Monday, January 31, 2011
Birds & Bikes
Holland boasts a profusion of bicycles and water birds. There are especially a lot of ducks and great blue herons. They are probably drawn to the canals and small bodies of water that pepper and stripe the landscape. Here are pictures of bikes, birds and land they inhabit.
Friday, January 28, 2011
Welcome to Utrecht
I love my city, Utrecht. It is around 300,000 people. You can find all shops you need here, and at the same time, the city seems provincial (in a good way.) The only thing difficult to find in Utrecht is bubble wrap… There are brick streets. A series of canals run parallel to the road. My city boasts flower sellers, boutiques, bookstores, cafes. A haberdashery. The old shares space with the new: one sees modern stores like Apple and McDonalds beside buildings like my favorite tea shop, which is built below ground in an ancient stone cellar lit by lamps. Your tea is served in non-matching antique porcelain tea cups and your carrot cake is served on elegantly-painted saucers. Nestled in the heart of the city are some academic buildings. They mostly house the law faculty, and some of the humanities masters programs, like mine, “cultural history.” There are a few caveats. For example, everything closes at 5 or 6. This reflects the Dutch norm of working less hours than Americans. All in all, however, it is a charming place to live. I am a bit removed from the city. Most of my classmates live a stone’s throw from our classes. I bike twenty-five minutes one way to class. Everything is relative, however, and by this point in the year, the bike ride feels like nothing(even though my gear is currently locked on the highest setting…)I took these photographs yesterday, early afternoon. Though my fingers were cold enough to be wearing mittens, the sun radiated.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
January and February Notes
Hobbies
With the help of a nearby second-hand store, I am transforming my once somber room into a bona fide Paula Paradise. When I moved in, my room was drab with horrid floral curtains. All of that is changing. To start, I have new curtains. Also, I made pottery mosaics around a huge wall mirror. I made the mosaic with cement from a hardware store and broken bits of colored pottery. The colors happened to be red, white and blue, both America’s colors and Dutch flag colors. I have painted furniture. New posters and pictures adorn the walls.
Additionally, I have been getting more involved in Bikram yoga and spinning. My roommate introduced me to Bikram yoga. As a reminder, I bend myself into a slightly misshapen human-pretzel for an hour-and-a-half in a wood-paneled room heated to 105 Fahrenheit and then I go outside in the freezing cold, and then back inside where I take a hot shower.
Spinning is new to me. My friend Jitske introduced me to it. For forty-five minutes you furiously peddle on a stationary bike with dozens of others. The instructor is speaking in Dutch, but you follow the motions of everyone rising and falling and are able to keep up. A loud techno and pop beat thrums in the background and disco lights flash in the slightly-darkened room. The description sounds bizarre, but it is brilliant exercise and surprisingly rejuvenating.
Rotary Presentations
I gave my first rotary presentation last week and believe it was a smash success. I did not use a power point, though I have a jazzy one I made if I need to use it. The only sad part is that once presentations are through, I cannot get to know the jovial rotarians more. So far, the Dutch rotarians I have met are witty, genuine and kind. Genuine is a key word. Like most Dutch people, they say what they mean. There is comfort in that. Usually, they have nice words to say.
Academics
My classes are wrapping up. I will be excited to finish my last two papers of the block and start taking two new classes in February. My classes will be on "Culture and Identity in Europe" and "The History of Religion in Europe." After that block, I have one block left in which I write my thesis. I am still developing thoughts on the subject.
Social Life
At first, I found it difficult getting acclimated to the Netherlands, to feel at home. Despite the nation’s reputation for party-crazed-nights, most students I know stay indoors in the evenings. This sometimes makes it hard to meet people. For instance, to socialize here, you must have friends and then, they invite you to their homes. Fortunately, this has happened for me. My feet, which once felt in the air, now feel planted on terra firma. Riding a bike regularly, taking public transportation, buying cheese in a market, all of these things come easier now. Proost to that! (Cheers in Dutch.)
With the help of a nearby second-hand store, I am transforming my once somber room into a bona fide Paula Paradise. When I moved in, my room was drab with horrid floral curtains. All of that is changing. To start, I have new curtains. Also, I made pottery mosaics around a huge wall mirror. I made the mosaic with cement from a hardware store and broken bits of colored pottery. The colors happened to be red, white and blue, both America’s colors and Dutch flag colors. I have painted furniture. New posters and pictures adorn the walls.
Additionally, I have been getting more involved in Bikram yoga and spinning. My roommate introduced me to Bikram yoga. As a reminder, I bend myself into a slightly misshapen human-pretzel for an hour-and-a-half in a wood-paneled room heated to 105 Fahrenheit and then I go outside in the freezing cold, and then back inside where I take a hot shower.
Spinning is new to me. My friend Jitske introduced me to it. For forty-five minutes you furiously peddle on a stationary bike with dozens of others. The instructor is speaking in Dutch, but you follow the motions of everyone rising and falling and are able to keep up. A loud techno and pop beat thrums in the background and disco lights flash in the slightly-darkened room. The description sounds bizarre, but it is brilliant exercise and surprisingly rejuvenating.
