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!!