Carr on a Bike

Back to Boston

2009-07-10T16:38:00.000-07:00

So I've been back stateside for over a week and I haven't felt a single pang of culture shock. There's really been nothing to re-acclimate to. Maybe it's because my mind's been on this side of the Atlantic Ocean for a good long time. Maybe it's just because America's awesome and nobody should ever leave it. Dunno.

But here's the thing: would I have ever noticed the awesome things about living in this country (and Boston, to a certain extent) if I hadn't left? I doubt I'd be so amazed by complete strangers striking up a conversation on public transportation, by listening to hip-hop on the radio, by the American-ness (according to Dahl) of using wi-fi on a bus, by the lack of smokers (and, on a related note, the easiness of breathing after a late night), by just how critical linguistic familiarity is to grocery shopping/exercise classes/living...these little things, that I downplayed or never even noticed before I went away, just fill me with this inexplicable joy. I feel what I imagine many immigrants must feel--this utter gratefulness for what the United States can offer and an almost adamant insistence that I, and every other person on the earth, deserves every little wonderful bit of this. HGTV for everyone! Huzzah!

I think a lot of this is also due to Boston. As we passed Hopkinton, I saw the skyline on the horizon and felt like I was home again. Whether I'm walking down Newbury or biking late at night back from someone's sublet, I honestly can't imagine ever having wanted to leave. Although that OH MY GOD GET ME OUT OF HERE AND AWAY FROM THESE CRAZY PEOPLE feeling was kind of overtaking my life by the beginning of December. Life here is excellent (and I've been pleasantly surprised with more-than-adequate employment).

Oh, and they put in bike lanes on Comm. Ave. I officially have NO reason to return to the Netherlands.

Home.

2009-07-02T15:02:00.000-07:00

Home! Finally! The flights were pleasant, and I had a devastatingly funny rabbinical student as a seatmate on the way across the pond. Upon my arrival in Philly, though, I learned that my bags were left behind in London. Hoping that they'll arrive by tonight, but hey, who knows. It would really be nice to have a cell phone charger and clean underwear. Like, REALLY nice.

The last few days in Nijmegen were brilliant and incredibly sad. In the absence of our actual family, we find family--and the Erasmus kids became my family in the last five and a half months. It hasn't quite hit me that they're so far away, but it won't be fun when it does.

In the absence of having a whole lot to do here, I'm just kicking back with the family and a couple friends, reveling in the joys of a clean house, DSW, and driving. I'm shipping up to Boston on Sunday. It's overwhelming, if you think about it...three homes and two countries within a week. But it's good to be back stateside. It really, really, really is.

There are already things I'm noticing about Americans: how harried we look, how sarcastic we can be, how helpful we are on the phone, how skimpily (is that a word?) we dress. I think I'll continue to update this blog periodically as I re-learn how to live here and try to define that nebulous thing we call American-ness. So stay tuned, kiddos.

Ich bin ein Berliner.

2009-06-28T03:39:00.000-07:00

Finals are KAPUT! And so here's the long-awaited recap of my German adventures.

Alice and I awoke at the bright and shiny hour of 2:30 AM to catch a shuttle to the Ryanair airport, waited/pseudo-slept for another couple hours, eventually got on the plane, and finally crawled into our long-awaited hostel beds for a well-deserved nap. We woke refreshed a couple hours later to explore Unter den Linden, the part of the city populated by the most historic buildings and memorials.

This has to be one of my favorite pictures of all time:

We were leaving the Marx and Engels monument and I turned around one last time to find them staring contemplatively at the Fermsehturm--an interesting picture of East Berlin.

As the sky decided whether it wanted to rain or not, we also saw some other stuff, like the Berlin Cathedral...

...and the Brandenburg Tor.

We absolutely had to see the Reichstag, the German parliament building. It's (mostly) survived rounds of bombings, gunfire, and the infamous fire in the 1930s--you can still see the bullet holes in the columns and where they've had to patch it up a bit. It is truly magnificent.

In 1999, construction was completed on the new Bundestag dome. Pre-bombing and general hellfire-osity, it used to have your average, run-of-the-mill government-building dome on top, but they decided to make the new one all fancy and reflective and glassy to give a sense of transparency in government. You take an elevator large enough for a herd of cattle up to the roof, which provides some incredible views of the city.

Climbing up to the top of the dome itself was one of my favorite parts of the trip. See for yourself:

After enjoying our first Berliner Pilsener by the Spree River, we got all kinds of lost on our way to finding the Holocaust memorial and got a pretty good idea of just how awesome Berliner architecture is. The Sony Center is one of the shining stars:

The next day, after some wandering around some neighborhoods and seeing Greek and Roman sculpture at the Pergamonmuseum, we hit the club. We hit the club hard. Those Berliners sure can party.

When traveling, I try to avoid going out at night because then I wake up at 12:30 the next day feeling like an 18-wheeler has driven over my head numerous times. But in order to really experience Berlin, one needs to experience the nightlife. It doesn't start until 1 and it doesn't end until 7. And it is crazy. Hence why I was thankful to be flying home with no major injury and a couple hours of sleep under my belt.

It's probably worth moving away from chronology towards general impressions of the city (if for no other reason than I'm just sick of staring at the computer screen). I get the impression that Germans, Berliners in particular, are seriously invested in repudiating the legacy of the Holocaust. And, I mean, it's kinda true that people are quick to associate Germans, even modern-day Germans, with Nazism. Remember that whole uproar when it was discovered that Pope Benny was in the Nazi Youth as a child?

As a result, there are an abundance of museums and memorials commemorating the German Jewish experience and the Holocaust around the city, including the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe:

...and the architecturally stunning Jewish Museum. I didn't think the museum itself was all that great, but the building is just incredible.

Daniel Liebeskind (interestingly enough, he's also the architect chosen to build the WTC memorial) really just relied on light and angles and how they play out on plain old concrete. And man, it WORKED. There were two really--and I mean really--effective examples, one of which was the Garden of Exiles. It was essentially forty-some concrete columns, all tilted just slightly at the same angle. Walking through made me dizzy, unstable to the point of physical illness, and constantly on my guard to keep from face-planting...just as I imagine a refugee must have felt.

Liebeskind also put intentional unfilled spaces throughout the building. One void, three or four stories high, was filled with 10,000 iron masks. Another had a skylight that filled the void with eerie blue light. The most important void--the Holocaust void--was only reachable by a giant door opened by a museum docent. Once inside, the docent closed the door and you were left alone in the dark, completely unheated room, lit only by a tiny crack of light in the ceiling. I can't quite describe the feeling of seeing that door close on me and seeing all the light evaporate in the same way that I can't quite communicate what it's like to walk into a gas chamber. I mean, wow. That is art.

Another legacy that the city has to contend with is the Wall. It's kind of hilarious when you're just rambling around a pretty well-developed, pleasant, normal-looking city and you step over the line etched in the pavement that represents where the wall once stood. Like, what was the conversation that resulted in its construction? "Hey guys, our best and brightest are defecting to the American side." "I've got an idea! Let's build a giant concrete barrier around it."

As an AP history student, I have to qualify that last statement by saying that yeah, I know it's more complicated than that. But come ON.

But despite the darker sides of Berlin, it is really an incredible city. And if I spoke German, I'd be moving there in a second.

Why? Kreuzberg, the part of Berlin where we stayed, is a more relaxed--and dare I say, European--version of Brooklyn. Its streets are crammed with tiny breakfast cafes and Turkish restaurants. But off the beaten path, you find leafy streets and hippie families playing Frisbee in Görlitzer Park.

And hipsters. Praise Jeeeeesus for hipsters. It's so refreshing to see people with blue hair and bright red lipstick and piercings and tattoos. I thought there was a lot of social pressure at BC to dress a certain way, but the Dutch (minus Amsterdammers) really have no patience for people who dress differently. They even have a saying that essentially means "the middle of the road is the best way".

So when we went out on Saturday afternoon for the Fete de la Musique--live music of every genre and every volume on every street corner--and saw punks and goths and hippies and nonconformists and women with pin curls, it was just a breath of fresh air.

And the graffiti!

(It isn't just a Kreuzberg thing...graffiti is a serious art form in Berlin. We even passed a dentist's office that had graffiti murals of giant pop-art people brushing their teeth and flossing.)

There's a whole lot more I could say about specific things, but this entry is getting all kinds of long. Check out Picasa (did you notice those pretty, pretty links I added on the right?) for the kajillions of pictures. In this case, the images really say it all.

This week has been a big one. Had a vastly mediocre choir concert last night--did you ever think I'd be grateful to Neshaminy for part of my education?--and Iwan and Timo, two lovely friends from Amsterdam, stopped by on Thursday for one last hurrah in Nijmegen.

Today is the day, kids. The day where I start taking things down from my walls and moving clothes from the piles on my floor to neat stacks in my suitcase. That's always a big day for me--it signals the moment where the place where I live changes from a nest to a transitional room. Just four white walls and some bedsheets. It's sad. Really.

P.S. This is what the Dutch pass off as a sense of humor:

(Translation: "Michael Jackson has already been requested. That's soooo 2009.")

Scrawled on a wall at UNDRGRND when we went out on Thursday...literally two hours after his death was announced. You probably can't tell from all the way over there, but I'm shaking my fist at the sky. Not okay, Dutchies. Not okay.

Alive. Barely.

2009-06-22T14:34:00.000-07:00

Made it back from Berlin in one piece, thankfully. People have told me in the past that it's insane, and that statement is...true. But it's also got phenomenal architecture and it's just bustling and inventive and awesome.

I'll put up pictures once I get a free moment, because the next couple of days are all about finals, choir rehearsal, and um, starting to pack. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the countdown is officially in single digits. I feel weird about it.

On that note, off to finish a fragmentary (and actually kind of horrible) paper and finish up a box of tea. Have I mentioned how excited I am to see you guys?

Mid-June. Still raining.

2009-06-14T05:01:00.001-07:00

In the last week: turned 21, got a new cousin, went to the gym more than once, tried haggis for the first time (don't worry, it was vegetarian), convinced my French teacher to let me go to Berlin. A good couple of days, all in all.

Old age sucks. I laughed too hard on the morning of my birthday and pulled something in my back...I am officially becoming my father.

