scheveningen beach

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.