Last weekend I went to London with my friend Eden. We stayed with one of her family friends who live in a house in Notting Hill. It was really nice to be able to have that cozy feeling of being in a home. We went to Harrods, Portobello Market, the Globe, the Tate Modern, London Bridge, Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abby, Big Ben, Hyde Park, and watched a play at a new theatre by Notting Hill. We even rode the “tube”, which was a very efficient way to get around the city, which I felt was 10 times bigger than Amsterdam.

Notting Hill is a very nice part of London. It is residential, but very close to excellent restaurants, theatres, and shopping. I was glad we got to stay there and have such hospitable hosts.

The Portobello Market was my favorite part of the trip. My favorite thing to do in a new place is just to wander around and people watch. The market was full of life with all different types of vendors and live music. Eden and I got a little taste of British fashion and some excellent souvenirs.

On our last day, we visited Abbey Road. We got to take the clich� (but awesome) picture of us waking across like the Beatles did. Wealso “graffitied” the studio wall, like so many others, and wrote our names.  We officially made our mark in London.

It’s been a dream of mine to go to London because my Pop-pop used to go there all the time for business trips and I always wondered what it was like, and what he saw land loved about the city. I even recreated a picture taken of him in front of the Tower of London. Even though it was a great weekend, it didn’t feel like it was long enough.

Location: London, UK

This past weekend IES hosted a trip to Maastricht, The Netherlands. It took us four hours to get there (by train, bus, and train again) and then we walked 15 minutes to get to our hostel. We stayed at the StayOkay hostel, which is very close to the city of Maastricht. Maastricht is very much smaller than Amsterdam and feels more like Brussels and less like a Dutch city. I really enjoyed walking along the cobblestones and getting brief glimpses at the river that runs beside the city, which our hostel was overlooking. Our coordinator, Chantall, gave us a short tour of the city and then we had a pie tasting. It was a bit cold that day, just like everywhere else. I’m slowly starting to wonder whether or not Spring will actually come! Flowers are gradually blooming, but the sky just won’t clear up and give us the sun.

The most interesting part of our overnight adventure to Maastricht was the cave tour. There is a system of manmade caves underneath Maastricht that are hundreds of miles long! Our tour guide let us see just how vulnerable we would be if we got lost without light in the caves and it would be impossible to escape. It gets so cold in the caves that even if you can’t find your way out and wait for someone to find you, a human can’t survive without heat in the caves after two days because of hypothermia. During World War II, The Netherlands stored over 600 paintings in the caves in a special climate-controlled vault so that the Germans could not bomb them.

After the cave tours we literally walked to Belgium. It was a beautiful hike and it turned out to be a beautiful day. Everyone was out walking their dogs (did I mention I miss my pets at home?) and going for runs. Once we got to Belgium, seeing a few more cave entrances along the way, we got some ice cream and it (almost!) felt like summer. I can’t wait!

Location: Maastricht, The Netherlands

This past week, I’ve mainly been working on homework and getting into the UvA grind. Classes have been picking up and it was time for me to catch up and start my papers. I did, however go to three different restaurant week reservations and the Stedelijk museum. Amsterdam has one week in March where you can reserve a spot at a four or five star restaurant and pay 27.50 euro each for a three or four) course meal. The first place I went to was called cTaste for “Dinner in the Dark”. It is a restaurant where you are led into a pitch black room where you are seated by sightless (legally blind) servers. A group of six of us ate in complete darkness and didn’t know what we ate until we were led back to the light again. It was a disorienting experience, but by far the most worth it out of the three reservations I made. The other two were Asian cuisine restaurants called Woo Bros. and Little Buddha. They were both excellent but were not as unique as the cTaste experience. I think I have definitely become more of a foodie  since coming to Amsterdam.

The Stedelijk museum was also a very new and interesting experience. The Contemporary art museum offered an insane look into the proliferation and talent of Mike Kelley. This new exhibit was often strange and disturbing, and at times wonderfully creative. Of course, on the lower levers of the museum where pieces by Van Gogh and Monet were housed, I felt I got a lovely range of amazingly beautiful artwork.

Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Yesterday, IES took us to Zaanse Schans, the most happening place of the pre-industrial revolution. It used to include over 700 windmills, each with a separate job–all propelled by wind power (wood cutting, paper making, oil drilling, grain grinding, etc.)! I was really surprised to find that the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed on paper made from a paper mill in Zaanse Schans. I was even more surprised to have never heard of the windmills’ existence. Walking through the town, I was swept away by the charming atmosphere and the potent smell of chocolate (there was a chocolate factory nearby). Even though the weather was cloudy and very cold, that made for good wind, and so we got to see a sawmill demonstration and really see the power that these windmills produced. Contrary to my previous beliefs, people did not live in the windmills, but only used them for commercial purposes.

After seeing the sawmill, we got to taste cheese made locally and I bought some amazing pesto cheese, which I later grated onto my dinner. Then we went to a clog making shop where we saw a five-minute demonstration of clog making. Instead of doing everything handmade, they showed us how they make clogs using two different WWII era machines from Germany and France (why not the Netherlands? I don’t know). It was interesting to see a different side of the Netherlands that was more rural and historical that Rotterdam or more city-like like Amsterdam. Even for its small geographical capacity, I’m finding out more than I ever knew I could about the Netherlands. For example, the Deltawerken, a dike system in the Netherlands, has helped the country regain most of their land lost during a 19^th century flood and can be seen from outer space! If only we had that technology with some of our natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and, more recently, Hurricane Sandy in New Jersey and New York. The Netherlands has a lot more to offer the U.S. than just it’s political ideologies of toleration, which is normally the only thing the country seems to be noted for. To me, the Netherlands is full of surprises and history.

Location: Zaanse Schans, The Netherlands

For my first travel experience outside of Amsterdam, I spent a day in Brussels with three of my new friends. To travel there from Amsterdam, it took us about four hours each way because we had two transfers. When we arrived, it felt so different from Amsterdam. The stones they used for the buildings were lighter colored, giving the whole city a fresher, brighter feel than the whimsical “gezellig” nature of Amsterdam. There were many more hills and less bike lanes as well. We first headed over to a place where we had looked up had the best Belgian waffles. I had a waffle not only topped with strawberries and chocolate, but also with whipped cream! 

We didn’t realize it, but the waffle place was actually right next to Manneken Pis (the fountain statue of a little boy peeing). 

Then we headed to Grand Place where there was a cathedral and a museum about Brussels. A couple was getting married in the cathedral and afterwards we saw them ride about in the square on a tandem bike while their friends and family threw rice over them. We walked to St. Katherine’s Cathedral and then met a friend who was studying abroad in the city.

She was a great help navigating the chocolate scene of Brussels. We went into Pierre Marcolini, or as I like to call it, the “Gucci” of chocolate where someone’s job was to open the door for us and greet us, and the chocolate looked more like artwork. I bought two thimble sized chocolates for 1.80 euro. One was called “Violette” and the other was “Palet D’Or” which actually had gold flakes on it. 

After our delectable dalliances in the Gucci of chocolate, we walked around, enjoyed the architecture and parks of Brussels, visited another cathedral, and saw an underground palace. Yes… the palace is actually underground due to a fire and the placement of another more modern building on top. The Coudenberg Palace was uncoverd by archaeologists and is now a museum that you can explore in. Overall, we fit an incredible amount of site-seeing (and tasting) into our day.

Location: Brussels, Belgium

This is going to be a post about debunking myths and upholding truths about the Netherlands and the Dutch people. First of all, some might say, after some confusion “Oh! The Netherlands! You mean HOLLAND!” Actually, North Holland and South Holland are the only two provinces out of twelve in the Netherlands that make up what used to be Holland. The national language is Dutch, which the Dutch call “Nederlandse” but “Dutch” sounds more like Deutsch” which is the German term for “German”. Now that we’ve got that cleared up, let me debunk a few myths:

1. The dutch do not wear wooden clogs. They sell them so that tourists can buy them, not so they can make a fashion statement. Although, I did buy a pair of plush clogs to use as slippers… you caught me!

2. It is not common for the locals don’t smoke weed. You would look like a huge foreigner if you were to frequent the coffeeshops.

3. The Red Light District is not a dangerous place. Prostitution is legalized in Amsterdam, and because of that it is very regulated and those regulations are highly enforced. The only reason there would be any danger is because it is a TOURIST area. Again, just like the coffeeshops, the Red Light District tends to collect foreigners who are likely to be targets of pick pocketing and theft, which is always a concern in a big city.

Some Truths are:

1. A bike is like an extra set of legs here. Men and women make the most out of their bikes, and if they have a family, it is not uncommon to see a Mother or Father with children strapped to the front and back of the bike, or have a special bucket in the front to fit many more children. These are usually kids younger than 6 or 7 because children start biking at a very early age here.

