Amsterdam (or, Trying to explain Rocky Horror to the Dutch)

We went to Amsterdam this weekend! It was an amazing experience, truly. I wasn't all too excited at first because I've been crazy stressed over classes (classes here are SO much harder than classes in Boston) but ended up having a fabulous time. Our whole weekend was planned out for us. Friday we went on a walking tour of the city and then to the Rembrandt Museum (it's technically called the Rijksmuseum but I probably spelled that wrong), and then to this Indonesian restaurant for dinner. Saturday we went to the Van Gogh Museum and then the Hermitage Museum, and Sunday we went to the Anne Frank House/Museum.

We stayed at this hostel a little over a mile from the center of the city, and we didn't use the public transportation once, so there was a lot of walking. I developed this massive blister on the bottom of my right foot and could barely walk all of Sunday, but we still made it back to Well in one piece.

Each night we were given the opportunity to explore the city and do whatever we want. Friday night we went out to meet up at a bar with some of our roommates from the hostel (we stayed in a 6 person room but it was all with Emerson people) and ended up not being able to find them, so we went to this little Irish Pub in the square where the first picture below is. As we were sitting there Dojna, Robbert, and Rene (three of the super hot people who work in the OSA) walked by. We called to them and the next thing we knew they were inside sitting down with us with drinks of their own. About an hour in Dojna asked us if we wanted more to drink, but we said we weren't planning on it since we didn't want to spend too much money. Her response? "No no no, I pay." She got up and came back with a drink for everyone. At midnight it was her birthday too so Robbert bought her a special drink and we all sang to her, just the six of us. It was actually an amazing night, and I think I experienced my first little bit of culture shock trying to explain what Hanukkah and Rocky Horror were to Robbert. The OSA staff is so incredibly nice. They have made the transition here so much fun.

Anyway, let's get to the pictures!

This is Amsterdam's concert/opera house (I think). We stayed just a few blocks away from it and it was an easy 5 minute walk to the square its in, which is full of bars and cafes and all sorts of shopping.
This is Dulcia, the director of the program here. She is awesome and she conveniently was the one to give us our 2-hour walking tour of the city. We walked all over and eventually made our way to Dam Square, which is sort of the center of the city.
Amsterdam has outdoor public urinals. It's actually a pretty ingenious idea. They strategically place them around the city so that late at night when the drunks are about men don't go peeing on the sides of buildings. Even though it may seem a bit odd, the idea behind it (I think) is very intelligent. This is my friend Braden "using" one of them.

Something a lot of people who've never been there don't realize about Amsterdam is that it is full of canals, much like Venice. You literally can't walk anywhere in the city without there being water somewhere close by. It's gorgeous.



The main shopping streets were PACKED on Saturday morning. This is us walking back to Dam Square from the Van Gogh museum, which was amazing. It was required that I go because of my Art History Post WWII class.

There were so many pigeons in Dam Square. SO MANY.

This is the Holocaust memorial right in the center of Dam Square.

And this is the Royal Palace in Dam Square. It's currently being renovated so there was scaffolding all over it.
When a lot of people think of Amsterdam, they think of legal marijuana. And actually, though there are coffeeshops every few blocks that are legally allowed to sell it, marijuana isn't a huge thing to the locals there. The Amsterdam government a few years ago decided to make a law differentiating between hard and soft drugs (we had to do this massive reading on the history of Amsterdam for our 1-credit course, so I know tons of random info about the city now). Because of this, marijuana (and hash and other forms of it) and other soft drugs (mushrooms is the only other one I can remember at the moment) were legalized and you can buy up to 5 grams I think and smoke or eat it in the specially-designated coffee shops. There are a lot of them around the city.

So pretty. This was near the Hermitage Museum, which is a partnership Amsterdam has with St. Petersburg in Russia. They had all of this amazing old Russian garb and stuff in there.

This is the Anne Frank house, but you can't really tell. You're not allowed to take pictures inside otherwise I would have. But I was on the verge of tears the whole time I was in there.

All around the city you can find these painted elephants. Each one is painted by a different artist and they actually sell little miniatures of them (but they're rather expensive). It's like a community art project. Check out the cute little Dutch kid.