The goodbye parties are in full swing. They've been fun and heartbreaking at the same time. Sure, we get a lot of school-sponsored alcohol, but they've forced me to think about my own departure. On that account, I'm still torn between chanting U-S-A! U-S-A! and curling up in the fetal position and wailing. The only thing separating me from the end of my tumultuous relationship with Radboud University is 3500 words of essays and an exam. In that respect, let's rip the freakin' Band-Aid off already!

The twelve or fourteen of us around the table at Clare's flat last night were talking about the first thing we're going to do when we get home. Me? Strawberry rhubarb pie on the back porch and then walking around in Target the next morning and just inhaling the bargain-scented canned air. You know, consumerist osmosis.

But then we all got quiet at the same time and someone said "Wow, I'm really going to miss dinners like this."

I don't think I realized it until that very moment, but dinners really have been the anchoring part of this whole experience for me. I've tried everything from haggis to stamppot to tapas. But it's the impromptu rounds of flip cup and the conversations that are so engrossing that suddenly you look at the clock and WHAM! it's already midnight...those are the things that I'm really going to miss. We just don't have time for such things at school. We're too busy guarding our GPAs and saving the world at the same time to sit down with good friends and shoot the bull over chicken curry once in a while.

I don't think that this experience will make me cut down on my extracurriculars (I mean, really?), but it's made me realize my reliance on friends. I don't value my support system nearly enough. I'm so engrossed in my problems and my plays and the things that I think are important that I don't pay attention to the people that have my back. Another thing to work on upon my return.

So, seventeen days left. I'm honestly amazed. Until then, I'll be passing the potatoes and laughing long into the night with some good, good people.

Raining sideways.

2009-06-07T09:34:00.001-07:00

It hasn't rained this hard since January. I'm hoping for brighter, warmer, sunnier days in the upcoming weeks--'cause, um, it's June--but for now I'm holing up in Hoogeveldt with Grizzly Bear's latest album, microwaveable falafel, and all the Foucault I can stomach. Exams call, and I must answer. Bleeeeaarrrrggghhhh.

Another brilliant display of incompetence.

2009-06-06T07:19:00.000-07:00

Sorry, this one's going to be a rant.

For about four weeks, I've been emailing my French professor and trying to catch her before she scurries out of the classroom to set up a new time to take the final exam. (I'm leaving this godforsaken country--praise Allah and the seventy-two virgins--before it's scheduled to take place on July 9th.)

In the meantime, I've made plans. Like, oh, I don't know, A TRIP TO BERLIN.

I finally get an email back from her this morning going on and on about how we'd already decided (we? where is this we coming from?) to have the exam on June 19th, and it simply can't be changed. All with an undertone of "you just think you are SO entitled that you get to have an exam whenever the hell you want".

So it looks like I'm not going to Berlin. Think she'll reimburse me for my plane tickets?

This is honestly the final straw in my dealings with this university. Everything I have done or have tried to do while I've been here--getting papers signed, faxing things to my advisor at home, registering for classes, checking out books from the library, blah blah blah ad infinitum--has been frought and unnecessarily complicated and nobody wants to take any responsibility for what is, in essence, THEIR JOB.

For instance, some moron in the cogs of the BRILLIANT Dutch bureaucratic machine managed to screw up the date on my €500 residence permit. So I went to the International Office on Friday to see if someone could call the immigration office and triple-check that it'll be okay for me to leave the country in a couple weeks, despite this hopelessly bungled document.

The woman REFUSES to call. And I'm like, um, you know, I would do it myself, except for that little nagging fact that I DON'T SPEAK DUTCH. AND YOU WORK IN THE INTERNATIONAL OFFICE. SO YOU SHOULD KNOW THAT.

But her colleague handles those questions! And said colleague isn't in the office today! SHOCK! AWE!

So...could you call IND? Pretty please? With a cherry on top? No. Of course you couldn't. Because that would be Too. Friggin'. Simple.

So could I have your colleague's email address? Maybe a phone number?

Shock registers on her face. "Oh no, you'll have to come by the office."

Abortion providers may be getting murdered and state courts may be depriving gay men and women of their basic civil rights, but hey...in America, you can get a goddamn phone call made if you need a phone call made. Twenty-five days, ladies and gentlemen.

One month left.

2009-06-01T14:04:00.000-07:00

Yep, folks. You read that right. Thirty more days and I'll be somewhere over the Atlantic. And hopefully not disappearing in an electrical storm before I get to breathe the sweet polluted American air. (Too soon? Sorry.)

Someone asked me today if I'm excited to go home. Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. Yes x 10^29380291.

But then I look up at the insanely blue sky and down at the collected letters of Hunter Thompson in my lap, and I think, when will I ever have the time to appreciate these things again?

I wonder if this sensation of comfort in burgeoning familiarity, of nine-thirty sunsets over the city from the bike bridge and the (nasty, nasty) taste of warm wine in a blazing late afternoon outside Piecken, will end up coloring how I felt about this whole experience.

At the risk of beating that dead horse a couple more times, it's worth re-stating that my first couple of weeks here pushed me into depths of misery that I didn't think possible for a normal human being to bear. Sometimes I'm re-stocking on groceries at Albert Heijn and I'm struck dumb lifting a bag of muesli into my basket just thinking about how far I've come. Was it really only five months ago that I retreated into the dark space between the bread shelves and the employee door, reduced to embarrassing (loud, snotty, mascara-drenched) American tears because I couldn't tell the difference between fabric softener and bleach and regular detergent?

I think the magnitude of this whole experience just hit me now. Daaamn. I am a different person.

I won't be that girl who returns from abroad tanned and beaming and full of stories and just ACHING about how much she misses where she was and her brand-new [insert nationality here] boyfriend. Not to diminish the awesomeness of that experience. I would have given my right arm and maybe a couple fingers from my left hand to have a relatively painless, joyous, perpetually Facebook-friendly time abroad.

But the things I've done--and the things those things have done to me (yeah, just try to straighten that one out)--have showed me who I am at my core. Ecstatic ups, horrendous downs, and now I think I'm starting to get a general idea of who I'm going to become. And it's not too bad.

Bring it on, June.

Brevity on a sunny day.

2009-05-30T04:37:00.001-07:00

I just stumbled upon this on the NYT website. It perfectly sums up how I'm feeling right now: living in the present here, but at the same time using what I'm doing here to inform how I feel about and experience the United States when I get back. The fact that it's pretty bad-ass photography for the most part is just the icing on the cake...apparently the collection was done in conjunction with the FOAM museum in Amsterdam, which was doing an amaaaaazing Avedon retrospective when I visited at the end of April.

Okay, getting too pretentious. Moving on...

I spotted some insanely cheap tickets to Berlin on Ryanair's website this week, and five of us are heading there on June 18th for one last huzzah. Pretty excited.

I'm off for a run and potentially a nap. Something about today lends itself to sleep.

Word of the Day #2

2009-05-27T15:40:00.000-07:00

So it isn't Dutch, but here it is:

Angstschweiß (pronounced angst-shviess) - sweating due to nerves

...and on that note, I'm off to drink a liter of Coke Light, crank up the Chet Baker, and write this damn paper.

Odd.

2009-05-26T03:31:00.000-07:00

Last night, I experienced my first pangs of not wanting to leave. (I know, right?)

A whole bunch of us internationals were out on the patio at Odessa, schvitzing and drinking rapidly warming Palms, to celebrate Martina's last night in Nijmegen before she heads back to Switzerland. As she left, some part of me was like, damn. The people are what make Nijmegen tolerable for me. And quite honestly, I have no idea when--or if--I'll see them again. Not a pleasant thought.

And I turn 21 in less than 2 weeks? Honestly, WTF?

The signs of London

2009-05-21T14:28:00.001-07:00

And just for a little weekend pick-me-up, some charmingly worded signage from around London town:

(Fortnum and Mason)

(Tower of London)

(St. Bartholomew's Church)

Oh, those Brits. I just can't get enough.

London skies and bubbly Bath

2009-05-21T13:31:00.000-07:00

The re-cap!

After a long and stressful morning of traveling (bike to train to another train to bus to plane to bus...how I love Ryanair and chronically late Netherlands rail), Drew met me at Liverpool St. and we explored the hilariously touristy South Bank.

Parliament really does take your breath away. Big Ben--which, as I've recently discovered, is the name of the bell and not the clock tower itself--is absolutely magnificent. Pictures don't do it justice. It's not as humongous as movies would have you believe, though.

We followed up with a bit of wandering through the North Bank--Leicester Square, Buckingham Palace, Green Park--and stopped at Fortnum & Mason, a magical place that some vulgar Americans might call a department store (I, of course, wouldn't be among them), for some tea, conversation, and a glorious and unexpected run-in with one Caiti Maloney and her family. (YAY! Yay yay yay.) We perused the aisles of such funky items as Darjeeling Fine Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe tea, rose-petal preserves, and towering stacks of chocolate. They are, after all, purveyors of foodstuffs to the Queen herself.

London is in many ways a very bourgeois town...which filled me with a bit of self-loathing before I learned to just shut up and enjoy myself. Never did I think like a place like Harrods, with its food courts filled with £35/100g truffles and LED-lit Egyptian escalator, could exist (and continue to exist for over 100 years).

Drew managed to snag free tickets to a Bollywood version of Wuthering Heights at the Lyric in Hammersmith, which was--wait, what was that noise? Oh, I think it was Emily Bronte turning in her grave.

After a deep and much-needed sleep, I hopped on the Tube and spent the morning at the Tower of London. It's definitely more interesting and less creepy than popular opinion makes it out to be. The Crown Jewels are so seriously blinged-out that it's hard to believe that they're real. The carvings that prisoners made in the walls of their cells were shockingly well-preserved, which seems to be a trend in England.

There was also a fairly awkward and poorly maintained memorial to execution victims on the Tower Green, where many a political enemy and insufficient queen lost their heads.

Speaking of execution: the armory had an extensive collection of Henry VIII's armor from his early twenties until his death. The signs were pretty informative, but accompanied with snarky little signs mapping his path towards obesity and general lethargy based on analysis of his armor. He wasn't the greatest guy, but come on.

We walked through Borough Market's many stands hawking organic fruits and veggies, exotic American beers and other beverages (strawberry-rhubarb juice--YUM!), and even a stand claiming to sell ostrich and zebra (?!) burgers. Couldn't spend too much time, though, because I've been waiting my whole life for the next thing on the agenda...

