leiden so far...

-the place-
it’s a really cute town, mature in the way that it manages to be both historic and modern. in more than one store, i heard contemporary american music playing--including, i kid you not, ‘low’ by flo-rida: ‘shorty had them apple bottom jeans (jeans), boots with the fur (with the furrr), da whole club was lookin’ at her (ey!)…’ etc.

there are canals that run though the whole city.




if you get lost--inevitable with street names like ‘korevaarstraat’ and ‘zoeterwoudsesingel’ (actual names of streets in leiden)--you can just follow the canals. easy enough even for someone as directionally challenged as i am.

-the people-
people seem friendly here. while walking down the street, my study abroad buddies and i have received the occasional random smile or wave (or in one case, a thumbs up from an elderly man as he flashed us a toothless grin while whizzing by on his moped).

it started raining one day, so e. and i went into this department store to look for raincoats, but we found these goofy rain hats instead:


a woman who worked there saw us taking pictures and came over to us, saying something in dutch along the lines of ‘blah blah blah blah blah camera blah blah blah blah blah,’ so we mumbled ‘sorry’ and sheepishly began putting our cameras away. when she heard us speak, she switched to english, launching into a story about how she had a digital camera but had no idea how to use it. turns out she wasn’t telling us off after all, and i gladly spent about five minutes showing her the different features on my camera.

i've been too nervous to use 'mag ik engels spreken?' for fear of getting laughed at/offending someone due to horribly butchering the language... but asking 'may i speak english?' in english has worked fine so far.

-the food-
not exactly the flavors you’d find at home:


e. and i went to the pancake house (the one that's supposed to be the oldest one in europe) today. i ordered a banana-powdered sugar pancake:


it was thin like a crepe, about a foot in diameter, and delicious.

there's also a farmer's market-type thing every wednesday and saturday, so we went to that too.


later, we went to a grocery store and bought a frozen pizza... without realizing that our dorms don't have an oven. apparently, ovens aren't standard in dutch kitchens. so, we made do with what we had:


-the things-
some toilets here have two flush buttons, a big one and a small one, depending on, um, the strength of the flush you need.

i tried to do laundry, but the instructions are all in dutch:



i poured some detergent, pressed some buttons and twiddled some knobs, and the washing machine started filling up with water and spinning, so i guess i did something right (and i assumed the dryer’s ‘extra droog’ setting would get my laundry sufficiently dry).

my next goal is to get a bike. there are probably more bikes than cars here.


while walking is all fine and dandy, there’s only so much of it i can do in a day.

later,
b.