Orange Crush

So, didn’t expect another entry in my blog from me that quick did you now. Me neither, but as I am back from Holland for almost a week now I feel like I need to report on it, if this will not turn out to be an insightful blog, then may it at least serve as a memoir for my own purposes. Like I said, I am back in England for a week now, and honestly I do not know whether or not I’ve been alive, if the calendar would have said that it had been two days, or two weeks even, I would have believed it. In a failed attempt to enjoy the weather, with time lost going nowhere I have either wasted a whole week of my vacation or put it to the best possible use, which of the two it is, I cannot say with certainty. True enough, I don’t think I’ve had a real week like this past one for many years, and please do correct me if I am wrong, I did not even spend the whole week playing video games, haven’t touched one for months now really, so maybe it was time for me to live in a daze.

Surrounded by empty beer cans of which I am not certain when I drank them, and with a best of REM playing on my newly acquired 5.1 surround system, after getting so sick of two little laptop speakers that in a moment of “clarity” I headed into the town centre and half an hour later came walking back with this nice little setup in my hands, I think I am in proper surroundings to try and remember what exactly I did in Holland and put it into words.

Going back to Holland I think I was more nervous than when I was going to England by myself in the BMW, and why this was the case I am not sure, but before leaving I had promised myself that I would not return to the Netherlands until I was completely finished here in England, and by that not even meaning finishing the academic year but finishing all my money and other resources to make sure I would see as much as possible during my time here and ensuring a good use of my time. So with this in the back of my mind me and my good French friend Amélie, who joined me on my trip to the big NL, partly to ensure I would not turn too Dutch during my stay there and mostly to make sure I did enough touristy things to even prevent me from feeling Dutch, took the A40 bus from High Wycombe to Heathrow airport, and if you want to see how beautiful and ugly England can be I can recommend that you take this bus route. Along this path you shall find beautiful tree covered hills with the occasional stream running either down or through it, and then the next minute you will pass through a hillbilly village that hasn’t seen a proper architect or handyman even for many decades. Maybe I’ve mentioned this before but as soon as you get out of the cities in England, you almost feel as though you were in Eastern Europe where the houses are falling apart, or if they did fall apart then they left them there to rot, old farm equipment that has served well passed its time rests easily next to these houses and add a farm land background to that I really wasn’t sure whether I was driving through Poland or England. Let me also just clear up that this was more obvious on the bus ride from Heathrow to High Wycombe when we returned a week later, but I thought I’d set the mood.

The plane ride from England to Holland is a joke. You go up and you go down, there really isn’t more to it. KLM was kind enough to serve us a mini coke from a can, but came to pick up almost faster than anyone could drink it, and why they used cans it a complete mystery to me as well, if they had just bought a 2 liter bottle and poured from that not only would they have saved money but they could claim to be environmentally conscious as well, although that might lose its effect on a 40 minute plan ride on which more fuel is wasted than actually put to good use, but nonetheless I think I might have a point here. Arriving in sunny Amsterdam felt better than I think it should have, it was too familiar for it to have felt awkward and yet it was too awkward for it to be familiar. If that sentence didn’t make sense, try to read it again. Coming back “home” was a strange feeling as well, I think I had blocked that house, my room, the garden and everything from my head while I was in England, and yet it still felt as though I had never left. A walk on the Dutch beaches with the blind blowing really hard and the dogs running along was an excellent choice to try and put this new situation into perspective and a chance to see whether or not you could see England if you looked really long, this failed of course but might have some relevance when I go claim that insanity plea.