R&J was done as it should always be done: devilishly funny in parts, with period costumes and bawdy songs and tons of fake blood and some really great ensemble turns. And all with a groundling seat. Glee! I'm sad to say that Heathrow doesn't re-direct their flights around the Globe, so some soliloquies were interrupted by the roar of a 757 overhead. Methinks that they didn't have that problem back in the day.

The production ran about three and a half hours, so we had just enough time to grab dinner before Waiting for Godot. Patrick Stewart. Ian McKellen. I really don't think anything else needs to be said.

But no trip to London is complete without a stroll by Parliament at night. Magic.

Met up with long-lost Manhattanite turned Londoner John Hogan the next morning for a posh brunch at the Wolesley and a guided tour of the nooks and crannies of the city. Some highlights: pints at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (one of the oldest pubs in England, frequented by pretty much everyone who was anyone in the last few centuries), Francis Bacon at the Tate Modern, sneaking into the Temple (where the Inns of Court are located) through a small and nondescript door--

--lovely St. Bartholomew's Church--

--and Covent Garden at night.

Got to bed early, because we hopped on a bus to Bath the next morning briiiight and early to visit Ms. Christina Lepri on her home turf! The Roman baths were really incredible. Never did I think that going through a museum would be so...relaxing.

We also took a sip of the so-called "healing" sulfur spring waters. Warm. Gross. Don't do it.

After a quick trip through the Fashion Museum and chips at the Pig and Fiddle, we took a rainy, beautiful stroll through the home of Jane Austen. The English countryside is really all it's cracked up to be.

Hopped up at six the next morning for the bus back to London--there began the Epic 42 Hours Sans Sleep--and finished up the rest of the Tate Modern as well as a couple quick surveys of the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery.

The real showstopper, however, was Westminster Abbey. I looked up in the cavernous arches above the nave and choral pews and felt tears welling up in my eyes. Loyal readers of Carr on a Bike (and, uh, anyone who knows me) know that I'm not a crier, but damn. The tombs! The ancient carvings! The 12th century religious murals! Ahhhh!

And have I mentioned that the audio tour is narrated by Jeremy Irons?

It was weird and frustrating to be back in the Netherlands the next morning, to go from a place where things sort of border on the familiar (Vitamin Water! Reese's! English! Culture!) to a place that still, even after almost 5 months, feels foreign and uncomfortable. I'm still working on accepting the fact that I didn't come here for the Netherlands; I came here for Europe, which has proved to be pretty freakin' awesome.

This room needs cleaning and some overdue library books need reading, so I'm off to do my thing. Forty-one days, ladies and gents.

Of passports and poor word choice

2009-05-19T02:33:00.000-07:00

I'm back in NL. London was awesome...it's one of those cities that you don't fall in love with immediately, but grow to like more and more each day until leaving becomes a serious drag. Bath was incredibly beautiful. I wish I'd gotten to spend a bit more time there.

A brief rundown: I got to see three plays, gorged myself on free museums, roamed churches and ruins, wandered for ages, laughed until I cried with good friends. I don't know if it's just the warm fuzzy feeling I got by being surrounded by English for the first time since January, but life just felt so much easier there, so much more civilized, more beautiful and less practical. I am so ready to go home. So, so, so, SO ready.

P.S. As for the title: so apparently I have some quality that screams OH MY GOD PAT HER DOWN SEVERAL TIMES AND QUESTION HER ABOUT HER MOTIVES BECAUSE SHE'S AN EVIL VICIOUS TERRORIST. This has happened at least once every time I've flown in Europe. So I'm standing in the Stansted airport at five this morning, having just completed 24 hours without sleep, and I make the bleary-eyed mistake of telling said security officer that oh no, I don't have any special plans in traveling, I'm just heading home to the Netherlands.

Oh WAIT. HOME?! Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid.

She raises an eyebrow. "You don't SEEM like you're from the Netherlands." Long shifty glare. "Can you step to the side for a moment?"

So, just to throw this out there: I'm not a terrorist. Seriously. The rumors are false.

London calling...

2009-05-13T09:31:00.000-07:00

Leaving bright and early (GAH!) for London tomorrow. Should be fabulous, despite predictions that it'll rain every minute of every day that I'm there. Be back on Tuesday.

But that wasn't the main reason I updated. This entry is a shout-out to Alexandra (Poisson du Monde) Fisher.

Yes, I took this with my webcam without you knowing. MWAHAHAHA.

And now back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Tulips, canals, sand, and general adorableness

2009-05-12T04:10:00.000-07:00

The same crew who went to Italy in March (I swear, every time I think about that trip I have to pause, sigh, and look longingly out the window) decided on Saturday night to take a marathon train trip to northern Holland.

Northern Holland, it bears mentioning, is not near where I live. What? you say. Don't you live a little north of center in the Netherlands? True. But using Holland and the Netherlands interchangably to describe the same country is a common mistake. In fact, calling somebody a Hollander if they don't necessarily live in those provinces is a little derogatory, like calling them a hick or something. I live in the province of Gelderland. Noord- and Zuid-Holland are two other provinces west of Amsterdam.

Lesson over. Let's get to the pictures.

We started off in Haarlem, which is, um, vastly unlike Harlem as we understand it. Lots of canals and houseboats and pretty, pretty flowers. We had a cup of coffee and some tostis (traditional Dutch grilled cheese-like thing) in the sunny town square as the bells tolled in the Grote Kerk, then made our way through the winding cobblestone streets.

And there was a windmill! True, we have one in Nijmegen, but this one was older and cuter. (Cute will be an oft-used adjective today. Get used to it.)

Houseboat living isn't too weird in the Netherlands because there's so. much. water. We saw some particularly lovely ones in Haarlem. This one, for instance, had a hot tub. YUM.

Next, we jumped on a 20-minute train to Zandvoort-aan-Zee, which is a resort town on the North Sea. It was surprisingly warm, and we went wading.

...then Jaclyn and Dahl went swimming.

After a brief sunning session to wring some of the water out of said jeans (ahem), we took a train to Alkmaar, another town known worldwide for its cheese market and countrywide for its football team. (Quick note: I think I really live here now because when somebody talks about football, I don't immediately think about quarterbacks...I think about what Americans like to call 'soccer'.)

Another windmill! It was surrounded by this lovely leafy park and pretty houses and canals, and just as we were leaving to head to the train station, a puppy came galumphing over and jumped in my purse. YESSSSS.

I can't believe how different Holland is from the rest of the Netherlands. Even Amsterdam doesn't compare in cuteness, and Amsterdam is a frighteningly cute city once you get past the whole OH MY GOD THERE IS A SHOP SELLING MARIJUANA TWO FEET AWAY thing. True, we visited on a Sunday so there's the whole natural slowdown of everything being closed, but everything just seems more pleasant and livable and humane, really.

We agreed that Nijmegen needs some canals. Perhaps we'll start digging a moat around Hoogeveldt today.

Sara from Italy is cooking up a whole lot of tiramisu tonight for her birthday and for the rest of the week, I'm consumed with preparations for London. It's surprisingly cold out. I mean, come on, Netherlands...it's gonna be June in a couple weeks. Get your act together.

Kraków: the SparkNotes edition.

2009-05-04T10:39:00.000-07:00

So I'm sure you've seen most of my pictures on Picasa (once again: picasaweb.google.com/margaretaislinncarr), which mostly come with explanations, so I'll keep it fairly short and sweet. Excerpts from my travel journal (ooh! SCANDALOUS).

"First impressions of Poland: Dry. Stuffy. Depressing. This is probably mostly attributable to the four hours that Rebecca and I spent touching our neighbors' knees in a 2nd-class smoking car from Bydgoszcz to Warsaw. I just kept seeing these halfhearted houses and these thrown-together train platforms in the middle of absolutely NOWHERE that look more like rusted 1970s playground equipment than an actual place where people board trains--thank you, recent communism--and tired looking flowering brush, and I was like, is this it?"

"A textbook Eastern European woman (tacky purple jewelry, scrunchie, orange-red lipstick) not only mediated our questions to the train conductor, but got off at Warsaw Centralna--skipping her own stop--just to make sure we got on the right connecting train. It's instances like that that make me feel like the world's not so big after all...and yet, the hassle of today makes me extraordinarily aware that Americans aren't the center of the universe."

"I've tried to start this explanation several times and I feel like I just can't. It was the only remaining gas chamber, the other (and larger) two at Birkenau having been dynamited in an attempt to cover up the genocide. The air was thick with poison and thousands of ghosts. The mildewed ceiling dripped death. The silence reeked of last screams and lungs closing against one's will. I stumbled through, dazed. I had stood where they had stood, and yet, I was alive. Not by virtue of inner strength or perseverance, but just by the mere chance of chronology. I walked through the valley of death and emerged dizzy and utterly empty and completely unharmed. I find this staggeringly unfair."

"People talk about Auschwitz like a giant cosmic ink blob on the annals of history, and it most emphatically is not. Some god did not drop the ink. It wasn't a mistake. We wrote it, and we are responsible--not as Germans, not as Americans, not as old, not as young, as human beings--for not mopping it up in time."

"I looked out at the fairly new houses built around Birkenau and Auschwitz, the residents of which have to look out at the reminder of that horror each day. How does a nation bounce back from being the main symbol of barbarism in the history of the modern world? I can't imagine."

"The main square is enormous and kind of quirky: illegal street vendors selling remote-control cars and foam dogs, hundreds of people eating lunch under yellow umbrellas, teenage hip-hoppers (is every city in the world required to have a mediocre dance team? I think so), turrets and arches and flags atop candy-colored buildings of indeterminate age. St. Mary's Church (pictured) is obviously ancient on the outside, but kind of unassuming as European churches go--all brick and tarnished brass, asymmetrical towers--but filled with kaleidoscopic color on the inside. Almost cartoonish and absolutely breathtaking."

"Wawel, the castle, is astounding but not quite elegant--a veritable hodgepodge of design elements (the retaining wall, for instance, was constructed in the 1920s), mostly brick and stucco, with the Wawel Cathedral (JPII's old hangout) ornamented with brass domes both aged and polished...soaring iron gates, ivy-covered towers, and a great view of sailboats on the Vistula. The gardens were in bloom and the sun was blazing."

"We were let into the Remuh Synagogue's incredibly old cemetery by two gruff guardsmen ("You pay!" "Cover your arms!"). It was silent. The whole Kazimierz quarter, in fact, was silent (it being the Sabbath and all).

