Den Haag

5/27/2011

We boarded our train at platform 20 in Brussels headed for The Hague. Our tickets didn’t specify hardly anything on them, most definitely not a seat number, so we followed others and looked for an empty cabin (no one was around to direct us or take our tickets). We found one and it didn’t seem like many people were going to cabins around us, so I was a little worried about the car not being in service or something, but I didn’t really care to get food and I didn’t notice any signs that stuck out, so we just enjoyed the cabin to ourselves… for about 15 minutes. We noticed soon after we left that our train was slowing down and we realized we were already at the next stop, well the seats in our room filled up fast as did the other cabins nearby within the next couple of stops. I felt bad b/c there wasn’t a lot of leg room to begin with and I had my giant suitcase in the middle b/c there was no way that it was going to be fitting on one of the tiny metal racks/shelves that were above our heads. After it was too crowded in our cabin Zane managed to get his suitcase up on the rack to make a little more leg room for him and the older lady across from him. The lady across from me was very sweet and without asking I was speaking English to her from the beginning, for whatever reason, I could just tell that she spoke and very well. She told us that it was about two hours to The Hague from where she got on (the stop after us), so after a few minutes I didn’t feel so bad about falling asleep. After 45 minutes or so I woke up seeing a couple of new faces and was wondering how far away it would be. I had fun looking out the window and tugging on Zane’s arm every time I would see a cool building (we could even see the main square and the big Atom thing at the beginning of the trip). It was beautiful. Not too long after a gentleman came by speaking really fast in a language I did not know. He wanted our identification cards and our tickets. Upon examining ours he looked up at us and said that we were sitting in first class with second class tickets *WHOOPS*! He said we could pay 16 Euros or move, we asked if he took card b/c he had a little machine in his hands and he said the next car was that way (pointing backwards), so we got our belongings and headed back (we still wonder if he misunderstood us, thinking maybe we asked where the other car was). Well there were all these crazy older ladies huddled between the two cars so we were stuck for a while and ended up standing by the bathroom for the remainder of the time (luckily it was only 3-4 stops away, so we were able to ride in “first class” for more than half of the ride). Which might I add that the second class trains looked exactly the same on the outside/inside and there were 1 and 2s written all over the outside of the trains, and the car that we had originally started out on had a 2 on it! Whatever. We weren’t sure where we needed to get off b/c the announcer didn’t say anything in English like the last train had. So while I was walking around looking for two seat next to each other Zane had struck up a conversation with a guy that was telling him that we were suppose to get off at the last station (even though I couldn’t recall the signs anywhere saying The Hague or Den Haag). At first I was a little panicked, but it sounded like something that would happen that day (all this bad luck must have been because Zane opened the umbrella in our last hotel room to dry. ;) Just kidding) But a nice lady was walking through and the guy asked her if he was right about the last stop (at least that’s what I think he said… he said it Dutch, I think.) She said it was actually the next stop that we would want to get off at (Hurray!!) So we got off and followed several people to get out because there was absolutely no English translation :S. We eventually found from the information desk that we could hop on tram 1 and it would take us right in front of our hotel. So we went out and I immediately saw a tram 1 pass us, so we quick made it to the stop and waited for the next one. There were a couple of other trams that came by and we noticed that there wasn’t anywhere that you really paid and everyone would just get on at any of the doors and sit down, so we thought that they were just free. So we lugged our suitcases on and we were off. After a few stops we realized we had no idea what stop it would be at and we would just have to look out for it. Zane nudged me to ask the girl across from us because “she looked like someone that would speak English” and she did, but she didn’t know where our hotel was, but the lady across from her told her it was definitely not the way we were going. I was frustrated. We got off at the next stop and thought maybe they went both ways, so we had to walk a block to find a stop that went the other direction, and sure enough tram 1 does go both ways. Before we got on another tram we looked at the map and decided we’d get off near the world forum and walk to our hotel from there. Well it took us about a half hour and we got to pass a lot of beautiful buildings and I found a little place I totally wanted to go back to and shop. Luckily there was a stop called the World Forum (I swear, it’s the only thing in English on that tram) and we got off, we looked around and had no idea which way to go and a lady waiting for another tram noticed and asked us where we were going and said “It’s the big white building behind you” and naturally in big red letters it says Crowne Plaza (in our defense the trees were blocking it from where we were originally standing though). We then proceeded to check in and went into our incredible room! (We later learned that it is actually a 5 star hotel) I was reading through the information booklet and they said to ask the front desk of good places to eat and shopping areas. It was still very bright outside and we were hungry so went back downstairs and asked and she told us it as 10 minutes to the beach and about a 20 minute walk back to the shopping plaza we had passed. We were trying to go down a nearby street to see if there were any closer restaurants, but could only find business buildings, so we turned around and headed towards the beach. 40 minutes later we were freezing (because we decided it was so hot coming in that we’d leave our jackets, but boy howdy was it windy!) and finally reached the beach shopping plaza. We looked around inside and half of the shops were closed, and nothing sounded too appetizing to us. We thought maybe an all you can eat buffet place that we passed, we glanced at the prices and saw that it was 27 Euros a person and turned around. We soon became aware that most of the restaurants around were not cheap, so we ended up going to a New York Pizza Place and shared a pizza. We looked around a little bit longer and found a supermarket and got some little things we thought would be handy and decided to take the tram back (which we did find out from the front desk that you do need to pay). It wasn’t long after that we passed out for the night.