If you really want to know how much of a tourist I was in that one week while I was in Holland, let me recap what I did and surely you will not think that my passport says that I am Dutch. We visited: Amsterdam, Noordwijkerhout, Enschede (mostly the A1 highway though), The Hague, Kinderdijk, Enkhuizen, the Afsluitdijk, Keukenhof and Amsterdam again. And of course there was also the main reason that I came back to Holland, an Easter bowling and dinner with my family which was really enjoyable, but too short to really talk with anyone in depth. So maybe I’ll go into more detail about the trip, I was going to leave it a listing of what we had done, but I still have coffee in my mug so I’ll continue. Amsterdam on the first full day in Holland was good, in a sense that it really enhanced the tourist feeling I was trying to accomplish. And what are tourists supposed to do when they get out of the central station and the sun is shining and they are not really sure where to go? Exactly, a canal tour! I had done one of these before a couple of years earlier, but it was good for me to get some orientation back in Amsterdam and as much as I hate saying this, the tour is really nice. The tapes that say what were are looking at in four languages, all spoken without a hint of Dutch accent of course, are very entertaining by themselves, but the best part of these tours is the guy controlling the boat, I would refer to him as captain, but that would be too much of an honor, this guy had the best stories about people urinating on the boats we were in as well saying where to go not to go (not commissioned of course!), and then all of this in English with the biggest accent that I even had trouble understanding him sometimes, but that is part of the charm of Amsterdam as well, you can hear the Amsterdam accent the locals have when they speak Dutch even flow through perfectly in their English.

So after this most pleasurable boat ride it was time to get in some culture, history and all that good stuff so we headed down to the Anne Frank house. I had never been there before so I had no clue what to expect either but if that family could spend a couple years there, we could surely spend an afternoon. After standing in line outside of the house for a good half hour we got to go inside and do a self guided tour of the house. The wait outside was not bad at all by the way as the sun was still shining and the temperature was very comfortable, but it would have been nice if they served drinks or ice cream right outside, note to self, write that down. The house itself was more of a museum than a historic place, most of the original furniture was gone already and bare rooms with small exhibition stands remained. Even though they had done a great job in making this house into a worthwhile place to visit, it probably didn’t have the impact I would have imagined as you got the full story without getting the experience, the fact that all of that had taken place at the same location that we were standing had faded.

I could tell you all of the things we did in a minute to minute story, but that would bore you more than it would bore me and frankly I feel like writing that much anyway, I’ll continue with the story but will only mindlessly say too little with too many words for the parts that I feel like I can do that, and since you’re still reading, you must be interested anyway. Now a place that I had never really visited before, only very quickly and not taking the time to see all the sights is The Hague. Never before had it occurred to me that this is a pretty neat city as well, and yes I said neat mainly because I don’t want my limited vocabulary to shine through just yet. As far as I can recall, and again there is a chance that I am wrong, I had never before had the pleasure to see the Binnenhof, Buitenhof, Bovenhof and the Binnestebuitenhof in real life. I had purchased a city walking tour guide as I was as much of a tourist as Amélie was, and to save money I bought one which covered 40 Dutch cities and towns and because of that it only had limited information on each of them. After having a proper coffee we attempted to do the suggested tour of the Hague and because the book was in Dutch I did my best to point out all of the things of interest. The book failed me fast enough though as it said that we were supposedly in the royal gardens of the palace but we couldn’t figure out which building was the actually palace, so as it turned out later in the day we had mistaken the royal stables for the palace, so my compliments to the builders of the stables for making it look like a palace. Quickly enough I had decided that the tour we were supposedly following was not going to be as interesting as I hoped we followed the tourist information signs to the Panorama Mesdag, and on the way there it had occurred to me that there was a slight smell of horse coming from the “palace”. Now this Mesdag thing is overrated, the painting apparently is really big and they portray it in a way that it looks more like a scenery view so that you don’t even see it is a painting which for me ruined the effect a little, if they had framed the thing instead of putting sand in front of it I bet it would have been one of the most impressive paintings, and frames, I had ever seen. The dimensions of the painting we lost in the way it was portrayed and even though the tapes kindly informed us of the size of the thing, again in several different languages without a trace of Dutch accent (…), there was no way to actually tell it was that big. Although I might sound a little negative about going there, don’t think that I regret going there. It is one of the things that teachers tell you about in primary and secondary school and can leave a gap in your Dutch heritage feeling if left unattended, I was happy to have been there.

