Freshers Flu

This week has been a bit of a nothing week. I haven’t really done that much worth writing about due to inordinate amounts of work and having a cold, but it’s been nice. I could really do with some olbas oil though. Spent lots of time on the balcony again enjoying the last few days of summer – I think we’re set for a bout of bad weather which means I should probably get an umbrella or raincoat. It will be nice to be able to wear layers again though and not worry about overheating whilst biking.

Dining hall food has got progressively worse throughout the term, and to think during introweek I was actually sort of impressed by it. I think it’s much easier if you do eat meat (although marginally more expensive) but I try not to – mainly because I don’t like it more than morals. Today the vegetarian option ran out at 6:20, 40 minutes before dining hall was meant to close – fortunately I managed to get the last one. On the bright side however we did get a toastie/tosti maker (thanks Petra!), so now I can make as many cheese and marmite toasties as my heart desires (which is a lot). Toasties for every meal please as well as all the caramel milka in the country.

I’m also finally an official resident of the Netherlands after going through the ordeal of registering with the municipality on Wednesday. You just had to wait in a packed room with everyone talking for someone to call your name (sometimes first name, sometimes surname) and nationality, they didn’t really shout though, just at a normal volume level for conversation. It ended up with people just shouting countries and hoping people would realise/guess it was them being called – bureaucratic chinese whispers. For me “Hayley, UK” was called out and it took so long for me to work out that was probably me. This does however mean I can finally set up a bank account and use the vending machines on campus (so apparently all my blog entries revolve around food)!

On Monday, we had a unit dinner which was good because normally everyone is so busy that we never get to just sit down and spend time together as a 6, even if individually we spend a lot of time together. Marlies and Bart made tomato bruschetta for starters which was so good and I ate vast amounts of. Maurits and I had to do the main course which would have been easier if we had actually remembered to buy ingredients more than 1 hour before dinner, I fully blame him as I went to Albert Heijn earlier that day and he didn’t tell me the ingredients. We made a pasta salad with pesto, pine nuts, rocket, roasted red pepper and artichoke which was actually really good, better than I expected – I was somewhat sceptical about cold pasta salad as a main course. Amea, our wonderful resident Mary Berry, and Jacky were in charge of desert which was a chocolate and pear cake and oh so good! Basically we’re all really good cooks when we work as a team.

I’m still yet to miss a Thursday party night at the bar, even if I did only go for about 30 minutes this week where they mistook my asking for water as wanting vodka shots, but at least I wasn’t as hungover as last Friday and actually made it to my classes!

I also finished rewatching season 2 of Orange is the New Black.

Rotterdam

I’m not going to lie I didn’t have particularly high hopes for Rotterdam after every Dutch person on campus told me how ugly it was. It wasn’t. In fact it was really quite beautiful. It probably helps that I really like modern architecture and they’ve got plenty of that. It’s really innovative and it feels like a very artsy city. It is very different to everywhere else I’ve been in the Netherlands though, especially because they were far less cyclists (or at least it felt like it).

I was lucky to have a local as a guide around Rotterdam as it’s really big and it feels it, maybe that’s partially the tall buildings though. Plus they also showed me all the good places to go. It was mainly just wandering around rather than going anywhere specific which is what I like when I’m going to new cities, we got smoked sausages (and I temporarily gave up on my vegetarianism), bought a really nice lemony tea from Simon & Levelt which is apparently great for making iced tea with (sadly we don’t have a freezer to make ice in) and went to a pub/bar that sold hundreds of beers – I got a honey beer.

We walked down by the river which was really nice and then went on a boat trip around the harbour, which, other than being really cold, was interesting. Weird to think that in the age of planes we still do so much of our business by boat. 

Apparently this is Santa holding a Christmas tree…

Note to self: Try not to cycle too quickly when you’ve actually put effort into how you look because you will sweat off all your makeup when you stop and that’s definitely not fetch.

All the food

A week and a half in and I have had all my classes and have been given a stupid amount of work to do (however I am procrastinating by writing this instead of doing my work on phonetics). Either I never did any work in Leeds or they just give you ridiculous amounts here, every piece of work though is worth less than it is in Leeds so it’s more like constant assessment than your entire grade resting on 2 essays. I am absolutely in love with my linguistics module, it’s fantastic and the teacher is great – I wish I could say the same for sociology which is just shocking. His views seem very dated at times and some of the stuff he says just makes me so angry. Fortunately it’s only 1 semester though so I can cope with that, shame it’s last thing on a Friday though (especially since Thursday is party night in the bar).

I feel like I’ve done quite a lot this week, I’ve probably watched less than 8 hours of Netflix!

Internationals in Amsterdam

Last Saturday I went to Amsterdam for the day with two of the other exchanges from Leeds and a girl from Germany. It only took half an hour on the train, but €7.20 each way starts to add up so I doubt I’ll go that much, especially with Utrecht being so beautiful and less touristy. We didn’t really do anything specific other than go to the theatre in the evening but more on that later. We just did a lot of walking around by the canals but I think we’ll go do museums and such on a week day later in the month. It was far too busy on Saturday! Whilst we were walking we found this cute little shop that sold so much British and American food which I ended up spending a fortune on but it was just very exciting. It is weird the things that you miss, like malt vinegar which doesn’t seem to be a thing here so chips taste super bland even with mayo, and proper tea, the things I would do for a mug of PG Tips, oh and a pack of walkers salt and vinegar crisps. On the food theme, we went to a cheese museum and got to try so many great flavours and colours of cheese, they had purple, red, green and blue (as in bright blue) cheese – I had been before so I knew what I wanted. Pesto cheese, oh my god, so good! I also intend to bring home stroopwafel and pepernoten for everyone at Christmas, I defy you not to eat all of them in one go.

