The thoughts & opinions of Sassarella, the Queen of Sass as she cavorts in 's Gravenhage & beyond. Brought to you by CES's (Chief Executive Slaves) of Big Skanky Ho Inc.
Grblah. I am the biggest space cadet to ever walk the earth. Yesterday, I forgot my keys. My roommate keeps a spare set at work. So after work was over, I picked up the spare set and went on my merry way. My plan to go to Amsterdam and have fondue with the Swedish had to be set aside in favour of having dinner downtown (work ended a little later than I thought it would), which actually turned out lovely. I ate at a place called Rootz which had a delicious veggie pie of some sort, followed by a delicious chocolade bonbontaart. This was followed by a return to the apartment I'm staying at, only to discover that the key, the only key in the box where she keeps the spare set, was the wrong key. Did I mention it's midnight at this point? Did I mention that all the phone numbers that I have in the Hague (including my own) were sitting on a sheet of paper right next to my keys? Did I mention that I was in the middle of a storm, which being right next to the North Sea and all, is nothing to sneeze at.
I discovered that Scheveningen has no public phones that accept change. Not only that, it has no public phones that accept a foreign credit card. Not that this would have done me any good, since I didn't have anyone's phone number. Around two a.m., after repeatedly trying to use the phone and buzz my way into the apartment, I finally gave up and went to find a cheap hotel. I ended up at the Hotel Seinduin.
How to describe the Hotel Seinduin? It's a house. A big house, but a house nonetheless. The receptionist was unhappy to see me at 2 am (like I'm happy to be there), and after some talk, she lets me in, takes me to the reception, and proceeds to rip me off. I end up paying 75 euro (about $100) for a room that's cold, which is nice cause I'm soaked, flourescently lit, and decorated like a late 60s whorehouse with orange fabric and fake wood laminate furniture. I note all this in the five seconds it takes me to take my coat off, get into bed, and turn the damn lights off.
5:40am, the next morning, I wake up and lie there for three hours. After a whole lot of wandering around town, I find that the other guy I came over with is staying in the same hotel. And he has a spare bed in his fucking room, which just reinforces my idiocy. I find some phone numbers, I call the huismeester (housemaster), get the spare key, get inside and so far I've spent the day in a wasted attempt to get warm. It's not raining anymore, but the sea is going crazy. I guess this is good surfing weather, except you'd freeze your ass off.
Today, I'm going to go buy a tape recorder and a cell phone. Then I'm going to put on eighty layers of clothing, grab a huge mug of hot tea and curl up under about 80 duvets.
There's a movie on right now starring David Schwimmer and Woody Allen. This can only suck. Grblah. posted by Alleen at 11:47:51 AM
Wednesday, April 24, 2002
To all the Armenians in the house, Happy April 24th. It's pretty well impossible to commemorate April 24th in a city with no Armenians and a large Turkish population, so here's my little contribution:
For more info on the Armenian genocide, click here. posted by Alleen at 8:34:29 PM
Today, I tried the herring. Raw salted herring sandwich (haring broodjes) covered in onions is a big thing with the Dutch, who, being on the coast and all, love their seafood. I ignored many things like my natural revulsion to the fact that they leave the skin on, or the fact that not even the Dutch like Dutch food (hence an almost complete lack of Dutch restaurants), or the fact that I was eating raw salted herring covered with onions on a hot dog bun. I reasoned with myself that I should try the delicacies of the country that I'm currently living in. It's kind of like sushi, I said to myself, and anyway, I can't just eat pannekoeken forever.
Wrong wrong wrong. Do not eat the herring. Do not go near the herring. Give the herring with onions a wide berth. It is not like sushi. It's not even a Dutch delicacy; it's just evil. The horrific flavour is just the beginning. The texture, the smell, and the several hours of continuous stomach trouble are the true pinnacle of the herring experience. I had to go and drink a can of plain soda water (no ginger ale here--the first person who visits me gets to bring me a case) to make the taste go away.
On the plus side, I found Pocky. There's a Chinese supermarket in the piddling Chinatown in Den Haag that has Pocky. Sadly, no Miffy chocolates, but definitely Pocky. It's wierd but I felt more at home in a Chinese supermarket than I do in Dutch food shops, even though nobody spoke English.
For some reason, my clothing and hair choices of the day elicited a lot of comments from strangers. A group of teenaged girls called me Jennifer Lopez as I walked by. Yet another woman stopped me to ask where I'd gotten my sunglasses (the fuzzy red ones) and also brought up J. Lo. Apparently the way to achieve the J. Lo look is to throw on some unironed Alcatraz clothing, do something to your hair in an attempt to hide its unwashed state, and throw on some fuzzy red sunglasses. In Toronto, I am a slob; in Den Haag, I'm a superstar.