"I think I've perfected the art of people-watching. Later in the day, we watched the sun set over the city from a shady bench in the Planty (park that surrounds the Old City) by the Florianska Gate, and I was completely absorbed by meditating on the fine line between dressing up and looking like a hooker in Eastern Europe, cooing at the audacious children and puppies that walked right up to me and stared before being summoned by their slightly embarrassed parents/owners, elderly couples all dressed up for a Sunday-evening stroll (men in sport coats and ties, women in skirt suits and heels, some shuffling painfully), the father and mother on Rollerblades, pushing a wheelchair-bound son and a baby in a stroller while a daughter, also on Rollerblades, tagged along, couples swapping hands in the back pockets of jeans...the real spirit of cities, I've found, seeks you out."

Life in Nijmegen right now can best be summed up by what I'm consuming: a raincoat, Top-Siders, a stack of UK Glamour, and a lot of Wilco. Yes, folks, the rain is back. Priscilla (my bike) is dying a long, slow, painful death, which makes me sad. Class is starting again today after almost two weeks of vacation, which is a welcome change. This break has mainly consisted of a lot of sleeping and dealing with the remnants of a nasty, nasty cold that developed right before Poland. I understand now why I get sick so rarely at school--my body simply doesn't have time to do it.

Freaky things: a mere 8 weeks until the land of red meat and freedom, technically being a senior...IN COLLEGE. How did I get so old?

Another brief insight

2009-05-04T02:52:00.000-07:00

First, a disclaimer: Thus far, the Dutch I've met have been very kind, speak English graciously to appease the stupid American, and are pretty competent (with the obvious exception of the country-wide adherence to bureaucracy, even when completely contradictory to all that is good and practical).

That said, I'm starting to think that some are straight-up retarded. (Was that terribly un-PC? Sorry. I've just been away from the States too long, I guess.)

So I've learned to read a bit of Dutch (largely some basic vocab words + an uncanny ability to pick up on context clues) and noticed the other day over a mug of tea that THERE ARE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE TEA BOX. As in HOW TO MAKE TEA. As in HEAT WATER AND POUR IT IN A MUG WITH SAID TEA BAG. Which is quickly followed by an admonition that BOILING WATER MAY BE HOT.

Anecdote number two. When I first moved into my flat, I found that the washer and dryer were completely covered in handmade signs with capital letters and lots of exclamation points. They seemed important, so I asked my flatmate Dorothea for a translation. The signs say such illustrious things as DON'T DROP WET LAUNDRY ON THE FLOOR! IT'LL GET DIRTY! and DON'T PUT YOUR BRAS IN THE DRYER! and DETERGENT GOES IN THE COMPARTMENT MARKED "DETERGENT".

These same people also managed to build a successful nation below sea level. My mind is officially boggled.

Koninginnedag 2009

2009-05-01T08:21:00.000-07:00

Drew came down to the continent for Queen's Day. Always great to see a familiar face. For the uninitiated, Queen's Day (Koninginnedag in Dutch) is the birthday of the late Queen Juliana. It's basically an excuse for everyone to dress in obnoxious orange clothing and have gigantic dance parties in the streets fueled by copious amounts of beer (and cocaine, apparently?). Total. Freaking. Blast.

The best DJs--in my humble opinion--could be found at the Marie Heinekenplein in the afternoon, but we also managed to catch DJ Tiesto in the hideously crowded Museumplein later in the day:

Total hooligan behavior.

On a different note: I'm sure you've seen on CNN or otherwise about the car crash that happened yesterday...to be honest, I really was pretty much oblivious to it until we saw the news online. The queen and the royal family were visiting the small city of Apeldoorn (about 30 miles from Nijmegen) when this guy crashed his car into the crowd and just narrowly missed the motorcade. He died this morning of brain injuries, but his final words were that the crash was an attack on the royal family. Four people are dead and I think the country's pretty shaken up.

It's very strange to experience a national tragedy as an expatriate. I'm not quite sure how to feel about it...I'm distanced from it simply by virtue of being an American abroad, but in some ways it hits much closer to home than simply finding it tragic because innocent people died.

More on Krakow soon. Pictures are up on Picasa (picasaweb.google.com/margaretaislinncarr) if you want to take a gander.

Krakow-ing up

2009-04-23T09:34:00.001-07:00

Excuse the bad pun. I haven't been sleeping so well as of late.

Briefly: y'all need to be really proud of me, because I managed to pack everything I need for 4 days in Poland in my backpack. I'm bringing ONE PAIR OF SHOES.

(Collective gasp!)

(Collective applause.)

I'll be back from the homeland on Monday afternoon.

Tour de Nijmegen

2009-04-19T12:45:00.000-07:00

This is what happens when you give bikes, beer, and neon spandex to a bunch of internationals with minimal work, no extracurricular activities, and no immediate travel plans.

The race commenced!

There were only a few casualties: a wheelchair, a rear bumper, and the front wheel of a bike (picture above) due to said collision with bumper.

Honestly, it was one of the best days I've had here thus far. The sun was out, the veggie burgers were a'grillin', and the laughter was plentiful. Nijmegen isn't always wonderful like this, but I'm sure glad when it is.

"No, it's not nirvana, but it's on the way..."

2009-04-14T13:54:00.001-07:00

So we were all sitting around Jaclyn's kitchen table with a bottle of wine a couple of weeks ago and her flatmate Jasper mentioned that he was in a choir. Me: WHERE? WHEN? HOW? PLEEEEEASE TAKE ME. PLEEEEEASE.

And he did!

We're singing Poulenc and Stravinsky and my sight-reading abilities and vocal cords are intensely out of shape and it's conducted entirely in Dutch, but I'm officially joining next week as a sopraan een (soprano 1, for all you keeping score at home). This is...good.

Other news: finished with first-term finals on Thursday, participating in the Tour de Nijmegen (80's-themed bike race and BBQ with the internationals) on Saturday, just finished Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (and LOVED it), and regained electricity in my flat today for the first time since Saturday night. The weather's good. Awesome, actually.

Oh, and there was a petting zoo at the gihugic Easter Monday market in town.

Sometimes I still can't believe that I'm in Europe. Nothing really makes me think "WOW, that was European" anymore. Even seeing fellow students enjoying beers outside the campus bar on my way into class doesn't seem weird anymore. Nor do bicycle school buses carrying loads of preschoolers. (Sorry, no pics for that one...you'll just have to imagine.)

I'm home in exactly 11 weeks. As excited as I am to fall prostrate and kiss the gum-covered sidewalks of Illadelph International Airport, I can't shake the feeling that time is flying waaaay too fast. In fact, I just got an email about senior picture sittings. BUUHHHHH.

Good Friday, Dutch-heathen style.

2009-04-10T13:28:00.000-07:00

Fake Vermont...

...Swedes hard at work...

...and open umbrellas at Piecken.

Filth.

2009-04-07T01:38:00.000-07:00

So you know how I said that our hallway kitchen is the universal black hole of filth? Proof (Dad, you should enjoy this one).

Also good to keep in mind: this was taken on a Saturday. Saturday as in two days after the majority of my roommates go home for the weekend. This pile of half-eaten week-old food, used cooking appliances, and warm fritesaus (can I think of anything more horrible? well, no.) is usually left out on the table/counter for all remaining roommates to enjoy for three to four days.

Oh, and I found a dead mouse next to the couch yesterday.

My freckles tell me it's spring.

2009-04-02T12:29:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the two reasons why I'm functioning right now: sunshine (it got up to 65 degrees F today!) and Goffertpark (a gihugic green space in western Nijmegen populated by precocious blonde children, ponies, and friendly pooches).

Final exam weeks for third quarter have commenced--ergo, no class. I only have two finals coming up, so I really don't have much to do but sit/bike/sleep in said sunshine and straight chill, bro. It's been nice. I also discovered the library today. It was...comically unpleasant. Does this really surprise anyone?

The kicker: the university GYM has longer hours than the university library. Gulp.

I've been in the oddest mood lately: not quite homesick, but yearning for something a tad more meaningful than the class-gym-dinner-party-sleep cycle that's been dominating my life as of late. I think Krakow (three weeks!) and London (seven weeks!), as well as Queen's Day in Amsterdam at the end of April should help to shake it up a little bit.

Speaking of which...April? When did that happen?

I really am excited for Poland. It's going to be cray-cray, mostly because I don't speak a word of Polish--wait, yes I do! Kaczka! It means "duck"!--but also extremely cool because Eastern Europe is muy affordable and sort of off the beaten path (at least for your average college student). I'll be able to see Auschwitz, which will be awesome. Not WHOOOO SPRING BREAK kind of awesome, but in the traditional sense. Overwhelming and fascinating and terrifying.

Figuring out the train system will be similarly overwhelming...which is why we're so darn lucky to have Polish nationals as friends. Wish me luck as we put this whole impromptu thing together.

P.S. I miss you guys. Like, a lot.

Hey, I'm going to Krakow in less than a month!

2009-03-31T03:20:00.000-07:00

Details to follow. Hooray for cheap flights and devalued currency!

Amerikanistendag in review

2009-03-27T14:37:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the conference in Groningen--if you don't know what I'm talking about, see previous entry--and I'm feeling better about things than I have in a while.

Groningen is just the loveliest college town ever. It's a little larger and more crunchy-granola than Nijmegen, with lots of beautiful canals and prewar buildings home to fair-trade coffee shops and Birkenstock dealers. The university itself is the second oldest in the Netherlands, and the architecture is just absolutely spectacular. (Sorry, forgot my camera. Sad face.)

Aside from that, it was worth the nearly 3-hour train ride (in this country, that's ENDLESS) to talk about things like political accountability and transcendentalism and Foucauldian power relations and to have my ideas chewed up and spat out over and over again. Yes, it was probably the nerdiest 9 hours I've ever spent, but my brain feels like it's exploding. In a good way. If the world of academia is like this--endless conversations and tons of books and free-flowing coffee--then you can count me in.

I also made some new Dutch friends, both students and professors, and not only did we make tentative plans for Monday night jazz at a local club...they also directed me to the local arts center. WHICH CONTAINS PRACTICE ROOMS. YES YES YESSSSS.

And with that, I'm off to make some Cup-A-Soup and hit the hay...my brain hurts.