So, continuing on, I have even visited a place that I had no clue about before Amélie had suggested to go there, Kinderdijk. Maybe I have been told about its existence before, maybe not, either way I was completely oblivious to the fact it was there, and that it was such a tourist attraction as well. For those of you who don’t know what Kinderdijk is, and I don’t blame you for not knowing, it is a big field full of windmills. You might be thinking, “so what?” and those were my thoughts exactly, but apparently windmills are a very Dutch phenomenon and tourist love to go visit it as it is so unique, and since I was now a tourist and I dared not to object the fact that we going to visit it, and looking back it was a nice scenery and I must also admit I have not anything like it in any other country so I guess this makes me somewhat ignorant as well, but at least I have seen it now and can help further the promotion of the country I’m sometimes afraid of calling my own and rarely do even call it my own. Drifting off again. Oh yes! The Keukenhof, or the Kitchens Garden translated. Many years I’ve lived right by it, many years cursed at the Sunday traffic it brings in the months that it is open, and always laughed at the amount of Germans and Japanese that go to visit it, but never before I had actually had an open enough mind to go there and take a peek at what was behind all those trees. To my big surprise it was a worthwhile exhibition of many different flowers in a park that was so much bigger than I had hoped, but still did not grow weary of within the hour, I am not sure as to exactly how many hours we spent inside the park but it could’ve easily been four and we hadn’t even seen everything yet. After having lived in England for three months I guess it’s easier to appreciate the beauty that has been so normal for so many years, never before had I looked at flowers and not seen work, naturally I still saw a lot of work, but it didn’t feel as if I had to do it, or even still really knew how much work it was. And with that thought I think I’ll leave you for today, maybe I’ll be back with another story soon, who knows, as I am typing this in word before posting it on the internet I have not yet incorporated any pictures into the story and I think I’ll just make a small selection and post them right under here. It is time to go do something else as I would like have most of my assignments finished before going back to school and being too busy with drinking Guinness, as well as trying to find a work placement for the forthcoming semester, which in England is probably harder to find than a good meal. Ach ja.

Pictures!:

Amsterdam as seen from the boat.
Amsterdam vanaf het bootje.

So many bikes in Holland!
Wat zijn er toch veel fietsen in Nederland!

That's not me, I'm the one taking the picture.
Dat ben ik niet, ik ben degene die de foto neemt.

Ice cream anyone?
Iemand een ijsje?

Beautiful Palace! Or are these the stables?
Prachtig paleisjes! Of zijn dit de stallen?

Ah yes, I do pose for pictures sometimes.
Ja, soms sta ik ook op de foto.

Ah you see, this is the palace! At last! We've found it!
En dit is dus wel het paleis, uiteindelijk toch gevonden!

Kinderdijk, enough said.
Kinderdijk, genoeg gezegt.

Nice harbor town of Enkhuizen.
De mooie haven van Enkhuizen.

Yes, I was in the keukenhof, and no I did not sit there the whole time.
Ja, ik was in het keukenhof, en nee daar heb ik niet de hele tijd gezeten.

Amélie and I infront of the flower flields!
Amélie en ik bij de bollenvelden!

This post was created under the influence of R.E.M.’s “In Time – The Best of REM” and Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Blood Sugar Sex Magik”.

Dancing Through Sunday

Ever had one of those mornings where you slowly wake up, still laying comfortably in your bed and then start to think that it must be well into the afternoon and upon realization of that you jump out of bed too quickly because there are things that need doing, only once you’ve done that you look at the clock and see that it is not even passed 9 am yet. With a head that woke up too quickly and the coffee that can’t be made fast enough is how I will write to you all this time. I will not promise it is going to be as much text as the other time; we’ll just start here and see how far we can get without overdosing on caffeine and still not waking up.

When I left you last time I told you about the gig I went to here in Wycombe, and that feels so far away, I don’t even remember exactly what date it was that I went there but if I look at the date that I posted my blog and see the reference to the gig being “last night” then I sorta figured it out already, making the last two sentences completely useless, and doesn’t that make you happy knowing that what you’ve just read was actually useless. It started a new paragraph nicely though. I don’t recall exactly what I’ve done day by day in that time since then so here are a few of the highlights: going to Bristol and going to Holland. If there is something I missed in the highlights then let me apologize in advance and tell you that life has been moving much too quick lately for me to keep a clear track of everything, but I will try and report on as much as I can, also to make sure that I will remember in two weeks what I’ve been up to here!

Bristol.

