Friday, April 17, 2009

home, home in den haag

i found a place to live!

tonight is my first night chez moi. i miss E.B., but i'm sure he's delighted to have his place back again. plus i spent the night hanging with him and some of his friends, so he can't miss me too much. my new place comes with a bike, but the lock is some sort of james-bond-style intense thing, so i haven't been able to figure it out yet.

also, J.H. forwarded an article from the NYT about how dutch bikes are hip in NYC. well, i have a bona fide dutch bike here in the land o' the dutch. how bleeding edge is that? once i figure out how to lock & unlock it, i'll be golden.

my apartment is on dunne bierkade, which means: "thin/skinny beer quay" and fronts a canal. it's a "grittier" area of the hague, which in hague terms means there is some trash on the ground and a couple of rowdy drunks come out at midnight.

the buildings on this street are 17th century and some dutch painters -- jan steen & jan van goyen -- lived here. also, apparently, spinoza wrote "ethics" somewhere around the corner from this street (and is buried nearby at the Nieuwe Kerk).

history lesson over. good night.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Aww, I got a mention by name. Could you please search out all things Spinoza this time around and record them duly? Where he is buried and where he wrote the Ethics makes a great start.

-J.H.

rxm said...

sure!! i'll do my best.