The Days Gone By

The day Sean left, I awoke several hours after his departure to be hit with a sudden culture shock. I immediately recognized how few people I knew in this country, on my program, and at my new school. I was suddenly lost in translation; though the Dutch do speak English very well, the country's signage is in Dutch. My knowledge of the streets around me were minimal and I had no idea what to do with myself during my free time. I sullenly stared out the window, only to find the pleasant sight of a few specks of snow.










Surprisingly, this dilemma was very short lived. That night, I signed up for a practice room in the conservatory, only to find that a combo was meeting there that was taught by a professor I have lessons with. He asked if I wanted to join in, and I gladly accepted, especially since the theme of the group was  Brazilian music. The musicians playing in the group were some of the best I'd heard at the conservatory so far, and we finished with a tune that highly resembled a Jazz standard called "There Will Never Be Another You," a similarity that both the guitarist and I caught at the same time. He and I talked for about forty five minutes after the combo, and, prompted to leave by what looked like a very important phone call, he hastily invited me to a poker game the following night at his girlfriend's apartment.




The poker game was my first exposure to something I really loved about the conservatory as well as most of my travels in Europe. All the people sitting around the table were from around different countries, and we had representation from Spain, Italy and Israel, and one of the girls' roommates came later and had just recently moved here from France. The conversations darted from politics to pop culture and I really got to see where these people came from, which were all completely different environments. Even the two people from Spain were from very culturally different cities (Madrid and Barcelona) and Lorenzo, the Italian guy on my right, grew up in a town in a valley in the Italian Alps. Though I lost all my money (and a little more) that I put in for the night, I had a really great time getting to know a few people and it eased my transition to living alone here in Europe.





The next few weeks went by virtually without spontaneous outings, which allowed me to get situated into a consistent daily plan. I cemented my final schedule of classes and developed a routine around it. Mondays and Fridays have only a singular lesson, so I use those days to do cultural excursions (both by myself and the program I'm on, IES), Tuesday's hold my Latin Jazz ensemble, and then Wednesday and Thursday are full days of lessons. Towards the end of the month, my Dutch class (mandatory by Tulane's request)   added to my Monday and Thursday schedule, but I missed some of the Monday lessons for various trips.








The first Wednesday in February the other IES students came. Until then, only about 20 of us (from the Conservatory and the Art Institute) had been living in our apartment building and our excursions (like the one to Utrecht) were only with a small group of students who I at least enjoyed the company of. The influx of new IES students revealed to me how many of the students on our program are studying abroad here only to smoke pot and travel to other places in Europe. These students, who particularly stand out as being unmotivated and living day to day without purpose, annoy and irritate me upon every meeting with them since they've arrived. I've often heard, "I'm just taking classes cause I have to. It's required for my school," and I get to encounter the prototypical IES student every single morning. More about what I dislike about my roommate in posts to come.






The second Saturday after Sean left, IES sponsored a trip to see a castle in Utrecht. We met as a group outside of our apartment complex and walked to the bus ( a double decker one at that!) where I sat next to a girl in an empty seat. I introduced myself, and this girl and I engaged in typical small talk at first, talking about where we were from and our family and studies. She was studying International Relations, specifically in the Middle East, where we had such polarized viewpoints that the conversation quickly turned sour and I resorted to staring at the scenery outside. The night before, quite a bit of snow fell over the entirety of the Netherlands, so the drive was highlighted by scenery covered in a thin white coat, and was so beautiful that I could use it as an excuse to avoid more awkward conversation with this girl (whatever her name was).

Despite the beautiful scenery, I was fairly disappointed with what we came to see. The castle was one that had been destroyed before the 19th century, and in the years approaching the 20th century, the heir to the ruined castle set out to rebuild it. Much like William Randolph Hearst, the Haar Castle was a renovation of a castle done in a modern style. So much of the building was built to resemble the old gothic style aesthetically, but utilized modern technology, such as central heating, plumbing, and electricity. So what we got to see on the inside, which was all presented by a tour guide, was the current wealthy estate's home (that the family still uses) and all of the beautiful rich people things they have. Isn't that grand? Sickened by the self-indulgence that this mansion (as well as its numerous visitors) condones, I was even more irritated with hearing the blasé mindless babble from the students in my program that represent everything that the world hates about Americans.