Amsterdam also has no subway system (due to all the water there, also because of its age). They do have above-ground trams though, which are very timely and convenient. We didn't end up using them, but they are everywhere. There are very few cars in the city. Most people either use the public transportation, bike, or walk. Because of this, the roads were never built into real roads and the trams run on the main roads, which are very narrow and many people walk or bike on, so you have to be careful as to not get run over. It's also difficult to navigate around the bikers a lot and more than one person in my group was either knocked over or just barely missed by a biker.

After we got back to Well, Nicole, Kendra and I decided to stop at the Vink (which is this cafe in town) for dinner since the dining hall was closed by the time we got back. The fries were SO good and at one point when we were just sitting talking we looked up and saw this floating by. It was a perfect ending to our weekend.

"I understand your drinking problem...I really do."

Note the title. This is what Lucia, the director of the program here, said to us yesterday during one of our many (I swear there were like 5) drug/alcohol lectures. She was talking about how since the drinking age is so high in the US, American students tend to drink more than they should when they finally are legal to drink for the first time, because they haven't had the opportunity to find their limits yet. It just sounded funny when she said it, so we've been quoting it ever since. Luckily, despite the fact that we went to the Linden two nights in a row and were served alcohol on the boat tour we were on yesterday, we're all good kids and know how to not drink like idiots. Mom, dad, be happy.

Speaking of the boat tour yesterday, it was awesome. We just went up and down the river that runs sort of through Well (it was like a 10 minute walk from the castle). All of us plus some of the professors/all of the OSA staff came with us. It was just really fun and relaxing. Yesterday we also had this choir of about 18 people come all the way from Amsterdam to perform specially for us in the castle lounge. They were amazing. They sang in Dutch, English, German, Italian, and Latin. It was a lot of religious music but it was so pretty, and afterwards, Chester Lee, who co-runs the program with Dulcia, brought in roses and asked students to volunteer to give a rose to each member of the choir. I ended up giving one to the conductor, and I thanked him and shook his hand, and afterwards when Nicole and Kendra were on our way out to take a walk around the grounds we ran into some more members and said thank you to them again. Everyone we've met so far has been so accepting of all the Americans and so nice to us. It's been a really easy transition.

Since there's only 85 of us and we've all been told repeatedly that we'll all know each other by the time we get back anyway, everyone's really excited to meet everyone and it sort of feels like the start of freshman year all over again, when people were just so excited and anxious to make friends. I love it though. So far I'd say I've met and/or already know probably about 50-or-so of the people here.

We also all friended some of the people who work in the Office of Student Affairs (the attractive ones) on facebook, since they have this piece of paper posted at the entrance to where we live with all their facebook names on it saying that they want us to friend them. I love this one woman. Her name is Dojna, she's really really little and cute and even though (or I guess somewhat because?) she's tiny she has this really feisty loud personality. We were kind of scared of her when we met her at the airport for the first time. I was sitting on the ledge in the courtyard yesterday with some people and she came over and pretended to push me into the moat to be funny. It's so weird, because all of the people who work in the OSA are really young (Johnny and René are only like 9 years older than us) and they're the ones who work the closest with us, so we've all ended up sort of becoming friends with them, and I'm sure will become even closer as the semester progresses. I really, truly love it here.

Kendra and I went into town today to get school supplies from the store and also to check out some of the other shops. We ended up only going to the general store and the supermarket (which was an actual supermarket, I was surprised to find). From the general store I bought some Ibuprophen since I have a cold, which was quite an experience because I couldn't figure out the Dutch word for asprin or tylenol or anything. So I just awkwardly went up to one of the women who worked there and said, "asprin?" all confused-like, and she pointed to the front of the store. Apparently you have to order it at the counter, and they give you the option of 200 or 400 milligrams and the number of tablets in a pack. The tablets are also weirdly covered in a candy-like shell. In the supermarket we got Dutch chips and these little chocolate egg things that are for kids but are banned in the US because they have a plastic toy inside and are apparently a choking hazard. My toys were two little glow in the dark plastic people and Kendra got a sail boat that she had to piece together. We also ended up running into this guy from town we met at the bar the other night, and he said hi to us as he rode by on his bike while we were walking out. This is SUCH a small town.

Anyway, this is long, and since it would take FOREVER to post all of the pictures from the past two days that I really want to, here is a link to the album of pictures of the castle I posted on facebook. It should be viewable even if you don't have a facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=310410&id=530645400&l=eda23c59fd

Now I'm off to go plan our trains/hostel for Brussels in a week and a half! Our Amsterdam required excursion is this weekend and we're all SO excited.