Rotary Presentations
I gave my first rotary presentation last week and believe it was a smash success. I did not use a power point, though I have a jazzy one I made if I need to use it. The only sad part is that once presentations are through, I cannot get to know the jovial rotarians more. So far, the Dutch rotarians I have met are witty, genuine and kind. Genuine is a key word. Like most Dutch people, they say what they mean. There is comfort in that. Usually, they have nice words to say.
Academics
My classes are wrapping up. I will be excited to finish my last two papers of the block and start taking two new classes in February. My classes will be on "Culture and Identity in Europe" and "The History of Religion in Europe." After that block, I have one block left in which I write my thesis. I am still developing thoughts on the subject.
Social Life
At first, I found it difficult getting acclimated to the Netherlands, to feel at home. Despite the nation’s reputation for party-crazed-nights, most students I know stay indoors in the evenings. This sometimes makes it hard to meet people. For instance, to socialize here, you must have friends and then, they invite you to their homes. Fortunately, this has happened for me. My feet, which once felt in the air, now feel planted on terra firma. Riding a bike regularly, taking public transportation, buying cheese in a market, all of these things come easier now. Proost to that! (Cheers in Dutch.)
Friday, January 21, 2011
Protest!
Today, classes were officially canceled for a protest. I took the forty-minute train ride to the Hague, joining Dutch students protesting university tuition hikes.
The Hague is the seat of the Dutch parliament and Royal Court. The protest was supposed to start in a field, across from the government headquarters at 1:00. By eleven, the trains were stuffed with students.
Students overflowed from the train station, winding in a enormous procession onto the field. Thousands, from as far away as Groningen (three hours north) attended. Portable toilets were set up. Stands sold food. Students blew into megaphones and on blue plastic whistles. I photographed banners, students, young and old, police on horses.The earth was soon dark and muddy from foot traffic. Police officers stood peacefully nearby.
A group of boys carried a large boom box onto the field. A thundering beat pulsed through the entire crowd, audible a ten-minute walk from the protestors. Dutch politicians spoke. A procession of teachers stood with studentes in solidarity. It was a thrill.
The tuition raise measures will be voted on in a few months; hopefully the protest will make a difference.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Berlin with the Dutchies
I sometimes refer to my Dutch friends as Dutchies since saying "the Dutch people" is a mouthful. Yesterday, we returned from a week long class field trip to Berlin, Germany.
We visited 3-5 monuments, memorials, art and history museums a day. I would describe Berlin as not a very attractice city with a lot to do. There is a fierce abundance of gray, concrete and steel. My class is studying the different dimensions of the Cold War and so visiting Germany was a logical extension of our studies. To see East Berlin, Potsdam, pieces of the Wall and Berlin itself was fantastic.
Among other Berlin highlights, my class visited a section of the Berlin wall that is still standing and has been turned into a memorial and painted by artists from around the world. My fourteen classmates walked the city from end to end, our miles on foot supplemented by use of the train with our week-long public transportation pass. From the windows we saw wonderful murals and street art.
Pictures of the Berlin Wall (decorated by artists)
:
Most of the sights we saw--the DDR Museum, the Stasi Museum (the Stasi were the Ministry of State Security in East Germany, modeled after the violent KGB of Russia)and displays at the Germany History Museum-- revolved around Cold War events. When we were not seeing events dealing with Cold War oppression in a divided Germany, we were retracing the horrors of the Holocaust. Berlin is a city that refuses to forget. It has erected monuments, memorials and museums--like the Jewish History Museum--that confront a bloody history.
What I liked best about the Berlin trip was not Berlin. The city--the one from which my grandmother on my mom's side fled with her parents when she was three in 1933--makes me sick. And grateful. If my great-parents had not had the foresight to leave when they had (we are Jewish) then I would not be here. Berlin is a city of open spaces--architecturally. I felt a lot of hollow spaces inside metaphorically while I was there, too. The things I liked the best were moments that took me away from the beaded handbag with a swastika on it in the natural history museum: friends, music and art.
1. Friends
What I adore about my classmates is that I can talk to anyone for almost any amount of time and not get bored. Though we had a few talkers on board--people that talk like machines with no natural stopping point, there was not the cult of snobbery that seems to inflict many American youth. The national Dutch value of embracing the collective instead of the individual is manifest in the students who I have come to know and befriend. If they see you walking somewhere alone, they will ask, do you want me to come with you. If there are not enough chairs at a table for you, they will push together tables to make room. Are cliques an American invention? The ego does not seem as important to the Dutch as to Americans. They are not concerned with being right 100% of the time, they care more about the discussion, more about nuance. They don’t seem to see everything in black and white (as I often do) they think in more shaded terms (their political system has many, many parties, in America we have two main parties which can lead to people always thinking in a binary instead of a multiplicity of ways.)
