Den Haag

I had originally thought I'd show up in The Hague, wander around the city for a bit, make my way to the beachside suburb of Scheveningen, tram down to the ParkPop festival, and call it a day, taking a tram to Antwerp next for a few days in Belgium. I dropped my stuff of in the hostel and, putting the citymap away in my back pocket, starting aimlessly ambling through the city. I saw lots of great buildings whose names and functions I had no idea, just soaking in the atmosphere of thi city, which was, frankly, nicer than Amsterdam. Amsterdam is big and touristy and 95% of the tourists are there to see/experience two things; those things are not the Van Gogh museum and the tulips. This gives Amsterdam an air of rushed expectation. The Hague was much more laid back, much more charming with a more authentic feel, and much more empty. I was really digging the city when, walking down some street I heard a kid's voice call out "Abba." Now, I don't know Dutch, but almost a week here has given me the ability to recognize the phonetics, and I knew that Abba is not Dutch. I turned round and saw a man walking with two young children, and he had a kippah on! I went right up to him and said to the effect of "nice to see another kippah here;" I assumed he was also a tourist as I didn't think there was a Jewish community here. I was quite wrong. He told me he lives here in The Hague, that the Jewish community was having a BBQ, and that if I wanted to come run a few errands first, he'd take me to the BBQ. I eagerly accepted and made friends with his two kids in the car on our way to the hardware stores (Iyrgalen, 6, and Ronit, 3). The BBQ was fun and, and to increase the funky cooincideces of the day, I met a young couple who, three months before, moved to the Country Club area of Teaneck, not an 8 minute walk from my parents' house, who are living for two years here in The Hague for work. Wild! We even got to talk about the Young Israel of Teaneck!
After the BBQ we all went to Scheveningen, to the beach, where I played with the kids and, finally, ate some amazing herring. The beach was, well, a beach. Nice sand, decent water, tons of people, nothing new. The herring was though. They sell entrie fish that are beheaded and lightly salted and covered in chopped onions. You hold them by the tail, tilt your head all the way back, drop the fish in, and bite of a nice chunk. The texture is soft but the flesh is quite firm, not like the nasty cream sauce-mayonaissey stuff in the states, and it is not overly salty like our matjes (and I had matjes here as well as the normal herring). Final opinion: awesome. I will never eat herring the same way again. Eat that old Hungarian gys from Rabbi Friedman's shtiebel! (And no kichel here!)
After the beach I went back to the hostel to shower (did I mention, by the way, that the hostel I am in here is amazing?) and then I took the tram to the ParkPop festival. I got there with just two hors to the end, but I got to see Alpha Blondie, Nena, and Danko Jones perform. The festival itself was huge, a nine hour music extravaganza spread out over three massive stages set up over a grand expanse of field, covered in hundreds of thousands of people, soda and beer cups, and food wrappers. I've never been to Woodstock, but this was the closest I'll ever ever get. The sheer size of the it and the amount of people in attendance was staggering, and at least 80% of the people there were stoned or some level of drunk. It was pretty intense. I have never heard of any of the performers either, but they played some pretty good music.
Today I wandered around a really nice 15th centruy town called Delft. It was sooo hot, and after a few hours of walking and seeing some really nic buildings, I lay down on the grass in one of the parks and passed out for half an hour. The heat drains you, especially when carrying around a bunch of stuff and walking a lot. After the nap I felt better, and I went back to The Hague to walk around a bit more, and to go back to Scheveningen to sit on the beach and read (it was empty today) and have a last herring. As I dangled the herring over my mouth, actually already in my mouth, a seagull divebombed and grabbed the fish right out of my hand, whacking me in the face in the process. It was pretty hilarious, and I started cracking up; the bystanders who saw what happened laughed as well, and I got a new herring at no extra charge. I went to the shul for mincha/maariv, and called it a day. Tomorrow I go to Antwerp.
Today I

