By Chase Newman
Leien University, The Netherlands
This past week marked the first actual trip that I took outside of Leiden since I arrived almost a month ago. While I know people who have already been to Paris and Madrid, I'm just getting started- and I plan to catch up!
Last Friday I took the train to the Dutch city of Den Haag, otherwise known as The Hague. This city serves as the seat of the Dutch Parliament. I boarded the train at about 11:00 AM with a few people who I've recently become friends with in what was a rather eclectic crew- one Hawaiian, two Germans, a guy from Portugal, and myself the Tennessean. We didn't have much of a plan and just sort of figured it out as we went along, but it turned out to be quite a fun day. We got somewhat lost a few times, which meant by the end of the day we had walked a lot and were ready for a nap. We ended up seeing the Parliament building (but we missed the last tour by 15 minutes), Queen Beatrix's working palace, the Peace Palace where the International Court of Justice is housed, and we checked out the M. C. Escher museum which was my favorite part of the trip. Escher is one of my favorite artists so it was a treat to be able to see his work up close and in person. Also, the museum is housed inside of an old palace, so the building itself was a work of art. Inside of the museum our group met another group of students, two from Russia and one from New York. We talked with these people for a bit and ended up grabbing some coffee with them after leaving the museum. Finally we hopped on the train to go back to Leiden after a day well spent.
Saturday night I met some new international students through one of my friends, and we all had dinner together and a Dutch pancake house, or t' Pannenkoekenhuis. This was the first time I had ever eaten a famous Dutch pancake, and let me say that I am now officially a fan. I ordered an apple, cinnamon and sugar pancake which ended up tasting delicious. Dutch pancakes are a little bit thicker than the French crepes, but are about the size of a large pizza. In other words, they look beautifully delicious. Our pancakes were served on huge Delft-ware plates, which are beautiful works of art that the Netherlands are also famous for. After dinner we went and saw a movie, True Grit, which was shown in English but with Dutch subtitles. Inside the movie theater myself and the two other Americans in our group began talking to a woman in the family seated behind us. She was also an American from New York, but had moved here after marrying her Dutch husband. Come to find out, she actually has a cousin who went to Maryville College. I was blown away simply by the fact that she had even heard of Maryville. After talking a bit, she said she would invite us over for dinner sometime soon and got contact information from one of the people in our group. As the cliche goes, "it's a small world."
On Sunday I took my first trip to Amsterdam. I decided to go by myself for the simple fact that all I planned on doing was going to museums, and I always take a REALLY long time when I go to museums because I'm the guy that has to read every single little thing, so I figured I would spare everyone the agony of having to go through a museum with me. I'm not used to using public transportation, considering that I live in Tennessee, so this ended up being a bit stressful. By the end of the day I had taken a train, a bus, and a tram, all to get to and from the museums in Amsterdam. But, thankfully it all worked out. I visited the van Gogh museum while there, and got to skip the long line outside since I bought a museum card that gets me free access to a number of museums in the Netherlands. This museum holds the largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh in the world, as well as quite a few paintings from other well known artists. I really enjoyed the layout of this museum, as it began by showing works from other artists who were early inspirations for van Gogh. After comparing a few side by side it was really quite easy to discern where he drew his influences and inspiration from. Van Gogh is actually my other favorite artist, so it was nice to be able to see works from both of my favorite artists in one weekend. The audio tour provided quite a bit of great information as to the backgrounds of a number of the pieces. I was a bit disappointed that many of his most well known pieces were absent, such as the Starry Night pieces; however, I was able to see my absolute favorite painting, Almond Branches in Bloom, and it looked even more beautiful in person than in the pictures I've seen. This was pretty much all I saw of Amsterdam, but I will definitely be making many return trips because there's quite a lot left to see.
On Monday I visited the Naturalis museum in Leiden with some friends. This is basically one really big nature museum with a LOT of stuff to look at. It was all very interesting stuff, but it was very overwhelming and was just too much to look at in one day. But, since I have the museum card, I can go back as many times as I want!
It's been quite cold here lately, so cold that there's been a thin layer of ice over some of the canals the past few days. It actually just finished snowing a little bit a few minutes ago. As much as I love snow, I am not a fan of this weather. At all. I've had a bit of a cold the past few days as well, so that doesn't make things any better.
But, that's all I've got for updates at the moment. Oh, and happy birthday to me!