The Hague (and the Hassle)

2009-03-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

I decided, more or less on a whim, to go to The Hague to visit Ian (he's there for a Model UN conference, which happens to be sponsored by Radboud University!). Getting there required some adept navigation of the Netherlands rail system. I figure we're long overdue for an extended airing of grievances, so here we go:

Why You Should Avoid Taking Netherlands Rail If At All Possible: The Definitive List

1. The trash receptacles on board

They are made of iron. They are extremely heavy. They adhere to Dutch design standards, which means that they look very practical but are absolutely useless. You can't open or close them without unleashing a giant THWAP that is just forceful and metallic enough to send shockwaves through your entire skeletal system. If I had a nickel for every time I was jolted out of a comfortable doze-bordering-on-blissful-nap by the guillotine-like thud of someone disposing of an apple core or bottle of Dubbel Friss, I would...have a whole bunch of useless American currency.

2. Children

There are bratty children, and then there are Dutch children. I saw a lot of those monsters on my train ride over. I can't say I wasn't warned...we had a speaker during our orientation week to educate us on Dutch culture, and he sort of jokingly hinted that they might not be the most well-disciplined bunch.

Cut to Maggie nursing an intense headache on a train stopped interminably outside of Utrecht Centraal. A father, clad in the typical Dutch uniform of hip canvas jacket emblazoned with some nonsensical English phrase, sits placidly as his two blond spawn SCREAM AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS. AND SCREAM AND SCREAM. AND RUN UP AND DOWN THE AISLES. AND PLAY WITH SOME TOY THAT MAKES A NOISE SIMILAR TO THE "PULL IT!" LEVER ON A BOP-IT. FOR FORTY-FIVE MINUTES STRAIGHT. AND NOBODY ON THE WHOLE FRIGGIN' TRAIN THINKS THIS IS WEIRD AND ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE BUT ME. Sorry, a lot of caps. But you get the point.

3. Personal Space Guy

There's a Seinfeld episode about "close talkers". There should be a Seinfeld episode about close train sitters...more specifically, about sketchy, sweaty, overweight forty-year-old men in ill-fitting double-breasted corduroy blazers who sit in the awkward seat immediately facing you despite the fact that there is NOBODY ELSE IN THE TRAIN CAR. They reek of cologne and they usually do something horrid like drain a can of liquid, lukewarm Optimel yogurt with a weird smacking sound, wipe their mouth with the back of their hand, and then lean over and place said grimy hand on your personal (!) tray table. You're not hot and I'm not interested. Please go away.

And even if you're giving off that electric-fence vibe like nobody's business and they eventually let out a big sigh and concede a few centimeters or so of personal space, they will still find some way to make up for it. Like utilizing the trash receptacle (see no. 1) for said Optimel container. Or talking really loudly on the phone as if to emphasize that they're important enough to receive a phone call.

Don't worry, though, he'll eventually leave. Unfortunately, his personal scent won't.

4. Telepathy

Since I don't have a Dutch bank account and Ye Olde Bank of America Visa lacks the PIN computer chip necessary to complete card transactions, I buy my train tickets at the service desk. This morning, I purchased a ticket back to Nijmegen and was just starting to walk away from the desk when I realized that it might be a good idea to triple-check that I'd need to change trains at Utrecht like I did on the way over.

She looks at me like I have five heads and a pitchfork-shaped tail. "There's been an accident," she says cryptically, and types something on a computer and hands me a printed sheet of paper. Due to this mysterious accident, it looks like I'll have to change trains THREE TIMES to get back to Nijmegen. I'd have to take the aptly named sneltrain to Leiden, then switch tracks to get to Schiphol, then get on a different train at Utrecht and hopefully end up at Nijmegen sometime before I have to fly home in July. The part that kills me? I was just supposed to glean these transfers from the air.

Okay, so all my connecting trains have been at least fifteen or twenty minutes late and I'm sitting at Schiphol when I see on the train departures board that there's a 11:30 going directly to Nijmegen. I wait. Nothing. But no worries...there's also an 11:45. Hmm. Nothing there either.

I go to the information booth and relate my concerns. Another with the pitchfork-tail-and-multiple-heads look. She tells me that there's a train at noon as well.

"Okay, but why didn't the other trains show up?"

"Oh. We...skipped those."

WHAT IS MY LIFE?

It was a bit of a hassle actually getting to where I needed to be (damn you, similarly named hotels in different parts of the Western Netherlands), but once there, it was nice to do some exploring. At the risk of casting this entire journey in a comically bad light, I managed to pick the one day that every single museum and public building of any importance is closed. Boo. But there was some nice hanging-outage in a cute cafe, lots of strolling, lots of greenery, lots of cool architecture (see my Picasa account, why don't you), and it was fun to pretend to be a MUN delegate at the Global Village party. Even more fun to be sober and watch the world's future leaders get completely sloshed.

On the menu this week: on Friday, an American Studies conference at Groningen University (Amerikistendag 2009! Say that four times fast), which my geeky multidisciplinary soul is super excited for. Sadly, lovely Bea from Spain is spending her last week on Erasmus, so her goodbye party is on Saturday. Other than that...not much. Harsh reminders to work on my thesis would be appreciated.

Mr. Sun pays a visit to Nijmegen

2009-03-17T11:05:00.000-07:00

I woke up today (after a lovely multi-part dream involving a cruise to the Hamptons and swimming with opiate-addled sharks...yeah, I have no idea either) and threw open my curtains and THE SUN WAS SHINING. This is not a joke. It is officially possible to have an unconditionally beautiful, warm, sunny day in Nijmegen.

There are buds on the tree outside my window. All signs point to the fact that spring is arriving. Slowly--and with an obscene amount of precipitation--but it's getting here.

Tomorrow marks two full months of the European life. Perhaps that's why my mind is turning towards home again: class registration and agonizing over the piles of thesis stuff that should be done and wondering if my thesis advisor hates me or if my emails simply went directly into spam. A teeny part of me will always wish I'd stayed there. Most of the time, though, I'm enjoying the here and now. Long dinners with friends and long walks for the hell of it. Having enough time to really absorb what I'm reading. And reading itself! Mostly all those classics that I pushed aside each summer in favor of the more lake house-friendly Wolfe and Franzen...and, of course, Gatsby for the umpteenth time.

I've planned yet another trip: to London! At the end of May! I'm hoping to see a lot of great (and hopefully cheap) theatre, drink some tea, and perchance hop on over to Bath. Touristy suggestions are welcome.

And more practical news: my flight home (on British Airways, no less...YESSSS) is booked for the afternoon of July 1st, and I'll be getting into Philly that night. It looks like I'll be up at BC for the rest of the summer starting July 5th-ish. God knows I'd love to be home this summer--gratuitous food, hot tub, laziness--but the Big Bad Economy is making steady work at the Robsham look pretty good right now.

Off to shower and attempt Moroccan couscous (yipes) before our international student organization's St. Patrick's Day party. Should be interesting...

As promised: the epic Italia entry

2009-03-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

I'm not going to pretend that this will be an extremely accurate account of my adventures in Italy, but I promise you'll get the gist of it. It takes roughly 239840239 years to upload pictures onto the blog, so if you're interested in seeing all 300 of them: http://picasaweb.google.com/margaretaislinncarr

So!

Venice

After braving the zoo-like atmosphere that is Ryanair (having to check my carry-on--and paying 20 euro to do so--and then getting my 3oz shampoo bottle thrown away...Maggie was not a happy camper) we arrived at Camping Alba d'Oro in Mestre, a town just outside Venice that Frommer's calls "charmless and industrial". Highlights of our stay: the best bottle of wine I have ever had (this includes the rest of Italy, mind you) and a sign promising "chicken parts with fries". Yum?

Perhaps I should qualify that "we": I traveled with Jaclyn from Tennessee, Rebecca from Colorado, and Rebecca from Sweden. We all live in Hoogeveldt, my dorm (if it could accurately be called a dorm) and have dinner together regularly.

We made a wrong turn when we got off the bus at the Piazzale Roma (no buses are allowed on the island itself) and ended up wandering around the less-touristy Santa Croce area. It was a Sunday morning and absolutely nobody was around, just tolling bells and sunlight on closed pasticcerias. There are some condemned buildings tilting dangerously, bricks crumbling, graffiti in English and Italian and a mix of both. And yet, it absolutely took my breath away.

First on our (well, my) list of things that absolutely had to be done was a vaporetto ride through the Grand Canal to Lido, a resort island just off the coast. The teal water, the strong wind, the sunlight, the canal traffic...it felt like Epcot, really. I had to keep convincing myself that I was in a real place.

Vaporettos (vaporetti?) are water buses, the preferred method of Venetian transportation. Much better--and much more interesting--than going on foot. Especially when the Carnevale crowds look like this:

Taken from the Museo Correr on the Piazza San Marco. Not kidding.

Lido was lovely...being a huge fan of the novella Death in Venice by Thomas Mann (please add it to your lifetime reading list), it was extremely cool to see the hotel and beachfront cabanas where the whole thing takes place. It was much quieter and had fantastic stracciatella gelato. And so begins Maggie's 9-day weight gain. Le sigh.

The Doge's Palace was absolutely enormous and wonderful: oil paintings and dark wood and the extremely creepy Bridge of Sighs. Definitely see the Picasa album for those pictures. San Marco Basilica was incredibly old and elegant and just on the edge of decay, which is the state of most buildings in Venice. I like it better that way--gives you an idea of just how old and history-rich everything is.

Absolutely exhausted from our jam-packed day (masked Carnevale revelers take a lot out of you, I've come to find), we had an early night and then wandered around the Jewish Ghetto and the Cannaregio until our late-afternoon train. It's most definitely not a ghetto in the American sense...pretty much all Venetian real estate is pricey, pricey, pricey. It's the area in which the authorities all but confined Jews in the 17th century. We managed to find take-out coffee (quite a feat) and perused books from the 1700s in a charming bookshop.

I love wandering with no real purpose in mind. I feel like you really see the city itself that way. And you sometimes stumble upon the most magnificent things, like a public archive that was having electric lighting installed in it for the first time or a mysterious, crumbling opera house that you'd miss altogether otherwise.

I was sad as our train went back over the bridge connecting Venice to the mainland. The city's disintegrating by the day despite everyone's best attempts to save it, and although it's probably possible to go back again, it'll never be just the same as it was for those two sunny, chilly days in February.