Amsterdam

I spent the first day in Amsterdam walking. I walked around in the morning on my own, I went on a guided walking tour in the afternoon, and I walked around more in the evening and night. I like Amsterdam, it is chraming. I wasn't shocked by anything, everything was as I expected. The architecture is nice, the canals are charming, the red light district is, well, what you would expect. The best thing I saw was a raft made of a flat wooden floor with six plastic oildrums bolted to the bottom and an outboard motor and couch on top. That was it. Two guys were just literally couch surfing down one of the canals.
The second day I rented a bike and biked in Amsterdam Noord (north) where I saw lots of fields and canals and cows and even some of the famous windmills. The bike ride was nice, and very easy (this country is so flat!), but it was then that I made the decision to come home early. I am still kicking myself for it, but I am sure it will all work out in the end. At night I took a walk and stumbled upon the International Thetre School's fesival/party and joined, where I found out about ParkPop, supposedly the biggest pop music festival in Europe, kind of like the European Woodstock, which takes place in Den Haag. Just that morning I got an email from Ephraim teling me about the amazing herring in Scheveningen, a beach suburb of Den Haag, and I decided to go after shabbos.
I had planned to go to the museums in Amsterdam on Friday, but after seeing how much they wanted to charge (14 euro for Van Gogh and 12.50 for the Rijksmueum, which was mostly closed undergoing renovations) I decided to skip the museums, and I walked around the last bits of the city that I had not seen yet, including Vondelpark, a realy nice park, and the outdoor Bloemenmarkt, the flower market, where the two most ubiquitous products were tulip bulbs and cannbis seeds.
After I was finished with the city I went to the family I was staying at for shabbos, the son of the family I ate with last week in London. Nice family, their kids have the reddest hair I have ever seen. If you look straight at their heads you get blinded, it was that intensely and brightly red. There was another North american there for shabbos, a Canadian med student who was an absolute pleasure to talk to. He did philosophy in undergrad and has a masters in theoretical physics and is now in med school and we had some brilliant conversation, easily the highlight of shabbos.
Shabbos endd extremely late (we didn't make havdallah until 12, the fast is going to be torture), and after showering and using the internet, I got to bed at around 2.
And woke up at 6 to catch the tain to Den Haag.
All shabbos and before people were telling me that Amsterdam is the only thing really worthwhile seeing in The Netherlands, that it is a boring country, that the rest of it is just plain old nothing. I never believe people when they say things like that, especially if they are city people. As a New Yorker, I am also biased against the surrounding areas, so I went to Den Haag anyway, especially as there was that huge music festival going on and great herring to try. I was only going to stay a day, but something happened that made me stay for longer.

Arriving in Amsterdam

Easyjet is a pretty decent airlines. I've heard horror stories, but the plane was new, the seats were of reasnable size, and for the price of a 12 hours bus-ferry-train trip, I took a 45 minute flight (and I am including the baggage fee that Easyjet adds). Sure, from the time I left the city of London until the time I got to my hostel was actually four and a half hours, but the train ride that was twice the price of my journey takes the same amount of time. I sat next to two Dutch sisters on their way home from a London shopping spree and we ended up talking for the entire flight, the baggae collection, and then, when my credit cards failed to work in the ticket machine at the airport, Sven, a boyfriend of one of them who came to pick them up, bought me a ticket. Nice guy.
I got to the hostel eventually, showered, and went right to bed. No staying up late in amsterdam for night number one.

The Magic of Travel

I was tired. I spent all night doing laundry and packing, and I got only three hours of sleep. I spent all day walking around the Tower of London, it was hot, and, despite a multitude of sitting breaks, I realized that my knee is a lot less recovered than I thought. I was hot, sweaty, getting bored of, or at least too used to, London, and between being tired, my knee hurting, and the feeling of boredom, the first thoughts of going home started to flit across my semi-consciousness. The hot and sweaty train ride to the airport and the shlepping 50 pounds of bag on my back with my knee didn't do much to help, and I have to admit tha my mood was dropping faster than the UK's welfare benefits.
Then I got to airport security.
Over a hundred people were queued up waiting to walk through the metal detectors, taking their phones out of their pockets and their belts off, all of s sharing the wonderful universal experience that is airtravel.
A smile started to creep across my face.
The "Strange Creatures" music from Doctor Who started playing in my head (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqm4vaWJhpw).
By the time I got through security I was grinning ear to ear, rejuvenated, reenergized, ready to go, excited to visit yet another new place, all thoughts of home vanishing from my mind, the pain (almost) leaving my knee, and was psyched, once again, to travel, reminding me why I love doing this. I have no idea how I am going to 'settle down' again.

