On Nov. 23, 2005 I moved to The Hague from Washington, DC. This is my new Dutch life.

1.12.2006

Buzzed

The Hague City Gets Its Buzz Back
The NY Times travel section featured a nice-ish piece about The Hague on Sunday. My man, Ivan, sent me the tip.

I'll confirm that many Many MANY people warned us that The Hague is boring. However, most agreed (save for one person) that anything was better than Rotterdam, our other choice. Dunno what kind of free-wheeling party lifestyle those folks partake, but generally we're lucky if we have enough time to eat a proper dinner each night. Maybe we're also boring.

The Hague is a lot like DC with it's international flavor and stateliness, the 'we're here to work' demeanor of its residents, and a pile of acronyms to learn. Lots of brain power here with the Permanent Court of Arbitration (The PCA for those in the know), The International Court of Justice (eh-hem, The ICJ), and International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia - the Slobodan Milosevic trial, essentially.

With the absence of drug tourists (aka college kids wasted in the streets looking to blossom for the first time in Amsterdam's red light district- uhm gross), it seems that the Hague has a lot of other nice stuff on offer - theater, dance, art galleries and museums, not to mention location, location location. A quick train ride away, and we hit Amsterdam twice last week.

Maybe it's not as arty and striking as the big A, but it's a least a step up from the rot.

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2 Comments:

Blogger Robert MacMillan said...

Curious to hear impressions of any other places in Netherlands you might travel - Maybe Friesland (Groningen)? Maastricht? Leyden? Utrecht? Lots of places and you have litle time, but who knows, maybe you'll get a chance.

Living vicariously through my expats, I am...

11:12 AM GMT+1

 
Blogger akaijen said...

Well... lessee...

We've been up to Amsterdam a couple of times, but we went to look at wedding venues, so we didn't really sight see.

We also spent a couple of hours in Haarlem on Christmas Eve. Haarlem is a bit of an exurb of Amsterdam, but a town in its own right. I think the highlight was ducking into a cafe for some gluwijn, or mulled wine I guess. I'm not sure what mulled really means, so I can't say for sure if gluwijn is mulled or just warm. All I know is that it really hits the spot on a cold afternoon.

I happened to go to Utrecht when I came over in October to file my immigration application. Guy, my cat, stayed with a coworker of B-'s while we looked for an apartment. Said coworker lives in Utrecht. I didn't see much, but it looked nice from what a saw. Definitely a college town with that college town feel.

And of course, I've been down to Delft a couple of times, which I blogged about previously.

With the holidays and trying to get settled we haven't done as much travelling as we'd have liked. Our biggest obstacle is finding a kennel for Nigel (the dog). We plan to get that all sorted out soon.

I'm pretty keen to get up to Waddenzee which are a chain of islands up North. They're meant to be nice. Would like to get down Maastricht, over by Germany and Belgium, and Zeeland which is south of here.

Most of this is all better experienced when the weather is nicer. It's very drab these days and with few daylight hours, there's not much time to get out and appreciate things. Will keep you posted for sure. :)

2:15 PM GMT+1

 

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