Florence

I just want to preface this by saying that Florence is my favorite place in the world. I fell in love the second I got off the train and I think a large part of my heart is still there in a sunny piazza. So yeah, bias on my part. Sorry.

Our hostel was amazing. We had a spacious room and a private balcony (!) all to ourselves. And let's just talk about the gloriousness of falling into a deep sleep, belly full of fresh, super-garlicky pesto pasta (oh.my.God.) and waking up to the bells of Santa Croce and Tuscan sun streaming in through the window. Yes. So glorious.

It's a tremendously walkable city, and so we got to the Duomo in about 20 minutes. It's amazing when you first see it--the streets are narrow and filled with tall buildings, so you round a corner and all of a sudden this enormous, gleaming work of art is just sitting there. Everyone around you just stops in their tracks, shuts up, and takes out a camera.

Brunelleschi, the architect, didn't even get to see it built because it took 150 years. They sure don't make 'em like that anymore. Dang.

Next up was the Accademia, where we saw tons of 12th-century religious art (my new obsession...so creepy and amazingly well-preserved) and snapped numerous surreptitious pictures of its most famous offering:

We finished off the day with a couple hours perusing the extensive collection of leather purses, silk ties, and gloves at the Mercato San Lorenzo. Got to sleep early and woke up at 6:30 AM for the Uffizi Gallery. Maggie was not pleased. But she was very pleased once she spent three hours in that smashingly fantastic museum. Botticelli and Durer and Michelangelo, oh my! Sorry, no pictures...intense guards were watching my every move. We enjoyed great views of the city from its top floor and rooftop balcony, though:

Lunch was falafel pitas and sparkling water and dark chocolate on the steps of Chiesa Santa Maria Novella. The sun was surprisingly strong--such a nice change from the gloom of the Netherlands. I think I could have stayed there forever, watching the people pass by and Jaclyn's attempts at pigeon sabotage. After some brief regrouping at the hostel, we headed up the hill on the other side of the Arno to the Piazzale Michelangelo.

The guidebooks say it's one of the best views in the world, and they weren't kidding. I couldn't stop looking at the bridges and city to the west and the rolling, foggy Tuscan hills to the east. Said guidebook also recommended that we hike up even farther to San Miniato al Monte to hear the monks chant in the darkened church at sundown, and it didn't disappoint. I got chills.

Tuckered out from the Tuscan StairMaster, we stopped by a free olive oil tasting at the wine bar down the street from our hostel (flavors tasted: juniper, mandarin orange, black truffle, lemon...and you can seriously taste the difference between them) and then sat out on our balcony with a bottle of wine and looked out at the stars. I'm telling you, this place is heaven.

Rome

We caught a train in late afternoon after saying goodbye to the Duomo once more (sigh). After all the surreal, laid-back, quiet beauty of Florence and Venice, it was strange to be in a bustling, almost American city once again. After putting our stuff down in our (kind of icky) hostel, we loaded up on sunscreen at a quirky little farmacia, grabbed a bite, and hit the Colosseum.

It's so strange and cool that there are ruins hiding out in the middle of this pretty modern city. Over the years, marble and iron and all kinds of stuff has been incorporated into new architecture and even recycled. Case in point: the old roof of the front of the Pantheon was melted down and re-cast as the altar in St. Peter's. Which reminds me:

St. Peter's Basilica, where we went the next day, is one of those places that takes your breath away the second you walk in it. We all know that I have some, er, issues with the Catholic Church, but being in a place like that fills me with some kind of faith. Whether it's in God or human ingenuity, I'm not sure--but wowza.

The Vatican Museums were absolutely incredible. If we weren't up until three in the morning listening to our neighbors, who thought it would be fun to blast "Hips Don't Lie" on repeat in the lobby (are you picking up on the subtle hints that this might have not been the best choice of accommodation?), I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more. The biggest surprise was an incredibly well-curated modern art museum in the Borgia Apartments. We also saw some hilariously inaccurate old maps (Canada was just a blob labeled as "Terra Incognita") and tons of papal bling. The Sistine was impressive, but I honestly think the School of Athens was my favorite. It's so cool to see this stuff close up.

After some postcard writing on the Spanish Steps and throwing coins in the Trevi Fountain (one to return to Rome, one to fall in love while there), we got some incredible gelato (one scoop of raspberry with crunchy seeds, one scoop of Nutella as thick as the stuff itself) and hit the Pantheon. It was just after Mass and everything was foggy and smelled like incense. It's a Roman building, and incredibly well-preserved.

There was a bit of a fiasco as to where exactly I was staying after I branched off from the Nijmegen girls and met up with BC kids (too long to go into detail here), but I ended up crashing at Deanna's after clubbing at a predominantly American bar until 6 AM. I think my body still hurts. It is the oddest feeling in the world to walk into a completely new place in a completely new country and see the same thirty or forty people milling around that you'd see walking through the quad on any given day. Got a late start the next morning (obviously) and regrouped by sitting in the sun on a grassy hill alongside the Colosseum, gaining freckles on my nose, journaling, and just thinking about how lucky I was to be there. I mean, seriously.

Met up with Grace and Colleen a couple hours later and made our way over to Chiesa St. Ignacio to see the Chorale sing Mass. You all know I'm not a crier, but I walked into that room and saw a large percentage of people I've been missing incredibly and there were some happy tears. The Chorale has a tradition of singing "Tollite Hostias" at midnight in a different place each night when they're on tour, so after a brief stop at an Irish bar (I mean, come on...we go to BC, for God's sake) we Tollite'd and hit the sheets.

The next morning, we got up early for one reason and one reason alone:

Yep, he blessed me. Now I'm excused for everything that has ever occurred in my life up to this point. I think.

Went back to St. Peter's because I simply can't get enough of it, and after some wandering and great conversation and coffee with Grace (who, for all of you listening at home, is studying in Rome this semester), ended up at Chiesa Jesu for a full Chorale concert.

And, as if this trip could get any more BC, it's the church where St. Ignatius is buried. Go figure. There is this crazily blinged-out statue of Iggy himself hidden behind a canvas on the side of the church, which moves up and down to hide or uncover it. Apparently there was some ransacking happening in some century by someone--yeah, good memory, Mags--and it was a way for them to hide it if necessary. They usually only bring him out on special occasions (notably the feast of St. Ignatius), but they did a special uncovering just for us. It was crazy. Pictures of the whole dang thing on Picasa.

A late night with Tollite and typical college behavior on the Campo di Fiori (oy) and up extraordinarily early the next day for a tour of the catacombs, the Colosseum and the Roman ruins on Palatine Hill. I'm running out of time and should probably be doing something more productive and GPA-boosting (like going to class...or something), but all the pics are up on Picasa.

It started drizzling on my return trip to the Pantheon, and I got to see the ancient drainage system in action. Very cool.

We headed back to the hotel to take a quick disco nap (you would not believe how good the floor feels after a long day of walking), got some dinner, and headed to the Piazza Navona for my last Tollite. People were coming out of their balconies and watching. It was such a bittersweet moment for me...I was just so torn between the happiness of spending 9 days in such an amazing place and the sadness of leaving the people I love (especially the seniors). Aw man, I'm getting all verklempt just writing this.

I walked the half-mile or so to Termini Station the next morning at an obscenely early hour (7 AM, if you must know). The city was just waking up. Workmen in their orange jumpsuits were having a cup of java at a local cafe and the dew was still fresh on the grass. I felt completely and totally at peace. More than I've felt in a long, long time. Returning to Nijmegen was hard, but I think you've got to go away in order to start to appreciate where you come from.

I think that about does it. More on the Amsterdam weekend in a few days.

From Italian sun to Dutch gray.

2009-03-04T06:28:00.000-08:00

Italy. Was. Awesome.

There is dirty (we're talking horribly dirty) laundry littering my floor and papers that need to be written and stuff that needs to be read, but I keep looking at these pictures as if to remind myself that the past nine days actually happened. I think I'm going to do an entry on each city at some point because there is SO MUCH to be said about all of them. This will probably happen next week, so stay tuned.

In a nutshell, things I will always remember: the color of the Venetian canals, the Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi, monks chanting at San Miniato al Monte at sunset, the charming used bookshop in the Venetian Jewish Ghetto, that hilariously horrible hostel in Rome, limoncello on the balcony in Florence, hot chocolate on the Spanish Steps, "Come Thou Fount" echoing in Chiesa Jesu, turning the corner and seeing the Duomo for the first time, that pizza shop by Deanna's apartment in Rome, "Tollite" everywhere, journaling amongst the ruins of the Forum and the Colosseum, watching incense rise behind the altar at St. Peter's Basilica, being blessed by the Pope (not kidding), hugging every BC person in sight, gelato gelato gelato.

I felt tears coming to my eyes as I watched Rome fall away over the wing of the plane. It wasn't entirely from sadness, either. I am so grateful for what Italy did for my spirits: it showed me that there is a Europe outside this kind of humorless and calm and sterile country, a place where people jostle and yell and sing and bask and take great pride in food and friendship in a way completely different from--and yet compatible with--American mannerisms.

Matt comes to visit this week. I have been totally cheating on this whole study-abroad-and-leave-everything-behind thing, but I've found that being with the people I know and love has reminded me that they'll still be there when I get back. I know I made the right decision in coming here. Not the easy decision, but the one that will be make me the person I need to become.

Amsterdam this weekend! Whooooo!

Briefly...

2009-02-18T06:02:00.001-08:00

The ancient Dutch man who teaches my Monday yoga class said that you can't pretend to understand anything unless you are able to stand on your head and see everything upside down.

After that revelation, things are making more sense.

P.S. There probably won't be more updates before I leave for the Grand Italian Adventure on Saturday. Expect the epic post of epic posts. And many, many pictures. Be back on the 3rd.

To market, to market

2009-02-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

After a long, hard week of partying and reading for class (my life is SO difficult), Rebecca and Jaclyn and I decided to hit up the weekly open-air market in the center of town.

At this bakery stand, we got fresh slagroom croissants--kind of like the Dutch version of cannoli. Nothing like a healthy breakfast.

It's so nice to see some blue sky again after a few days of snow/sleet/rain/hail/general meteorological misery.

The market could best be described as a teeny version of Rice's. (If you're not from Bucks County, just disregard that comment.) There was lots of cheap produce (I picked up a kilo of Pink Lady apples, an avocado, and some red peppers for just about 4 euro...yessss), abundant fried food, sausage and cheese stands, knockoff purses, pashminas galore, and the requisite racks of strange European fashion.