To honor the start of the infamous “Easter Break” I had to get out of High Wycombe for no real reason actually, other than regretting not having seen a whole lot of the UK yet. And for those of you that do not know, Easter break here is basically a three week excuse to do nothing at all, drink too much in the pub and then after three weeks coming back and wondering where those weeks went, much like the famous US spring break I guess, the main difference being that they use a religious excuse here. Anyway, I spent the first Saturday of this break in Bristol, why Bristol? I don’t know really, it was a city I hadn’t been yet, and now I have, so it’s other one that can marked off the long list of cities and places that I still want to visit. In order to make this blog more readable, and fun for the picture tourists that seem to outnumber the people that actually come here to read what I have to say I will not say too much about my visit there, but let you watch some of the pictures instead. Even though my talents for picture taking aren’t all that great… enjoy.

This is my housemate sleeping in back of my car while we drove down to Bristol.
(Mijn huisgenoot lag lekker te slapen achter in mijn auto terwijl we naar Bristol reden.)

A nice harbor view of Bristol ...very pretty!!
(De haven van Bristol, mooi he!!)

Proof I was there.
(Bewijs dat ik d'r ook was.)

Churches! Churches! Churches! My newly found obsession.
(Kerken! Kerken! Kerken! Een nieuwe obessesie van mij.)

A view from the hill with the watchtower, be patient.
(Uitzicht over Bristol vanaf de heuvel met de uitkijktoren, even geduld.)

And there is the watchtower! It looks more impressive than it really is and should you dare to go inside and up to the top, prepare to come down with trembling feet as two way traffic passes through a staircase barely big enough to fit me.
(En daar is dan de uitkijktoren! Hij ziet er op de foto indrukwekkender uit dan dat ie werkelijk is en als je naar binnen en boven durft te gaan kom je met knikkende knieen naar beneden want mensen die naar beneden en naar boven gaan, moeten dat met een trap die net aan groot genoeg was voor mij.)

Could the view be worth it...?
(Misschien is het uitzicht het wel waard?)

More proof I was there, if you look closely.
(Nog meer bewijs dat ik d'r ook was, als je goed kijkt.)

This looked pretty impressive and from this day forth shall be called the Bristol Sphere (if that wasn't it's name already).
(Dit zag d'r ook wel indrukwekkend uit en heet vanaf nu de Bristol Sphere (als dat nog niet het geval was)).

Look! Another church! yay! This one had no roof actually, the Germans bombed it during the second world war, and this goes to prove the British laziness when it comes to home improvement.
(Kijk nou! Nog een kerkje! Deze had geen dak, die hadden de Duitsers d'r af gebombadeerd, gewoon bewijs dat de Engelse heel lui zijn als het om gebouwen opknappen gaat.)

Ohh!! Before I completely forget, my little sister came to drink a cup coffee at my house the day after I went to Bristol. Lekker bakkie, koekie, gezellig he ;)

Yeah this was just to make sure I mentioned it.

So now that I have provided you with pictures, are really satisfied? Is there a craving for more pictures? Will it not make my blog load to slow, or have you purchased a faster internet connection since then? Whatever the case may be I will leave you at this point for now, but will return very quick with another update to tell you all about my adventures in this small country called the Netherlands. Have a good one!

This post was created under the influence of the Spin Doctor's "Go Ahead Now, A Retrospective".

Untitled

It seems that as spring came into High Wycombe, I disappeared from the blog. Which in essence is true. In the time since my last blog, it has basically just been me living the rhythm acquired here, and not a whole lot of exciting trips to report about. Not that I don’t do anything, but I guess that it has all been so normal to me now that I haven’t seen the need to report on any of it. Look at it as a sign of integration!