Leien University, The Netherlands
This past week marked the first actual trip that I took outside of Leiden since I arrived almost a month ago. While I know people who have already been to Paris and Madrid, I'm just getting started- and I plan to catch up!
Last Friday I took the train to the Dutch city of Den Haag, otherwise known as The Hague. This city serves as the seat of the Dutch Parliament. I boarded the train at about 11:00 AM with a few people who I've recently become friends with in what was a rather eclectic crew- one Hawaiian, two Germans, a guy from Portugal, and myself the Tennessean. We didn't have much of a plan and just sort of figured it out as we went along, but it turned out to be quite a fun day. We got somewhat lost a few times, which meant by the end of the day we had walked a lot and were ready for a nap. We ended up seeing the Parliament building (but we missed the last tour by 15 minutes), Queen Beatrix's working palace, the Peace Palace where the International Court of Justice is housed, and we checked out the M. C. Escher museum which was my favorite part of the trip. Escher is one of my favorite artists so it was a treat to be able to see his work up close and in person. Also, the museum is housed inside of an old palace, so the building itself was a work of art. Inside of the museum our group met another group of students, two from Russia and one from New York. We talked with these people for a bit and ended up grabbing some coffee with them after leaving the museum. Finally we hopped on the train to go back to Leiden after a day well spent.
Saturday night I met some new international students through one of my friends, and we all had dinner together and a Dutch pancake house, or t' Pannenkoekenhuis. This was the first time I had ever eaten a famous Dutch pancake, and let me say that I am now officially a fan. I ordered an apple, cinnamon and sugar pancake which ended up tasting delicious. Dutch pancakes are a little bit thicker than the French crepes, but are about the size of a large pizza. In other words, they look beautifully delicious. Our pancakes were served on huge Delft-ware plates, which are beautiful works of art that the Netherlands are also famous for. After dinner we went and saw a movie, True Grit, which was shown in English but with Dutch subtitles. Inside the movie theater myself and the two other Americans in our group began talking to a woman in the family seated behind us. She was also an American from New York, but had moved here after marrying her Dutch husband. Come to find out, she actually has a cousin who went to Maryville College. I was blown away simply by the fact that she had even heard of Maryville. After talking a bit, she said she would invite us over for dinner sometime soon and got contact information from one of the people in our group. As the cliche goes, "it's a small world."
On Sunday I took my first trip to Amsterdam. I decided to go by myself for the simple fact that all I planned on doing was going to museums, and I always take a REALLY long time when I go to museums because I'm the guy that has to read every single little thing, so I figured I would spare everyone the agony of having to go through a museum with me. I'm not used to using public transportation, considering that I live in Tennessee, so this ended up being a bit stressful. By the end of the day I had taken a train, a bus, and a tram, all to get to and from the museums in Amsterdam. But, thankfully it all worked out. I visited the van Gogh museum while there, and got to skip the long line outside since I bought a museum card that gets me free access to a number of museums in the Netherlands. This museum holds the largest collection of paintings by Vincent van Gogh in the world, as well as quite a few paintings from other well known artists. I really enjoyed the layout of this museum, as it began by showing works from other artists who were early inspirations for van Gogh. After comparing a few side by side it was really quite easy to discern where he drew his influences and inspiration from. Van Gogh is actually my other favorite artist, so it was nice to be able to see works from both of my favorite artists in one weekend. The audio tour provided quite a bit of great information as to the backgrounds of a number of the pieces. I was a bit disappointed that many of his most well known pieces were absent, such as the Starry Night pieces; however, I was able to see my absolute favorite painting, Almond Branches in Bloom, and it looked even more beautiful in person than in the pictures I've seen. This was pretty much all I saw of Amsterdam, but I will definitely be making many return trips because there's quite a lot left to see.
On Monday I visited the Naturalis museum in Leiden with some friends. This is basically one really big nature museum with a LOT of stuff to look at. It was all very interesting stuff, but it was very overwhelming and was just too much to look at in one day. But, since I have the museum card, I can go back as many times as I want!
It's been quite cold here lately, so cold that there's been a thin layer of ice over some of the canals the past few days. It actually just finished snowing a little bit a few minutes ago. As much as I love snow, I am not a fan of this weather. At all. I've had a bit of a cold the past few days as well, so that doesn't make things any better.
But, that's all I've got for updates at the moment. Oh, and happy birthday to me!