Deciding between two similar styles of 15-euro coats:

And the winner is...

Then we got some magnificent hot chocolate (and much-needed defrosting time) at the Blue Hand Pub in the town square. It's served complete with hot milk, dark chocolate chunks, and coffee liqueur. FYI: the Blue Hand--or more accurately, In de Blaauwe Hand--is one of the oldest pubs in Europe. It's been serving up brews since the mid-16th century. Nice. Lots of gorgeous dark wood and stained glass...expect pictures at some point.

At home, there's no time to do stuff like this--to explore and wander and have two-hour dinners with friends. It's good that I'm finally starting to take advantage of it.

P.S. I hate pretty much all things Valentine's Day, but in the spirit of the thing: someone in the Netherlands loves you!

Three weeks in

2009-02-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow marks my third full week of living in Nijmegen. Classes are in order. (Minimal) work is there to be done. I'm finding my way around. Trips are planned. Parties are...constant. I have met some great people from interesting places and I have a regular group of friends. And now I sit at my desk with my mug of tea and...well, there is nothing else to do.

We had a roommate meeting and bonding session tonight, complete with pizza and some kind of party game. I only stayed for the pizza. I felt so incredibly out of my element, surrounded by 10 or 12 people laughing at jokes in a language I can't even begin to understand, that I felt sick to my stomach and just couldn't stay there a second longer. I'm trying to beat it, but culture shock is a tenacious little creature.

Twenty-one days in Nijmegen (and twenty-seven in Europe!), and I still don't know where I am when I wake up in the morning. The time has flown: not because my time here thus far has been all rose petals and sunshine and cute Facebook pictures, but because every day is like learning how to function all over again. You need to block out hours for things as mundane as making copies of documents for class. I feel like a toddler. Maybe that's too extreme...okay, I feel like a freshman. Yuck.

I'm also in the midst of applying for my Dutch residence permit, which is a vastly less complicated process than any of the pre-departure emails would have you believe. I keep putting it off, though. Making it official that I'm a legal resident of the Netherlands is a daunting prospect. It's taking a deep breath and putting all the cards on the table and saying "okay, let's just freakin' do this."

"Sweet Caroline" just came up on my iTunes. Just what I needed. I can't wait to see Matt and the chorale kids in just over two weeks. I miss life at BC so much. I miss wasting hours in the green room. I miss the challenge of balancing class and 4B and theater and VagMons and ASTEP and the multitude of little things that crop up in the margins, and I miss feeling worthwhile because of that challenge. I'm missing all this cool activism that's happening with Women's Health Initiative and sexual health amendments. And Lupe Fiasco, apparently. I miss SINGING! I miss having a place to sing. I miss walking around and seeing people I know and knowing that they're part of me and I'm part of them. You don't get that feeling here. School spirit doesn't exist. You go to class and you go home. In America, your college is part of your identity. Here, it's just something you do.

Off topic, but nonetheless relevant: Skype is the greatest invention. Ever. I can't even wrap my mind around how I can talk to--and SEE--someone thousands of miles away on a 6-hour time difference...in real time. Straight trippin', yo.

I'm going to go back out there and attempt to bond with my roommates again. Wish me luck...

"Hey guys, let's bike to Germany."

2009-02-08T16:11:00.000-08:00

One of the upsides to being absolutely uncommitted after class: deciding on a whim to bike to another country.

It was about 45 degrees (obviously Fahrenheit) and the sun was just about to set. Seven of us internationals planned a 15-20 km. route through the village of Berg en Dal, hoping to cross the border into Germany and go north for a little bit, then head back west to Nijmegen.

These pictures don't quite do justice to the sunset we caught just outside Berg en Dal, but I hope they give some idea:

And then we arrived in Germany!

And we saw a German gas station! And a German pasture with assorted German cows! And then we turned around.

Nijmegen and its environs are known as being extremely hilly areas (read: not completely and utterly flat). As we whizzed down Berg en Dalseweg on the way out, it looked as if it would be a heck of a climb back up. Little did we know what a climb it would be. God, am I going to have great legs by the time July rolls around.

Italy is booked! Venice for two days, Florence for three, and Roma for four. If you have any suggestions as to what we should do/see, please let me know...I am so overwhelmed by the amount of fantastic art and monuments and ruins and canals out there that I simply can't decide where my touristy priorities should lie.

As for more mundane news, class registration continues to be a disaster. I will be so grateful to return to the normalcy of BC UIS, where at the end of the day, even if they're not the classes you hoped for, you're at least getting credit for something.

And perhaps this seems mundane as well, but I'm actually pretty proud: I went on a 4.5-mile run this afternoon and didn't get lost once.

Time for bed. A big day of grocery shopping, itinerary-creating, important-government-form-submitting, and copying awaits.

Waiting on the world to change.

2009-02-05T07:18:00.000-08:00

Class has finally begun. Praise Jesus and pass the espresso.

Classes are an hour and forty-five minutes long and meet once a week, which is pretty freakin' bizarre after all the class we have to attend at BC. There's also a break in the middle, which many people use to go to one of the numerous vending/coffee/tea machines in the halls of the Erasmusgebouw (20-story main academic building). The teacher usually begins two to five minutes early and it is completely unacceptable to waltz in late. Everyone takes absolutely immaculate notes and I think I may still be high from all the Wite-Out that was used in yesterday's class.

So far, I've attended French Culture in the 20th and 21st Centuries (which should...suck) and 19th Century American Literature, which is taught by an awkward American prof from Purdue who seemed extraordinarily relieved to see Americans. I stayed after class with my friend Rosa and talked to this guy, who is on a Fulbright and uprooted his whole family and life to come here. It's good to know that this transition's hard for everyone, regardless of age.

Just got back from my Multiculturalism in North America class, which is an American Studies course in two parts. It seems like it's going to be awesome--lots of reading and discussion and documentary and photo viewing. It's structured a lot like the Am Stud classes at BC, so I think it'll be awesome.

I'm writing today mostly as a reflection on that class. We watched a BBC documentary that explored the meaning of being American throughout the nation's history, and frankly, it was embarrassing. Cue footage of a volunteer border patrol, comprised of 10 to 15 Texas rednecks who get their thrills by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and going through the streets physically and verbally threatening anyone who looks like they might be illegal. "They're bringing foreign diseases into our country," exclaimed one prim little Southern belle. There were also lengthy segments on human rights violations during the Spanish-American war, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Japanese internment camps, and "cultural inspectors" hired by Ford to force assimilation.

You could tell that Rosa and I were the only Americans in the class by the way we covered our eyes and slumped in our seats. The documentary was shown in six-minute chunks and was paused after each for brief reflection, which was basically spent staring aghast at said Americans.

Luckily, we finished up with some exploding fireworks and waving flags and general DNC footage. Whew--dodged that bullet. Everyone here believes in Obama perhaps even more strongly than most Americans do, and it scares me. I obviously love the prez as much as the next flower-garland-making, bike-riding, French-speaking, moss-kissing flaming liberal, but I'm terrified that when he doesn't live up to the ginormous expectations that the world (and the Bush legacy) has left for him, everyone's going to turn on us.

Change is happening, but a lot of things are changing for the worse--things I never see over here. If what I hear from home and friends is true, businesses are shuttering, parents are losing their jobs, BC tuition is looking impossible to pay, and what really breaks my heart is that PA is canceling the Governor's Schools. I feel groundless right now. Like I've bounced as high as I could on a trampoline and when I wasn't paying attention, someone grabbed it out from under me and I'm just watching the ground approach and preparing for the shock of landing. (Too poetic. I know. Sorry.) I don't know where the US is going, and I'm too far away to even have an idea.

And as a big "screw you" to the realities of recession (and my rapidly shrinking bank account), a few of us are planning a 9-day adventure to Venice, Florence, and Rome at the end of February. Stay tuned for details.

Orientation week and Amsterdam

2009-02-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

Orientation was pretty fun. We did some bowling, toured the city, pub crawled, pub crawled, and pub crawled some more.

The ISN, the group that organizes orientation and various international events throughout the semester, put together an excursion on Saturday. We first went to the Storm Surge Barrier just outside of Rotterdam. Quite simply, it is two curved arms that move out and block sea water from coming into the river and flooding like it did in the early 1950s, which was an event about as widespread and fatal as Hurricane Katrina.

We also went to Amsterdam, which was just beautiful. In a very different way from Paris, but nonetheless, it is a fantastic place with lots of lovely canals and the like. It seems a lot more touristy than Paris as well. I can't imagine biking there--the streets are simply too congested. Surprisingly, it made me glad that I don't live in such a gigantic tourist hub.

We only had enough time to walk around a bit and grab some dinner, so I definitely plan to go back for a weekend and visit the Van Gogh museum and the Rijksmuseum.

The folks in this picture are some kids from my orientation group: Rebecca (Sweden), Jerrad (US), and Jenna (Scotland). Picture this: people from 7 or 8 different countries eating Chinese food together in Amsterdam. This is when you know we live in a truly globalized world.

I found the Red Light District to be incredibly saddening. It brings me back to the debate we studied in Fems last term about whether prostitution is a good thing or a bad thing, taking into consideration a woman's choice to do it, legal considerations (the Netherlands has health regulations and taxes associated with the business), etc. In America, I think prostitution is more of an abstract idea if you're not seeing it out there every single day...whereas in Amsterdam and numerous other cities around the country, day and night, there are women in their underwear showcased in these windows and I feel forced to really consider how I feel about it. I myself felt objectified and victimized when I saw the women in the windows--how can we be expected to live in a world without objectification if one of the most influential countries make huge tax dollars off of their bodies? Also, there are zero male prostitutes out there. Apparently they tried it once and the guy just got heckled. Awesome.

On to more pleasant things. There are several residential areas here, all of which are technically off campus. The international students live in either Lent (4-person flats much like the Mods, located in a very Newton-like satellite campus across the bridge from Nijmegen) and 15-person corridors in Hoogeveldt (where I live). One would think that I really lucked out, being within walking distance from campus and a 10-15 minute bike ride from the city, but it gets very quiet here. It was nice to be invited to Lent last night to have dinner with some new friends. People can COOK here. The French kids made carbonara and the Spanish kids made paella and the conversation was loud and refreshing.

