I Finally Got Out of the City!

Hallo Again,

Well, I finally scratched the itch I've been having to get out of the city and see more of Europe. Today my friend Vivian and I hopped on a train and went to Leiden, which is only about 35 minutes away. We decided to go about 10:00 last night, and we're glad we did. We didn't really have a plan, and looked at our guidebooks on the train to figure out what we wanted to do. We had perfect timing, we bought our tickets 4 minutes before the train was supposed to leave, and immediately after we got on board the doors closed. When we got to Leiden, we really had no idea what we wanted to do, but we noticed a visitor's center outside the train station. We went there to pick up a map, which we looked at once, then wandered off. We found the Museum of Ethnology, which was something in we saw in our guidebooks that we wanted to see. CIEE gave us museum kaarts, which gives us free admission to all of the national museums in the Netherlands, and luckily this museum was covered. We did pay a euro each in order to see the special exhibitions on Sumatra and the Mayans, but no one checked our tickets anyway. The museum was pretty much filled with artifacts the Dutch stole from the colonies, but was educational nonetheless. I learned more about Indonesia. Turkmenistan, and Sumatra than I ever knew and I was excited because in the Maya exhibit I knew pretty much all of the background info. Since it was a Saturday morning, the museum was pretty empty anyway, so we could take our time throughout all of the exhibits.

After we left the museum, we decided to just walk around Leiden. It's a pretty small city, so it's pretty easily walked. We decided to search for somewhere to eat lunch, and we found this cafe on the water which was pretty cheap. The food was delicious and it cost less that €7, which was even nicer. After that we continued to wander around the city. We looked in a bunch of the shops, found a residential area to wander around, and found a huge market. At the market, we decided to pick up some fresh stroopwafels. Have I explained stroopwafels here yet? Well, they are an amazing sweet that I am now addicted to and planning on bringing a whole suitcase full of them home with me to last me until I can get more. They are two thin waffle cookies with caramel in between. In markets, they make them fresh and are much bigger, they are also really warm and delicious. The ones made fresh are like flat ice cream cones with caramel. It's the most delicious thing ever and they only cost a euro (either for one big fresh one or a package of them). After that we found this medieval fortress which apparently is the highest elevation in the Netherlands (so it was a small hill). That offered up some nice views of the city, it has 2 very large churches and lots of red rooftops. After that we decided to make our way back to the train station, stopping to buy a couple of cheap scarves in an attempt to make our wardrobes a bit more European. We also picked up some fries in the train station, which was always an addiction for me, but it's worse now because the fries here are much better. Again, our timing was perfect, our train was rolling in just as we came up the stairs. 2 stops later, and we were back in Amsterdam before 5pm.

We both decided that short day trips like these would be a good use of our weekends. An issue many of us are facing is that we want to travel, but we have a limited time to do so and traveling is quite expensive. Paris is only 3 hours away, however since it's a high speed train is costs around $150 round trip. But traveling within the Netherlands is relatively cheap and easy, my ticket today cost less than €16. And by being back in time for dinner, I don't have to pay for as much food and a hostel. Also, our museum kaarts get us into the interesting museums. Also, we'll really get to know the Netherlands, which is important because we're living here for 4 months and we're technically citizens while we are here. But we do have some weekends planned to travel further away. The first weekend of March a big group of us are going to Brussels, which should be a fun trip. I also want to spend some of my long weekends in Berlin and London. Flights to London are actually pretty cheap, about €70 round trip and it's about a 45 minute flight.

Next Saturday my program is going to Groningen for the day. It's in the north of the country and it's where our program director is from. It's going to be an early morning though, we have to be at the bus at 8am. Oh, and I also signed up to do a homestay. I don't know who my family is yet or where they are from, but my program will cover the cost of a train ticket. I really am getting my money's worth out of this program. They offer all kinds of activities which are included in our program fees and they gave us the museum kaart too. Like the Amsterdam day trip I did last weekend was with my program. They also got us tickets for the US vs. Netherlands soccer gam on March 3rd. Of course the program staff is trying to convince us to wear orange (it's the color of the soccer team, so it's the national color even though the flag is red, white, and blue), however we are sitting in the American section. Some people are going to try to support both. However, people here take their football very seriously. I don't want to cause any trouble, so I might be neutral. However, I also need to acquire lots of orange in preparation for Queen's Day in April, which is a major national holiday where everyone wears obnoxious amounts of orange and no cars are allowed in the city center, so it's one giant party celebrating the Netherlands.

This week is going to be a light week, apparently the primary schools have the week off, so two of my classes are cancelled. So on Monday I don't have class until 4, then my usual no class on Tuesday, class on Wednesday from 3 until 5:45, and class on Thursday night at 6. I'm going to try to explore the city more and get out of my comfort zone. I know I wanted my first venture outside of Amsterdam to be with someone, but I think I'm comfortable enough to navigate the trains on my own now. Not that it's difficult or anything. Everything is in English, and I'm picking up on enough Dutch to understand stuff. That is one thing I appreciate about my Dutch class, I am learning the practical stuff that I am seeing around me. It's not like language classes in the US where they teach you the most random vocabulary you might never use. One of our assignments last week was to bring in our grocery lists and the professor told us all of the Dutch words for the things we couldn't find. He is also very useful as he answers our questions about Dutch culture. Of course, the Dutch happen to think that they are far more advanced than the rest of the world, so he adds his European bias into his answers. For example, he made biting remarks about how Americans always special order everything and expect their waitstaff to constantly be paying attention to them. And apparently the Dutch aren't exactly into skim milk, most of them drink whole milk or buttermilk. I haven't found lactose free milk here, however I found halfvolle milk, which mean half fat or low fat milk. I just use it for my cereal anyway, so I think I'm good.

Oh, and I also attempted to make french toast, however it didn't turn out well. Mostly because I didn't have maple syrup. So I went to Albert Heijn and bought some pancake syrup, which I think is maple syrup. We'll see how that goes. In case anyone was wondering, my mac and cheese was a failure. The cheese I bought didn't melt or mix with the milk. I guess I should stick to mac and cheese out of a box or Grandmother's. It's fine, I didn't have a big enough bowl to mix the sauce with the pasta, so I was able to just forego the cheese sauce and use regular pasta sauce on the leftover pasta. It actually created a quite tasty meal, I could throw some pasta, broccoli, and chicken into a skillet with the sauce and it cooked in about 10 minutes. See, there is life without a microwave! I still haven't figured out my oven dilemma, I do miss baking a lot.

Ok, I think that's enough for now. I sit down to write a short entry, and it always turns into a novel. Oh well, I suppose this a good way to remember everything that happened right? I supposed when I am missing Amsterdam I'll go back to this blog and relive my memories. I guess that's why people keep journals about exciting times in their lives.

Love,
Laura