When in Rome

Hello. Friday after class I went to a wonderful open air market with literally everything you could want. They had all kinds of fresh meats, clothes from everywhere, dvd’s, even used washing machines. I tried Baclava, and it was delicious. We walked back from the market through what is probably the real Hague. Instead of the more tourist destinations there were many more apartments and (cheaper) small businesses. Then Friday night we went out to eat at a Mexican food restaurant. It was the worst Mexican food I have ever tasted. The food was basically microwaveable pre-packaged food, if it had been sitting out for awhile. Anyway, after that we wondered into a one room bar with a pool table and watched a soccer game. We stayed there for a few hours as I progressively drank darker and stronger beers than I had planned (FYI-the Guinness in the Hague is horrible, it is very thin and they mix it in one cup at a time, so it takes awhile to get the finished drink). On the up side, one of the guys in our group proceeded to beat everyone in the bar at pool, an old man started hitting on the girls with us in Dutch and was kicked out, and the (not old creepy) locals seemed to enjoy our presence as much as we enjoyed theirs.

Saturday morning we woke up around 830 a.m., which was not fun after going to bed late, and headed into Amsterdam. It’s about a 45 minute train ride into Amsterdam through the countryside. Amsterdam itself is awesome. It’s a big city, entirely an urban area. We walked through most of the city, ending by the Rijk and Van Gogh museums. We didn’t go into the museums because we only had one day here in Amsterdam and a few of the people in the group had seen them already. In between the museums is a park area with a large outdoor pool and the I AMSTERDAM sign. We stopped to relax and cool off in the water, it felt very natural to stop for a bit and just relax in the water (Disneyland should add this feature). We then rented paddle boats and went around the city a bit. The whole city has small rivers that run in between the walkways/roads. While we were there, a Saturday, there were constantly ‘party boats’ going around the city with people playing music and dancing.

We eventually made it to the Rembrandt square area where they have a variety of nice restaurants, a coffee shop called Smokeys, and another smaller park area. We eventually walked through the red light district (during the day, there was not much activity), and watched the US and Ghana game at a local bar. By the time it was over it was night and the crowd had picked up quite a bit, also, the ladies windows had filled up. As a side, they have urinals on the street, literally little kiosks with three urinals facing outward on random street corners, it’s awesome. Also, there are coffee shops that serve marijuana and various pastries with marijuana all over the city. Although, the regular bars only serve alcohol and seem to look down on their counterparts in the coffee shops. But besides that, a ton of people roam the streets in the red light district at night, it reminds me of Mill Avenue on a crowded night, but with a different variety of businesses and clientele. There were some rowdy people, as expected, and the crowd was mostly guys, also as expected.

Anyway, to catch up to today, on Sunday morning we travelled to Bruxelles and took a walking tour of some of the downtown area of the city. There are amazing buildings here and it is the largest city of the three we have been in so far. Sunday night we walked back downtown and had a great dinner at a little Italian place, it may be a tourist set-up, but it still feels more authentic to go to an Italian place where the employees speak Italian. After dinner we all walked to a bar called Delirium. The bar has won world records and such for most beers, they usually have something like 2,004 at a time. They had a 1.5 inch book of available beers, with some 90 or so on tap. I had a Chimay, which they brew here in Belgium, and some 12% ABV beer which tasted incredibly good for the high alcohol content. The bar itself was exactly what you’d expect, lots of wood and dingy walls. The roof was covered in oversized tin bottle caps from different beers. Interestingly, the light weight tables and chairs, plus the sparse set-up, made me feel like a giant bar fight would break out at any moment, full of flying people and breaking furniture.

Anyway, after that we headed to another bar to watch the Argentina and Mexico soccer game. I have been going to a lot of bars, but it’s the best place to watch the soccer games. This bar was extremely hot because of the crowd, a lot of places don’t have a/c here. The weather, at first, in The Hague must have been around 60, now it’s more like 90, quite a change. After the game we got a little lost walking back to the hotel, which is in a bad part of town. We walked by quite a few shady looking places (under some bridges), with groups of guys sitting around staring at you as you walk by. But, there were five or six of us together and we made it back safely.

That brings me back up to today, we had class this morning at the University of Bruxelles. To get there we took the trains and trams which were very hot and crowded, though not quite as packed as the trains in China. The class room was like a dungeon: brick walls, no windows, and the door was two inch thick wood. It was interesting to see the little drawings and scribbles on some of the desks, just like students anywhere. Someone had written “I Love J,” which I’m sure was meant for me. So that’s that, I just had a gyro for lunch, the cheapest meal I’ve had so far, only 5 euro for a giant gyro and drink. Plus, the place was situated so that the wind blew right in through the windows and made it a beautiful little café to eat lunch. Then I did some reading and watched the Netherlands and Croatia soccer game while sitting at the hotel bar. If you got a Delirium brand beer you could bet on the exact score of the game and win a free 40 oz beer. So, a few of us bet on the score and in the last couple seconds (literally a penalty in extra time) my number came up. So I got a free beer and we split it. Then we headed off to a nice little dinner on the terrace of a waffle restaurant, and walked to the giant molecule that is famous in Bruxelles, built during some old world’s fair and just left up, because it looks cool. Hope everyone is doing well. Love, Jeff.

PS. I am not going to post pictures because I haven’t taken the time to figure out how to do it, without uploading them one at a time.