Since I last posted I did go out to see Cambridge though. This wasn’t even my first visit there! When I drove into England I got so lost by the poor road signs on the highways that I ended up in Cambridge before realizing I was heading north instead of west, I think it will be wise to install a compass in my car. Speaking of which, just last weekend as I did my weekly shopping did I pass the 1000 km mark since leaving my front door in Holland. Which is rather remarkable since I could easily drive this distance in less than two weeks in Holland, but here it took me two months? Going back to Cambridge. Getting there took us nearly 2 hours and we took the wrong train which stopped in every Hill Billy village in the countryside. This did make the train trip enjoyable as well though, I for one have never realized the amount of country side England has, vast plains with small hills being used for nothing, a farm here, an abandoned silo there. Cambridge itself is a very beautiful city with university buildings so old that it could make anyone visiting there feel young. One of the most extraordinary buildings there is the King’s College Chapel, a big church with a lot of decorations on both the in and outside. We couldn’t resist going in there to take a look and see what it was like. I think I probably saw the biggest organ ever, even beating the ones that Satan and Dracula like to use in the movies. Walking around in Cambridge and seeing all different types of architecture can easily fill a good day, and that is what we did! Only when it started raining (always a grim reminder that you are in England), did we go into the Fitzwilliam museum and found a nice exhibition on European art from the 17^th to 18^th century. And as we once again were with a very diverse group of people, everyone (including myself) enjoyed looking at the paintings. The thing that struck me the most though was that all of the British paintings being displayed there had to do with the bible. Now this seems pretty normal for this time period, but as we looked at German, French and Dutch art, it was either more subtle or not there at all. This goes ties in with another observation I’ve made over the past few weeks, every village, town and city is literally swarming with churches. Even here in High Wycombe I will have passed three churches before I see my first pub! People say that in New York, and other US cities, there is a Starbucks on every street corner, I think here there is either a Church, Mosque or other place of worship on every corner. And if it’s not there, there will be sign saying that it is three houses down the road. And does this encourage the British people to attend church? I don’t think so, the churches don’t really seem to be pulling in the people, but they are all still standing there using up space and wasting money. Maybe Starbucks should try to set up in some of the churches, they could make coffee with holy water and probably attract new audiences into the churches. Oh, I almost forgot, the churches that do seem to do really well though, are the ones that offer services in Polish. As there is major reconstruction going on in the town centre here, the area is also swarming with Polish people. Last week I even ordered a coffee in Polish! Imagine that.

I did get a taste of the British religious endeavors last weekend though. It’s probably more Irish than British, but a reason to get completely pissed (British for drunk) is good enough for most of the people here. It was St. Patrick’s Day!! The biggest Irish pride day of the year and probably celebrated in more countries unofficially than officially, but a real happening nonetheless. On top of that it was the day of the final matches of the RBS Six Nations rugby tournament. This is something I started watching in the pubs and really started enjoying, I feel pretty familiar with the rules now but don’t have the ambition to play myself. Ok, so back to St. Patrick, aka St. Pat, Pat, Paddy, Paddie, the list goes on. Out of all the English people I’ve asked what this guy was all about, no one could give me a clear answer. “He was some Irish dude that got rid of all the snakes in Ireland apparently. “ It was probably the most repeated answer I got, so that’s what I settled with as well. Until it was actually St. Patrick’s day and he now stands in my mind as the one true holy man from Christianity as he now encourages people to go down to the pub and drink Guinness all day long! Normally the pubs in town open at noon, but on St. Pat’s they were all open at 10 am and they were filled already! These British must have woken up, looked at the calendar and said “Ok, I’ve got 30 minutes to get to the pub”. (Just as a side note, one of the things most regularly said and thought by the exchange students here is “Argh, British”, with British pronounced with the local accent, Bri’ish. This statement is used whenever we encounter something none of us can explain but seems perfectly normal here; one of the examples is the double water tap system I explained earlier). So in accordance with this great tradition, me and my housemate went into town at 11 and straight to the pub to drink a coffee, one of the two black drinks allowed on this day. Then we did some shopping, ate something back home and went back to the pub to watch the rugby. By this time we were joined by another four or five people and the St. Patrick’s Guinness adventure had begun! Watching sports in the pub is really a happening here in England, it doesn’t really matter who is playing, or what they are playing for that matter, there will always be plenty of people who support a particular team and will shout, cheer and cry for them. So after Ireland had won the first match of the day, they had won the championship, then when France won the second game of the day, they had won the championship. It was then up to England to score 60 points more than Wales in the final match of the day for them to come out as champions. What happened though, is that Wales beat the English with an almost pathetic effort by the English team. This was actually a bad thing, I had been in the pub with several French people cheering for the French team first, and then we thought it would appropriate to support Wales in their match against England. Now at the end of this match we did get a couple of angry british looks, but still a lot of people came over to congratulate me on the French victory …they all thought I was French even with my Dutch farmer look. Now comes the sad part of the story. Normally this pub serves food until 9pm and with the last match ending at seven we thought we’d order some food so we could stay in the pub the rest of the night. However, because of St. Pat’s they had stopped serving at seven, so we were just out of luck and actually had to leave to get food. When we arrived back a couple of hours later, there was a line to get into the pub …with a waiting time of one and a half hours!! This is the only “real” Irish pub in town, and although most of the other pubs had official St. Patrick’s celebrations, this was the place to be. We decided to go to another pub and drink some Guinness there as it was really cold and we didn’t feel like standing in line. When we returned 2 Guinnesses later to the Irish pub, the line had gone and the party was still in full swing so that’s where we finished the night and cheered for the one true holy man until closing time. To recap, on this day I had been to four different pubs, went in and out of one them 3 times and since closing time in the UK is 2 am, we had an after party until about 4. Now you might think why is he so elaborately describing this day of foolish drunkenness to us? Well since I am in England, not only to study but explore their culture as well, I thought it appropriate to comment on my adventures on one of the UK’s most fitting annual celebrations.