Still waiting--impatiently, as usual--for classes to start. As all of you probably know, I must always have a solid plan in place for every hour of my day or I just explode. Ergo, the last couple of weeks could definitely be classified as one lengthy explosion. There is so much waiting involved with everything here. You ask about something as simple as a class change and people furrow their brows and tell you "Oh, that'll definitely take a few days." I'm still not signed up for any classes and they technically start today. (Insert freakout here.)

I know that the sheer volume of activities and schoolwork I do at BC tend to stress me out at times (understatement), but that kind of stress is nothing compared to just waiting. And looking out at the low-lying clouds and wondering when it'll be spring again.

Off to pay rent (wow, do I feel like a big girl), get some passport photos taken, and apply for a sports card. Hopefully I'll know by the end of the week if it's possible to take a long weekend in Rome to hang out with Chorale people at the end of the month. I feel so far away from home right now for so many reasons. I know it takes time to establish oneself in a new place, so I'm just holding out. I just hope it happens soon.

Today has been okay.

2009-01-28T17:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when I'm riding my bike at odd hours--like I've been doing for the past couple nights--it strikes me as kind of crazy that this is how we get around here: we just hook our purses over the handlebars and switch on our lamps and pedal off into the night. I could feel the ice crystals that had formed on my seat for the past three and a half hours seeping into my jeans and the wind flying into my face and up the sleeves of my not-entirely-fastened winter coat was COLD. Boston cold. It surprised me, and it got me thinking.

Orientation thus far has been a series of similarly sweaty, semi-awkward late nights fueled by Grolsch and European techno. My mentoring group, with whom I've toured the campus and shared chili con carne--you heard it here first--is comprised of a whole bunch of cheerful Europeans as well as a red meat-eating, football-playing fellow American. Thank. God. I love America and everyone in it for no other reason other than its familiarity, and I see nothing wrong with this affection.

This afternoon, washed in the golden, foggy rays of a Netherlands sunset, we saw the campus and the library and the meditation room (!) and the sports center and its zillions of rail-thin, self-assured, cute-boot-wearing students and I felt filled with possibility. But I didn't feel that possibility on the bike ride home tonight. I just felt my bones shivering and was acutely aware that if I just pedaled a little faster, I might be able to catch my family on Skype...for the second time in four hours.

I wish I could say that I'm happy right now. I really, really, desperately do. All the stars are aligning and everyone around me is laughing and the beer is flowing. There doesn't seem to be any earthly reason for me to be unhappy. Which makes me think that maybe I'm intentionally trying to make this not be the fantastic Eurotrip that it has the potential to be...in which case it's highly likely that my entire life thus far is the result of a concerted effort to make everything seem awful so that when it does suck, I won't be surprised.

And how I logicked myself into that conclusion, I will never truly know. Jesus.

It seems like the more I surround myself with incredible, awe-inspiring, new, different, exciting things, the more that I only want what I already have. Great friends. A loving, supportive family. A school where, for the first time in over two years, I feel like I finally fit. Who would ever give that up, no matter the possible gains?

I need to stop writing. I need to go to sleep and wake up in the morning and talk and see and move so much that I don't start thinking again. I need class to start. I need to get my brain moving. I need to plan trips. I need to distract myself from myself.

I don't speak Dutch. Oops.

2009-01-24T07:49:00.000-08:00

I arrived in Nijmegen on Thursday afternoon, so I'm alive and all that good stuff.

Other than that, being here is incredibly lonely. I forgot how scary it is to be completely and totally on my own, and not knowing a word of Dutch isn't helping. I got here early thinking that I'd want to have that extra time to acclimate myself, but right now, the days of absolute nothingness are making me crazy. All I can think about are the things I'm missing: BC, Langhorne, friends, English, Cheerios.

Nijmegen is the oldest city in the Netherlands (it's over 2000 years old) and accordingly, its streets are winding and oddly organized and are therefore kind of difficult to navigate. Nearly everyone has a bike here. There is, of course, traffic, but not nearly as much as you'd expect in a small city. I did manage to find a grocery store, a cell phone, and bed sheets via the bike that was so graciously left for me by Kacey (who went to Nijmegen last spring). This makes life considerably easier.

I'll probably have more to say in a few days, once the culture shock wears off.

Paris, part II

2009-01-22T08:05:00.000-08:00

(Note: this was written on the train from Paris to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam, I took another train to Nijmegen and then a bus (well, two buses because I screwed up the first time) from Centraal to Heyendaal, where the university's located. There was a lot of walking with the heavy heavy suitcases. In the rain. I pretty much wanted to kill myself. But now I'm here and I have to go to the city center to find linens. Awesome. Anyway...)

To recap the last couple days:

I attempted to go to the Louvre. I was really amped. I got up early (9h) and walked there, only to be greeted by a sign (and accompanying burly guard) informing me that the museum is closed on Tuesdays. So I didn't go to the Louvre. But still:

So I wandered for the rest of the day. My first stop was the Tuileries. I guess some could consider it a bit depressing when all the trees are bare, but it's really an incredible place regardless. Which brings me to another point: the concept of space in Paris is really, really strange. You have this absolutely huge places (the Tuileries, the Louvre, the giant sidewalks on the Champs-Elysees) and then you go to a restaurant or bar and you're hanging out in your neighbor's food. Interesting.

Other touristy things: the Musee Rodin (and yes, dear family, I did some exploring and found the site of the "poussez" incident), the Champs-Elysees, the Tour Eiffel, and just simply wandering. I stumbled upon a beautiful little (well, little by Parisian standards) church called l'Eglise de Ste-Clotilde. My pictures didn't come out that well because I was being hella surreptitious with my camera, but the light at that point in the afternoon was just...fantastic.

You know that Rufus Wainwright song, "Complainte de la Butte"? Well, it's kind of crazy, but I think that if Montmartre could sing, it would sound like that. If you get the chance, please go there. I was only there for a few hours and skipped the touristy stuff like the Moulin Rouge, but the view from the Sacre-Coeur and the light at dusk are like nothing I've ever seen.

For family and BC people: the people in this picture are Marina and my good friend from high school, Fish (who goes to Middlebury with Marina). They were among the members of the group that gathered at Carr's Irish Pub--no, I'm not kidding--to watch the inauguration ceremony. What a speech. In addition to the requisite American majority, there were also a good number of EU people up in there. The French seem to adore the Obamas: they were on virtually every newspaper and magazine cover and metro advertisement.

It was so moving to see a) a truly respectable politician take office, and b) see the tsunami-like wave of international positive feeling that accompanied his inauguration. I have never been so proud to be an American. I'm talking lump-in-the-throat, tears-welling-up kind of patriotism. And to conclude what is quickly becoming an epic post:

FINALLY.

Paris

2009-01-18T14:18:00.001-08:00

Coming at you liiiive from Paris!

The travel wasn't as bad as expected; I actually arrived early at CDG and my luggage was the first off the plane. But as of today, I've managed to a) be struck by panic and ask the incredulous attendants at Charles de Gaulle if I forgot to go through customs (no, not kidding) and b) forget to hook up my blow dryer to the converter and have it go WHOA EUROPEAN VOLTAGE and turn orange and all but blow up. I guess I've failed Study Abroad 101, but other than that, life is awesome.

I'm renting a room at the Foyer International des Etudiants on the Rue de Saint-Michel--pretty much standard European hostel fare (plain, slightly sketchy), but the location is...unbelievable. I have a balcony:

And that view of la Tour Eiffel that you see at the top? Yeah, I can see that from the solarium (similar to a study lounge).

Paris is so beautiful that it doesn't even try to be beautiful or acknowledge that it's beautiful. It's got gorgeous, absolutely baffling roads and beautiful people with small, precocious children. Against logic and the best interests of the people I deal with in day-to-day business, being here makes you want to speak French.

Adventures thus far: a cheap panini (in Paris, cheap is 3.9 euros, which is equal to about $5.10), looking at fantastic art until my eyes fell out at the Musee d'Orsay, watching the Eagles embarrass themselves yet again at a Canadian pub, learning the hard way that my cellphone alarm doesn't function overseas, and figuring out the getting-to-Nijmegen situation at the Gare d'Austerlitz.

Up for tomorrow: a day at the Louvre, looking at awesome art until my eyes fall out, and then bar-hopping in honor of our newest president. And hopefully Montmartre and the Musee Rodin on Wednesday.

Hope all is well. Bises from France!

Tomorrow

2009-01-16T10:45:00.000-08:00

...and packing is FINITO. Praise Allah.

I leave Philly tomorrow at 12:30, followed by an endless layover in Chi-town, and will hopefully arrive at Paris-CDG at the bright and shiny hour of 9:30 AM. I'm excited and nervous and I really hope that my luggage doesn't get lost and that my rusty, rusty French holds up.

Until then, I'll be hanging out in my hot tub and watching all the crappy reality TV I can handle. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Dutch Word of the Day

2009-01-13T10:46:00.000-08:00

peperduur - literally, "as expensive as pepper"; used to describe something that's extraordinarily expensive.

When you repeat this word over and over with what I hope is vaguely related to the actual pronunciation, it kind of sounds like hopping on a pogo stick.

The clock is ticking...

2009-01-07T09:50:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that I'm now not leaving the States until the 17th, thereby buying myself a whole lot of time, it seems like every wrench has been thrown into the gears of trying to plan this damn trip. I have a rapidly growing list of grievances as follows:

1) Searching for a bank in Nijmegen. Which doesn't seem to be all that hard, but the vast majority of sites are in Dutch or only have an office in Amsterdam. May I simply bike across the German border every couple of weeks to go to an ATM? Customs will probably say no. May I open an account in a Dutch bank? Larry the advisor says that Homeland Security doesn't let that fly. Will I have to resort to selling the Vicodin left over from the wisdom-teeth fiasco in order to prevent starvation? I hope not, but it's highly possible.

2) I don't know where I'm living, how I get there, or how to pay for it. Cool.

3) Since I can't do anything about my visa (well, it's actually not a visa, but a residence permit) until I get there, I'm a little worried that I'm going to forget something and get deported. The best part: I need to wire the residence permit fee from a bank. Immediately upon my arrival. Please refer to grievance #1.

4) €1 = $1.36. Yikes.

But despite the grievances, the fact remains that I, Girl Who Has Never Left America Except For Two Brief and Unsatisfying Trips to Canada and Eight Hours in Mexico, will be gallivanting around Paris in roughly ten days.

Can I get an a-MEN?