5/28/11

We woke up around 730 and went down to the best breakfast buffet we’ve had yet! They had these delicious little pancakes and potatoes (hash brown rounds?) and toast, meat, scrambled eggs, fruit, pastries, yogurt, cheese and so much more! So we stuffed our faces and went back upstairs and fell back asleep for quite a while. We didn’t realize how tired we were! We woke up and started getting ready and in the middle of it, housekeeping kicked us out, so we went to the front desk and asked where a nearby Albert Heijn (from an Email Agatha sent us telling us all of the places we should see and the food we should eat) and where we could find a convertor.  She told us it was about a five minute walk and circled it on our map. I asked her if it was by the World Forum building that we had walked by the day before because she drew it on the map in the middle of the flags down that way, but she said no, we head towards the Shell station and turn right, so that’s what we did. And we sure got lost, we found ourselves in the middle of this neighborhood and managed to find it on the map and saw that we were way off!! So we went back to where she had drawn the store (by the World Forum) and noticed there was nothing down there, so we tried going down a side street and found a nice couple who spoke English (it was then that we realized that just about everyone speaks English here, even better than most British people!) and they told us that the Albert Heijn down the way we were going would be a very, very long walk and showed us one by the beach that would be closer. I was very irritated with our receptionist. We went back to the hotel and bought a day pass for the tram, hopped on the tram and headed towards the beach. We found the Albert Heijn and bought some Vla and stroopwafel (DELICIOUS!)  Then we began our mad hunt for a convertor. We found out that convertor is one of the words that a lot of the people struggle with and found out that it’s called a transformer here. We went into about a dozen stores down the strip and back at the beach plaza and couldn’t find anywhere that had one. We bought some of the best cream puffs at a local bakery and hopped back on the tram headed towards downtown. Once again, we asked several people and went in and out of stores looking for the convertor and found nothing. Before we were going to give up and go back to the hotel, we decided to go back into the first place that we started (that Zane wanted to rush through because it was about a 5 story department store and he feared for our wallets). We asked where the travel section was (because we had only really looked at the electronic section before) and headed up to the 3^rd floor. Sure enough… SUCCESS! We were thrilled and exhausted! We went back to the hotel and stayed in for the night.

5/29/11

We had some more of the delicious breakfast buffet before meeting with Zane’s program. We went downstairs into one of the meeting rooms (I immediately realized that it was small and there wasn’t many seats set up) and Zane got his paperwork and signed in (I scanned the list and saw that there were only 13 people!! I was so shocked of how small the group was). We sat in the back, because I didn’t want to take up someone else’s seat. They started with introductions and we found out that Zane is one of THREE students that came here from the University of Denver! He didn’t recognize either of them (we later found out that they were in all different sections). Soon after a little intro, we went on our walking tour of Den Haag with a woman that lives here. She took us downtown and showed us all of these different historical spots, the parliament buildings, shopping areas, a palace, foreign embassies, and so much more with all of the incredible history behind everything. After a few hours we went back to the hotel and had lunch. The orientation began and I went up to our room and began to read a book. Several hours later we went down to the beach again, this time it was a little less windy (I didn’t think we’d get blown away this time) and had dinner. We came back to the hotel soon after, so Zane could finish his reading and we could talk with our families before going to bed.

