with C and her friend K. K is also from italy. K is also super! the movie we went to see is called "death at a funeral". it was in english with dutch subtitles. i really wasn't sure what it would be like. i had vaguely heard of it but really didn't know what it was about. i learned a bit more from 1mdb - enough to explain it to C & K before they plunked down euros for it. anyway, it turned out to be hilarious. and all three of us liked it. and then P went and saw it with his friend L, and the two of them liked it. so all in all, i can say that a canadian, two italians, a sri lankan & one person -- nationality unknown -- liked it. pretty good endorsement.
Monday, July 30, 2007
i AMsterdam
(this is going to be a huge post. so i will try to be better about breaking it into reasonable-ish paragraphs.)
how i spent a day in amsterdam:
after my rocking dance club night at the hague, i was going to amsterdam saturday morning. i was supposed to meet up with O and S (another guy from the class) at 9:00 at the den haag centraal station. i woke up and got ready, walked down to the bus stop. only to see that the sunday bus schedule is ridiculous. i was running late by about 10 minutes anyway, but now i would have to wait until the next bus, which wasn't for another 15 minutes. by the time i get to centraal station is it now 9:30. i suspect that O and S figured i'd slept in or forgotten or passed out in a gutter and went on to amsterdam without me. turns out that they thoughtfully left a note for me with the guy in the information booth. a bunch of us (O and S included) were going to see a comedy show and had a designated meeting spot at 6 pm. so i figured i could catch up then. turns out that O forgot my cell phone number at home or lost the paper i wrote it on and so couldn't call to see where i was. not that that would have helped much, since i think i had like 2 euro left on my prepaid SIM card. anyway. i hop on board the train to amsterdam and settle in with my book ("snow" by orhan pamuk).
i get to amsterdam's centraal station which is quite a hub, in and of itself, but yet remarkably easy to navigate. there was much to see right around the station, so i took off in the right, then wrong, then right again direction and found myself at my first point of historical significance (as a transplanted new york resident): schrierstoren or the "tower of tears" > this is where women waved goodbye to their sailors (& hello to STDs upon their return). the tower was erected in 1482. more interestingly (at least to me) is that this is the spot that henry hudson set sail from in 1609 on his ship "half moon", which brought him to new york harbour. neat.
my next stop was the erotic museum. i'm not sure what i thought i would see there of note, but i expected it to be more like the museum of sex in new york, which i have not been to, but does seem to have interesting, curated exhibitions. the erotic museum is a pass. i didn't think much of it and apart from a few interesting depictions of sex in far history, there wasn't much to see. if you've seen man, woman body parts before, don't bother.
the next place i wandered to was the he hua temple, opened by queen beatrix on 15.09.00 - a buddhist temple, actually the largest buddhist temple in europe built in the chinese style. it's located in the heart of chinatown. chinatown is amazingly clean, did not smell offensive & did not appear to be overrun by rats. wowza. but the people still walk supppppppper sloooooooow (regardless of nationality). and without discrimination as to nationality, i am supppppppper annoyed by them. equal opportunity, that's me.
near by is the red light district -- it sort of melds into the chinatown area. the red light district is nothing much in the daylight. tacky stores, and bored prostitutes engaging in personal hygience in front of their windows. the dutch have (comparatively) a bizarre attitude about their personal space, as in they rarely ever draw their curtains, so prostitutes and non-prostitutes alike permit passers-by to gaze into their homes. not only do they not mind, but i get the feeling that they're offended if you don't peep in. thing is, they aren't doing anything even half-way interesting. and besides, i'm more inclined to peep into a window where the people aren't expecting it, awaiting it or hoping for it. very strange. anyway, it is very very very easy to walk by the windows and frankly really not give a sh*t. my focus was just on not getting lost and having to consult my map 20 times on the same street. again, irritatingly, it's like walking in times square in the sense that at all times of day or night, annoying groups will be ambling around with their heads in the air and common sense discarded wherever they boarded the plane.
side note/random observation: it seems like phil collins still has a thriving career in the netherlands. shudder.
so after re-caffeination & restroom break, i headed off to the most exciting place i wanted to visit. the nationaal brilmuseum. a museum about eyeglasses!!! check it out on the web: www.brilmuseumamsterdam.nl. just a very cool place with interesting, vintage glasses. i pored over the displays & took lots of pictures, which i will bore you with later.
i had lunch in amsterdam at an indonesian restaurant. the best indonesian food outside indonesia can be found in the netherlands. the food at this place was really good, really filling & pleasantly inexpensive.
ok, moving along. i went to see a few of the sights - old church, new church, jewish museum, portugese jewish synagogue, etc. i'd write about these things, but i feel like once you've seen a few old-castley-palace-y-basilica-ish places, you've got the basic sense of the thing. so i don't have much to say. for once. be thankful. really.
well i did want to go to anne frank house. i walked over to it. but jeez louise. the entire state of maine was there waiting in line. eeeep. i stuck around for a while, wondering if there was some way to go in with a press pass or something, but it was all very proper. so i didn't go in. and then the other people from the course who were in amsterdam told me it was a "must-do". well, they probably thought that about new/old/churchy/stone/really old building/palace/castle/church too. so yeah. anyway, i saw a play about anne frank in new york and anne frank was played by natalie portman (before she was a big famous hollywood vegan). and i think i'm covered. next time.
i found out that a festival called streetlab was taking place in the jordaan area, in an old gas factory that has been converted into a venue / cultural space. it's actually a very cool looking building, multi-use. so it was a trudge to get out there though. & of course i walked. because i walked every single place in amsterdam. streetlab was basically an urban/street culture show, if you can call it that. officially, it was called a street fashion and street art festival. with a theme around bikes. a bunch of artists had been given free rein to design their ideal bike. some of them were really amazing. one bike had a tape deck in it, so that you could see the tape playing in the center of the bike (such as where the bike chain would circle around - at the widest part). the best part (and i took loads of pictures of this bike) was that the tape playing in the bike was from a bollywood movie, and of course i knew all the words. it was a song called "dulhania dulhania". other bikes were very cool too - incorporating all sorts of stuffed animals and cool design, etc. by the time i got to the festival, there were two main things going on: a sneaker design show (artists from all over had been asked to design their dream shoe). some of the sneakers were unbelievably complex & beautiful. again, i went crazy with the camera. there was also a dutch/english rap group there, and people were dancing. but the sneakers really were amazing. after the sneaker show, i went into the area showing the street art & fashion. there was also a music show & fashion show in the same area. i wandered around and looked at the clothes, painting, prints, music, etc. however the best part of this area was that i got a haircut for 10 euros!
when i told my roommates about my 10 euro haircut, they asked me if i had let some man standing on the street cut my hair. not so. inside the fashion space, there were 4 professional hairdressers who work with a particular line of hair products. they were offering haircuts to anyone who wanted one for 10 euro and you received one of their products (whichever one they used on your hair) free. so really it was a 5 euro haircut. anyway. how could i resist. i didn't get much of my hair cut, since i am on the growing it out kick. but i had to do it. it was just too glamfance to walk away from. i waited and waited and finally it was my turn. i step up and my hairstylist is a very charming & attractive man named vasco. vasco's mother is dutch, his father is portugese & he hails from south netherlands. vasco looks like he might be in his late late 30s or early early 40s. vasco is 58 years old. he looks better than i did when i was 21. unbelievable. and he's very sweet. and nice. vasco has three kids, his eldest is 21. when i told him i am 31, he nearly toppled over and said that i look like i'm 25. see, charmant! & i also found out that his son is single! so vasco and i had a pleasant chat about our respective lives, and i walk away with a super glam haircut. for a day. because the next time i showered, my hair went back to lying lifeless on my head. anyway.
by the time i got out of the hair cut & away from streetlab, it was getting late. i had already long missed the comedy show that one of my hague class mates had organized. and vasco told me that streetlab was having a big dj dance party that evening, and that i should come. [i think he felt bad for me since i told him i was traveling alone.] but i had also found out about an indie rock show at this cool venue called "de nieuwe anita" with doors opening at 8 pm - netherlands bands, apple kim, the heights & some djs afterwards. apple kim & the heights were pretty good. the cover was 6 euros, and drinks were around 4.50 euros (for a mojito). nieuwe anita is a smallish, cosy venue - the band plays in the basement, which you can watch from above. look in through the top floor, or watch from downstairs. the front part of the place is like a regular bar with tables & then the backroom/downstairs is a venue. i found a prime spot to watch the bands. the music was really good, and the people were friendly. the bands seemed to play there alot - there was something cake-shop-y about it. just a small, friendly venue with good drinks. the front door/entrance is pretty hilarious, though. the place is single-handedly run by an older man (there is a bartender, but the "door" is run by the man). the front door is always locked, and you have to be buzzed in. but since he deals with the door and takes cover, he won't open the door until he's dealt with everyone in the line waiting to pay cover and get a stamp. instead of having an extra employee in the place, you have to wait outside until he lets you in. and he won't let anyone else open the door for you either. so when i buzzed, he was busy and no one answered. the signage was in dutch, so i couldn't read what the procedure was. i was going to leave, but then this guy sitting outside waiting for a friend told me that i'd get buzzed in after a minute or two. i'm glad i got in. yay!
after the show, i really had to get to centraal station to get back to the hague. i was really hoping that there would be late trains. i probably should have checked the schedule, but that would be so organized. and normal. why not wait to see if you have to stay at the train station overnight instead. i walked back and made a second circuit through the red light district. things were really buzzing now. but oh man. was it ever annoying. british accents will never sound good again. i feel like i've already made that comment, but i'm confusing what i write on this site and what i think / tell people in real time. that can't be good. i'm already confused enough without adding another layer of "reality" into the mix. anyway, americans get such a bad rap, but in amsterdam it's really the brits you have to hate. and anyone who has ever sat on a karaoke pedal bus really should be shot. but anyway. as a final note on the red light district, sex has never looked so uninspired. at least if you ask me.
i hopped the train back to the hague. the car i was sitting in totally smelled like pot. big time. it seemed like the perfect end to a day in am'dam.
how i spent a day in amsterdam:
after my rocking dance club night at the hague, i was going to amsterdam saturday morning. i was supposed to meet up with O and S (another guy from the class) at 9:00 at the den haag centraal station. i woke up and got ready, walked down to the bus stop. only to see that the sunday bus schedule is ridiculous. i was running late by about 10 minutes anyway, but now i would have to wait until the next bus, which wasn't for another 15 minutes. by the time i get to centraal station is it now 9:30. i suspect that O and S figured i'd slept in or forgotten or passed out in a gutter and went on to amsterdam without me. turns out that they thoughtfully left a note for me with the guy in the information booth. a bunch of us (O and S included) were going to see a comedy show and had a designated meeting spot at 6 pm. so i figured i could catch up then. turns out that O forgot my cell phone number at home or lost the paper i wrote it on and so couldn't call to see where i was. not that that would have helped much, since i think i had like 2 euro left on my prepaid SIM card. anyway. i hop on board the train to amsterdam and settle in with my book ("snow" by orhan pamuk).
i get to amsterdam's centraal station which is quite a hub, in and of itself, but yet remarkably easy to navigate. there was much to see right around the station, so i took off in the right, then wrong, then right again direction and found myself at my first point of historical significance (as a transplanted new york resident): schrierstoren or the "tower of tears" > this is where women waved goodbye to their sailors (& hello to STDs upon their return). the tower was erected in 1482. more interestingly (at least to me) is that this is the spot that henry hudson set sail from in 1609 on his ship "half moon", which brought him to new york harbour. neat.
my next stop was the erotic museum. i'm not sure what i thought i would see there of note, but i expected it to be more like the museum of sex in new york, which i have not been to, but does seem to have interesting, curated exhibitions. the erotic museum is a pass. i didn't think much of it and apart from a few interesting depictions of sex in far history, there wasn't much to see. if you've seen man, woman body parts before, don't bother.
the next place i wandered to was the he hua temple, opened by queen beatrix on 15.09.00 - a buddhist temple, actually the largest buddhist temple in europe built in the chinese style. it's located in the heart of chinatown. chinatown is amazingly clean, did not smell offensive & did not appear to be overrun by rats. wowza. but the people still walk supppppppper sloooooooow (regardless of nationality). and without discrimination as to nationality, i am supppppppper annoyed by them. equal opportunity, that's me.
near by is the red light district -- it sort of melds into the chinatown area. the red light district is nothing much in the daylight. tacky stores, and bored prostitutes engaging in personal hygience in front of their windows. the dutch have (comparatively) a bizarre attitude about their personal space, as in they rarely ever draw their curtains, so prostitutes and non-prostitutes alike permit passers-by to gaze into their homes. not only do they not mind, but i get the feeling that they're offended if you don't peep in. thing is, they aren't doing anything even half-way interesting. and besides, i'm more inclined to peep into a window where the people aren't expecting it, awaiting it or hoping for it. very strange. anyway, it is very very very easy to walk by the windows and frankly really not give a sh*t. my focus was just on not getting lost and having to consult my map 20 times on the same street. again, irritatingly, it's like walking in times square in the sense that at all times of day or night, annoying groups will be ambling around with their heads in the air and common sense discarded wherever they boarded the plane.
side note/random observation: it seems like phil collins still has a thriving career in the netherlands. shudder.
so after re-caffeination & restroom break, i headed off to the most exciting place i wanted to visit. the nationaal brilmuseum. a museum about eyeglasses!!! check it out on the web: www.brilmuseumamsterdam.nl. just a very cool place with interesting, vintage glasses. i pored over the displays & took lots of pictures, which i will bore you with later.
i had lunch in amsterdam at an indonesian restaurant. the best indonesian food outside indonesia can be found in the netherlands. the food at this place was really good, really filling & pleasantly inexpensive.
ok, moving along. i went to see a few of the sights - old church, new church, jewish museum, portugese jewish synagogue, etc. i'd write about these things, but i feel like once you've seen a few old-castley-palace-y-basilica-ish places, you've got the basic sense of the thing. so i don't have much to say. for once. be thankful. really.
well i did want to go to anne frank house. i walked over to it. but jeez louise. the entire state of maine was there waiting in line. eeeep. i stuck around for a while, wondering if there was some way to go in with a press pass or something, but it was all very proper. so i didn't go in. and then the other people from the course who were in amsterdam told me it was a "must-do". well, they probably thought that about new/old/churchy/stone/really old building/palace/castle/church too. so yeah. anyway, i saw a play about anne frank in new york and anne frank was played by natalie portman (before she was a big famous hollywood vegan). and i think i'm covered. next time.
i found out that a festival called streetlab was taking place in the jordaan area, in an old gas factory that has been converted into a venue / cultural space. it's actually a very cool looking building, multi-use. so it was a trudge to get out there though. & of course i walked. because i walked every single place in amsterdam. streetlab was basically an urban/street culture show, if you can call it that. officially, it was called a street fashion and street art festival. with a theme around bikes. a bunch of artists had been given free rein to design their ideal bike. some of them were really amazing. one bike had a tape deck in it, so that you could see the tape playing in the center of the bike (such as where the bike chain would circle around - at the widest part). the best part (and i took loads of pictures of this bike) was that the tape playing in the bike was from a bollywood movie, and of course i knew all the words. it was a song called "dulhania dulhania". other bikes were very cool too - incorporating all sorts of stuffed animals and cool design, etc. by the time i got to the festival, there were two main things going on: a sneaker design show (artists from all over had been asked to design their dream shoe). some of the sneakers were unbelievably complex & beautiful. again, i went crazy with the camera. there was also a dutch/english rap group there, and people were dancing. but the sneakers really were amazing. after the sneaker show, i went into the area showing the street art & fashion. there was also a music show & fashion show in the same area. i wandered around and looked at the clothes, painting, prints, music, etc. however the best part of this area was that i got a haircut for 10 euros!
when i told my roommates about my 10 euro haircut, they asked me if i had let some man standing on the street cut my hair. not so. inside the fashion space, there were 4 professional hairdressers who work with a particular line of hair products. they were offering haircuts to anyone who wanted one for 10 euro and you received one of their products (whichever one they used on your hair) free. so really it was a 5 euro haircut. anyway. how could i resist. i didn't get much of my hair cut, since i am on the growing it out kick. but i had to do it. it was just too glamfance to walk away from. i waited and waited and finally it was my turn. i step up and my hairstylist is a very charming & attractive man named vasco. vasco's mother is dutch, his father is portugese & he hails from south netherlands. vasco looks like he might be in his late late 30s or early early 40s. vasco is 58 years old. he looks better than i did when i was 21. unbelievable. and he's very sweet. and nice. vasco has three kids, his eldest is 21. when i told him i am 31, he nearly toppled over and said that i look like i'm 25. see, charmant! & i also found out that his son is single! so vasco and i had a pleasant chat about our respective lives, and i walk away with a super glam haircut. for a day. because the next time i showered, my hair went back to lying lifeless on my head. anyway.