Dinner and friends:
2. Music
The hostel we stayed in was within walking distance of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra,(Berliner Philharmoniker) under the direction of Hans Adler. One evening, my class decided to split up (we usually ate dinner together in sundry restaurants.) Upon departing from the train at ten til' eight p.m I saw crowds of people shuffling towards the Orchestra. I walked a few moments in the opposite direction towards the hostel we were staying in. Then, I pivoted and turned around. I'm going the wrong direction, I told myself, and gleefully followed the crowds into the concert hall building, where I inquired into whether any student tickets were still available. The ticket was only ten euros and I had prime seats, middle and center. The concert hall was bowl-shaped, with seats rising up from all sides. In the middle was a small floor with the piano where I listened, enchanted. For the next two hours I enjoyed the works of French concert pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. When I bought the ticket I did not know who or what was playing. It became a night of extraordinary music by the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, Chopin and Wagner (and a request for Brahms from a member of the audience.) I could not stop watching Thibaudet's fingers flit and fly across the keys. Two hours felt like forty minutes.
3. Art
My favorite art experience in Berlin was seeing the studio of Werner Brunner(b 1941). This visit was organized by my great professor, Joes Segal in our class on the Cold War. Werner Brunner's Studio:
We visited 3-5 monuments, memorials, art and history museums a day. I would describe Berlin as not a very attractice city with a lot to do. There is a fierce abundance of gray, concrete and steel. My class is studying the different dimensions of the Cold War and so visiting Germany was a logical extension of our studies. To see East Berlin, Potsdam, pieces of the Wall and Berlin itself was fantastic.
Among other Berlin highlights, my class visited a section of the Berlin wall that is still standing and has been turned into a memorial and painted by artists from around the world. My fourteen classmates walked the city from end to end, our miles on foot supplemented by use of the train with our week-long public transportation pass. From the windows we saw wonderful murals and street art.
Pictures of the Berlin Wall (decorated by artists)
:
Most of the sights we saw--the DDR Museum, the Stasi Museum (the Stasi were the Ministry of State Security in East Germany, modeled after the violent KGB of Russia)and displays at the Germany History Museum-- revolved around Cold War events. When we were not seeing events dealing with Cold War oppression in a divided Germany, we were retracing the horrors of the Holocaust. Berlin is a city that refuses to forget. It has erected monuments, memorials and museums--like the Jewish History Museum--that confront a bloody history.
What I liked best about the Berlin trip was not Berlin. The city--the one from which my grandmother on my mom's side fled with her parents when she was three in 1933--makes me sick. And grateful. If my great-parents had not had the foresight to leave when they had (we are Jewish) then I would not be here. Berlin is a city of open spaces--architecturally. I felt a lot of hollow spaces inside metaphorically while I was there, too. The things I liked the best were moments that took me away from the beaded handbag with a swastika on it in the natural history museum: friends, music and art.
1. Friends
What I adore about my classmates is that I can talk to anyone for almost any amount of time and not get bored. Though we had a few talkers on board--people that talk like machines with no natural stopping point, there was not the cult of snobbery that seems to inflict many American youth. The national Dutch value of embracing the collective instead of the individual is manifest in the students who I have come to know and befriend. If they see you walking somewhere alone, they will ask, do you want me to come with you. If there are not enough chairs at a table for you, they will push together tables to make room. Are cliques an American invention? The ego does not seem as important to the Dutch as to Americans. They are not concerned with being right 100% of the time, they care more about the discussion, more about nuance. They don’t seem to see everything in black and white (as I often do) they think in more shaded terms (their political system has many, many parties, in America we have two main parties which can lead to people always thinking in a binary instead of a multiplicity of ways.)
Dinner and friends:
2. Music
The hostel we stayed in was within walking distance of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra,(Berliner Philharmoniker) under the direction of Hans Adler. One evening, my class decided to split up (we usually ate dinner together in sundry restaurants.) Upon departing from the train at ten til' eight p.m I saw crowds of people shuffling towards the Orchestra. I walked a few moments in the opposite direction towards the hostel we were staying in. Then, I pivoted and turned around. I'm going the wrong direction, I told myself, and gleefully followed the crowds into the concert hall building, where I inquired into whether any student tickets were still available. The ticket was only ten euros and I had prime seats, middle and center. The concert hall was bowl-shaped, with seats rising up from all sides. In the middle was a small floor with the piano where I listened, enchanted. For the next two hours I enjoyed the works of French concert pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet. When I bought the ticket I did not know who or what was playing. It became a night of extraordinary music by the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, Chopin and Wagner (and a request for Brahms from a member of the audience.) I could not stop watching Thibaudet's fingers flit and fly across the keys. Two hours felt like forty minutes.
3. Art
My favorite art experience in Berlin was seeing the studio of Werner Brunner(b 1941). This visit was organized by my great professor, Joes Segal in our class on the Cold War. Werner Brunner's Studio:
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