After the castle, we were taken to the city of Utrecht, which is really a wonderful area, and were taken for an authentic pancake lunch. For those of you who don't know, much like the French crepe, the Dutch have turned the pancake into a sweet/savory ordeal, with popular choices for pancakes ranging from bacon, sausage or (what Americans would call) Gouda cheese to fresh fruit, ginger, or chocolate syrup. I gorged on these delectable pancakes and spent the lunch talking with the staff of our trip, who all had infinitely more compelling interests than most people on the trip, and after the lunch we were given the freedom to roam. True to my newly formed tradition, I bought cheese in every location I went and made sure to get recommendations from the vendors. We searched for a place to get a beer and enjoyed a warm spot in the bar and sipped on some Belgian specialty beers.

The next weekend, IES sponsored a trip to Rotterdam as well. During the week leading up to it, we got more snow, and for several days in a row, Nick, Peter and I searched for skates so we could go ice skating on the canal. Though we had no luck in procuring a pair, I made sure that I was able to shuffle a little on the ice and the sight of frozen canals I can only feel immensely lucky to have seen. Families were skating along nearly every frozen canal, children were being pulled in sleighs and chairs across the frozen playground and here we were, a few American's without snow clothes prancing gleefully on the grachten. The snow was delightful to have, though its only downside was that it made biking around Amsterdam a headache.  

Friday, we left early in the morning by train to get down to Rotterdam. Our introduction to the city was a modern art museum. This museum had the whole bottom floor dedicated to a specific artist, who did mostly animation and short films, and had a dark and clever sense of humor. The second floor consisted of pieces that took up physical space, like, for example, one that was called "Bus Stop" and resembled a bus stop and had mirrors facing each other inside that played with the observer's sense of space. The third floor, my favorite, consisted of text on walls, and revolved around the theme "Rules of Conceptual Art" a tongue in cheek collection of various pokes at society.

  

For lunch we enjoyed some Turkish cuisine, potentially the most common style of restaurant you'll find in Europe, and followed our lunch with a personal tour from a man from the Information Center in Rotterdam. The man who guided us, a former architect who designed many buildings in Rotterdam and the Netherlands, was a rotund elderly Dutch man with watering blue eyes and a stubbly grey beard, who's knowledge of Rotterdam were somewhat based historically but mostly from his personal perspective as an active architect in the city. 

Rotterdam has a much different feel than the rest of the Netherlands because of how recent all the work done in it is. During the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands, they mostly bombed Rotterdam, and the buildings of the old city were leveled to the ground, and were replaced after the war in what was called (ironically) "Manhattanization." The Rotterdam residents looked to make their city high-tech and aesthetically beautiful, and the design of the city reflects how much they care about the look. There's constant construction in the city, and it's clearly one of the biggest cities in the Netherlands. We didn't get to do much as far as activities in the city, but the tour was so engaging that I really enjoyed being in Rotterdam. Halfway through the tour

The next weekend, my cousin Raquel came to visit Amsterdam while looking at a potential educational opportunity at the brand new film institute. She brought her friend Sophie with her and the 3 of us got to spend a lot of time together, taking in some sights that I've already seen, but mostly just enjoying the company of each other. I met them Friday in the Niewmarkt to get some beer, after I took us in a large circle, looking for a bar that I wasn't particularly sure I knew the location of, and after a few Dutch brews and insightful discourses on European politics, we made our way to the Cafe Alto, a premier Amsterdam Jazz club, to see a friend perform. Saturday, I met the two of them for fondue and Sunday we all went to the Rijksmuseum to see some of that great old Dutch art. On Sunday I saw them off to their train and resumed my school routines.