by the time i got out of the hair cut & away from streetlab, it was getting late. i had already long missed the comedy show that one of my hague class mates had organized. and vasco told me that streetlab was having a big dj dance party that evening, and that i should come. [i think he felt bad for me since i told him i was traveling alone.] but i had also found out about an indie rock show at this cool venue called "de nieuwe anita" with doors opening at 8 pm - netherlands bands, apple kim, the heights & some djs afterwards. apple kim & the heights were pretty good. the cover was 6 euros, and drinks were around 4.50 euros (for a mojito). nieuwe anita is a smallish, cosy venue - the band plays in the basement, which you can watch from above. look in through the top floor, or watch from downstairs. the front part of the place is like a regular bar with tables & then the backroom/downstairs is a venue. i found a prime spot to watch the bands. the music was really good, and the people were friendly. the bands seemed to play there alot - there was something cake-shop-y about it. just a small, friendly venue with good drinks. the front door/entrance is pretty hilarious, though. the place is single-handedly run by an older man (there is a bartender, but the "door" is run by the man). the front door is always locked, and you have to be buzzed in. but since he deals with the door and takes cover, he won't open the door until he's dealt with everyone in the line waiting to pay cover and get a stamp. instead of having an extra employee in the place, you have to wait outside until he lets you in. and he won't let anyone else open the door for you either. so when i buzzed, he was busy and no one answered. the signage was in dutch, so i couldn't read what the procedure was. i was going to leave, but then this guy sitting outside waiting for a friend told me that i'd get buzzed in after a minute or two. i'm glad i got in. yay!
after the show, i really had to get to centraal station to get back to the hague. i was really hoping that there would be late trains. i probably should have checked the schedule, but that would be so organized. and normal. why not wait to see if you have to stay at the train station overnight instead. i walked back and made a second circuit through the red light district. things were really buzzing now. but oh man. was it ever annoying. british accents will never sound good again. i feel like i've already made that comment, but i'm confusing what i write on this site and what i think / tell people in real time. that can't be good. i'm already confused enough without adding another layer of "reality" into the mix. anyway, americans get such a bad rap, but in amsterdam it's really the brits you have to hate. and anyone who has ever sat on a karaoke pedal bus really should be shot. but anyway. as a final note on the red light district, sex has never looked so uninspired. at least if you ask me.
i hopped the train back to the hague. the car i was sitting in totally smelled like pot. big time. it seemed like the perfect end to a day in am'dam.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
an open letter to den haag busdriver
dear bus driver of the no. 18 clingendael-bound bus at approximately 11:40 pm, 29.07.07:
mr. congeniality, you are not. not only were you the meanest, rudest f*ck in the city (no mean feat, my friend), but you also drove your bus like a maniac. in a word, you suck. why did i get on the bus from the middle doors, only to be berated by you? because your colleague last night refused to open the doors at the front for me, since i was about a nano-second late after the doors closed. it would be nice to know with some certainty precisely where at the stop you will actually stop your bus. it would be even nicer to know that bus riders had more than 0.000005 seconds to get on the bus. lest you speed off recklessly, possibly knocking over a few elderly people in your path. no wonder people are grumpy here. they all have prosthetic body parts from random bus accidents. so sir. i refuse to apologize for my seemingly gauche actions. i succeeded. not only did i get on the bus last night, but i also succeeded in making it home without leaving any organs on the roadway. huzzah for me.
anyway, i just wanted to thank you for being an as*hole yesterday.
with all due respect,
r.m.
mr. congeniality, you are not. not only were you the meanest, rudest f*ck in the city (no mean feat, my friend), but you also drove your bus like a maniac. in a word, you suck. why did i get on the bus from the middle doors, only to be berated by you? because your colleague last night refused to open the doors at the front for me, since i was about a nano-second late after the doors closed. it would be nice to know with some certainty precisely where at the stop you will actually stop your bus. it would be even nicer to know that bus riders had more than 0.000005 seconds to get on the bus. lest you speed off recklessly, possibly knocking over a few elderly people in your path. no wonder people are grumpy here. they all have prosthetic body parts from random bus accidents. so sir. i refuse to apologize for my seemingly gauche actions. i succeeded. not only did i get on the bus last night, but i also succeeded in making it home without leaving any organs on the roadway. huzzah for me.
anyway, i just wanted to thank you for being an as*hole yesterday.
with all due respect,
r.m.
Friday, July 27, 2007
den haag knows how to party!
observations from 27.07.07:
* went walking around after school. really need to buy some sort of wind-breaker or umbrella or raincoat or something. the weather here changes every 2 minutes. sunny + sort of hot turns into overcast, raining and freakin' tornado-like winds in 2 minutes. on an earlier excursion O and i had found a place called "the sting" - it wasn't clear from a distance whether the sting was a club, a theatre, a circus ring, or a boring old clothing store. it is the latter. i went in to see about finding a windbreaker. the clothes there are the "le chateau" of the hague, but less goth-ish looking. didn't find anything. oh well.
* i came home & C had ditched work a little early, since she was waiting around for some forensic evidence person to get in touch with her (p.s. how cool does that sound? about 70 million times cooler than 'i'm waiting around for a self-important partner.') anyway. nothing was on tv. not even boob cruise (did i tell you about boob cruise? i feel like i did. anyway, boob cruise, or rather hot doc: boob cruise was this documentary about old men who go on cruises with obscenely large breasted women - by obscenely i mean, couldn't possibly ever lie on her stomach, those are as large as basketballs, omg are we at the carny - large. anyway. the show was less interesting than it looked (i know, difficult to achieve.)) so since nothing was on tv, we watched requiem for a dream. yeah, just thought we'd watch a light-hearted movie to kick off the weekend! the first time i saw requiem it was at the cinecenta at uvic with S.B. and A.K. and we left with post-traumatic stress disorder. oh, but i love that movie. i had forgotten that the soundtrack was done by kronos quartet. they're awesome too.
* the four of us (me, C, A and P) went out for a roomie's dinner on friday night. i feel so incredibly grateful to get to stay here, so i suggested i take them out for dinner. we went to an amazing tapas place. oh, it was sooooo yummy. and i'm on a real spanish rioja kick right now. you heard it here first.
* after dinner, we all went to a going away party for a few people working at the ICC and the ICTY - some people are moving to another organization and some people are going back to their jobs and school. the party was at a bar with a cuban theme (pictures of che, etc.). at the party, i met A. A is a spanish-dutch lothario with longish hair. we had flirty banter, and since we were among the only people who did not work for the ICC/ICTY, we spent a lot of time chatting. i convinced him to tell people that he works for the sierra leone tribunal. and he did. and i think people believed him. if you can throw around a few relevant concepts, i think you can probably fake being anybody. A is, in real life (or at least in the real life he told me about), a real estate magnate.
* after the bar, we went to a club called "den musik hier sukks". there was a 3 euro cover charge, which was worth it just for entry into such a bizarre place. apparently, the dutch have ADD because the music would cut out to something else within 45 seconds of being played. with no fade-out whatsoever. fade-out, or whatever that style is called when one song does NOT abruptly turn into another song. the dutch "style" moves abruptly from from one song to another song from an entirely different genre of music. it takes a lot of skill to seamlessly move from gangsta rap to ABBA.
* nevertheless, the dance floor was packed. it was the first time (but not the last!) that i have ever danced on a raised piece of club real estate (sorry to disappoint kids, but it was not a cage or a speaker - my sense of balance prohibits such extreme adventure activities.). but still.
* so, here's a weird feature of the hague club scene -- there were old men there. old men. alone. just skeeving around. ick. leering. edging themselves onto the dance floor. or looking appraisingly from the bar. double ick.
i leave you with that disturbing image!!
* went walking around after school. really need to buy some sort of wind-breaker or umbrella or raincoat or something. the weather here changes every 2 minutes. sunny + sort of hot turns into overcast, raining and freakin' tornado-like winds in 2 minutes. on an earlier excursion O and i had found a place called "the sting" - it wasn't clear from a distance whether the sting was a club, a theatre, a circus ring, or a boring old clothing store. it is the latter. i went in to see about finding a windbreaker. the clothes there are the "le chateau" of the hague, but less goth-ish looking. didn't find anything. oh well.
* i came home & C had ditched work a little early, since she was waiting around for some forensic evidence person to get in touch with her (p.s. how cool does that sound? about 70 million times cooler than 'i'm waiting around for a self-important partner.') anyway. nothing was on tv. not even boob cruise (did i tell you about boob cruise? i feel like i did. anyway, boob cruise, or rather hot doc: boob cruise was this documentary about old men who go on cruises with obscenely large breasted women - by obscenely i mean, couldn't possibly ever lie on her stomach, those are as large as basketballs, omg are we at the carny - large. anyway. the show was less interesting than it looked (i know, difficult to achieve.)) so since nothing was on tv, we watched requiem for a dream. yeah, just thought we'd watch a light-hearted movie to kick off the weekend! the first time i saw requiem it was at the cinecenta at uvic with S.B. and A.K. and we left with post-traumatic stress disorder. oh, but i love that movie. i had forgotten that the soundtrack was done by kronos quartet. they're awesome too.
* the four of us (me, C, A and P) went out for a roomie's dinner on friday night. i feel so incredibly grateful to get to stay here, so i suggested i take them out for dinner. we went to an amazing tapas place. oh, it was sooooo yummy. and i'm on a real spanish rioja kick right now. you heard it here first.
* after dinner, we all went to a going away party for a few people working at the ICC and the ICTY - some people are moving to another organization and some people are going back to their jobs and school. the party was at a bar with a cuban theme (pictures of che, etc.). at the party, i met A. A is a spanish-dutch lothario with longish hair. we had flirty banter, and since we were among the only people who did not work for the ICC/ICTY, we spent a lot of time chatting. i convinced him to tell people that he works for the sierra leone tribunal. and he did. and i think people believed him. if you can throw around a few relevant concepts, i think you can probably fake being anybody. A is, in real life (or at least in the real life he told me about), a real estate magnate.
* after the bar, we went to a club called "den musik hier sukks". there was a 3 euro cover charge, which was worth it just for entry into such a bizarre place. apparently, the dutch have ADD because the music would cut out to something else within 45 seconds of being played. with no fade-out whatsoever. fade-out, or whatever that style is called when one song does NOT abruptly turn into another song. the dutch "style" moves abruptly from from one song to another song from an entirely different genre of music. it takes a lot of skill to seamlessly move from gangsta rap to ABBA.
* nevertheless, the dance floor was packed. it was the first time (but not the last!) that i have ever danced on a raised piece of club real estate (sorry to disappoint kids, but it was not a cage or a speaker - my sense of balance prohibits such extreme adventure activities.). but still.
* so, here's a weird feature of the hague club scene -- there were old men there. old men. alone. just skeeving around. ick. leering. edging themselves onto the dance floor. or looking appraisingly from the bar. double ick.
i leave you with that disturbing image!!
there is no title for this post
before i launch into the splendour of thursday, 26.07.07, i wanted to mention that the judge of the ICJ presented a lecture/discussion on the inner workings of the ICJ [int'l court of just-us, i mean, justice]. it was pretty interesting, but of course she couldn't / wouldn't / shouldn't go into anything really juicy about the innards of the ICJ. anyway, the best was that the last question was the most provocative and she really rose to the occasion. anyway, it's apparently not the end of the world if you submit redacted, responsive to the ICJ. the question was a two-parter, the first part being about the serbian redacted document and the second part being about criticism against the court in its Genocide opinion [i'm going to go out on a limb here and say that i think the conclusion is that genocide is bad. very bad.] the court relied on secondary & tertiary sources for the factual underpinnings of the case.
no more school stuff.
after school, i took the train to delft, a short train ride away from me. delft is where S lives. S is someone i met on my croatia trip. he works for shell and is based in delft. S also takes kickass photographs, has travelled to everywhere and is a super swell guy.
one note on S. when i met S, he was sporting a pair of glasses that i think honestly were meant to cover two faces. they looked like a safety visor. S wears bifocals. the lenses on these babies were so huge that S would actually have to lift up his glasses to use the bifocality function of them. whaaaaa? so, in my usual tactful way, i told S that his shitttastic glasses had to go. anyway, he knew that i would be in the hague this summer and i told him i would take him to go buy another pair of glasses. S wisely averted my interventions by buying himself a pair of glasses that could not possibly double as a face shield. yay!
i basically came to delft to get dinner with S, so i will have to return to do some exploring. and to buy some of that fugly blue porcelain crap for my parents. S and i had dinner at a yummy indian restaurant (apparently the only one in delft) run by bangladeshis. S is bff with the guy who runs the place. food was really yummy.
funny thing about delft is that the "new church" (N.C.) was actually built as recently as 1381 [i hate that ugly 'modern' architecture, so gauche!]. in front of the new church. the nieuwe kerk contains the dutch royal family's burial vault, which is sealed with a 5000 kg cover stone between funerals (so would-be grave robbers start working out now). in front of the N.C., there is a statue of hugo grotius (!!!!!). apparently there are several famous delft-ors. vermeer, van leeuwenhoek (mr. microscope) and grotius (mr. international law). vermeer and van leeuwenhoek are buried at the oude kerke ("old church" or the O.C.).
before my journey to delft, i stumbled upon an amazing law bookstore! amazing. law. in one sentence, is your mind blown? but really, this bookstore has so many interesting books on international law and european union law. i was definitely trying to remind myself that since i gave my sherpa some time off, i'd have to carry anything i bought on my own back. back to new york. definitely have to think twice before buying. but of course i still bought a bunch of books. when you see me back in new york, please don't mention the crooked, humped back i will have developed from carrying all the stuff i have with me back to new york.
oh, another development. i'm boycotting the croissanterie. i feel like this is deja vu. i can't tell if i've already blogged about something, or if i am only remembering it because i told people about it happening. fruit. that means there will probably be repetitive content. welcome officially to my transformation into my mom.
anyway. thursday morning, i walk to the croissanterie to get my usual (2 plain baby croissants, 2 cheese baby croissants). the woman speaks to me in dutch. i point at what i want and say 2 please. she adds up the price and it sounds like 2 euro, 40 (cents? mini-euros? eurolings?), but i'm not sure. it sounds sufficiently german enough to make me think i'm right, but i need to confirm. so i ask (in english -- the international language of commerce, might i add) how much it will cost. she freaks on me (and for the first time ever in the netherlands, starts to be super linguistically bitchy) - in a snarling voice: "if you don't try, you'll never learn the language". it wasn't even said with a friendly grandmother smile. it was spat out at me. i wanted to fling my 2 euro 40 at her, spin on my heel and exit with drama. or i wanted to put on my most sarcastic face and ask how much cantonese she expects she could speak after being in taiwan for four days. but instead i just stopped smiling, gave her 2 euro 40 and exited. only to curse her silently on the way to school. yes, ordinarily i think cultural awareness / learning is super cool. i would like to learn some dutch while i'm here. i can say a few basics (all the polite words, anyway - the thank yous and excuse mes of the language), but i haven't yet figured out how to say "have you been an as*holey jerkface for your whole life, or is this a recent development" in dutch. still, the croissants were yummy. my boycott / embargo will probably end very shortly.
no more school stuff.
after school, i took the train to delft, a short train ride away from me. delft is where S lives. S is someone i met on my croatia trip. he works for shell and is based in delft. S also takes kickass photographs, has travelled to everywhere and is a super swell guy.
one note on S. when i met S, he was sporting a pair of glasses that i think honestly were meant to cover two faces. they looked like a safety visor. S wears bifocals. the lenses on these babies were so huge that S would actually have to lift up his glasses to use the bifocality function of them. whaaaaa? so, in my usual tactful way, i told S that his shitttastic glasses had to go. anyway, he knew that i would be in the hague this summer and i told him i would take him to go buy another pair of glasses. S wisely averted my interventions by buying himself a pair of glasses that could not possibly double as a face shield. yay!
i basically came to delft to get dinner with S, so i will have to return to do some exploring. and to buy some of that fugly blue porcelain crap for my parents. S and i had dinner at a yummy indian restaurant (apparently the only one in delft) run by bangladeshis. S is bff with the guy who runs the place. food was really yummy.
funny thing about delft is that the "new church" (N.C.) was actually built as recently as 1381 [i hate that ugly 'modern' architecture, so gauche!]. in front of the new church. the nieuwe kerk contains the dutch royal family's burial vault, which is sealed with a 5000 kg cover stone between funerals (so would-be grave robbers start working out now). in front of the N.C., there is a statue of hugo grotius (!!!!!). apparently there are several famous delft-ors. vermeer, van leeuwenhoek (mr. microscope) and grotius (mr. international law). vermeer and van leeuwenhoek are buried at the oude kerke ("old church" or the O.C.).
before my journey to delft, i stumbled upon an amazing law bookstore! amazing. law. in one sentence, is your mind blown? but really, this bookstore has so many interesting books on international law and european union law. i was definitely trying to remind myself that since i gave my sherpa some time off, i'd have to carry anything i bought on my own back. back to new york. definitely have to think twice before buying. but of course i still bought a bunch of books. when you see me back in new york, please don't mention the crooked, humped back i will have developed from carrying all the stuff i have with me back to new york.
oh, another development. i'm boycotting the croissanterie. i feel like this is deja vu. i can't tell if i've already blogged about something, or if i am only remembering it because i told people about it happening. fruit. that means there will probably be repetitive content. welcome officially to my transformation into my mom.
anyway. thursday morning, i walk to the croissanterie to get my usual (2 plain baby croissants, 2 cheese baby croissants). the woman speaks to me in dutch. i point at what i want and say 2 please. she adds up the price and it sounds like 2 euro, 40 (cents? mini-euros? eurolings?), but i'm not sure. it sounds sufficiently german enough to make me think i'm right, but i need to confirm. so i ask (in english -- the international language of commerce, might i add) how much it will cost. she freaks on me (and for the first time ever in the netherlands, starts to be super linguistically bitchy) - in a snarling voice: "if you don't try, you'll never learn the language". it wasn't even said with a friendly grandmother smile. it was spat out at me. i wanted to fling my 2 euro 40 at her, spin on my heel and exit with drama. or i wanted to put on my most sarcastic face and ask how much cantonese she expects she could speak after being in taiwan for four days. but instead i just stopped smiling, gave her 2 euro 40 and exited. only to curse her silently on the way to school. yes, ordinarily i think cultural awareness / learning is super cool. i would like to learn some dutch while i'm here. i can say a few basics (all the polite words, anyway - the thank yous and excuse mes of the language), but i haven't yet figured out how to say "have you been an as*holey jerkface for your whole life, or is this a recent development" in dutch. still, the croissants were yummy. my boycott / embargo will probably end very shortly.