5/30/11

This was the first morning of class and 730 sure came around quickly. While Zane was in class I unpacked our things and ironed some of Zane’s shirts and trousers and read. After class was over I had the privilege of joining the class on their trip to the International Criminal Court (ICC). We had to rush through lunch because our taxi came late and then we went up to the room where they hold all the press conferences. I thought the room would be a little bit nicer, but our guide told us that the building use to be a garage, so they did quite a nice job turning the place around. She told us a little bit about the cases they have and had a little question-answer session before the President Judge came in to present to us. President Song was very informative and entertaining. He was able to give a lot of information and take questions within the half hour we had with him. Following his address, we were able to go up and watch one of the cases. They had super nice Bose headsets for us to get the proper translation of the witness (the main languages at the ICC are English and French). It was an intense case! Two men were being charged with three crimes against humanity and seven war crimes (I’ll spare you all the gory details). We were able to watch from the public gallery because it was an open trial; which was basically a room that we sat in and could watch the court through the glass (which is much smaller than any courtroom I’ve ever seen). From where I was sitting I could only see one of the men, but Zane could see both. We, unfortunately, only got to see part of the witness’ testimony before having to go back downstairs. We had a short break and few minutes to ask our guide any questions. Then we heard from a representative of the Presidency (he was from America :D) and a representative of the Office of Prosecutors. We were dismissed and took taxis back to the hotel, dropped off our things and hopped on the tram to go downtown. We were on a quick mission for some fresh Stroopwafel! We stopped in to Albert Heijn because the stop was right there to get some more goodies and head for the square that we were told the stand would be, but as we were walking down the alley we noticed that half of the shops were closed and I remembered that our tour guide had told us that all the shops start closing at 6:30 on Mondays (they have to make sure to honor FHE… JK!) So the stand wasn’t there and we were bummed. I got a bite to eat and we headed back for the night.

5/31/2011

While Zane was in class, I went back downtown to do some shopping. I didn’t think that I was going to be able to go to the courts when I planned for this trip, so I didn’t pack the most conservative of clothes, but after going in and out of stores, defeated in prices, I ended up only getting some nylons. I went back, hurried and got ready and waited for Zane to get out of class. We were going to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) that was just across the street from the hotel. But they checked our passports, so we still ended up being late. We were rushed through another lunch, but luckily we were smart this time and only got sandwiches. We were led up to their public gallery to watch the Radovan Karadzic trial!! Karadzic was representing himself and it was just so awesome to see history in the making! If you don’t know anything about him, you should definitely look up this genocide case. We were led to a meeting room where we got to hear from a Prosecutor at the ICTY. He had a power point that went into the gruesome details of the background of the ICTY and their cases.  We found out from him that the media that was surrounding the building was due to the transferring of Mladic to the ICTY today!! Because of this huge event, we were not able to hear from the President Judge and were let out early. Zane and I made another trip downtown and succeeded in getting fresh Stroopwafel and an entire outfit for under 20 Euros! :D

6/1/11

I went back to sleep while Zane was in class today. It was wonderful. After classes we had about an hour before meeting to go to the Peace Palace, so we grabbed a bite to eat at the gas station. We had gone past the Peace Palace several times on the tram going down town, but it was so much more beautiful the closer up we got. We actually arrived early today, but security wouldn’t let us go through until 2:30 because that was when we were scheduled to be there. As soon as we walked in, my eyes got big and my mouth hung open in awe of how completely gorgeous the building is. We had a few minutes before Boris, our tour guide, found us. We had gathered in the courtroom that the dispute between Cambodia and Thailand has taken place two days before. It was one beautiful and detailed room. Boris joined us there and explained about the case and the history of the room before moving us into the Red Room. Boris was a very funny and informing Frenchman; it was very enlightening to hear from him. After about an hour President Owada addressed us. It was very nice of him to give us an hour of his time, but it was very hard to stay awake with the thick accent, lack of air condition, and it being in the middle of the afternoon. He spoke straight through about different cases, but with 80 pages of reading for the next day, no one wanted to stay for questions. So we stayed in for a long and tiresome night.