Last Days in London

I spent the last two days hanging out with a friend from Argentina who was over in London with her mom after acting as a delegate to Amsterdam from the Anne Frank house in Buenos Aires. It was nice to have some company. I showed them around the city on Monday (I guess I've been here a long time). At night I went out to eat in a great restaurant, this funky pizza parlor called Pizaza, with good thin crust pizza and decent milkshakes, and super company; Gaby Davis and her boyfriend Dovid took me, and taught me some great British slang, words that seem so benign in American yet mean completely different things in English English. I'll be useing them.
Today I spent all day with Lu and her mom in the Tower of London. The Yeoman tour was great, and everything else was neat, but I did not think it was worht the very expensive entrance fee. Ah well. I can say I saw the Tower and the Crown Jewels and the Armour of lots of English kings and a perrier firing and... ok, I guess there was a lot to do and see, it was just quite expensive.

Posh HipHop

I went to town today, drawn by a music festival that was going on in town (actually,there were a few but I only made it to this one). All of the museums and schools near Exhibition Road (V&A, Natural History Museum, Science Museum, royal College, Royal Academy of Music, etc) hosted performances from all over. I did see a bit of the science museum, but the performances were really the highlight. I saw a string quintet in the science Museum (ok), a bit of As You Like It, a gypsy band, a Hungarian cello piece, a Brazilian piece for cello and guitar, capoiera, but the highlight was definitely this guy: http://www.myspace.com/mrbthegentlemanrhymer.
He calls himself Mr. B the Gentleman Rhymer, and he did what he calls 'Chap-Hop,' affecting a very posh accent and demeanor and doing rap, and sometimes rock, style music, but about posh things like cricket and drinking tea and crack cocaine. K, that one isn't that posh. He was hilarious. He started every song with "Hit it sir! and ended with "I thank you" but in a very posh British accent. Amazing.

Boring, and then Better

This past week was mostly boring, with one very nice day. After the Stomachache, on Tuesday, I stayed home to rest and rehabilitate my knee, doing absolutely nothing. So Tuesday was boring.
Wednesday was fun though. I went to Cambridge and was shown around by a real live student! (Thanks Gaby!) We walked around a bunch of colleges, getting into places ordinary tourists can't, and I got a very interesting explanation of some of the history and culture of Cambridge. Those people can party! For two weeks in June, after exams, the University has something called May Week (no idea)where the colleges throw massive black-tie balls, complete with circuses and champagne and oysters and silent disco and Jay-Z and unlimited food and alcohol and fun. I did not get to go to one :(
Very cool though. That night I went out with a young couple I got friendly with. They took me to a kosher pub, which was kind of neat. The place was a pub, and a restaurant, and all the food is kosher; though they don't serve pub food, it was still fun. The food was decent, the atmosphere was...different, and each table had a touch screen computer on which you order, play games, pub quizzes, and can read your horoscope.
Thursday and Friday were both boring days. I stayed at home, RICEd my knee, stretched, and was bored. Shabbos, however, was AMAZING. On Friday night I went to a really amazing family, had amazing food (lamb tagine, brisket, moroccan chicken, roasted veg, roasted potatoes, great salad with quinoa, really delicious) and some great conversation. The grandfather can trace his family entirely in England all the way back to the 17th century; he was in London during the Blitz and told stories about hiding in the bomb shelters and actually getting hit by an explosion. The grandmother and I talked about Victorian literature, we all talked about military history, and the three oldest kids and I (the eldest is exactly Yosef's age) had a very intense conversation about Doctor Who, while the adults rolled their eyes at us. Awesome! It is a shame that American kids don't grow up with Doctor Who, it has to be one the most well-done kids TV shows (that can also be enjoyed by adults) ever made. Watch it.
For lunch I went to one of the rabbis in the JLE, a South African fellow, who had 40 people for lunch. 40. It was massive. I met tons of new people, including a cohort of French girls, some of them med students, who sat across from me. We talked for most of the meal and between mincha and maariv as well. The rabbi put on this hilarious, I guess you could call it a show, where he sang, in quite an operatic voice, a yiddishe song about mashiach and then proceeded to put on hats from a number of different countries (USA, Scotland, South Africa, England, Russia, etc) and sing in each country's 'style.' You had to be there, but it was hilarious. The whole shabbos had great food, great people, great conversation, a great end to my time here in the UK. I leave to Amsterdam on Tuesday, my knee is sort of starting to improve-ish, and hopefully, next week will mirror this past shabbos more than it will this past week.