humpday!!!
oh. i forgot to mention that when i got home from school on tuesday evening, P was the only one at home. he was alone. in the dark. drinking whiskey. from the bottle. (ok, not from the bottle, but from a wineglass). the work of an international law-doer must be rough.
wednesday = hump day
what happened on wednesday? (i gotta speed through a bit, since its friday evening and i'm still only blogging about wednesday! jeez louise!)
on my 40 minute walk to school (i almost wrote "work") i found a croissanterie that opens around 8:15 or so. first of all, that's amazing. because nothing opens early here. in fact, i wonder if all the shops i pass are money-laundering fronts since they never seem to be open at any time when a person could plausibly buy something there. very weird. very very odd.
so, croissanterie. i go in and there are 2 be-suitted guys being attended to in front of me. they buy up stuff, croissants & bread & danishes. and one of them pulls out his wallet with a credit card (or debit card). the woman says (in dutch) something about a minimal payment to use a card. so the guy has to buy more stuff. and more stuff. and more stuff. i'm thinking the minimal payment must be 50 euro, or something. anyway, just when i start to think that he might finish up all of the croissants i want, it's my turn!
i order 2 baby plain croissant & 2 baby cheese croissant. and inhale them before i get to the end of the block. yummy in my tummy. i get to class, picking up an edgar latte on the way. breakfast of champions.
i think most of you know about my product addiction. i'm addicted to toiletry products. if it comes in a bottle or a jar and promises to make my cellulite / wrinkles / acne / oily hair / body hair / facial hair / hyper-pigmentation [insert random physical appearance issue here], then i will buy it. i am the proud owner of about 70 different types of shampoo, conditioner, body scrub and facial exfoliant. proudly stripping away any of the natural oils on my skin. hurrazh.
so one of the most difficult things for me to resist is product from foreign. as a result, i ended up buying a body scrub thingy that promises to make me smell like shiny rice. or something. i also bought blue nail-polish (update alert: the nail-polish colour makes me look like my finger nails have gonorrhea so i had to take it off. ah well. live & learn.)
wednesday evening we had a gathering in the city hall with the mayor of the hague. it was fun. everyone from school was there and it was really nice to mix and mingle (though i did my usual thing of latching onto 2 people and being a dead weight parasite). the city hall building is very modern (white & very curvy) with modern art installations inside. very interesting.
anyway, post-boozing, bunches of people were going to the beach to a place called crazy pianos (which is quite a scene, apparently) for more drinks and some food and more drinks. i didn't go because i wanted to see what P, C & A were up to at home.
another amazing thing that happened on humpday was that i got my cell phone to work! i had to buy a new sim card since the first one i bought online was defective. so now i have a phone! thank you vodaphone. if i could i would give you x-es and o-es.
i had two random thoughts on wednesday on my daily promenade. 1) whatever happened to tugs o' war, or tug o' wars or whatever the plural might be? the venerable art of the tug o' war, i fear, is disappearing. maybe it has completely disappeared. it seems like we'd have so many tugs o' war when i was a kid. and now you never hear about them anymore. i hope they make a retro-come back. AND 2) someone (maybe me?) should do research (ph.d. dissertation) on the history of prejudice & discrimination against left-handed peoples. around the world.
i leave you with that.
wednesday = hump day
what happened on wednesday? (i gotta speed through a bit, since its friday evening and i'm still only blogging about wednesday! jeez louise!)
on my 40 minute walk to school (i almost wrote "work") i found a croissanterie that opens around 8:15 or so. first of all, that's amazing. because nothing opens early here. in fact, i wonder if all the shops i pass are money-laundering fronts since they never seem to be open at any time when a person could plausibly buy something there. very weird. very very odd.
so, croissanterie. i go in and there are 2 be-suitted guys being attended to in front of me. they buy up stuff, croissants & bread & danishes. and one of them pulls out his wallet with a credit card (or debit card). the woman says (in dutch) something about a minimal payment to use a card. so the guy has to buy more stuff. and more stuff. and more stuff. i'm thinking the minimal payment must be 50 euro, or something. anyway, just when i start to think that he might finish up all of the croissants i want, it's my turn!
i order 2 baby plain croissant & 2 baby cheese croissant. and inhale them before i get to the end of the block. yummy in my tummy. i get to class, picking up an edgar latte on the way. breakfast of champions.
i think most of you know about my product addiction. i'm addicted to toiletry products. if it comes in a bottle or a jar and promises to make my cellulite / wrinkles / acne / oily hair / body hair / facial hair / hyper-pigmentation [insert random physical appearance issue here], then i will buy it. i am the proud owner of about 70 different types of shampoo, conditioner, body scrub and facial exfoliant. proudly stripping away any of the natural oils on my skin. hurrazh.
so one of the most difficult things for me to resist is product from foreign. as a result, i ended up buying a body scrub thingy that promises to make me smell like shiny rice. or something. i also bought blue nail-polish (update alert: the nail-polish colour makes me look like my finger nails have gonorrhea so i had to take it off. ah well. live & learn.)
wednesday evening we had a gathering in the city hall with the mayor of the hague. it was fun. everyone from school was there and it was really nice to mix and mingle (though i did my usual thing of latching onto 2 people and being a dead weight parasite). the city hall building is very modern (white & very curvy) with modern art installations inside. very interesting.
anyway, post-boozing, bunches of people were going to the beach to a place called crazy pianos (which is quite a scene, apparently) for more drinks and some food and more drinks. i didn't go because i wanted to see what P, C & A were up to at home.
another amazing thing that happened on humpday was that i got my cell phone to work! i had to buy a new sim card since the first one i bought online was defective. so now i have a phone! thank you vodaphone. if i could i would give you x-es and o-es.
i had two random thoughts on wednesday on my daily promenade. 1) whatever happened to tugs o' war, or tug o' wars or whatever the plural might be? the venerable art of the tug o' war, i fear, is disappearing. maybe it has completely disappeared. it seems like we'd have so many tugs o' war when i was a kid. and now you never hear about them anymore. i hope they make a retro-come back. AND 2) someone (maybe me?) should do research (ph.d. dissertation) on the history of prejudice & discrimination against left-handed peoples. around the world.
i leave you with that.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
monday, tuesday happy days!
so, when i left off, i had not yet started the course. well i have now. tomorrow (friday, 27.07.07) will be the first full week of class. because it's not particularly exciting for me to blog at length about the course, i think i'll just jot down my random musings and observations here. with course-related stuff peppered in and about here and there fore and aft.
the course takes place in the new library area of the peace palace, which is also where the international court of justice resides. and some other things too. anyway, the building is really quite gorgeous. the security process is hilarious. basically, you walk through a pedestrian entry-way, where you show a picture id, and then put your stuff through the x-ray machine and walk through a metal detector (totally airport stylez) but the nuance here is that it doesn't matter if you beep. you could be walking through the machine, speaking arabic, wearing an i love al qaeda t-shirt and brandishing a knife, but they would just wave you through. i memories of the SCC. but seriously, a very cool dutch guy (not an oxymoron) named martin works security. we're tight. like mcdorman's pants.
okay, on the topic of. there are two elements of DEN HAAG which hearken back to law school. one is the number of pirie-esque bicyclists i see on the walk to school every day. amazing. a lot of people seem to prefer the incumbant, recumbant, or redundant (i forget what they are called) bikes. i think of it as multi-tasking. (i want to bike and i want lie down. how can i combine these two activities?) the other uvic-ism is that there is a whole lotta teddy D style pant-age here. yes, bubble butts are winning. although, the dutch (on the whole) are not known for being bootilicious, so really, the tight pants are really just tight pants on flat as*ses. definitely A for effort, though.
so, where i'm staying. a quick 411 on the apartment: 1 bathroom, with separate area for showering and for going number 1 and/or number 2. 3 bedrooms (mine has an outdoor space that looks sturdy and will not being the subject of future litigation), 1 big kitchen, 1 big living room (with an organ in it, bought by P.S. at an antique-y store, doesn't seem to work well.) the room i'm staying in (which really belongs to P.S.) is really quite spacious. thanks P.S.!! and L.G. for introducing me to P.S. you rawk like a faux-hawk.
the street (trigggonometrystraat) is really cute. and it's very close to a big park (called clingon park). the area is definitely sweet. there is a pasture of sheep across the main street (wassenstrassenschmassen straat). and the street follows a canal for quite some time, which is really full of algae, but i'll appreciate it more when i'm older. the walk is about 40 minutes to school. i shaved 11 minutes off the time once by walking at my new york breakneck speed. but the conditioning needs to be ramped up, so hopefully by the time i'm done here, i could do it in 10 minutes. wow! along the way to school there is a gas station. a shell gas station. for refueling needs on route to some hard-core sheep viewing. the best thing about this gas station (yes, yes, i will tell you) is that it is it stocks all sorts of regular things but also super massive amazing things. so what did i buy there, you ask? well, a new towel! yes, the selection of towels (bath, hand, face + bath sheets and shower mats) at the shell gas-station is amazing. there were more towel choices than there were potato chip choices. the dutch know what matters. well actually, no they don't - i haven't seen a single sign for ketchup-flavoured chips. but you can't have everything all the time.
so about the class: there are 300 of us, from all over the world. something like 80 countries are represented. there is about 6 or 7 canadians. i actually know one of them. he clerked the year ahead of me. and also worked in new york, at a firm not too far from mine. there are a load of germans and brazilians, as well. the class room is purported wi-fi, but it seems to have anticipated that at most, by 2108 only 30 people at a time would seek to connect to the internet. alas. poor peace palace. now that 300 people are trying to work on their nerve.com profile at the same time, the results of wi-fi are mixed. two other salient features of the class room area (this is a new, very nice modern library building attached to the old peace palace - there's a library upstairs, and a big lecture hall on the main floor.) the "lounge" area has a coffee-lady. shockingly like maria, the law lounge coffee lady. but i can honestly say that the coffee in this lounge makes maria's coffee seem like "ninth street espresso" (wickedtastic coffee shoppe in the east village). which is saying a lot, if you know that 30% of my stomach lining has been stripped away through the consumption of maria's coffee. anyway, suffice it to say i'm not seeking caffeination in the lounge. the other thing (well i just thought of another one, so things) about the lounge: there is one TINY water cooler for 300 people. 1. TINY. 300. PEOPLE. not such a wise move resource-allocation wise. and similarly, there are 6 computer that are actually fully functioning with internet and all in the lounge. but there are only 6. and unlike the wisdom of the grande prairie public library, here there is no time limit for use of the public internet computers. so you can run to the computers at the first 20 minute break and sit there for 20 minutes solid, while a line to people as long as the amazon river forms behind. logistical short-comings, but overall i am thrilled. just to be nominated.
i have found a few awesome near-school spots. like edgar's coffee shop. i don't know if it actually has a name, but it's run by this amazing guy (edgar) who wears a self-appointed uniform of a short-sleeve button-down shirt with the dutch version of dockers. he runs the cafe with his 3 daughters. he makes yummy lattes. the only thing i've had to eat there is a chorizo baguette -- i had it for lunch 3 times already. i will probably have it for lunch about 10 more times before i leave. the other place that's not too far from school is "smoothie company" - i've had two "lime + berry" smoothies. delishhhhiooosooo.
so the set-up of the course is that we have 1 "general course" professor -- this year it is prof. reisman of yale university (who teaches 15 lectures + 3 seminars) and then each week there are 2 other professors (who teach 5 lectures and 1 seminar each). they teach special topics. right now, we have prof. cataldi (relationship between international and domestic law) & prof. pinto (use of force in international law). so starting monday, we'll have prof. reisman and two other professors for the week. the professors have all been great. prof. reisman is exceptional. and used bono in an example but pronounced it BOW-NO, and admitted he had never heard of u2. & that is why i have a professorial crush on him. he's awesome!
a few notes about my school-mates. i have met some super awesome, smart people. this course attracts people at all levels of their career - from judges to law students; from government officials to professors; from researchers at n.g.o.s to associates at law firms. it's very cool. the breadth of experience and knowledge is amazing. the lectures are in either english or french, with simultaneous translation into the other language. i have to say i've been doing better with french than i thought i would. when the discussion gets really substantive, i have to use the translation, but i'm actually not doing so bad at all at understanding the rest of the french lectures. so far the people i've gotten to know the best are O (iraqi-american from detroit rock city), E (australian lawyer in dubai for the royal family), D (irish lawyer in england working for the good of mankind), E (norwegian law research/grad student in oslo), K (pakistanti professor in lahore), J (dutch graduate student in england) -- there is also a guy (i'm not sure where he's from or what his story is but ... ) --- he looks like philip seymour hoffman as the character of truman capote. & today (friday, 27.07.07) he was wearing one red and one green sock. and i love him.
here's the abc after-school special:
Manndag: i went home & kicked it with P, C, and A. we watched "the big lebowski" and had pizza for dinner. super!
Dinsdag: i went to the open-air street market with O > i bought some awesome dried strawberries & mixed nuts. yummmmers. O and i were going to meet up with E and D for drinks. but we had issues calling D's cell phone. it took us half an hour to find a public pay phone. the pay phone we did find did not take creditcards -- but did take some sort of smart chip card which is apparently too cool for north america. anyway. finally we fished out enough change to use the phone and then we tried dialing every possible combination and permutation of D's phone number. a very pleasant sounding woman speaking dutch kept interrupting though. i know, i know -- so pushy, the dutch. we finally gave up on meeting up with E & D, and O and i went to get some middle eastern food. it was yummy. i did get locked into the bathroom at the restaurant. the lock was really sticky. i had a moment of panic before i realized that i was not helping my situation with clammy hands. anyway, after what felt like 10 years, i escaped from the bathroom. and then O walked home (he lives 5 minutes from the central area we hang out in) and i started my 40 minute walk home. upon reaching l'appartement des quatres, i joined my beloved flat-mates to watch scrubs (with dutch subtitles)
the course takes place in the new library area of the peace palace, which is also where the international court of justice resides. and some other things too. anyway, the building is really quite gorgeous. the security process is hilarious. basically, you walk through a pedestrian entry-way, where you show a picture id, and then put your stuff through the x-ray machine and walk through a metal detector (totally airport stylez) but the nuance here is that it doesn't matter if you beep. you could be walking through the machine, speaking arabic, wearing an i love al qaeda t-shirt and brandishing a knife, but they would just wave you through. i memories of the SCC. but seriously, a very cool dutch guy (not an oxymoron) named martin works security. we're tight. like mcdorman's pants.
okay, on the topic of. there are two elements of DEN HAAG which hearken back to law school. one is the number of pirie-esque bicyclists i see on the walk to school every day. amazing. a lot of people seem to prefer the incumbant, recumbant, or redundant (i forget what they are called) bikes. i think of it as multi-tasking. (i want to bike and i want lie down. how can i combine these two activities?) the other uvic-ism is that there is a whole lotta teddy D style pant-age here. yes, bubble butts are winning. although, the dutch (on the whole) are not known for being bootilicious, so really, the tight pants are really just tight pants on flat as*ses. definitely A for effort, though.
so, where i'm staying. a quick 411 on the apartment: 1 bathroom, with separate area for showering and for going number 1 and/or number 2. 3 bedrooms (mine has an outdoor space that looks sturdy and will not being the subject of future litigation), 1 big kitchen, 1 big living room (with an organ in it, bought by P.S. at an antique-y store, doesn't seem to work well.) the room i'm staying in (which really belongs to P.S.) is really quite spacious. thanks P.S.!! and L.G. for introducing me to P.S. you rawk like a faux-hawk.
the street (trigggonometrystraat) is really cute. and it's very close to a big park (called clingon park). the area is definitely sweet. there is a pasture of sheep across the main street (wassenstrassenschmassen straat). and the street follows a canal for quite some time, which is really full of algae, but i'll appreciate it more when i'm older. the walk is about 40 minutes to school. i shaved 11 minutes off the time once by walking at my new york breakneck speed. but the conditioning needs to be ramped up, so hopefully by the time i'm done here, i could do it in 10 minutes. wow! along the way to school there is a gas station. a shell gas station. for refueling needs on route to some hard-core sheep viewing. the best thing about this gas station (yes, yes, i will tell you) is that it is it stocks all sorts of regular things but also super massive amazing things. so what did i buy there, you ask? well, a new towel! yes, the selection of towels (bath, hand, face + bath sheets and shower mats) at the shell gas-station is amazing. there were more towel choices than there were potato chip choices. the dutch know what matters. well actually, no they don't - i haven't seen a single sign for ketchup-flavoured chips. but you can't have everything all the time.