As far as school goes, it’s being going ok. Nice sentence there. We have finally begun to do some work and assignments are now coming through and I have finished some of them. I think I commented earlier on how I thought that these assignments were too easy as some of them only required 1,000 words and were worth 50% of the final mark. Now, if you have read through the whole thing up till now you have read 1,661 words. So a thousand words literally is nothing. But that is the catch, try to say exactly what you want/need in such little words in the most difficult part of the assignments, it really limits your abilities to explore topics but forces you to be very precise. However in an assignment I had to do for my finance class, 75% of the grade was simply putting some numbers into excel and then a brief description of the results, which really was not a whole lot of work but all of the local students did freak out about it, so either it was too easy for me or I thought too easy of it, should I receive a grade for it before I leave here I’ll surely comment on it. Which brings me to another interesting thing, we only need to receive a grade of 40% to pass an assignment or a course. I’m not sure about this but I think there is a dark side to this as well, if you only need 40 to pass, that means it will be nearly impossible to get anything close to 100, and that a 75 will be quite the accomplishment as well.

Last night I went to my first official gig here in the UK. Disappointing really, that in the two months that I’ve been here now I’ve failed to really go to a concert, and what I went to last night was hardly one as well. One of the barmen from my favourite pub said that there would be hardcore (punk ;p) show in a local venue here in town and said that I would most likely enjoy it. So there I went, a 30 minute walk to the venue which I had never been to before because it’s pretty far out of town and upon arrival found the place pretty empty. There were about 30 people there, including four guys on stage playing already, but I found out later that the place could only hold up to 100 people max. When someone says hardcore in Holland, it will refer the likes of Thunderdome, when someone says hardcore in the US it refers mostly to the New York Hardcore punk scene(or the decedents of it), and here it’s something completely different. The bands playing played something that combined screamo, hardcore, emo, rock ‘n’ roll, and even a little taste of the electronica side of things. Nonetheless, all the band members, and crowd looked like love deprived emo kids and all of the lyrics to the songs were screamed through the microphone in such a way that I couldn’t understand a word of it. Normally I have no problem with this kinda thing and actually enjoy it, but this time there were four bands doing the exact same thing and not a single note was actually sung, two of the bands even wanted to encourage the crowd to sing-a-long with the 1:15 minute screaming sessions which surprisingly they couldn’t. I think this might be a new generation of hardcore which is great, but when critically analyzing it even some of the people that were there agreed with me that there were little possibilities for this kind of music. Even the emotionally drunk emo kids want to sing-a-long to something while they cut their wrists and not have to mumble words that could possibly be different words and give a completely different meaning to it. Now, you may not get the impressions that I didn’t enjoy myself at the gig, I actually did. It was good to hear fast drums, guitars and having the kick drum dominate when the blood in your neck moves up and down. And probably if the venue was filled I would have moshed for a while, but now there was only a little hardcore dancing going on, and for those of you who know what that is will also know that that is not violent enough for me.

As I now have three pages filled in word and feel like I’ve rambled more than actually said anything I will leave it at this for now. If you got through the whole thing in one pull without drinking a beer than I congratulate you, have you not managed and aren’t even sure that you read, or even understood, all I’ve written then I don’t blame you, I myself am actually too lazy to go read through it again to see if all makes sense, which at this point doesn’t even really matter anymore does it?

Oh and Nard, before you do a word count, yes it is 2,452 words.

This post was created under the influence of Incubus’s “Light Grenades” and Social Distortion’s “White Light, White Heat, White Trash”.