Carnival and the Superbowl

So since the last time I wrote a lot has happened. First there was carnival - a three day Catholic fest of drunkenness and partying. Then I watched an American football game for the first time in my life and actually enjoyed it.
Carnival is an interesting time here in Maastricht. It is only celebrated in the southern part of the Netherlands in the two Catholic provinces. The people from the North-west (Amsterdam, the Hague and Rotterdam) think of the southerners as farmers and a lot of the students we met at the Hague were surprised that we decided to live in the "boring" part of the country. But for Carnival Maastricht was anything but boring. I have never seen so many people dress in such weird costumes ever in my life. There were a lot of fuzzy tiger suits, clown outfits and some not very politically correct costumes. Dressing up as Indians (not my kind) and wearing black face is not a very big deal at all. I also saw some "Jamaicans" dressed up in camouflage. All ten of us dressed up in costumes and went to the main city squares to watch the parades and the raising of the moosweif (or market lady). Fed at the last minute decided to wear one of Eleni's dresses as a costume and got hit on by a couple of men. By the last night of Carnival the entire city was littered, and there was broken glass everywhere. We spent the night club hopping and also dancing along to some weird music coming from a float from the parade that was being driven around the city center.
On Sunday night, which was also the first night of Carnival, we went to a bar and watched the Superbowl game. Since Eleni is from New York, I wanted the Giants to win, but I surprised myself by how into the game I got. I still don't understand any of the rules, and barely understood what was going on, but it was still great. So oddly enough after spending 2.5 years in the US, I finally got into football in Maastricht. Jack and Eleni told me that games are usually not as exciting as this one was, but for now I think its great.

Apart from that all I have done recently is class work since we had a paper to write for Samatar. Since we only have one actual class for the first half of the semester, I really want to go and travel a bit, but Europe is expensive! I know I am going to be broke by the end of this thing and my tax refund could not come at a better time.

The picture there is of the Markt Square, on of the main squares in the city centre.

Sinasappel = orange (the fruit)

One Month, 4 Countries, 7 Cities, 3 Continents

January was an intense month of traveling. But the whole story really starts on December 19th. That is when I booked my ticket to go to Chicago the next day to give the Dutch embassy my passport so that I could finally get that visa that I almost did not get. December 19th was also the day that I finally turned in my metrics paper, and since it was finals week I had not slept for more than 3 hours for about 4 days. You might have heard this story already but I am going to tell you all about it again anyway. I was ambitious and thought that I would leave to catch my 7am flight by taking the bus at 4:45 and save money on the cab ride. So I set my alarm for 4am but did not go to sleep till 2 taking care of all the forms and documents I had to take. I woke up the next morning with bright sunshine outside, and my cellphone in my hand, and it was already 8am. I panicked, called the study abroad office/former mac friend Aditi and then called a cab as I brushed my teeth. Somehow I got to the Dutch consulate 5 minutes before it closed. Then I spent the day walking around Chicago, met Suma and left for the airport for my flight back. There I found out that my flight was canceled, and so I spent the night in Chicago.

For the rest of my travels I have had similar luck. But I will get back to that later. I got to Amsterdam on the 2nd, and walked around the red light district and other places with Ben for a few hours and then left by train for Maastricht. At the Eindhoven station, where I had to switch trains, I ran into Andra, one of the Mac students going to Maastricht. The most frustrating thing about being here so far is that while everyone can speak English, people tend to assume that you know Dutch. And so on the trains, at the grocery store people come up to me say something in Dutch and I stare back at them, feel completely stupid and ask them whether they speak English (which pretty much everyone does). The point of this whole thing is that because of the language confusion Andra and I almost went to Germany instead of getting to Maastricht, because we did not know that the train splits at Sittard and the front goes to Maastricht and the back goes in the direction of Aachen, Germany. Then, my second day here I fell really sick, and missed a day of Samatar's class and was completely exhausted everyday after classes from 9-5 for a while. So for a few days I really wished I wasn't in the Netherlands, but back home in India, relaxing and doing nothing.

But everything changed once we got to the Hague (or Den Haag in Dutch) for our first "educational excursion". We went to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and got to sit in on a trial of seven Serbs accused of genocide in Srebrenica. We had been given packets of information about the case and at one point I realized, from the pictures on the handouts, that all the accused in the case were sitting in a row in the courtroom. It was a little strange to realize that you are sitting so close to these people accused of committing horrible crimes, and they were sitting there, a little bored, and a little amused at the attention they were getting from us. We also got to talk to one of the prosecutors at the ICTY, later that day. He talked about the difficulties in first proving that the genocide actually happened, and then trying to apprehend the people responsible. The two main accused for the Srebrenica massacre are still fugitives and are hiding in Serbia, but the ICTY does not have the ability to arrest them without the help of the government there. The visit to the ICTY is probably one of my favorite parts of this program so far. The ICTY is scheduled to close by 2010, when the last case is supposed to be done and all the appeals complete.

The next day we also went to the International Court of Justice, which is located in this building known as the Peace Palace. The Peace Palace itself is this magnificent and extravagant building, and apparently ridiculous amounts of money was spent on building and decorating the place. The palace is full of gifts given by various heads of states since 1899 when it was built (like curtains from the Shah of Iran). What I couldn't help thinking was that when Europe was celebrating "peace" (the peace palace was an idea of the Russian Czar and the Dutch queen at the time), the Dutch ran one of the most brutal colonies in Indonesia. It just all seemed like a huge waste of money and very fake. We also spent some time in Hague at a Karaoke bar one night, getting drunk and singing Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys songs. We also got to meet members of the Somali community at the Hague. They invited Samatar and us for a reception and a dinner. They gave him a painting of himself as a present, and the older Somalis and Samatar spent the whole night singing Somali songs. The ten of us spent most of our time talking to the Somali students about the Netherlands, and politics there about immigration.

Our classes with Samatar ended on the 19th in Amsterdam, and so I went back home for 9 days to India. But on the way there my flight from Heathrow was delayed by about 15 hours and therefore I actually got to leave the airport with a 24 hour landing visa and now I can say that I have been to London (maybe). So that is the story of my horrible travel luck.

I have been really bad at taking pictures, and I think right now I have just one of Maastricht. Tomorrow is the day that Carnival starts here, which is similar to Mardi Gras in the states apparently. I am unfamiliar with both of them. Everyone dresses up in outrageous costumes, and if you don't you will be yelled at. It also involves a lot of drinking and face paint. So next time I might have pictures of Carnival, and thoughts about Amsterdam.

Dutch word of the day: Dankjewel : Thank you very much

I finally have wireless

This took a long time, but I finally managed to get internet working on my computer again. And so I decided I am going to start my own study abroad blog. I don't know how often or what I am going to write about, but I would love to get comments, so that I know you are all reading. Obviously you all have nothing better to do than read about my adventures in Europe. I have been here for a month already and so there is a lot to talk about and I don't know where to start.

Strippenkaart is the first Dutch word I got to learn, which is the ticket you get to travel on buses and trams in the and for some reason I decided to name my blog that. Also I finally figured out the difference between Holland and the Netherlands. Holland is just a province. Netherlands is the actual country.