so about the class: there are 300 of us, from all over the world. something like 80 countries are represented. there is about 6 or 7 canadians. i actually know one of them. he clerked the year ahead of me. and also worked in new york, at a firm not too far from mine. there are a load of germans and brazilians, as well. the class room is purported wi-fi, but it seems to have anticipated that at most, by 2108 only 30 people at a time would seek to connect to the internet. alas. poor peace palace. now that 300 people are trying to work on their nerve.com profile at the same time, the results of wi-fi are mixed. two other salient features of the class room area (this is a new, very nice modern library building attached to the old peace palace - there's a library upstairs, and a big lecture hall on the main floor.) the "lounge" area has a coffee-lady. shockingly like maria, the law lounge coffee lady. but i can honestly say that the coffee in this lounge makes maria's coffee seem like "ninth street espresso" (wickedtastic coffee shoppe in the east village). which is saying a lot, if you know that 30% of my stomach lining has been stripped away through the consumption of maria's coffee. anyway, suffice it to say i'm not seeking caffeination in the lounge. the other thing (well i just thought of another one, so things) about the lounge: there is one TINY water cooler for 300 people. 1. TINY. 300. PEOPLE. not such a wise move resource-allocation wise. and similarly, there are 6 computer that are actually fully functioning with internet and all in the lounge. but there are only 6. and unlike the wisdom of the grande prairie public library, here there is no time limit for use of the public internet computers. so you can run to the computers at the first 20 minute break and sit there for 20 minutes solid, while a line to people as long as the amazon river forms behind. logistical short-comings, but overall i am thrilled. just to be nominated.
i have found a few awesome near-school spots. like edgar's coffee shop. i don't know if it actually has a name, but it's run by this amazing guy (edgar) who wears a self-appointed uniform of a short-sleeve button-down shirt with the dutch version of dockers. he runs the cafe with his 3 daughters. he makes yummy lattes. the only thing i've had to eat there is a chorizo baguette -- i had it for lunch 3 times already. i will probably have it for lunch about 10 more times before i leave. the other place that's not too far from school is "smoothie company" - i've had two "lime + berry" smoothies. delishhhhiooosooo.
so the set-up of the course is that we have 1 "general course" professor -- this year it is prof. reisman of yale university (who teaches 15 lectures + 3 seminars) and then each week there are 2 other professors (who teach 5 lectures and 1 seminar each). they teach special topics. right now, we have prof. cataldi (relationship between international and domestic law) & prof. pinto (use of force in international law). so starting monday, we'll have prof. reisman and two other professors for the week. the professors have all been great. prof. reisman is exceptional. and used bono in an example but pronounced it BOW-NO, and admitted he had never heard of u2. & that is why i have a professorial crush on him. he's awesome!
a few notes about my school-mates. i have met some super awesome, smart people. this course attracts people at all levels of their career - from judges to law students; from government officials to professors; from researchers at n.g.o.s to associates at law firms. it's very cool. the breadth of experience and knowledge is amazing. the lectures are in either english or french, with simultaneous translation into the other language. i have to say i've been doing better with french than i thought i would. when the discussion gets really substantive, i have to use the translation, but i'm actually not doing so bad at all at understanding the rest of the french lectures. so far the people i've gotten to know the best are O (iraqi-american from detroit rock city), E (australian lawyer in dubai for the royal family), D (irish lawyer in england working for the good of mankind), E (norwegian law research/grad student in oslo), K (pakistanti professor in lahore), J (dutch graduate student in england) -- there is also a guy (i'm not sure where he's from or what his story is but ... ) --- he looks like philip seymour hoffman as the character of truman capote. & today (friday, 27.07.07) he was wearing one red and one green sock. and i love him.
here's the abc after-school special:
Manndag: i went home & kicked it with P, C, and A. we watched "the big lebowski" and had pizza for dinner. super!
Dinsdag: i went to the open-air street market with O > i bought some awesome dried strawberries & mixed nuts. yummmmers. O and i were going to meet up with E and D for drinks. but we had issues calling D's cell phone. it took us half an hour to find a public pay phone. the pay phone we did find did not take creditcards -- but did take some sort of smart chip card which is apparently too cool for north america. anyway. finally we fished out enough change to use the phone and then we tried dialing every possible combination and permutation of D's phone number. a very pleasant sounding woman speaking dutch kept interrupting though. i know, i know -- so pushy, the dutch. we finally gave up on meeting up with E & D, and O and i went to get some middle eastern food. it was yummy. i did get locked into the bathroom at the restaurant. the lock was really sticky. i had a moment of panic before i realized that i was not helping my situation with clammy hands. anyway, after what felt like 10 years, i escaped from the bathroom. and then O walked home (he lives 5 minutes from the central area we hang out in) and i started my 40 minute walk home. upon reaching l'appartement des quatres, i joined my beloved flat-mates to watch scrubs (with dutch subtitles)
Monday, July 23, 2007
hej hej kobenhavn . . .
sweet sweet sleep, back in S's grown-up bed. woke up, read more of my book [i'm reading "mockingbird", a book about harper lee], checked e-mail. the ussssssual. i had about 20 postcards to write. i bought about 20 postcards and stamps, so i speed-wrote postcards, showered, ate the special danish breakfast that S made for me (i had it SO good in denmark). S was absolutely determined that my experience departing copenhagen be nothing like the hell that is known by the name tegel. and i really don't want to buy two plane tickets to all my destinations. so, i got to the airport in copenhagen early enough to check out the specimen of airport-ly wonder before me. copenhagen's airport was everything that tegel is not: logical, organized, helpful & accurate posting of information. all of the things i value in an international transportation hub.
there is very good reason that copenhagen won the best airport in the world award many times in a row. and also, there is really amazing fancypants shopping in that airport. but despite not having to purchase a last-minute ticket leaving me flush and whatnot, i decided to avoid any mall-like environment and opted instead to shower elderly danish people with my smiles. again, there's something grumpy about gutteral languaged peoples in this part of the world. they do not like to smile. they mistrust people. they think that smiling costs euros or something. there is something delicious about smiling at grumpy old people. it makes them wonder what you are so happy about.
one negative of my experience at copenhagen's airport. danish people are MAJOR stop-shorts. they stop short all over the place. it's a country full of captain oblivious-ii. oblivious-es. oblivious-ii. anyway. the last incident of the stop short disease took place as mr. and mrs. godawfulunhappy entered the departure lounge for our flight. they walked in the doorway and stopped SHORT. danny devito short. that guy who played mini-me on austin powers short. martin short. god. so as i divert my velocity so as i do not run into them, i say "excuse me" to get past them. i say it nice. i'm using my nice, indoor voice. the guy, thinking i was too far to hear his nasal voice, mimicked me and said "excuse me" in a singsong voice. that's when i looked him squarely in the eye, smiled brightly and said, "i see i amuse you. maybe you would like to stop and consider the meaning of life somewhere besides the only access to and from this room." okay, i didn't say that. i did smile though, intently enough for him to smile back sheepishly realizing that i had heard his stank a*s.
the flight was very nice. nothing eventful happened.
at the amsterdam airport, my luggage was super late. apparently it was on "stand-by". my check-in bag was something like 7 kg overweight. i had to go to customer service in copenhagen to pay for the extra kgs. but the woman at the customer service counter cut me a break, so i didn't have to pay. she just stamped it valid anyway. eventually, my luggage did come. it was practically the last bag.
i grabbed my bag. tried to use my useless unlocked cell phone with the netherlands SIM card, which is NOT working at all. [bastards at lycamobile]. then called my host at the hague, P.S., from a payphone. P.S. is a very sweet person. mainly because my friend L.G. says so. but also because he is the male version of me. but mostly because he (and his two roommates, C & A) are letting me stay in their apartment for 3 weeks. 3 weeks! P.S. even vacated his own room for me. now that's kwality people.
so the routine at chez P.S. et al. is ordering in (bonjour deja vu from brooklyn) and watching tv (yippy). we ordered pizza, watched tv [really bad movies that were out in theatres about 20 years ago and are now being shown on dutch television in the hopes that people have finally forgotten how shitttastic they were to begin with.]
sweet slumber in the hague. gotta get up early to go to my class tomorrow morning.
there is very good reason that copenhagen won the best airport in the world award many times in a row. and also, there is really amazing fancypants shopping in that airport. but despite not having to purchase a last-minute ticket leaving me flush and whatnot, i decided to avoid any mall-like environment and opted instead to shower elderly danish people with my smiles. again, there's something grumpy about gutteral languaged peoples in this part of the world. they do not like to smile. they mistrust people. they think that smiling costs euros or something. there is something delicious about smiling at grumpy old people. it makes them wonder what you are so happy about.
one negative of my experience at copenhagen's airport. danish people are MAJOR stop-shorts. they stop short all over the place. it's a country full of captain oblivious-ii. oblivious-es. oblivious-ii. anyway. the last incident of the stop short disease took place as mr. and mrs. godawfulunhappy entered the departure lounge for our flight. they walked in the doorway and stopped SHORT. danny devito short. that guy who played mini-me on austin powers short. martin short. god. so as i divert my velocity so as i do not run into them, i say "excuse me" to get past them. i say it nice. i'm using my nice, indoor voice. the guy, thinking i was too far to hear his nasal voice, mimicked me and said "excuse me" in a singsong voice. that's when i looked him squarely in the eye, smiled brightly and said, "i see i amuse you. maybe you would like to stop and consider the meaning of life somewhere besides the only access to and from this room." okay, i didn't say that. i did smile though, intently enough for him to smile back sheepishly realizing that i had heard his stank a*s.
the flight was very nice. nothing eventful happened.
at the amsterdam airport, my luggage was super late. apparently it was on "stand-by". my check-in bag was something like 7 kg overweight. i had to go to customer service in copenhagen to pay for the extra kgs. but the woman at the customer service counter cut me a break, so i didn't have to pay. she just stamped it valid anyway. eventually, my luggage did come. it was practically the last bag.
i grabbed my bag. tried to use my useless unlocked cell phone with the netherlands SIM card, which is NOT working at all. [bastards at lycamobile]. then called my host at the hague, P.S., from a payphone. P.S. is a very sweet person. mainly because my friend L.G. says so. but also because he is the male version of me. but mostly because he (and his two roommates, C & A) are letting me stay in their apartment for 3 weeks. 3 weeks! P.S. even vacated his own room for me. now that's kwality people.
so the routine at chez P.S. et al. is ordering in (bonjour deja vu from brooklyn) and watching tv (yippy). we ordered pizza, watched tv [really bad movies that were out in theatres about 20 years ago and are now being shown on dutch television in the hopes that people have finally forgotten how shitttastic they were to begin with.]
sweet slumber in the hague. gotta get up early to go to my class tomorrow morning.
i'm hav'n kobenhavn
21.07.07:
slept well at S's folk's place (actually slept in S's old room, which only reinforced the conjoined-ness of our twinning. surreal. after a super delicious danish breakfast (with two danishes that were absolutely absolutely definitely definitely wayyyy better than anything else i have tasted in the danish family.) and numerous photo-ops with the uncle/auntie crew, S and i hit kobenhavn. we had much to do and see and buy.
so after checking out h&M in its motherland, i only had two other scandinavian goods to scope out: marimekko & casch. casch is danish. marimekko is finnish. both are more amply available in denmark. i also wanted to check out a new pair of glasses. danish glasses. & S has an amazingly cool pair that i was oooohing and aaaaahing over - they are designed by a danish eyewear company called fleye (which means fine looking eye in danish). so i wanted to check out funky cool "european" design. S and i were talking about how to us hokey n'americaners, every thing is "european" in one big conglomeration and how cool "european" is. so i spent the rest of the trip talking about how i was so impressed by how european everything is in denmark. but again i digress.
we checked out this big fancy department store type place -- illum -- it's super awesome!!! they had kick-ass marimekko stuff. i basically died and went to finnish textile heaven. anyway. S and i did some super fun stuff in copenhagen. we walked wayyyyyy up a circular, steep walkway thingy to the round tower in copenhagen (first stone laid back ago in 1637). the view was really great. 360 degrees of copen-you-had-me-at-hello. we also took a water tour, starting at new harbour and going around to the black diamond, the new opera house, the little mermaid (which really is little and does not look even remotely as big as you'd think -- S pointed it out from our boat at a bit of a distance and i couldn't even see what she was pointing at, but still there were about 8000 tourists flocking around ariel, the baby mermaid) and through christian's harbour, and other water-y places. we passed by some amazing abodes -- including this one area called christiana -- this is an area where, in 1972, people started to squat in an unused military area -- and established a self-governing, independent community - to the point where there were houses built, businesses established & daycares. the area seems to be on an upsurge, since the apartments, houses, houseboats, etc. in the area are supppppppper posh looking. and is apparently (according to many sources, including resident copenhagen expert, S,) the mostest expensivest square meter of living space in europe, or at least it was at one point. who wouldn't want to live there, though. beautiful.
we also checked out the royal palace. the best thing (well two things) about the palace? the fact that you can walk right on up and in fact drive right on up to the palace. but if you drive up to the palace, you can't stop. if you stop, you will be squarely in the marks of denmark's finest sharpshooter. but but but. the second amazing thing about the palace -- are the palace guards. they are practically prepubescent fine young danish lads, expression-less, sombre and give mean salutes. and their foot snaps made me hot.
after kicking around all day in copenhagen and checking out the super snazzy european shops, S and i went to see a movie. we went to see "red road", which is very interesting and bizarre as far as movies go. and has a pretty graphic sexuelle scene. post movie, we went to dinner. a steak'n'ribs place. the steak was okay. the ribs was not. poor S thought she was going to puke. but she held it in.
our plan for the evening was go check out tivoli gardens. tivoli is a bizarre combination of butchart gardens & the PNE all in one spot. minus the 4-H element, of course. but seriously. check out the site: www.tivoli.dk. tivoli has a bunch of gardens, and pleasant ponds, etc. and a mid-way games area + restaurants + rides like roller coasters, and such. we went in to see the saturday night fireworks display that happens all summer long. i was trying to be nice to S and suggesting that i could miss out on fireworks for the sake of her health. but S spun on her heel and said that she would rather puke her guts out in front of the entire population of tivoli than for me to miss the fireworks. so we went to tivoli.
the first thing we saw in tivoli was also the second to last thing we saw in tivoli. the "tivoli big band" was playing big band standards all night long at the band-shell. it was really really really good. and toe-tapping. but the most bizarre thing about the "tivoli big band" show was that i was gifted a super ugly push heart that says "love" on it by a random boy watching the show. i think he was danish. i was partly touched and partly mortified. it's one of those plush toys that they give you as a consolation prize at the midway games area. anyway. thanks to you mr. plush heart. you really made my night at tivoli an extra-special one. the fireworks display was awesome!! it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. and then finally finished in a flurry of oooooohs aaaaaaahs and ouches. okay, no ouches, but someone did almost step on my foot.
another great thing about tivoli (and denmark in generally) is this new plan where they charge a 5 kroner surcharge for plastic bottles, which you get back when you return them to a big red machine. so you won't get 5 kroner back for tossing your plastic bottle or cup on the floor, litterbug.
two other cool things i wanted to say about denmark. well actually three. when you buy tickets to a movie, you can choose your seats. you get actual seat numbers so you don't have to do the whole i'm saving this row for 10 people by laying my sweater across all the seats and randomly placing used kleenexes on the seats. and you can buy a parking spot at tivoli the day before, where you only have to pay 40 kroner for the whole day of parking (and there's no way they can really check if you went to tivoli or not). basically you pay for it online and they give you a 4 number code to access the parking garage. pretty amazing. & the best thing ever is the sticker-y thing on danish cars which is a clock face. so when you park your car in a place that is fixed time parking (say, 2 hours maximum), you turn the wheel on the sticker-y thing to indicate the time at which you parked your car. BRILLIANT. i am kind of in love with the idea. and by extension with denmark.
another cool thing about denmark is actually a cool thing about S. she knows the brown guy from bombay rockers! f'reals!!! so now i am 2 degrees of separation from him too. we're like this [insert visual of crossed fingers here].
slept well at S's folk's place (actually slept in S's old room, which only reinforced the conjoined-ness of our twinning. surreal. after a super delicious danish breakfast (with two danishes that were absolutely absolutely definitely definitely wayyyy better than anything else i have tasted in the danish family.) and numerous photo-ops with the uncle/auntie crew, S and i hit kobenhavn. we had much to do and see and buy.
so after checking out h&M in its motherland, i only had two other scandinavian goods to scope out: marimekko & casch. casch is danish. marimekko is finnish. both are more amply available in denmark. i also wanted to check out a new pair of glasses. danish glasses. & S has an amazingly cool pair that i was oooohing and aaaaahing over - they are designed by a danish eyewear company called fleye (which means fine looking eye in danish). so i wanted to check out funky cool "european" design. S and i were talking about how to us hokey n'americaners, every thing is "european" in one big conglomeration and how cool "european" is. so i spent the rest of the trip talking about how i was so impressed by how european everything is in denmark. but again i digress.
we checked out this big fancy department store type place -- illum -- it's super awesome!!! they had kick-ass marimekko stuff. i basically died and went to finnish textile heaven. anyway. S and i did some super fun stuff in copenhagen. we walked wayyyyyy up a circular, steep walkway thingy to the round tower in copenhagen (first stone laid back ago in 1637). the view was really great. 360 degrees of copen-you-had-me-at-hello. we also took a water tour, starting at new harbour and going around to the black diamond, the new opera house, the little mermaid (which really is little and does not look even remotely as big as you'd think -- S pointed it out from our boat at a bit of a distance and i couldn't even see what she was pointing at, but still there were about 8000 tourists flocking around ariel, the baby mermaid) and through christian's harbour, and other water-y places. we passed by some amazing abodes -- including this one area called christiana -- this is an area where, in 1972, people started to squat in an unused military area -- and established a self-governing, independent community - to the point where there were houses built, businesses established & daycares. the area seems to be on an upsurge, since the apartments, houses, houseboats, etc. in the area are supppppppper posh looking. and is apparently (according to many sources, including resident copenhagen expert, S,) the mostest expensivest square meter of living space in europe, or at least it was at one point. who wouldn't want to live there, though. beautiful.