Pictures! + Update

Tonight we went into Old Well to the bar there, which is called Under De Linden, or just the Linden. There was like a group of 50 of us there, and we filtered in and out throughout the night just sitting outside watching the sun set over the town. The bar is owned by this husband and wife who were so excited we were there, and their daughter actually teaches a dance class at the castle I believe. They told us they have an American Night on Wednesdays too and invited us to come with our iPods so that we could choose the music ourselves. We are DEFINITELY planning on going. It's literally a 5 minute walk down the road and the atmosphere is so nice and relaxed. I love it.

Anyway, here are the pictures I meant to put up before. Blogspot decided it didn't like me + the internet here was being INSANELY slow so it was difficult before and I just gave up. Enjoy for real this time!


The entrance to the castle. The guy walking away is one of the guys who works in the office of student affairs who is very attractive. His name is Johnny. The guy on the right is the teacher who showed us around New Well today.


Tower!


Old Well.


New Well + the Kasteel Well plaque thing.


The field across the street that I wanted to go play in but was told I was not allowed to.


The field next door! Complete with horses, that are barely visible in the back.


Town bakery. We got free stroop waffles (I totally butchered that spelling). They were fabulous.


Weird European exit signs.


Our room from outside the door!


Inside more. Nicole's bed is on the left, mine's on the right, and Kendra's is to the right of the door.


We have sinks in our room! You can see Kendra's reflection in the mirror.


The view from our window. It looks down to the back of the castle onto the two motes but I couldn't get a good picture of it. Maybe some other time.

Well!

The clock on my computer currently says it is 9:54am back in New York/Boston. I haven’t yet been able to get online and change my clock (or actually create this blog for that matter) so I decided to type it all out now and post it later when Hubert (the crazy old grounds keeper/handyman guy) comes in to make sure our computers sign in to the internet correctly.

So we left Logan Airport in Boston a little after 7pm yesterday (Thursday, the 17^th of September). The flight was 6 hours and 20 minutes. It was rather boring. I sat next to a second semester junior named Sebastian and down the aisle from a girl Alexa who I had been talking to while sitting boredly in the airport for the three hours before we left, and they were extremely pleasant company. I couldn’t really sleep on the plane – and neither could many others – so by the time we landed at about 7am we were all completely wiped.

At the Amsterdam airport we met up with Robbert, who works in the Office of Student Affairs here, and he accompanied us on a bus on the 2 and ½ hour ride to Well. The countryside was absolutely gorgeous. Nothing but fields and green and water and just…so much beauty in every direction. And I have never seen so many cows/sheep/horses in my entire life, I swear. The ride back felt like it took forever, and we all napped a bit since we were so wiped from traveling/getting absolutely no sleep, but when we finally pulled into town we were nothing but excitement. We all stepped off the bus, got our bags, and started the walk up the front path. Everyone was grinning so huge and you could literally feel the excitement like electricity in the air. People kept commenting on how jittery we all were, and we’d just laugh.

We were brought into the courtyard to drop our bags off, and then brought down to the dining hall for lunch. The food was actually…pretty fantastic. There was everything from all sorts of different kinds of bread to cold cuts to yoghurt to all sorts of different fruit and crackers and cookies and spreads and even soup. Then there was coffee and tea and chocolate milk and water and orange juice and all sorts of other kinds of juice. The food was so unbelievably good and it only added to our excitement.

After we ate we were brought into a meeting room just to get a little overview of what to expect in the coming days and to meet the staff (all of whom are INSANELY attractive, by the way – seriously, the Dutch are hot, end of story). After that we were brought up to our rooms (which was quite an ordeal since we had to climb like four flights of stairs with all our bags…it was painful, but we survived) and began to unpack. At around 1 we met downstairs with one of the teachers (I can’t remember his first name but he goes by The Duke) and he took us into New Well (there’s Old Well and New Well) to show us around to where the doctor’s office, bank, supermarket, etc… all is, and then back to the castle to show us the payphone and computer lab and laundry room and whatnot.

Now we are sitting in our room trying to unpack and figure out what to do with all our suitcases, and Hubert just came in to give us internet so I am going to go post this now with some of the pictures I took today. Enjoy! :D