Friday brought the end of the work week and the end of a frantic two days in which the New Boss came for a visit. ES recently acquired a consulting firm in Portland, OR, and after some shuffling, the boss in my office (Jan-Willem) is no longer the head honcho; the New Boss is located in Portland. He came with his right-hand-man to visit the Dutch office, took us all to lunch, had a grand staff meeting of sorts, and then met individually with every employee. Well, everyone except me, since I won't really have that great of an impact on the functioning of the consulting group after two months. After a crazy-paced Thursday and Friday, the New Boss ended the trip by taking everyone out for "biers" at a place called The Plein.
I began to talk to Henk about my bicycle (which had thrown the chain, again) which somehow led to discussing Belgian beer with him, Jessica, and J-W. After each of the men telling a ridiculous story about how Belgian beer basically knocked them on their ass at a most inopportune time (one story involved someone turning on the hot water in a hotel bathroom with the ambitious idea of taking a drunken shower, only to wake up the next morning, still clothed, with the hot water still running and all the wallpaper pealed off the bathroom walls), Jessica went and got two genuine Trappist beers for us to try. Trappist is apparantly a label that is given to only six brands of beer, based on the way they are brewed (by monks) and the length of time the brewery has been in operation (I'm not sure where the cutoff is, but I got the idea they had to be from the 1600s or so). They have a higher percentage of alcohol, and also taste very good, which is why they can be so dangerous. Jessica likened them to American "designer martinis" - almost entirely alcohol, but you can drink Apple-tini after Apple-tini without feeling the effects - until you stand up.
In any case, I had been forewarned, and since this was my first social outing with work associates I thought it would be in poor taste to get sloshed. I stopped after one Belgian beer (and out of courtesy to the others who were still drinking [and buying] switched back to tamer, Dutch beer). Gradually those who lived further away left to catch trains and such, leaving me with Michiel (the one who caught the mouse) and Juan (the only one darker skinned and haired than I am; from Ecuador). We discussed politics, colonization, resource use in China and Africa, hydro-power, and the Dutch tradition of Sinterclaus and his black (Moorish) helpers; a tradition I found to be incredibly offensive and was even more surprised to realize that the others did not. The thing is, during the parade, the helpers aren't really black, or Moorish; they are Dutch people painted black, serving their master, the (white, European) Sinterclaus. It would NEVER fly in the US. But here, it was tradition and normal and no one took offense. At least, not the white European man I was talking to. I didn't have a chance to survey the Moorish population of the Netherlands.
All in all, I biked home in sort of a floaty daze, elated by the positive social experience (and I'm sure, in part, by the beer).
Saturday I biked to Delft. About 10 miles away from The Hague, it is the cutest, most quaint town I have seen so far. Canals line the streets, everyone rides bikes (though that's the case here, too) and there were outdoor markets around every corner. Some of them were affiliated with the annual Wereld Culturen Festival that happened to be this Saturday, and some were just the usual vendors that came out to sell antiques, cheese and dairy, produce, candy, baked goods, etc. It was amazing. I walked around for a while, bought lunch from a couple of vendors, listened to some Turkish music followed by some Dutch rappers at the festival, and read through the rest of the program for the day. To my surprise, they had a Klezmer band lined up to play, called L'Chaim. Of course, I stayed for the show and was not disappointed. They were great! I couldn't tell if they were singing in Dutch or Yiddish, but it didn't matter. Their spirit was what counted. I'm going to try to put a short video of them up on YouTube, if I can figure out how to get it off my camera.
The bike ride home seemed much shorter than the one there, and I got home without any problems. I cleaned up a bit, and met Kim (my new roommate!) in the Centrum for dinner. We explored the nightlife a bit, not actually going into any bars/pubs/clubs yet, but marking down the ones that looked interesting for future reference. We also decided to go to Harry Potter on the night the movie opens, since they are having a midnight showing at the theater in town, and possibly to London the weekend the last book is released.
A great weekend, for sure. This post is certainly long enough, but due to popular request I will follow up with another post containing pictures from my most recent adventures.
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