we also checked out the royal palace. the best thing (well two things) about the palace? the fact that you can walk right on up and in fact drive right on up to the palace. but if you drive up to the palace, you can't stop. if you stop, you will be squarely in the marks of denmark's finest sharpshooter. but but but. the second amazing thing about the palace -- are the palace guards. they are practically prepubescent fine young danish lads, expression-less, sombre and give mean salutes. and their foot snaps made me hot.
after kicking around all day in copenhagen and checking out the super snazzy european shops, S and i went to see a movie. we went to see "red road", which is very interesting and bizarre as far as movies go. and has a pretty graphic sexuelle scene. post movie, we went to dinner. a steak'n'ribs place. the steak was okay. the ribs was not. poor S thought she was going to puke. but she held it in.
our plan for the evening was go check out tivoli gardens. tivoli is a bizarre combination of butchart gardens & the PNE all in one spot. minus the 4-H element, of course. but seriously. check out the site: www.tivoli.dk. tivoli has a bunch of gardens, and pleasant ponds, etc. and a mid-way games area + restaurants + rides like roller coasters, and such. we went in to see the saturday night fireworks display that happens all summer long. i was trying to be nice to S and suggesting that i could miss out on fireworks for the sake of her health. but S spun on her heel and said that she would rather puke her guts out in front of the entire population of tivoli than for me to miss the fireworks. so we went to tivoli.
the first thing we saw in tivoli was also the second to last thing we saw in tivoli. the "tivoli big band" was playing big band standards all night long at the band-shell. it was really really really good. and toe-tapping. but the most bizarre thing about the "tivoli big band" show was that i was gifted a super ugly push heart that says "love" on it by a random boy watching the show. i think he was danish. i was partly touched and partly mortified. it's one of those plush toys that they give you as a consolation prize at the midway games area. anyway. thanks to you mr. plush heart. you really made my night at tivoli an extra-special one. the fireworks display was awesome!! it just got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. and then finally finished in a flurry of oooooohs aaaaaaahs and ouches. okay, no ouches, but someone did almost step on my foot.
another great thing about tivoli (and denmark in generally) is this new plan where they charge a 5 kroner surcharge for plastic bottles, which you get back when you return them to a big red machine. so you won't get 5 kroner back for tossing your plastic bottle or cup on the floor, litterbug.
two other cool things i wanted to say about denmark. well actually three. when you buy tickets to a movie, you can choose your seats. you get actual seat numbers so you don't have to do the whole i'm saving this row for 10 people by laying my sweater across all the seats and randomly placing used kleenexes on the seats. and you can buy a parking spot at tivoli the day before, where you only have to pay 40 kroner for the whole day of parking (and there's no way they can really check if you went to tivoli or not). basically you pay for it online and they give you a 4 number code to access the parking garage. pretty amazing. & the best thing ever is the sticker-y thing on danish cars which is a clock face. so when you park your car in a place that is fixed time parking (say, 2 hours maximum), you turn the wheel on the sticker-y thing to indicate the time at which you parked your car. BRILLIANT. i am kind of in love with the idea. and by extension with denmark.
another cool thing about denmark is actually a cool thing about S. she knows the brown guy from bombay rockers! f'reals!!! so now i am 2 degrees of separation from him too. we're like this [insert visual of crossed fingers here].
Sunday, July 22, 2007
alas poor yorick, i knew him, horatio
20.07.07:
after having the sleep of 10 000 suns last night, i woke up this morning and S had made a traditional danish breakkie -- yummy bread, cheese, juice, coffee, more cheese, fruit (sounds shockingly like a non-danish breakfast, right? but it was freakin' danish, k?) after breakfast, we hit the road.
first stop: hamlet's castle = kronborg castle. this place is superfantastiko. seriously. if you have even a passing knowledge of who shakespeare is, you should check this place out. if only for the prison cell tunnels under the castle (two floors under) where prisoners were dumped to serve out their sentences. the whole castle is a unesco site. & seriously cool. the prison tunnels have no light, save a few that they have put in for the tours. you can buy a flashlight to explore, but of course, S & i cheaped out and decided to go for the "authentic experience" of stubbing our toes and bumping our heads, just like the real prisoners would have (oooohhhh, aaaahhhhh). the inside of the castle - the living areas of the various kings of denmark - is also really interesting. S pointed out how short the beds were back in the 1420s. i think the rapid growth in human size from the 1420s to today can only be attributed to growth hormones in milk & genetically modified chromosomes in non-organic hydrogenated oil products and variations thereof. but seriously, if i was kicking around back then, i would be tall(!) the other super amazing thing about the castle is all the original woven textiles hanging on the walls. how how how how how (S & i wonder) did people do all that weaving with so much detail on such larges swathes without the benefit of adobe photoshop? how!?! another freakydeaky thing about kronborg castle is that it is the resting place of holger danske -- who is he? he's a big slumbering lug of a man who will wake up and beat down anyone who tries to invade denmark. i'm serious. i saw him sleeping, tip-toed by, and trust me he's got pipes like nobody's business. so there. holger danske is also the namesake of a danish furniture company: www.holger-dasnke.dk. [on a side note, why doesn't anyone name a business after a canadian hero -- like louis riel plumbing? or tommy douglas movers? capitalize on canadian historical lore & pride.]
ok, so next. since, S & i found sweeeeeeet parking. for free. oh yeah. so suck on that people with "alternate side parking rules apply" woes, we walked over to the ferry to sweden and walked on (after paying, of course...after seeing that prison under hamlet's castle, there's no way i'm breaking the law in denmark).
what is the ferry to sweden? it puts bc ferries to shame for one. it has a huge shopping area on deck (and not just for crappy magnets that say victoria on them) and a nice bar (full bar, no self-service watery coffee & hot chocolate here!). basically, this 20 minute ride takes you from denmark's helsingor to sweden's helsingborg and back again. 20 minutes, and there is more to entertain on this ferry than you'd believe.
the ferry ride over was pretty uneventful. two things of note. 1) S realizing or rather re-realizing how cheap things are in swedish kroner on the ferry & in the swedish town we were going to (helsingborg) & 2) watching a stabbing incident -- greasy-looking long-haired german ne'erdowell teenage punka*ses stabbing one another and bleeding all over the ferry. S was going to leap up to help them, but then the ferry stopped and we ran off in search of shopping bargains.
the main event of the afternoon was eating chocolate and shopping at h&m (in sweden!!) and basically just basking in the swedish sun.
after returning to denmark and then back to S's house, we drove closer to copenhagen to visit with her family. freakishly, S & i are twins. even more freakishly, S's family and mine are twins. seriously. it was like meeting the alter-ego parallel family i always sensed i had in denmark. f'reals.
our friday night plan was to go have dinner at this amazing sushi place in copenhagen -- called umami. wow, the food was amazing. the tuna tataki was second only to ebizo in victoria. S and i ordered loads of sushi and then did a re-order for 8 more pieces. i can't even begin to describe how delicious the food was. so i won't. but if you are in copenhagen and you don't go to umami, then i'm going to send holger danske after you. fo'sho.
the best thing about umami. well, after the company (S rocks) and after the food (which also rocks), it had to be the 2 couples from iceland sitting at the next table. S noticed they were staring at us. i looked over, and the two guys (the guys were sitting closest to us -- one was cute in a nerdy way, the other was cute in a jock way) were trying to figure out how to use their chopsticks by looking at me and mimicking. however, they were not doing so well. at first i thought they were german, based on their accents - and so did S. i was convinced they were german. anyway, i indicated how to hold chopsticks from my table. they kept looking over and trying. still looking really awkward. so i, being the super helpful lady that i am, hopped over to show them how to use their chopsticks. expertly. if they were not with their lady-friends, then S and i would have been happy to show them how to use their chopsticks using a patented over-the-shoulder-chopstick-help-age method. but alas. anyway, we had a total repartee with those peoples. & it was super fun. they had totally bizarre hard to pronounce icelandic names. but i'm adding iceland to my list of places to visit.
oh before i sign off for today, i have to admit that i took my dirty laundry to S's parent's house. yes, i am all class. & i have no shame.
til nachstes time.
after having the sleep of 10 000 suns last night, i woke up this morning and S had made a traditional danish breakkie -- yummy bread, cheese, juice, coffee, more cheese, fruit (sounds shockingly like a non-danish breakfast, right? but it was freakin' danish, k?) after breakfast, we hit the road.
first stop: hamlet's castle = kronborg castle. this place is superfantastiko. seriously. if you have even a passing knowledge of who shakespeare is, you should check this place out. if only for the prison cell tunnels under the castle (two floors under) where prisoners were dumped to serve out their sentences. the whole castle is a unesco site. & seriously cool. the prison tunnels have no light, save a few that they have put in for the tours. you can buy a flashlight to explore, but of course, S & i cheaped out and decided to go for the "authentic experience" of stubbing our toes and bumping our heads, just like the real prisoners would have (oooohhhh, aaaahhhhh). the inside of the castle - the living areas of the various kings of denmark - is also really interesting. S pointed out how short the beds were back in the 1420s. i think the rapid growth in human size from the 1420s to today can only be attributed to growth hormones in milk & genetically modified chromosomes in non-organic hydrogenated oil products and variations thereof. but seriously, if i was kicking around back then, i would be tall(!) the other super amazing thing about the castle is all the original woven textiles hanging on the walls. how how how how how (S & i wonder) did people do all that weaving with so much detail on such larges swathes without the benefit of adobe photoshop? how!?! another freakydeaky thing about kronborg castle is that it is the resting place of holger danske -- who is he? he's a big slumbering lug of a man who will wake up and beat down anyone who tries to invade denmark. i'm serious. i saw him sleeping, tip-toed by, and trust me he's got pipes like nobody's business. so there. holger danske is also the namesake of a danish furniture company: www.holger-dasnke.dk. [on a side note, why doesn't anyone name a business after a canadian hero -- like louis riel plumbing? or tommy douglas movers? capitalize on canadian historical lore & pride.]
ok, so next. since, S & i found sweeeeeeet parking. for free. oh yeah. so suck on that people with "alternate side parking rules apply" woes, we walked over to the ferry to sweden and walked on (after paying, of course...after seeing that prison under hamlet's castle, there's no way i'm breaking the law in denmark).
what is the ferry to sweden? it puts bc ferries to shame for one. it has a huge shopping area on deck (and not just for crappy magnets that say victoria on them) and a nice bar (full bar, no self-service watery coffee & hot chocolate here!). basically, this 20 minute ride takes you from denmark's helsingor to sweden's helsingborg and back again. 20 minutes, and there is more to entertain on this ferry than you'd believe.
the ferry ride over was pretty uneventful. two things of note. 1) S realizing or rather re-realizing how cheap things are in swedish kroner on the ferry & in the swedish town we were going to (helsingborg) & 2) watching a stabbing incident -- greasy-looking long-haired german ne'erdowell teenage punka*ses stabbing one another and bleeding all over the ferry. S was going to leap up to help them, but then the ferry stopped and we ran off in search of shopping bargains.
the main event of the afternoon was eating chocolate and shopping at h&m (in sweden!!) and basically just basking in the swedish sun.
after returning to denmark and then back to S's house, we drove closer to copenhagen to visit with her family. freakishly, S & i are twins. even more freakishly, S's family and mine are twins. seriously. it was like meeting the alter-ego parallel family i always sensed i had in denmark. f'reals.
our friday night plan was to go have dinner at this amazing sushi place in copenhagen -- called umami. wow, the food was amazing. the tuna tataki was second only to ebizo in victoria. S and i ordered loads of sushi and then did a re-order for 8 more pieces. i can't even begin to describe how delicious the food was. so i won't. but if you are in copenhagen and you don't go to umami, then i'm going to send holger danske after you. fo'sho.
the best thing about umami. well, after the company (S rocks) and after the food (which also rocks), it had to be the 2 couples from iceland sitting at the next table. S noticed they were staring at us. i looked over, and the two guys (the guys were sitting closest to us -- one was cute in a nerdy way, the other was cute in a jock way) were trying to figure out how to use their chopsticks by looking at me and mimicking. however, they were not doing so well. at first i thought they were german, based on their accents - and so did S. i was convinced they were german. anyway, i indicated how to hold chopsticks from my table. they kept looking over and trying. still looking really awkward. so i, being the super helpful lady that i am, hopped over to show them how to use their chopsticks. expertly. if they were not with their lady-friends, then S and i would have been happy to show them how to use their chopsticks using a patented over-the-shoulder-chopstick-help-age method. but alas. anyway, we had a total repartee with those peoples. & it was super fun. they had totally bizarre hard to pronounce icelandic names. but i'm adding iceland to my list of places to visit.
oh before i sign off for today, i have to admit that i took my dirty laundry to S's parent's house. yes, i am all class. & i have no shame.
til nachstes time.
Saturday, July 21, 2007
hej hej hej ...
danemark! denmark!
land of so much cool stuff. for such a geographically small land (though technically, greenland is part of denmark, so not as small as you might think), a great number of truly awesome things have been given to us by denmark & danish design is superb: bodum, georg jensen, carlsberg, bang & olufsen, butter cookies, LEGO(!!), inwear/matinique, ecco, peter beier chocolate, bojensen chocolate (& loads more!). i have become a dane by proxy.
after the airport debacle, i got to denmark and nearly collapsed with joy in the airport (the modern, logical, user-friendly airport -- hah tegel, take a page from the danes). my friend, S, [who is really my twin on account of how freakishly similar we are in temperament & experience, and how freakishly similar our families are as well. clearly we were separated at birth] came to pick me up - so very nice. we went back to her place first. her apartment is really nice & really cheap! S is a doctor. so she qualifies for special housing near two hospitals, once of which she has to be working at in order to get the housing. not only that, but since she'll be done her rotations at the nearby hospital, she is being sent apartment listings (at a huge discount) from a medical association (i think) in copenhagen for when she moves. these are huge places at huge subsidies, compared to market value.
after my oooohing and aaaaahing over her apartment. & S almost having a heart-attack after i told her about the rent for my prior sh*tboxes in nyc, we decide to go into her town. She lives just outside copenhagen in a very cute, small place called hillerod. hillerod's village is truly quaint. and is mostly known for frederiksborg castle (the summer home of the crown prince & his family, built in the 1560s (at least part of it) by king frederik II.)
we then went into town for lunch. and had a burger at a pub-type place. we each had burgers. they were yum!!
the rest of the evening was wonderfully low-key. i took a nap (big news, since my sleep woes are well-known) and then we had yummy thai food & chatted up a storm. whoa. and then i passed out.
land of so much cool stuff. for such a geographically small land (though technically, greenland is part of denmark, so not as small as you might think), a great number of truly awesome things have been given to us by denmark & danish design is superb: bodum, georg jensen, carlsberg, bang & olufsen, butter cookies, LEGO(!!), inwear/matinique, ecco, peter beier chocolate, bojensen chocolate (& loads more!). i have become a dane by proxy.
after the airport debacle, i got to denmark and nearly collapsed with joy in the airport (the modern, logical, user-friendly airport -- hah tegel, take a page from the danes). my friend, S, [who is really my twin on account of how freakishly similar we are in temperament & experience, and how freakishly similar our families are as well. clearly we were separated at birth] came to pick me up - so very nice. we went back to her place first. her apartment is really nice & really cheap! S is a doctor. so she qualifies for special housing near two hospitals, once of which she has to be working at in order to get the housing. not only that, but since she'll be done her rotations at the nearby hospital, she is being sent apartment listings (at a huge discount) from a medical association (i think) in copenhagen for when she moves. these are huge places at huge subsidies, compared to market value.
after my oooohing and aaaaahing over her apartment. & S almost having a heart-attack after i told her about the rent for my prior sh*tboxes in nyc, we decide to go into her town. She lives just outside copenhagen in a very cute, small place called hillerod. hillerod's village is truly quaint. and is mostly known for frederiksborg castle (the summer home of the crown prince & his family, built in the 1560s (at least part of it) by king frederik II.)
we then went into town for lunch. and had a burger at a pub-type place. we each had burgers. they were yum!!
the rest of the evening was wonderfully low-key. i took a nap (big news, since my sleep woes are well-known) and then we had yummy thai food & chatted up a storm. whoa. and then i passed out.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
tegel flughof, you will feel my wrath (a mini rant in prose)
i can only write this in point form because i am seriously flagging here.
* wake up, get nice email from M.B.
* check and double check transportation to airport
* get on u-bahn, thinking i have only 1 bus transfer to make
* realize at the last u-bahn stop that i have to catch 2 buses to get to Tegel
* time is nigh approaching boarding time. i am still not near Tegel
* thinking to myself: wow, the only time i have ever missed a flight because i was late was in vancouver on my way back to grande prairie and that was because my aunt said we had loads of time to get me to my flight. air canada apparently did not agree.
* take other connecting bus
* arrive Tegel
* stand around bewildered. think that this is the worst-organized airport i have ever been in. i am certain the airport in inner mongolia (should i ever get there) will be more user-friendly
* stand behind 8 other people at information counter
* ask where do i go to catch my flight
* guy points toward terminal A and says gate 6
* i say, yes, but where do i get my boarding card.
* he says you get your card at the same gate you board through.