2. The Dutch love their stroopwaffles, drops (licorice), and vlaamse frites. Stroopwaffles are the best when you put one on top of your mug to let the caramel syrup inside melt a little bit. Drops are good for the throat when it’s sore. And, the best place to get fries with mayo is Manneken Pis, also the name of a famous statue of a boy peeing in Brussels.

3. The Dutch are very direct. They are friendly and if you go to a brown caf� you will most likely strike up a conversation with a very nice stranger. To an American, they might think the Dutch are blunt, but not in a mean way.

I hope you liked my short introduction to Dutch myths and truths. I will be going to Brussels this weekend, so I will talk about that and other places I’ve gone in the Netherlands next time. Goedemiddag!

Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands

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The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of meeting new people, exploring, and making adjustments. I have settled into my apartment and gotten everything I need, gotten a go phone, and rented a bike and ridden it around successfully outside the city center. Through orientation we went on a canal tour, to Utrecht, and to Castle de Haar. Everything I have seen is beautiful and has the feel of both a city and a small town. I am finally used to the time difference and have just found a quiet place to sit, get wifi, and write this post.

I am living in a single room at Funenpark, a nice, peaceful residential complex that has beautiful contemporary architecture and is very near Centraal Station, and Brouwerij t’ij, now one of my favorite bars.  The first few days we all used the trams, which are easy, fast, but expensive. My first day by myself, without the orientation group, put me a little on edge. I’m scared of looking lost and becoming a target, but most of all, I was excited and anxious to finally be in a routine. After a five week-long winter break, stir crazy doesn’t quite describe the large amount of restlessness that has built up inside of me. It is strange to finally have so much free time after orientation to think about what is going to happen next.

The first morning of classes I rode my bike to Centraal station. The wind was incredible and acted as resistance while I rode alongside fellow residence of Amsterdam. At one point I weakly had to get off my bike to walk a little because my quads were burning and I wasn’t going anywhere. I have confidence I will get used to biking though. Amsterdam is insanely flat compared to Penn State so I will eventually have no problem and become a pro. I have already fallen off my bike and received some pretty nasty bruises on my knee (and taken a trip to the very calm and organized ER) but the accident has not shaken my determination.

All of my classes are three hours long, but I have Tuesday and Friday off of class. This gives me plenty of time to do the four, five page essays and one twenty-five page essay due at the end of the semester on top of other assignments, as well as make plans for travelling. The classes themselves are interesting and engaging and all of my professors seem to really want to know what the students’ interests are.

As promised, here is a list of packing tips:

1. Vacuum seal bags are your friends, but be willing to leave space to lessen the weight in your bag (and leave space for souvenirs), or be willing to pay extra for baggage.

2. If you love coffee as much as I do, bring a mini French press. You will save money on a daily basis and will be able to keep awake even before leaving your apartment.

3. Make sure you have the right adapters, and CHECK THE VOLTAGE! I fried my alarm clock by using the wrong adapter.

4. Bring a raincoat. The weather in Amsterdam is not just bipolar. The weather can go from rain to snow to hail to sunny and clear, and start all over again within an hour.

Here are other tips once you get to Amsterdam:

1. Museum Kaarts are wonderful, they get you into museums (and their bathrooms) for free and are given to you by IES.

2. You and your study abroad friends should get a Lebara SIM card because it is free texting and calling between Lebara users and is the best deal by far (20 euros gives you 60 euros worth of credit!)

3. Open a Dutch Bank account. It saves you the withdrawal fee at the ATM and most places (like UvA) will only talk Dutch credit/debit cards.

4. Get your bike through the place IES recommends. They give you a really good deal and they are very good bikes. You might think getting one at Waterlooplein is a good idea until you pay as much as you did to buy it, just to fix it a month later.

There are some very strange things I have discovered about Amsterdam; their lack of hot water in many public building restrooms, weighing your produce in an area beyond the checkout counter instead of in the produce isle, and the Dutch way of tipping which is much less than Americans usually tip. But some differences just make so much more sense; fries with mayo, bike lanes and lights (so much safer than NYC), only reusable bags at grocery stores, and NO 8AM CLASSES!! My next post will be about demystifying the Red Light District and Coffeeshops. Dag!

Location: Amsterdam, the Netherlands