The Hague and Easter Sunday

The Hague was kind of a mixed bag, tainted in part because we had to get up so damn early! After getting up before 5 with Mike, I slept the entire way there despite a graphic war movie playing on the bus. The purpose of our trip there was to attend a hearing at the United Nation's International Criminal Tribunal. the ICT was established in the last ten years to address the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia. Considering that's their soul purpose, it's unbelievable there are still so many trials ongoing--Slobodan Milosevic was on trial there we he died. So they do some impressive work there. We had a pretty basic briefing there to explain how the court operates, and how it's a lot liberal in its proceedings that the courts we're used to.

It was a pretty crazy trial—the man on the other side of the class from us was on trial for, among other things, genocide. He was also his own defense, and could pop in and make responses to anything the prosecution said. The trial has been going for a long time, and it’s all a bit dry, but it was a very strange thing to witness there. He actually made a good defense too—it’s not that he denied what he did, he just pointed out that the prosecution made a lot of assumptions that shouldn’t be taken at face value.

After this and a great lunch, we stopped by a museum there—it houses “The Girl with the Pearl Earring,” which is a simply beautiful painting. I really enjoyed the museum and our American tour guide—I unfortunately lost the postcards I bought there, but the paintings were gorgeous. Dutch painters are really impressive, even if sometimes their work in mundane. They’re not a catholic country, so there’s no incessant focus on religious figures like the art in many other countries around here.

So, we went to Delft, a small town in the Netherlands—it where Delftware, that blue and white handmade china, comes from. It was freezing cold and raining, so the whole place was miserable, and yet quaint. We did stop by two protestant churches there, and I got myself a copy of the golden rule in Dutch, which I think will make for an interesting apartment decoration. We also add a “Delft specialty”—raw herring topped with raw onions. I only had my requisite one bite, since I had such a mental block in eating it, but hey, I had a new experience with that. Then off to a bar, for a mid day beer to warm us up.

Dinner was at an Indonesian restaurant, which was quite enjoyable until I forgot my blazer there. I’m still in the process of getting it back—that was going to be my trendy European piece to bring back with me! The movie Girl with the Pearl Earring played on the way back, but after a few bottles of wine, we all had a really interesting pow-wow on the bus instead of paying attention. I love the other folks in this program.

The worst part of this week was the next day, when I had a take home midterm due the next day that I hadn’t started. In the end, it turns out I wouldn’t have done any better work on it had I started early, as it was simply a question I couldn’t have cared less about. It’s the same class I had to present in that week as well, so I felt a little bit of overload.

Also, before I moved on to the spring break entries, let’s talk about Easter: I did in fact go to the English language mass downtown at this beautiful church that was originally built in the 12^th century—it was a pretty impressive mass. Then me and some of the girls got together to make Easter dinner. I love having the family together for Easter and was pretty homesick, so our adventures in the kitchen were enough to distract me from that. We couldn’t get ham, so we made pork in pineapple juice (bought for the ham glaze!) and potatoes and some veggies—mostly without using the stove, as we were terrified of burning Kate’s house down while her family was gone. I’ve got a good group of girlfriends here, and it was nice to sit there over wine and dinner (and then chocolate!) and get to know them better. It was also the biggest meal I’ve ever been involved in executing, and planning, so I was pretty proud.

The next day began our Prague-Rome-Munich adventures, which only ended this morning, so stay tuned for all my exciting adventures there!