* i think: this airport sucks
* go to gate 6 of terminal A - the sign says air berlin is leaving from here. i am sterling. am beginning to wish i had taken a cab, because i am really pushing it to make this flight
* finally get attention of gate agent who tells me that i have to go to gate 6, terminal B.
* i inwardly groan. run to terminal B
* terminal B is a wasteland. there is no one in sight except a few straggly-looking travelers (like me) who are cursing their fate that they leave from Tegel and not Schonefeld.
* gate 6, terminal B looks like it's closed and might never re-open
* wrong place. wrong time. i am not getting on this flight. i look at the time. the flight is leaving in like 10 minutes. i don't have a boarding card. i haven't been through security. it's just not going to happen.
* i go to the first ticket counter (and p.s. these are all randomly interspersed all over the airport too, like the boarding card / gate situation) that looks reputable (british airways in this case) and ask if they flights to copenhagen because i missed mine
* woman looks up on her computer and says well we don't fly there from here.
* i think: is copenhagen not a big city. is berlin not a big city. are you not british airways. did you guys have an empire that the sun could never set on. and oh how the mighty have fallen - no flights between berlin & copenhagen. argh argh argh.
* she says well there is one flight on scandinavian air leaving at 9:50, you could make that one. but the ticket price i have from here is really pricey. you should go bug lufthansa because your other flight (with sterling) was cross-listed with lufthansa.
* okay.
* i run to the lufthansa ticketing counter which is in middle earth, Tegel.
* hello hello. i need a ticket for copenhagen. i missed my flight on sterling.
* okay well you have to buy a new ticket. you can't just convert your old one.
* yep, i know that. rub salt in the wound, lady.
* buy new ticket (can forget about putting that down-payment on that skateboard i wanted since i'm burning through euros like they were yesterday's stretched-out scrunchies)
* get on plane.
* breath sigh of relief.
* 55 minutes later, arrive copenhagen.
a few more points about Tegel airport.
>> could people here move any slower? whether they are travelers or employees of airlines or the airport, they have a nonchalance about them that would be fine on a dance floor. but this is not a dance floor. this is a zoo. this is war. this is all about making your flight and not paying 7000 euros for a new one.
>> could people here be any more oblivious? yes, those are nice shiny objects. yes, they are attractive. sure, they make you want to go over and look at them. but why don't you look to see how many people you are taking out before you stop short and freakin' cause an accident. oh and don't bother to actually realize that you've caused problems. just go on and be your freakin' merry self. jerkface mcgillicuddy.
>> could this airport have any better design structure? unlike the prototypical airport where there is a central area for obtaining boarding passes, a central area for passing security (or several areas) and a number of gates on the departures level that can be easily followed once you've passed security, Tegel airport has decided to take the alternative approach of chaotic chaos. as the most egregious of these:
a. why would Tegel put the boarding pass area in one place, when i can run around like an olympian looking for my gate (oh, not my gate to board -- no, no that would be so simple...my gate to go get a boarding card), which is pleasantly interspersed with every other airline's boarding areas and with signage you can't read even if you had superman's vision.
b. why would Tegel bother to have information desk people who give you complete information. if buddy at information had been so kind as to not point incorrectly toward terminal A but rather to point or say correctly gate 6, terminal B, i would have still made my original flight. if lady at terminal A, gate 6 hadn't been so slowly meandering through issuing boarding cards, maybe she would have noticed my frantic hand-waving for help earlier, thus ensuring i got to terminal B, gate 6 earlier. or, hey bothering to radio ahead and say there's one passenger on her way.
i'm telling you this whole german organization and efficiency thing is riding out some past glory. because there is nothing organized or efficient about Tegel airport.
i'm going to have to write a letter. i didn't want it to come to this. but this is absolutely unacceptable operators of Tegel airport. you will feel my wrath as i write my letter in blood!
* wake up, get nice email from M.B.
* check and double check transportation to airport
* get on u-bahn, thinking i have only 1 bus transfer to make
* realize at the last u-bahn stop that i have to catch 2 buses to get to Tegel
* time is nigh approaching boarding time. i am still not near Tegel
* thinking to myself: wow, the only time i have ever missed a flight because i was late was in vancouver on my way back to grande prairie and that was because my aunt said we had loads of time to get me to my flight. air canada apparently did not agree.
* take other connecting bus
* arrive Tegel
* stand around bewildered. think that this is the worst-organized airport i have ever been in. i am certain the airport in inner mongolia (should i ever get there) will be more user-friendly
* stand behind 8 other people at information counter
* ask where do i go to catch my flight
* guy points toward terminal A and says gate 6
* i say, yes, but where do i get my boarding card.
* he says you get your card at the same gate you board through.
* i think: this airport sucks
* go to gate 6 of terminal A - the sign says air berlin is leaving from here. i am sterling. am beginning to wish i had taken a cab, because i am really pushing it to make this flight
* finally get attention of gate agent who tells me that i have to go to gate 6, terminal B.
* i inwardly groan. run to terminal B
* terminal B is a wasteland. there is no one in sight except a few straggly-looking travelers (like me) who are cursing their fate that they leave from Tegel and not Schonefeld.
* gate 6, terminal B looks like it's closed and might never re-open
* wrong place. wrong time. i am not getting on this flight. i look at the time. the flight is leaving in like 10 minutes. i don't have a boarding card. i haven't been through security. it's just not going to happen.
* i go to the first ticket counter (and p.s. these are all randomly interspersed all over the airport too, like the boarding card / gate situation) that looks reputable (british airways in this case) and ask if they flights to copenhagen because i missed mine
* woman looks up on her computer and says well we don't fly there from here.
* i think: is copenhagen not a big city. is berlin not a big city. are you not british airways. did you guys have an empire that the sun could never set on. and oh how the mighty have fallen - no flights between berlin & copenhagen. argh argh argh.
* she says well there is one flight on scandinavian air leaving at 9:50, you could make that one. but the ticket price i have from here is really pricey. you should go bug lufthansa because your other flight (with sterling) was cross-listed with lufthansa.
* okay.
* i run to the lufthansa ticketing counter which is in middle earth, Tegel.
* hello hello. i need a ticket for copenhagen. i missed my flight on sterling.
* okay well you have to buy a new ticket. you can't just convert your old one.
* yep, i know that. rub salt in the wound, lady.
* buy new ticket (can forget about putting that down-payment on that skateboard i wanted since i'm burning through euros like they were yesterday's stretched-out scrunchies)
* get on plane.
* breath sigh of relief.
* 55 minutes later, arrive copenhagen.
a few more points about Tegel airport.
>> could people here move any slower? whether they are travelers or employees of airlines or the airport, they have a nonchalance about them that would be fine on a dance floor. but this is not a dance floor. this is a zoo. this is war. this is all about making your flight and not paying 7000 euros for a new one.
>> could people here be any more oblivious? yes, those are nice shiny objects. yes, they are attractive. sure, they make you want to go over and look at them. but why don't you look to see how many people you are taking out before you stop short and freakin' cause an accident. oh and don't bother to actually realize that you've caused problems. just go on and be your freakin' merry self. jerkface mcgillicuddy.
>> could this airport have any better design structure? unlike the prototypical airport where there is a central area for obtaining boarding passes, a central area for passing security (or several areas) and a number of gates on the departures level that can be easily followed once you've passed security, Tegel airport has decided to take the alternative approach of chaotic chaos. as the most egregious of these:
a. why would Tegel put the boarding pass area in one place, when i can run around like an olympian looking for my gate (oh, not my gate to board -- no, no that would be so simple...my gate to go get a boarding card), which is pleasantly interspersed with every other airline's boarding areas and with signage you can't read even if you had superman's vision.
b. why would Tegel bother to have information desk people who give you complete information. if buddy at information had been so kind as to not point incorrectly toward terminal A but rather to point or say correctly gate 6, terminal B, i would have still made my original flight. if lady at terminal A, gate 6 hadn't been so slowly meandering through issuing boarding cards, maybe she would have noticed my frantic hand-waving for help earlier, thus ensuring i got to terminal B, gate 6 earlier. or, hey bothering to radio ahead and say there's one passenger on her way.
i'm telling you this whole german organization and efficiency thing is riding out some past glory. because there is nothing organized or efficient about Tegel airport.
i'm going to have to write a letter. i didn't want it to come to this. but this is absolutely unacceptable operators of Tegel airport. you will feel my wrath as i write my letter in blood!
spoiler alert! don't read if you haven't read the one below
so i am trying to fall asleep, and i can't. i was going to wait a day or two to keep everyone in suspense about the continuing saga of R.M. and M.B., but i realize that tomorrow i'm going to sweden for the day and then spending the evening with my friend S's parents, so it would be now or late saturday. and since i can't sleep & this would mark the beginning of my first time of actually being caught up in days of blogging, i am going to go for it. it might not be as scintillating as my usual drivel. i'm tired. i fell asleep earlier on S's couch watching the tour de france (and that is not a statement about the program! who doesn't want to see a pack of guys wearing spandex over their muscular, hairless bodies? i do. sign me up. me too please. yes, yes, yes.)
ok, so where did i leave off? right. i drift to sleep thinking of M.B.
i awake. very early. realizing that i have to go to the airport for my flight to copenhagen on weird budget danish airline, sterling. i get up wayyyy early (which should have worked in my favour, but wait for it later...) and decide to do another posting to get myself as caught up as i can. i post. i'm all packed. i check email.
6 new messages. 4 are spammy-list-servy-crap. 2 are from M.B. YES, that M.B. yes, the M.B. that might have stood me up or might have waited like prince charming for me to come bounding down to where he thought we were meeting.
the earlier email goes something like this (it is in reply to my message about waiting and not seeing him): "Sorry! I thought we were meeting at Kottbusser Tor station. I waited for an hour. What are we going to do now. You leaf (which I think means leave) soon."
But then the later email goes "Oh you are here until August 30. Let's make another date for tomorrow."
his confusion due to my automatic reply message telling everyone that i am away. M.B. thinks i'm staying in berlin for another 6 weeks.
my mind goes: 1) he didn't stand me up! 2) he waited for an hour! 3) he wants to see me again! 4) he was worried about what we would do to meet! and 5) he asked me out to meet again!
ahhhh, so THIS is what bittersweet tastes like.
i write him back and tell him how disappointed i was that we didn't get to meet up. and that if he would like to, we could be email friends and practice our german and english with one another in email. i haven't heard back. but i also told him that when (if) he comes to new york, to get in touch with me, so i can show him around my town.
well M.B., we'll always have cafe einstein on prostitute alley. so much romance, so little time. actually a lot of time, just waiting around at the wrong place.
ok, so where did i leave off? right. i drift to sleep thinking of M.B.
i awake. very early. realizing that i have to go to the airport for my flight to copenhagen on weird budget danish airline, sterling. i get up wayyyy early (which should have worked in my favour, but wait for it later...) and decide to do another posting to get myself as caught up as i can. i post. i'm all packed. i check email.
6 new messages. 4 are spammy-list-servy-crap. 2 are from M.B. YES, that M.B. yes, the M.B. that might have stood me up or might have waited like prince charming for me to come bounding down to where he thought we were meeting.
the earlier email goes something like this (it is in reply to my message about waiting and not seeing him): "Sorry! I thought we were meeting at Kottbusser Tor station. I waited for an hour. What are we going to do now. You leaf (which I think means leave) soon."
But then the later email goes "Oh you are here until August 30. Let's make another date for tomorrow."
his confusion due to my automatic reply message telling everyone that i am away. M.B. thinks i'm staying in berlin for another 6 weeks.
my mind goes: 1) he didn't stand me up! 2) he waited for an hour! 3) he wants to see me again! 4) he was worried about what we would do to meet! and 5) he asked me out to meet again!
ahhhh, so THIS is what bittersweet tastes like.
i write him back and tell him how disappointed i was that we didn't get to meet up. and that if he would like to, we could be email friends and practice our german and english with one another in email. i haven't heard back. but i also told him that when (if) he comes to new york, to get in touch with me, so i can show him around my town.
well M.B., we'll always have cafe einstein on prostitute alley. so much romance, so little time. actually a lot of time, just waiting around at the wrong place.
my heartbreaking-est wednesday
wednesday morning was super. i woke up and got dressed, taking extra care in my appearance. because i was going to meet M.B. (the waiter from cafe einstein) i have to say, i was looking sharp. sharper than sharp. than henckels knives.
first off, i went down to coffee corner, where the owner (a delightful and sweet algerian man recently transplated to berlin from london) and his wife run a very cute, very excellent coffee shop. it's tiny with 3 tables out front to scope out the scene on kottbusser strasse. he is great. he was one of the constants in my visit. i would go there every morning and have the same order: toasted bagel, lightly buttered & chai latte. we chatted about everything under the sun. this last morning was a little sad since i wouldn't be seeing him for a while. i asked him about 100 nosy questions about his family, his wife, his kids, algeria, how he liked growing up in turkey, etc. then it was his turn. he asked me if i have a boyfriend. i said no. he looked so shocked he fell over backward. and then he said, with such sweetness in his voice, "i can't believe that. you are so beautiful, kind and intelligent." i reply with my usual, "i dunno. i think maybe boys are scared of me." and he says (and god bless him) "if that's true, then it's because they know they don't compare as your equal." (seriously, if this man was not married with three kids, i would totally have gotten down on one knee and proposed to him with a ring made out of a random paperclip in my bag.) he truly made my day.
my next stop was the jewish museum. i didn't have tonnes of time here, since i had to be at killer beast at 12:00 to pick up my dress (the wonderful ladies there had done some tailoring so it fit better. and get this! i offered to pay for it the first time i went there, and they said, well if it doesn't fit you after we tailor it, you don't have to buy it. i said, that's crazy. of course i will buy it. you are going to alter it for me. they seriously said that if it didn't fit me, they couldn't accept money from me. this would NEVER in one trillion years happen in nyc. just sayin'. so back to the jewish museum. again, i got off at the nearest u-bahn station and walked for about 4 blocks the wrong way (on average, it seems that it takes me four blocks to figure out that i'm not going in the direction i ought to be going. not too bad. it could definitely be worse. i could have walked 14 blocks in the wrong direction.)
the jewish museum is a must-see in berlin. as is the jewish memorial. the museum is definitely worth seeing for anyone with even a passing interest in architecture and design. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind. the building was actually known first for its architecture because it was created in 1999, and the museum took residence there in 2001 (i think). anyway, this building is the first building i've seen in a while that has really just captivated me. what's more - the structure encourages (actually forces) the visitors to really engage with it. there are a number of "voids" (5) that connect the new building in 1999 to the old structure that was here. the voids are like spaces for reflection within the museum and they are really stark, concrete, cold, but perfectly embody (i think) all that you can't see in a museum -- basically, the feeling of emptiness and loss associated with the holocaust.
another cool feature that makes this museum like no other i've visited is the garden of exile. the garden is where you come out to after you've visited the 3 axes of the museum's permanent collection of holocaust history (photographs, letters, belongings). it has a number of pillars (very much like the jewish memorial i described earlier). and there is a way you walk around it that actually leaves you feeling very disoriented. i think it provides a perfect context for grappling with all the questioning post-holocaust of how did this happen, how did we let this happen, etc. i'm not sure what the architect created, but those are the things i thought of when i walked through. though i would skip it if you have a weak stomach. it does kind of make you wanna puke.
the other piece of the museum that really stays with me is the holocaust tower, which is one of the voids. it's a very angular, sharp concrete structure that you stand inside. it is very quiet, and the only light is natural light from a little opening in the sky. it commemorates the victims of the holocaust and though i have never visited a concentration camp to see it for myself, this is what i imagine those gas chambers to be like. dark, empty, scary, hollow, and without soul. it's one of those experiences where design almost comes to belong inside you because it makes you respond so viscerally to something you are standing in or seeing. it's like how you can look at a single painting and feel so many complex emotions.
ok. that was a little heavier than my usual postings. i know that a lot of you are waiting to hear what happens with my waiter-friend. be patient, sweetlings. i have much more to tell.
i left the jewish museum a little late. so i literally ran (well, "ran") to killer beast. i realized that i confused it's location with the glasses place, but fortunately i was going in the same direction. i get out and run (and this time i did run) to the store. the two women are there (they are the owners) and i try on the dress. the woman who does the alterations is a perfectionist, so while i think it looks great, she thinks it needs to be taken in a bit more and needs a few more darts. whatever you want i say. to me a dart is something you throw at a picture of george bush's head. go crazy, lady. so i'm sitting there are she's fixing the dress. of course we are chatting up a storm. i love to talk. i am verbose. i make statements of the obvious. though in german every statement i make is of the obvious. turns out that there is a gallery in brooklyn with a sister gallery in berlin, and it's run by her friend. cool, i say. i give her my card for her next visit to new york. of course you can stay with me! the refitting is done and the dress looks great. it passes the german inspection. i stick around shooting the breeze and then realize i have to go meet my friend at the fountain at kottbusser tor. i dash out, telling them about my "date" and they give me a thumbs up (which i take to mean either "you go girl" or "go and get some" or both).
so this is where the story gets a little bit not so happy. that's an understatement. but there is a silver lining to it all.