Rotter-damn, bitch! That's all I have to say. Compared to Amsterdam and Den Haag, Rotterdam is one ugly city. It's a port city so it's pretty industrial, though probably one of the more multi-cultural cities in the Netherlands. Much of the city was levelled by bombing in WWII, so the city is pretty modern as compared to the rest of the Netherlands, though still built on the "if we squish it, they will come" model of urban planning that seems to pervade this country. I passed an apartment complex that had these semi-circular balconies that were about a foot to a foot and a half in radius. I wish I were exaggerating, but no, that's actually how squishy they build their homes in Rotterdam.
Admittedly Rotterdam isn't that bad. I fell victim again to the Dutch tendency to shut everything down on a Sunday. It was like being in a ghost town at some points. It did look like the shopping was fun and the nightlife plentiful, (hey I even passed a goth store!), so it may be worth a second look. Apparently, the secondhand stores in Rotterdam kick ass.
This trip, I only made it to two things. The pannekoekenboot is 12 euros worth of sweet sweet love. They put you on a boat, they feed you pancakes (three kinds!), and they even have a ballroom for the kiddies. It doesn't get better than this. Delicious!
I also made it to an art museum with an unpronouncable name. I got there about half an hour to closing, so they waved me in for free. I caught the last day of their local artist exhibition, which I believe had something to do with body parts. A huge papier mache tongue on the floor was a subtle counterpoint to the fridge full of plastic tubing and organs covered in fake blood. While I didn't particularly understand the point of most of it, it was certainly fun to look at. It was almost better than the giant Klaes Oldenburg hamburger at the AGO, though admittedly, I felt less of an urge to jump on the giant papier mache tongue. It just didn't look as smushy.
Another room contained a thought-provoking exhibit on the definition of sexy. At least that's what I assume was going on. The descriptions were all in Dutch, and for all I know the sign could have said "Only losers step here" or "Here is some art that was randomly grouped together by blind macaques." My personal favourite was the distorted photograph entitled, "Thank you, Thighmaster." I tittered at that for a good two minutes.
Rotterdam is dotted with statues. I don't know if they just do this for the tourists or whether the Dutch are so enamoured of their sculpture that they must have it everywhere. Hell, there's a sculpture not too far from the apartment I'm staying that's basically a face on its side. Two memorable Rotterdam sculptures included the array of giant, colourful turds laying in the grass by the side of a canal and a huge bronze sculpture of a woman's lower half, standing kind of like she needed to pee.
I am still without a camera, but I intend to visit again soon and I also intend to get ahold of a camera. We will see where these intentions lead.
I'm getting a little too tired to write. It's twenty to midnight where I am and almost six o'clock where you are. Enjoy your daylight, kids, I'm going to bed.
I've had a slow week packed with double shifts and a slow weekend packed with art supply searches. I went looking for art supplies yesterday and after much torture involving a dutch-english dictionary, the Den Haag yellow pages, and Battlefield Earth on in the background, I finally figured out that art supplies in Dutch is Kunstschildersmaterialen. I think. The Dutch have a tendency to make up compound words and to randomly incorporate other languages in the form of compound words. It makes for a certain difficulty in looking up words in the dictionary.
Anyway, the point is that I found them. There's an office supply store about 25 minutes walk from the apartment I'm staying in. If you go to the back of this office supply store, you will find a passageway that leads to a children's crafts and toy store. The passageway is lined with art supplies. I'm still not sure what the store is called, nor why it's set up in this bizarre manner. You can't get to the children's store without going through the office supply store. I suppose signs for all of these things are posted somewhere in Dutch, which isn't particularly helpful to me (though I guess signs in English wouldn't be helpful to the Dutch), though I actually couldn't find those either. I've become completely blase about whipping out a dutch-english dictionary in public. I figure, they'll know soon enough that I don't speak Dutch anyway.
Today, being Sunday, I've decided to go to Rotterdam. There's an all-you-can-eat pancake cruise of the canals there with my name written all over it. Also, there is some delightful modern architecture which I will be sure to look at as I stuff my face full of pancakes.
For Aleta's information, Der Hague would probably be the German way of saying Den Haag. The Dutch are not particularly keen on the Germans, what with wartime occupations and the shipping out of the entire Jewish population and what have you. The official name is apparently S. Gravenhage, yet another aspect of Dutch wordplay that I will never understand. Most people call it Den Haag, though the bank addressed my mail to me in S. Gravenhage.
I will try to post something when I get back from Rotterdam, probably something involving being too full of pancakes to write anything good. I must warn y'all though, that next week I'm on four double shifts which means that blog updates may be few and far between. Hell, last week I only had two double shifts and that fucked up my whole week. It was pretty bizarre because the morning shift involved testimony about a guy in a prison camp, while the afternoon shift involved a historian's expert report. The morning shift was horrific, but in a wierd way a lot more interesting, and so easier to follow. It's going to be really wierd when I actually start hoping for prison camp stories to keep me going.
Anyway. Pancake stories coming soon. posted by Alleen at 11:32:54 AM