6/2/11

Today was the first day that there wasn’t something going on after classes. So we went downtown to take pictures of all the cool buildings that we got to see on Sunday, but couldn’t take pictures of when my camera died. But before doing that we stopped to get some fries with mayonnaise (we thought they sounded disgusting, but we actually really enjoyed them) and kroketten (I don’t know how to even explain what this is, but it’s GOOD). After seeing all the sights and walking past all the shops we ended up deciding to just walk back to the hotel (because today was actually a holiday and a lot of the shops were closed). Stopping and taking pictures of all the cool things that we saw made the walk seem much shorter. We went in the hotel so Zane could read for class. We also worked hard at getting all of laundry washed, so it would have time to dry before we leave. When we were done, I was hungry and we were heading towards the beach, but we were tired and it was getting late, so we went back to the Shell station and bought some yummy chicken wraps. We decided to have dinner on the balcony and we were joined by Gianluca on the patio next to us. It was nice to chat with him for a bit, but then Zane got on the subject of futbol and I was then left in my own little world. We cleaned things up after and called it a night.

6/3/11

We made it through the first week of classes! Huzzah! We went to ask the front desk if we could rent a bike and they broke my heart by telling me that they had all been rented. I totally wanted to ride to the temple, because there was no way my little legs would walk 25 km in that heat and survive. So that was the first thing that we didn’t make on our list, hopefully there won’t be many more. So we decided to walk behind our hotel because we got to see a glimpse of it on our way back from the ICC and we saw a few parks. Well the park turned out to be even cooler than we thought. It was huge and there were several right by each other. One looked like it was mainly for kids with the typical playground, one appeared to be for local sunbathers, which was in front of a pond/lake, and the others just had several trails going through what seemed like a forest. On one of these paths, we just so happened to accidentally stumble upon the Madurodam, which is Holland on a miniature scale. We peeked over the fence to see it, because we’re too cheap to pay 14 Euros each to get in. We then walked back and headed towards the beach again and went to our favorite store, Albert Heijn. We looked in some of the stores that hadn’t ever been open on the other days that we had come down. We went towards the harbor and bought some Strawberry/Vanilla Vla (not as good as the chocolate/vanilla) and people watched while we decided on what to do for dinner. In the end we walked back to Albert Heijn and bought goodies to make sandwiches and went back to the hotel for the night.

6/4/11

Following breakfast this morning, we hopped on the tram, with 4 of the girls from the program, to the Hauge HS train station. From there we took a train to Amsterdam. It was incredible just to be there! I was in awe of how many people there were and how many freaking canals there really were. We were going to stay with the girls for a while because they were on their way to this huge flea market and I wanted to check it out, but we made a few stops along the way… They stopped in a couple of the local souvenir shops and the red light district. It wasn’t quite what I expected. I actually don’t think I would know if the girls didn’t say anything, but they made a turn and the next thing we know we were going down a prostitute alley with the girls in their doorways in just their underwear trying to lure in people. Poor Zane did his best to just to look down at all times. After that we weren’t sure what the girls were actually up to and with everything being legal and them not having the same standards as us, we decided to break out of the group and head towards the Anne Frank house instead of continuing on with them. I had read online that we should get to the museum early, so the line wouldn’t be so long, but we didn’t get there until after noon… We had the honor of waiting for an hour! The problem with the museum is there is not a lot of room inside to have people line up so the line wraps around the building, so we were out baking in the sun. I totally think it was worth it, I’m not sure if Zane would agree, but I thought it was awesome to actually stand in her room and see the actual diary and hear/read the stories. After wrapping things up there, we went to the Albert Heijn and bought more food to make sandwiches and sat on a bench and watched the local people and puppies J. We walked around a little more and went to one of the malls that I clearly couldn’t afford, but it was one of the most beautiful buildings! And we went into a few other little shops before deciding to head back because we were so hot and tired and so Zane could read for Monday. After getting back we packed all of our things up, got some ice cream bars at the gas station, and enjoyed our last night in the Netherlands.

6/5/11

We slept in a little longer today (HALLELUJAH)! Quick had our breakfast and headed down a little before we had to meet the group in the lobby, so we could check out. I am so glad Zane had us go down early, because it seemed like more than half of the hotel was checking out after us. So while we waited for everyone we watched people’s luggage/ Zane helped load the luggage onto the bus. Soon after we were on our way to Brussels on one of the nicest busses I’ve ever been on!