when M.B. and i made the plan. he said we could meet at a wasserplatz (or what i thought he said was wasserplatz) at kottbusser tor u-bahn station. [even writing this up is making me sad]. so i get there with 15 minutes to spare for our 1:30 meeting time. i dash through the station and walk in the direction of the water fountain i thought he was talking about. it takes me longer to get there because it is further from kottbusser than i thought. i am running late now and (given the german propensity to be punctual) starting to worry that he thinks i have stood him up. nothing could be further from the truth. had i known that the following would occur, i would have sat at kottbusser tor for the whole morning in anticipation of his glorious visage. but i didn't. so i'm waiting there. then i think oh, there's another water thing nearby, maybe he's there. so i go there. by now it is 2 pm. i haven't seen him and i'm starting to think there is some confusion. i check my email -- (thank god for blackberries. say what you want about them chaining you to a desk or whatever, i completely disagree. they liberate me like never before) -- no messages from him telling me he can't make it or he'll be late. i send him an email (hoping he can check it on his phone or something) saying that i'm at such and such place, and maybe i'm in the wrong place. of course there is no pay phone in sight. because this waterfall thing is in a park, not on the street. i walk around for another 15 minutes frantically looking for a phone. i even asked someone if i could use their cell phone to make a local call, but they didn't speak english (or pretended not to, anyway). so i'm sure you can imagine what happened. i wait around in that place for 2 hours. before i finally give up. part of me thinks maybe he stood me up, but i don't really believe it because he was the one who made the plan to meet and show me around. and also, i don't want to believe he would stand me up.
so, forlorn, miserable and feeling like a first-class loser for not confirming the location better. i walk home. i'm not paying attention, so i walk way out of the way. at this point, i'm starving, i've spent most of my last afternoon in berlin waiting and wandering aimlessly. i stop at a coffee shop to have a latte and at least get some reading done. i finish my latte and figure out the way home and walk back. i sit in the dark and really feel sad about not getting to see M.B.
at 7 pm, N.L. comes by to make sure i haven't set the apartment on fire, or given it over to squatters, or decided to put a skylight in the ceiling. he is in a rush so he does a quick inspection. everything is where he said it would be. he gives me back my deposit - 50 euro. as he's leaving, he says something that does lift my spirit: "you are a really funny person, and very genuine. i'm very glad i met you. and next time you come to berlin, you have to call me. now i know you, and we can go get a drink as friends." wow. he really did make my day about 10 000 times better. and seriously my day needed some pep after my non-date. it really did.
i start packing up my stuff. i blog about the day before. i'm too tired & grumpy to blog about wednesday, knowing that i had set up this whole big ta-dah i'm going to meet a cute german boy for a tour of berlin thing on tuesday. i was really disappointed in the whole situation, but didn't really know who to blame or if i could even blame anyone. i don't think i can.
i decide to snap out of it, and be an adult. there is a very nice restaurant about mid-way down maybachufur strasse (where i'm staying) called cafe jacques. every time i've walked past, it has been full and it looks really nice inside. i decide to bust out some sympathy euros for myself and eat away my pain (like always). so i go in, get a table for me, order my dinner. the waitress is really nice. there are friendly people all around me. and i'm in berlin. so i make the best of it. that's all one can really do, isn't it?
i go home, and read my book (i'm reading "travels with charley in search of america" by john steinbeck. a great read for anyone traveling in general or interested in a travelogue about driving across the united states by someone who can actually write. recommended - check plus). drift asleep, imagining what my day with M.B. would have been like.
sigh. mostly a sucky day. sucky supremely, but such is life. roll with it. if he stood me up, his loss. if we were both waiting around in different places, then so it was and we both lost.
[there is more to this story, however. but you will have to wait because i am an evil torture machine manufactured in an evil factory and will make you sit and wait until i get around to blogging tomorrow or the next day. muhahahahahahaha.]
first off, i went down to coffee corner, where the owner (a delightful and sweet algerian man recently transplated to berlin from london) and his wife run a very cute, very excellent coffee shop. it's tiny with 3 tables out front to scope out the scene on kottbusser strasse. he is great. he was one of the constants in my visit. i would go there every morning and have the same order: toasted bagel, lightly buttered & chai latte. we chatted about everything under the sun. this last morning was a little sad since i wouldn't be seeing him for a while. i asked him about 100 nosy questions about his family, his wife, his kids, algeria, how he liked growing up in turkey, etc. then it was his turn. he asked me if i have a boyfriend. i said no. he looked so shocked he fell over backward. and then he said, with such sweetness in his voice, "i can't believe that. you are so beautiful, kind and intelligent." i reply with my usual, "i dunno. i think maybe boys are scared of me." and he says (and god bless him) "if that's true, then it's because they know they don't compare as your equal." (seriously, if this man was not married with three kids, i would totally have gotten down on one knee and proposed to him with a ring made out of a random paperclip in my bag.) he truly made my day.
my next stop was the jewish museum. i didn't have tonnes of time here, since i had to be at killer beast at 12:00 to pick up my dress (the wonderful ladies there had done some tailoring so it fit better. and get this! i offered to pay for it the first time i went there, and they said, well if it doesn't fit you after we tailor it, you don't have to buy it. i said, that's crazy. of course i will buy it. you are going to alter it for me. they seriously said that if it didn't fit me, they couldn't accept money from me. this would NEVER in one trillion years happen in nyc. just sayin'. so back to the jewish museum. again, i got off at the nearest u-bahn station and walked for about 4 blocks the wrong way (on average, it seems that it takes me four blocks to figure out that i'm not going in the direction i ought to be going. not too bad. it could definitely be worse. i could have walked 14 blocks in the wrong direction.)
the jewish museum is a must-see in berlin. as is the jewish memorial. the museum is definitely worth seeing for anyone with even a passing interest in architecture and design. It was designed by Daniel Libeskind. the building was actually known first for its architecture because it was created in 1999, and the museum took residence there in 2001 (i think). anyway, this building is the first building i've seen in a while that has really just captivated me. what's more - the structure encourages (actually forces) the visitors to really engage with it. there are a number of "voids" (5) that connect the new building in 1999 to the old structure that was here. the voids are like spaces for reflection within the museum and they are really stark, concrete, cold, but perfectly embody (i think) all that you can't see in a museum -- basically, the feeling of emptiness and loss associated with the holocaust.
another cool feature that makes this museum like no other i've visited is the garden of exile. the garden is where you come out to after you've visited the 3 axes of the museum's permanent collection of holocaust history (photographs, letters, belongings). it has a number of pillars (very much like the jewish memorial i described earlier). and there is a way you walk around it that actually leaves you feeling very disoriented. i think it provides a perfect context for grappling with all the questioning post-holocaust of how did this happen, how did we let this happen, etc. i'm not sure what the architect created, but those are the things i thought of when i walked through. though i would skip it if you have a weak stomach. it does kind of make you wanna puke.
the other piece of the museum that really stays with me is the holocaust tower, which is one of the voids. it's a very angular, sharp concrete structure that you stand inside. it is very quiet, and the only light is natural light from a little opening in the sky. it commemorates the victims of the holocaust and though i have never visited a concentration camp to see it for myself, this is what i imagine those gas chambers to be like. dark, empty, scary, hollow, and without soul. it's one of those experiences where design almost comes to belong inside you because it makes you respond so viscerally to something you are standing in or seeing. it's like how you can look at a single painting and feel so many complex emotions.
ok. that was a little heavier than my usual postings. i know that a lot of you are waiting to hear what happens with my waiter-friend. be patient, sweetlings. i have much more to tell.
i left the jewish museum a little late. so i literally ran (well, "ran") to killer beast. i realized that i confused it's location with the glasses place, but fortunately i was going in the same direction. i get out and run (and this time i did run) to the store. the two women are there (they are the owners) and i try on the dress. the woman who does the alterations is a perfectionist, so while i think it looks great, she thinks it needs to be taken in a bit more and needs a few more darts. whatever you want i say. to me a dart is something you throw at a picture of george bush's head. go crazy, lady. so i'm sitting there are she's fixing the dress. of course we are chatting up a storm. i love to talk. i am verbose. i make statements of the obvious. though in german every statement i make is of the obvious. turns out that there is a gallery in brooklyn with a sister gallery in berlin, and it's run by her friend. cool, i say. i give her my card for her next visit to new york. of course you can stay with me! the refitting is done and the dress looks great. it passes the german inspection. i stick around shooting the breeze and then realize i have to go meet my friend at the fountain at kottbusser tor. i dash out, telling them about my "date" and they give me a thumbs up (which i take to mean either "you go girl" or "go and get some" or both).
so this is where the story gets a little bit not so happy. that's an understatement. but there is a silver lining to it all.
when M.B. and i made the plan. he said we could meet at a wasserplatz (or what i thought he said was wasserplatz) at kottbusser tor u-bahn station. [even writing this up is making me sad]. so i get there with 15 minutes to spare for our 1:30 meeting time. i dash through the station and walk in the direction of the water fountain i thought he was talking about. it takes me longer to get there because it is further from kottbusser than i thought. i am running late now and (given the german propensity to be punctual) starting to worry that he thinks i have stood him up. nothing could be further from the truth. had i known that the following would occur, i would have sat at kottbusser tor for the whole morning in anticipation of his glorious visage. but i didn't. so i'm waiting there. then i think oh, there's another water thing nearby, maybe he's there. so i go there. by now it is 2 pm. i haven't seen him and i'm starting to think there is some confusion. i check my email -- (thank god for blackberries. say what you want about them chaining you to a desk or whatever, i completely disagree. they liberate me like never before) -- no messages from him telling me he can't make it or he'll be late. i send him an email (hoping he can check it on his phone or something) saying that i'm at such and such place, and maybe i'm in the wrong place. of course there is no pay phone in sight. because this waterfall thing is in a park, not on the street. i walk around for another 15 minutes frantically looking for a phone. i even asked someone if i could use their cell phone to make a local call, but they didn't speak english (or pretended not to, anyway). so i'm sure you can imagine what happened. i wait around in that place for 2 hours. before i finally give up. part of me thinks maybe he stood me up, but i don't really believe it because he was the one who made the plan to meet and show me around. and also, i don't want to believe he would stand me up.
so, forlorn, miserable and feeling like a first-class loser for not confirming the location better. i walk home. i'm not paying attention, so i walk way out of the way. at this point, i'm starving, i've spent most of my last afternoon in berlin waiting and wandering aimlessly. i stop at a coffee shop to have a latte and at least get some reading done. i finish my latte and figure out the way home and walk back. i sit in the dark and really feel sad about not getting to see M.B.
at 7 pm, N.L. comes by to make sure i haven't set the apartment on fire, or given it over to squatters, or decided to put a skylight in the ceiling. he is in a rush so he does a quick inspection. everything is where he said it would be. he gives me back my deposit - 50 euro. as he's leaving, he says something that does lift my spirit: "you are a really funny person, and very genuine. i'm very glad i met you. and next time you come to berlin, you have to call me. now i know you, and we can go get a drink as friends." wow. he really did make my day about 10 000 times better. and seriously my day needed some pep after my non-date. it really did.
i start packing up my stuff. i blog about the day before. i'm too tired & grumpy to blog about wednesday, knowing that i had set up this whole big ta-dah i'm going to meet a cute german boy for a tour of berlin thing on tuesday. i was really disappointed in the whole situation, but didn't really know who to blame or if i could even blame anyone. i don't think i can.
i decide to snap out of it, and be an adult. there is a very nice restaurant about mid-way down maybachufur strasse (where i'm staying) called cafe jacques. every time i've walked past, it has been full and it looks really nice inside. i decide to bust out some sympathy euros for myself and eat away my pain (like always). so i go in, get a table for me, order my dinner. the waitress is really nice. there are friendly people all around me. and i'm in berlin. so i make the best of it. that's all one can really do, isn't it?
i go home, and read my book (i'm reading "travels with charley in search of america" by john steinbeck. a great read for anyone traveling in general or interested in a travelogue about driving across the united states by someone who can actually write. recommended - check plus). drift asleep, imagining what my day with M.B. would have been like.
sigh. mostly a sucky day. sucky supremely, but such is life. roll with it. if he stood me up, his loss. if we were both waiting around in different places, then so it was and we both lost.
[there is more to this story, however. but you will have to wait because i am an evil torture machine manufactured in an evil factory and will make you sit and wait until i get around to blogging tomorrow or the next day. muhahahahahahaha.]
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
tuesday had possibilities ...
hello jello. i am awake at 6-something am because i need to pack for my flight to copenhagen at 9 am this morning. so am i packing? well smarty-pantses, i finished packing. i have one carry-on too many. i'm flying on sterling, a danish budget airline. i realize now that i should have just booked flights on well-known airlines since with my over-luggage, they'll probably make me give them 6 litres of blood to keep the weight of the plane down so they can accommodate my extra baggage. or they will just ask me to part with my much coveted euros. oh coloured money again.
i had a lot to do today. hanging around is definitely my speed, but there also are a few things i did want to check out. so i started off by going to an amazing store (yes, i realize that many of my activities involve shopping. & yes, i live in nyc, where all and sundry can be bought. but the sheer bliss of saying "oh this. i got it in berlin" makes me both shallow and very happy.) i go to the most amazing store in berlin, and possibly all of germany: knopf paul. this is a store run by a man named paul. this store sells only buttons. but oh those buttons. breathtaking buttons. buttons made of any natural and man-made object you can find. did buttons ever seem so complex. i spent too much money here, buying buttons. there is, as a side note, a very cool store in toronto on west queen west that sells only ribbon. i am obsessed with ribbon and with buttons. i especially like to combine them in an orgy of button-ribbon. so knopf paul blew my mind. and paul stole my heart. i cannot express to you how deliriously happy this store made me. my eyes mist up just thinking about how much i will miss it when i get back to nyc. even if i found a buttons-only store in nyc (which i probably could) it will not be knopf paul. and that's more than a little sad.
my next stop was another shopping experience: KaDeWe. which purports to be the largest department store in europe. i believe it. now this place i had to leave quickly before i started selling my organs to buy the beautiful things. i wisely stayed away from their button section. but the most amazing thing about this store. well there are two. one is the array of stationary items. as many of you know, i am mad about stationary. i practically collect it. and kate's paperie in both victoria & ottawa has been a place of solace, reflection and (dare i say it) worship for me. the second thing that rocks about this place above any other department store is the 6th floor. what is there, you ask? well, imagine a place where every gourmet food you could possibly conceive of is available, both for on the spot eating and purchase for wild-pig-faced consumption later. i went crazy here. so crazy that i actually lost my shopping bag with stuff i had bought on other floors. i ran around looking for my bag, hitting all my stops. finally someone told me that there was a lost & found at customer service. i went there after the woman at the most amazing CHOCOLATE counter told me she saw that i left my bag there and gave it to customer service. i ran skipping to customer service. there was my bag. i picked up my bag of many euros and walked up to lingerie. oh actually i went there before i went to the 6th floor. gotta say, the lingerie floor was lacking. nyc department stores have better. but there is amazing lingerie in europe. so eventually i will find something to wear on my honeymoon, should there be one.
next stop was cultural. see, i can be classy too. the photographie museum rocked. there was an awesome exhibit of helmut newton. seriously awesome. there was also as part of the same exhibition some amazing photographs by larry clark and ralph gibson. okay, not much to say about this. you had to be there, to see some of the most fabu nudes i have ever seen. but i have not seen many.
then i went all luxe on my ass. well on my back anyway. i had booked an appointment at the spa at the hyatt hotel for a backfacial and a deep-tissue massage. oh heavenly bliss. i wanted to take four showers there because the water pressure was really strong. it practically had kickback. as many know, the shower pressure in my apartment is shite. my apartment in brooklyn. the shower pressure at M.D.'s apartment was also nothing to write about. which is why i didn't. well i just did. anyway.
after the spa, i walked over to the memorial for the murdered jews of europe. this was quite a remarkable place. upon first blush, it just looks like a bunch of concrete rectangles of different heights standing in a grid. but the beauty is in the engagement with the memorial. walking around it was a reflective experience and peaceful. it felt like walking through a graveyard of possibilities, of lives that had meaning, were important but incomplete. cut down. the other thing that i really liked about the memorial was that people were really engaging with it. many people were walking through the memorial. many germans. and because it is accessible 24 hours a day, everyday there was something ordinary and extraordinary about it.
oh i went also to brandenberg gate which was under major construction (renovation?). i took a picture of the top because, well, the rest of it had cranes behind it. and men in hard hats. i also took a picture of the reichstag from far away. i was hoping to run into chancellor merkel so i could talk to her about nicolas sarkozy and what she thinks is going on between germany & france. but no such luck.
[i want to add here that i have also hit up a bunch of bookstores, practically every one i walk past. as an interesting side-side note: does anyone from g.p. french 30 remember those books we read about le petit nicolas. well, there is a german version - der kleiner nicolas (something like that). i freaked out with joy and bought the two they had in stock.]
so the next part of my day had the real possibility. there was a cool-sounding cafe/restaurant that my guidebook said was a good place to get dinner. i found it (it was a bit off the beaten path) and might i add that i found it without getting lost. radical. it is on this main street, kurfurfenmeisterbergen strasse (or something like that). so i went in and ordered way too much food because i was starving (eyes bigger than stomach or something). anyway my waiter was SUPER CUTE. and SUPER NICE. i was flirting with him like mad. and not like the grade 5 flirting of punching him in the arm and threatening noogies. i mean the 31 y.o. sophisticated world traveler flirting (i.e., smiling alot and basically giving him shy glances. i have come a long way.) anyway, we totally hit it off. oh yeah the food was awesome too. and he came over to tell me his shift was ending. so we chatted a bit about my visit. i told him that i was just playing it by ear. (this was all in english because my german is not THAT good.) i started off in german (and btw germans are really great about people trying to speak german, at least berlin-people. very encouraging and do not correct in a mean way (hello paris. wake up.)) so he said, well you need a guide. what are you doing tomorrow. i said well i'm leaving on thursday so i think i will just be doing very little tomorrow. i said i have a guidebook. it's pretty good. he said, no you need a tour guide. i said in my coquettish voice, are you offering. and he smiled his gorgeous smile and said yes. so we made a plan to meet up wednesday at 1:30 near the kottbusser tor u-bahn station, where i could swear he said there was a water fountain (be tuned in for wednesday to hear about this water fountain). so we exchanged cards to have one another's email addresses. (i have to say i'm kind of running out of business cards. i brought them to pass out at the hague, begging for cool international law type contacts, but i've been basically throwing them at everyone who looks halfway decent. argh.) he smiled his irresistable smile. and on the way home i thought about how he could definitely get to second base with me.