Blue cheese

We went to the theatre in the evening, which was really weird especially since it was in the middle of a really residential area and surrounding by big high-rise flats in quite a deprived area. It was part of the Amsterdam Fringe Festival and I have to review a live arts performance for my journalism class, and I’ve certainly got a lot to say about it – maybe I will post my review on here when I’ve written it, who knows, the possibilities are endless! It was a 21st century take on Antigone done with only 2 actors and it had social media as the chorus and one of the characters was through skype, and it was just so weird. For 5 minutes the main actress stood repeating the same sentence whilst painting her boobs black with body paint for a protest the character was dong. It did make some quite interesting points though about like social media and revolutions and the constant presence of technology in our lives.

After that we wanted to go to a bar for a few drinks, but the only bar we could find was this big touristy chain. It was just full on gross British tourists on stag nights – the kind of people whose only knowledge of the Netherlands is weed and sex. It’s just embarrassing to be associated with them at times. The bar was also just round the corner from the Red Light district so we walked back through that to the station. It’s just so odd and I felt quite uncomfortable. I am all for decriminalisation or legalisation of sex work, but the fact that women’s bodies are treated almost like tourist attractions. I just don’t know. It’s a tricky one.

By the end of the day walking around Amsterdam I was so happy to get back to my bike at Utrecht station and ride home. I missed it loads!

Looking very enthusiastic in Dam square

I spent the rest of the weekend and my Monday off doing work and just chilling with my flat. Last night however was fantastic. We went out for a introweek family reunion to a pancake house which was super cute. It was like entire meals on pancakes, some people had cheese and ham or apple and ginger, I had pecans, apple, raisins and shaved almonds and absolutely covered it in treacle. It was so delicious but soooo sweet so about half way through I thought I was going to be beaten by it, but I fought through and (with a little bit of help from others) finished it. After that I went to the bar with one of my flatmates and we had a bit of a study session with a bottle of wine, until more of our friends turned up and we abandoned that idea.

Ohana means family

My dutch really isn’t improving (but I can almost identify most things on a menu which is really what’s important), but I’ve taught them all funny British sayings and words such as swings and roundabouts, faff and the correct pronunciation of Marlboro – they say it as Marl-bore-oh.

Going to Rotterdam on Saturday so I will update you on that after!

Post day in Amsterdam thoughts

I never intend to eat anything other than stroopwaffels again.

Also today I spent €8.40 on a bag of twiglets and a big bar of popping candy chocolate. No regrets. Still yet to find any proper vinegar for chips.

One week later…

I have now been here for over a week, intro-week has finished and classes have started. I feel very comfortable here and I think I definitely made the right choice – it’s absolutely incredible how quickly you settle into a new way of life. Intro-week was so much fun, but it actually being real life is so much better I think. There feels like a lot less pressure to have fun and I actually get to spend time with my unit. We’ve spent a lot of time sat on our sunny balcony overlooking the military base, so it could be worse. My flat are all super lovely – even if they do laugh at my ineptitude speaking Dutch and shocking attempts at riding a bike. On the subjects of bikes, I have now got my own bike and have ridden it to do my food shopping a few times – it has no handbrakes and it is slightly terrifying, but I think I will rapidly get used to it.

Balcony view

Classes started yesterday, but due to my beautiful timetable I get Mondays off, so I didn’t have any until this morning. I’m quite looking forward to my courses this year though – today I had linguistics and international journalism which both look really interesting. It’s nice to be able to do things that aren’t politics. The way of learning here really appeals to me and I think if we had Liberal Arts and Sciences colleges in the UK they’d be quite popular – you get a real interdisciplinary approach to things which I often think helps you look at a subject in a richer and more nuanced way. That said, in the UK I think we often leave with a deeper and wider knowledge of our subjects after studying them intensively for 3 years. Living on campus is great though, I woke up half an hour before my 9am class today and had plenty of time to have breakfast and get ready. Perfect for sloths like me!

Last Friday we had a city tour which meant I was able to see the city properly during the day and I think I might be starting to get my bearings, it’s absolutely lovely and I’m excited to show everyone who comes to visit me around. We had a lot of fun trying to complete challenges, such as dressing as hipsters in thrift shops and catching pigeons – my family came first which meant we won a prize (which I think was alcohol). I think I’ve drunk more beer in the past week than I have all year, especially at pre-drinks where I was taught weird dutch songs – such as this song about ringing your bike bell for someone is you think they are “lekkerding” (hot/sexy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c50n5gZf2ws. 

Tried to set up a bank account on Friday though and Dutch bureaucracy made that an absolute nightmare as I am yet to register with the municipality. Food shopping here is fun though, they have so much different food, although cannot find vinegar to put on chips anywhere apparently that isn’t a thing – I think it’s the thing I miss most from home at the moment.