HUGE GRIN home.
oh, and before i forget. that korfenforfenbergenstrasse i walked down (where the restaurant is) turned into prostitute alley by 10:30 when i left cafe einstein. seriously. prostitutes of various degrees of mild-fetish. i was amazed and curious. so what did i do? of course, i chatted with them. because i will chat with anyone. except for people who smell really bad (because i have extrasensitive olfactory skillz which is a curse if you live in nyc (at least in the summertime - i can actually tell (9 times out of 10) how many layers of urine there are in random spots.) so i talked to them and they were willing to chat. at least some of them. but then i realized that i was not helping them attract clients, so i decided to leave. i said be safe and call me when you are in nyc. here's my card. okay, i didn't give them my card. but i would have.
i had a lot to do today. hanging around is definitely my speed, but there also are a few things i did want to check out. so i started off by going to an amazing store (yes, i realize that many of my activities involve shopping. & yes, i live in nyc, where all and sundry can be bought. but the sheer bliss of saying "oh this. i got it in berlin" makes me both shallow and very happy.) i go to the most amazing store in berlin, and possibly all of germany: knopf paul. this is a store run by a man named paul. this store sells only buttons. but oh those buttons. breathtaking buttons. buttons made of any natural and man-made object you can find. did buttons ever seem so complex. i spent too much money here, buying buttons. there is, as a side note, a very cool store in toronto on west queen west that sells only ribbon. i am obsessed with ribbon and with buttons. i especially like to combine them in an orgy of button-ribbon. so knopf paul blew my mind. and paul stole my heart. i cannot express to you how deliriously happy this store made me. my eyes mist up just thinking about how much i will miss it when i get back to nyc. even if i found a buttons-only store in nyc (which i probably could) it will not be knopf paul. and that's more than a little sad.
my next stop was another shopping experience: KaDeWe. which purports to be the largest department store in europe. i believe it. now this place i had to leave quickly before i started selling my organs to buy the beautiful things. i wisely stayed away from their button section. but the most amazing thing about this store. well there are two. one is the array of stationary items. as many of you know, i am mad about stationary. i practically collect it. and kate's paperie in both victoria & ottawa has been a place of solace, reflection and (dare i say it) worship for me. the second thing that rocks about this place above any other department store is the 6th floor. what is there, you ask? well, imagine a place where every gourmet food you could possibly conceive of is available, both for on the spot eating and purchase for wild-pig-faced consumption later. i went crazy here. so crazy that i actually lost my shopping bag with stuff i had bought on other floors. i ran around looking for my bag, hitting all my stops. finally someone told me that there was a lost & found at customer service. i went there after the woman at the most amazing CHOCOLATE counter told me she saw that i left my bag there and gave it to customer service. i ran skipping to customer service. there was my bag. i picked up my bag of many euros and walked up to lingerie. oh actually i went there before i went to the 6th floor. gotta say, the lingerie floor was lacking. nyc department stores have better. but there is amazing lingerie in europe. so eventually i will find something to wear on my honeymoon, should there be one.
next stop was cultural. see, i can be classy too. the photographie museum rocked. there was an awesome exhibit of helmut newton. seriously awesome. there was also as part of the same exhibition some amazing photographs by larry clark and ralph gibson. okay, not much to say about this. you had to be there, to see some of the most fabu nudes i have ever seen. but i have not seen many.
then i went all luxe on my ass. well on my back anyway. i had booked an appointment at the spa at the hyatt hotel for a backfacial and a deep-tissue massage. oh heavenly bliss. i wanted to take four showers there because the water pressure was really strong. it practically had kickback. as many know, the shower pressure in my apartment is shite. my apartment in brooklyn. the shower pressure at M.D.'s apartment was also nothing to write about. which is why i didn't. well i just did. anyway.
after the spa, i walked over to the memorial for the murdered jews of europe. this was quite a remarkable place. upon first blush, it just looks like a bunch of concrete rectangles of different heights standing in a grid. but the beauty is in the engagement with the memorial. walking around it was a reflective experience and peaceful. it felt like walking through a graveyard of possibilities, of lives that had meaning, were important but incomplete. cut down. the other thing that i really liked about the memorial was that people were really engaging with it. many people were walking through the memorial. many germans. and because it is accessible 24 hours a day, everyday there was something ordinary and extraordinary about it.
oh i went also to brandenberg gate which was under major construction (renovation?). i took a picture of the top because, well, the rest of it had cranes behind it. and men in hard hats. i also took a picture of the reichstag from far away. i was hoping to run into chancellor merkel so i could talk to her about nicolas sarkozy and what she thinks is going on between germany & france. but no such luck.
[i want to add here that i have also hit up a bunch of bookstores, practically every one i walk past. as an interesting side-side note: does anyone from g.p. french 30 remember those books we read about le petit nicolas. well, there is a german version - der kleiner nicolas (something like that). i freaked out with joy and bought the two they had in stock.]
so the next part of my day had the real possibility. there was a cool-sounding cafe/restaurant that my guidebook said was a good place to get dinner. i found it (it was a bit off the beaten path) and might i add that i found it without getting lost. radical. it is on this main street, kurfurfenmeisterbergen strasse (or something like that). so i went in and ordered way too much food because i was starving (eyes bigger than stomach or something). anyway my waiter was SUPER CUTE. and SUPER NICE. i was flirting with him like mad. and not like the grade 5 flirting of punching him in the arm and threatening noogies. i mean the 31 y.o. sophisticated world traveler flirting (i.e., smiling alot and basically giving him shy glances. i have come a long way.) anyway, we totally hit it off. oh yeah the food was awesome too. and he came over to tell me his shift was ending. so we chatted a bit about my visit. i told him that i was just playing it by ear. (this was all in english because my german is not THAT good.) i started off in german (and btw germans are really great about people trying to speak german, at least berlin-people. very encouraging and do not correct in a mean way (hello paris. wake up.)) so he said, well you need a guide. what are you doing tomorrow. i said well i'm leaving on thursday so i think i will just be doing very little tomorrow. i said i have a guidebook. it's pretty good. he said, no you need a tour guide. i said in my coquettish voice, are you offering. and he smiled his gorgeous smile and said yes. so we made a plan to meet up wednesday at 1:30 near the kottbusser tor u-bahn station, where i could swear he said there was a water fountain (be tuned in for wednesday to hear about this water fountain). so we exchanged cards to have one another's email addresses. (i have to say i'm kind of running out of business cards. i brought them to pass out at the hague, begging for cool international law type contacts, but i've been basically throwing them at everyone who looks halfway decent. argh.) he smiled his irresistable smile. and on the way home i thought about how he could definitely get to second base with me.
HUGE GRIN home.
oh, and before i forget. that korfenforfenbergenstrasse i walked down (where the restaurant is) turned into prostitute alley by 10:30 when i left cafe einstein. seriously. prostitutes of various degrees of mild-fetish. i was amazed and curious. so what did i do? of course, i chatted with them. because i will chat with anyone. except for people who smell really bad (because i have extrasensitive olfactory skillz which is a curse if you live in nyc (at least in the summertime - i can actually tell (9 times out of 10) how many layers of urine there are in random spots.) so i talked to them and they were willing to chat. at least some of them. but then i realized that i was not helping them attract clients, so i decided to leave. i said be safe and call me when you are in nyc. here's my card. okay, i didn't give them my card. but i would have.
another day...
so welcome to monday.
monday was a day of many-splendored bliss. hmmm. given the fact that i think i'm suffering from an early-onset of memory loss (are there drugs for this?), i am having some trouble remembering what i did. contrary to what you might think, i was not in a drunken stupor. that is SO not me. really, it isn't. and please if you are related to me, please know that i am the epitome of a suitable girl.
okay, this is going to be shocking to some of you. but i just created an outline for my last few days so i could properly describe them. shocking because i never make outlines, i never revise or edit my work, i never put thought into anything. i just go back and change the introduction of a research paper to what i actually ended up saying. thank you UBC for rewarding mediocrity.
monday --
i went back to friedrichshaim to check out this glasses store that i spotted on sunday. it was closed on sunday because, well, everything is closed on sunday here. everything. it's a good thing i didn't cut my toe off because good luck to me for finding a pharmacy. convenience on the weekends, not a forte of the german volk. also lots of things don't open til tuesday. lazy. or really really smart.
so i went into the glasses store and tried on about 25 funky pairs. finally decided on some that i would never have picked out myself. they are way different from the plastic-y things i've been sporting since high school. i am proud to say that i did resist getting them tinted. some of you may remember my brief and disappointing flirtation with tinted glasses. ah, my blue tinted glasses that were only like 7.5% tinted (because my dad said any more tintation was too expensive) and the tinting was not at all noticeable. oh, how hard i tried to be "cool" and failed miserably.
anyway. back to the present. so bought some glasses. walked around some more. this women's clothing store i really wanted to check out (called, brilliantly, killer beast) didn't open until 3 pm!! (making victoria look like the epitome of convenience!) so i went to a coffee shop to read / wait around. there was an american guy (from michigan) sitting next to me, who tried (i think) to ask me out. see, i'm not very good at spotting these things. allow me to go off on a tangent and describe a rather sad event that took place at alt coffee on avenue a. so there i am sitting on a couch (a dirty, smelly couch, may i add) with some cases to read for work. i can't remember why i was working from the coffee shop, maybe it was christmas-time-ish. and a guy sits down beside me. we strike up a conversation. he tells me that it's cool that i'm a lawyer, so of course right away i'm suspicious. (the usual response to that statement is the guy looking around desperately for an escape route, ultimately insisting that he go get another drink for me and then never returning - only to be spotted later in full-on face to face contact with someone less lawyer-ish.) anyway, we have a very pleasant chat. he's into graphic design, lives in queens. we exchange life histories. my coloured history of moving around seems to be interesting to him since he's been living in nyc forever. so his friend (who is an accountant) comes and joins us for a bit and then leaves. i am completely oblivious when he asks me out for a drink. my immediate response is, "oh i can't drink now. i'm working." lame. he clearly meant we should go for a drink later. i couldn't possibly think ahead a few hours, so i gave a crisp, hardly inviting, lady-jerk answer. and he left. okay end digression.
where was i? (does it frighten anyone that i actually have to do analytical writing for a living?) okay so michigan guy asked me if i wanted to hang out later. again, i say "i'm leaving." as though i'm going to catch a flight back to bavaria right that instant. again, conversation ends. i am obliviously happy to return to my book.
but. i do go to killer beast. find an awesome dress. p.s. this store is amazing. they make most of the clothes themselves using vintage patterns. the dress i got is made from a pattern circa 1961. amazing. the last thing i sewed was in grade 8 - it was the extremely ugly, extremely turquoise pair of sweatpants with the cheapest possible fabric from fanny's fabrics. what's worse is that i actually wore those sweatpants (but only at home - whew!). so the dress needs some alterations which they will do for free. also these ladies are awesome, super fun and genuinely cool with a capital k.
eventually i wind my way home, after getting lost a few times. the u-bahn is brilliant; it's really my awful sense of direction that leads me to walk blindly many many many blocks the wrong way (even with a map!) so, i get home and check email. oh, i forgot to mention that on sunday, i posted an ad on craigslist to see if any german boys wanted to get a drink. it sounds sketchy, but craigslist is my lifeline. my roommate, K.R., and i spend much time reading craigslist personals to see who can find the sketchiest, yuckiest posting first. anyway. craigslist is not so big here, so i wasn't expecting much of a response. but i did hear back from a few people. one guy sounded nice and not creepy (i mentioned in my posting that a lack of creepy was necessary and also same-ish age.) so we met up (of course, it took a while to actually meet up since there was confusion about the meeting spot (this is foreshadowing for wednesday, fyi.)) finally, we meet. he looks weird in that normal way that we all are. and so we go get a drink at a cool nearby bar. the conversation flows, we're having fun and i'm feeling really happy to be chatting with a nice guy and practicing some german. we have banter with our waiter, who is super cute (also foreshadowing) and they collectively make fun of me for not understanding their german slang. but in a nice way. what i mean is, i didn't start crying. i go home, happy with another awesome day in berlin.
monday was a day of many-splendored bliss. hmmm. given the fact that i think i'm suffering from an early-onset of memory loss (are there drugs for this?), i am having some trouble remembering what i did. contrary to what you might think, i was not in a drunken stupor. that is SO not me. really, it isn't. and please if you are related to me, please know that i am the epitome of a suitable girl.
okay, this is going to be shocking to some of you. but i just created an outline for my last few days so i could properly describe them. shocking because i never make outlines, i never revise or edit my work, i never put thought into anything. i just go back and change the introduction of a research paper to what i actually ended up saying. thank you UBC for rewarding mediocrity.
monday --
i went back to friedrichshaim to check out this glasses store that i spotted on sunday. it was closed on sunday because, well, everything is closed on sunday here. everything. it's a good thing i didn't cut my toe off because good luck to me for finding a pharmacy. convenience on the weekends, not a forte of the german volk. also lots of things don't open til tuesday. lazy. or really really smart.
so i went into the glasses store and tried on about 25 funky pairs. finally decided on some that i would never have picked out myself. they are way different from the plastic-y things i've been sporting since high school. i am proud to say that i did resist getting them tinted. some of you may remember my brief and disappointing flirtation with tinted glasses. ah, my blue tinted glasses that were only like 7.5% tinted (because my dad said any more tintation was too expensive) and the tinting was not at all noticeable. oh, how hard i tried to be "cool" and failed miserably.
anyway. back to the present. so bought some glasses. walked around some more. this women's clothing store i really wanted to check out (called, brilliantly, killer beast) didn't open until 3 pm!! (making victoria look like the epitome of convenience!) so i went to a coffee shop to read / wait around. there was an american guy (from michigan) sitting next to me, who tried (i think) to ask me out. see, i'm not very good at spotting these things. allow me to go off on a tangent and describe a rather sad event that took place at alt coffee on avenue a. so there i am sitting on a couch (a dirty, smelly couch, may i add) with some cases to read for work. i can't remember why i was working from the coffee shop, maybe it was christmas-time-ish. and a guy sits down beside me. we strike up a conversation. he tells me that it's cool that i'm a lawyer, so of course right away i'm suspicious. (the usual response to that statement is the guy looking around desperately for an escape route, ultimately insisting that he go get another drink for me and then never returning - only to be spotted later in full-on face to face contact with someone less lawyer-ish.) anyway, we have a very pleasant chat. he's into graphic design, lives in queens. we exchange life histories. my coloured history of moving around seems to be interesting to him since he's been living in nyc forever. so his friend (who is an accountant) comes and joins us for a bit and then leaves. i am completely oblivious when he asks me out for a drink. my immediate response is, "oh i can't drink now. i'm working." lame. he clearly meant we should go for a drink later. i couldn't possibly think ahead a few hours, so i gave a crisp, hardly inviting, lady-jerk answer. and he left. okay end digression.
where was i? (does it frighten anyone that i actually have to do analytical writing for a living?) okay so michigan guy asked me if i wanted to hang out later. again, i say "i'm leaving." as though i'm going to catch a flight back to bavaria right that instant. again, conversation ends. i am obliviously happy to return to my book.
but. i do go to killer beast. find an awesome dress. p.s. this store is amazing. they make most of the clothes themselves using vintage patterns. the dress i got is made from a pattern circa 1961. amazing. the last thing i sewed was in grade 8 - it was the extremely ugly, extremely turquoise pair of sweatpants with the cheapest possible fabric from fanny's fabrics. what's worse is that i actually wore those sweatpants (but only at home - whew!). so the dress needs some alterations which they will do for free. also these ladies are awesome, super fun and genuinely cool with a capital k.
eventually i wind my way home, after getting lost a few times. the u-bahn is brilliant; it's really my awful sense of direction that leads me to walk blindly many many many blocks the wrong way (even with a map!) so, i get home and check email. oh, i forgot to mention that on sunday, i posted an ad on craigslist to see if any german boys wanted to get a drink. it sounds sketchy, but craigslist is my lifeline. my roommate, K.R., and i spend much time reading craigslist personals to see who can find the sketchiest, yuckiest posting first. anyway. craigslist is not so big here, so i wasn't expecting much of a response. but i did hear back from a few people. one guy sounded nice and not creepy (i mentioned in my posting that a lack of creepy was necessary and also same-ish age.) so we met up (of course, it took a while to actually meet up since there was confusion about the meeting spot (this is foreshadowing for wednesday, fyi.)) finally, we meet. he looks weird in that normal way that we all are. and so we go get a drink at a cool nearby bar. the conversation flows, we're having fun and i'm feeling really happy to be chatting with a nice guy and practicing some german. we have banter with our waiter, who is super cute (also foreshadowing) and they collectively make fun of me for not understanding their german slang. but in a nice way. what i mean is, i didn't start crying. i go home, happy with another awesome day in berlin.
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