Rotterdam

On Wednesday, I went to Rotterdam with Eva and Dilyana. We caught the train at arount 930 and arrived in Rotter-dam at noon, with no plan or itinerary except to somehow make our way over to the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, eventually, in the course of the day.

The main point was simply to get out of Middelburg for a minute and spend a whole day without the subject of "school" or "work" crossing our minds or weaseling into conversation.

We left the station and were on a windy street with lots and lots of people and big tall skyscrapers. I felt silly but I immiediately took pictures of the buildings. Not that I've never seen tall buildings before; it's just been so long! (Okay, only a month or two... it's still nice and surprising.)

We got orange juice at an Orange Cafe (Orange as in the cellular telephone company) and started walking. It was very, very windy. This is a hard part about the Netherlands: I can deal with the greyness and the raininess as well as I deal with it at home, except that the wind can make it impossible to use an umbrella, and drives the rain sideways so an umbrella wouldn't do much good anyway.

Luckily, it wasn't raining. In fact, we had very good weather the entire day: it rained for a few minutes in the morning but at that point we were already in the Free Record Shop.

What is it about traveling that turns otherwise unreasonable and thoughtless purchases into a completely necessary object that you absolutely couldn't live without? At any rate, Dilyana and I left with two DVDs each. (Mine were "When Harry Met Sally" and "Sense and Sensibility", so they weren't really thoughtless because I had been thinking about them for a long time.)

We passed an ice cream stand, and Eva looked desirous, so I immediately justified the stop and in we went. (I am very good at justifying the consumption of ice cream at any time of day and in any season or weather condition.)

Inside, we were served by a very friendly, funny young man, who spoke excellent English, advised on flavors and introduced Dilyana to passion fruit. What is even stranger than the fact that she had never heard of passion fruit is that she didn't like it when she tasted it.

"It's too sweet," she said.

"Sweet?!?" said the man, surprised. "You mean sour."
"No, too sweet," she said.

Eva and I had the same flavors, and the man teased us about copying each other. He asked where we were from, and got very diverse answers! He reminded me of me when I worked at Mio Gelato. Man I would love to work again.

We sat and enjoyed our ice cream. First really good ice cream I have had since coming to the Netherlands for this semester, and quite probably only the second or third time since I came here in August.

And only the first of the delicious taste of the day...

We walked some more, went to more shops. We had the idea that we were slowly working our way towards the museum, which Anne was very enthusiastic about and sounded very interesting.

We considered buying matching underwear, but it turned out not to be on sale. Eva bought a dress. She had no idea when she would wear it, but it looked very nice on her: grey with silver sequins around the hips and a low keyhole back. We went to a giant H&M, which makes the Middelburg branch look sadly pathetic.

We wandered around and looked for a place to get lunch.

Eva wanted french fries. I ate part of one of my sandwiches. It's not that I'm healthy or much of a planner, mostly it's just that I'm stingy. But when we passed a poffertjessalon, I insisted that we return after we found a lunch for the others. I was not passing up on real poffertjes, which I have only had once or twice since moving to Middelburg.

We wandered further in search of French fries and ended up at the big, funky library. It was at this point that we realized we were not walking towards the museum, and it was even later, as we were eating poffertjes, that we realized were walking in quite a different direction.

But no matter. We gave up on the French fries, turned around and walked back to the poffertjessalon. We were waited on by a surly, big, tall, young-ish man, who gave us a lot of information about the menu while we all smiled up at the him. At the end, Dilyana said, "English?" in a pleading voice.

"Please," I added, and he said, "Oh," and said a lot less in English.

I must admit that I am more and more pleased with my ordering skills. On Friday I went to the Coffe House St. John with Anne and not only ordered the coffee I wanted in near-perfect Dutch but even asked to replace the plain whipped cream with the Mocha kind. The real problem comes afterward, when they say something in return and I have to admit that actually, I don't really speak it - or rather, that I can say certain sentences involving food and cafes, but have very small chance of understanding!

We had tea and coffee, and Dilyana and I each ordered poffertjes. I think I'll let my pictures do the talking...

Poffertjes:

Dilyana and I, happy with our poffertjes:




Dilyana and I, eating poffertjes:

Ah, good times.

We walked back towards the central station the way we came, and from there, towards the museum. Only really towards it this time.

Of course, we arrived there after three, which didn't leave us much time for wandering. By the time we had gotten to the more recent pieces, which is what I am really interested in, the guards were kicking us out. We couldn't even buy postcards. Luckily, though, most museums are free on Wednesdays, so we got in for free instead of having to pay 7 euros, and therefore we were not too disappointed about the time shortage.

We went for a walk in the garden, and then looked in a few more shop windows.

We went for a walk in the garden of the museum, and afterwards, we looked into some more shops.

We spent some time in a nice bookshop which made me especially happy because there was a black cat sitting on the stairs near the counter. Almost completely black; just a little bit of white on a few of its paws. I am always thinking about how nice it would be to have a cat her ein Middelburg. It could sit and sleep on your lap while you were up late studying and curl up on the carpet under the window on sunny afternoons. And I, who has my own door, could let it in and out of doors.

Unfortunately, students at the Roosevelt Academy are not allowed to keep pets, except a select few who get special permission and those who have small caged creatures and can therefore sneak around the rules. However, I have no interest in anything that forces me to clean up after it.

We passed another nice window with the best T-shirts ever:

And silly me, I forgot to write down the name of the store! How much I would love to have a T-shirt that says "spinach" on it in Dutch! For all I know, though, it was only a promotion or ad campaign... but I long for that shirt!

For dinner we went for Chinese food at a place that seemed pretty fast food-y to me. Originally, though, they had wanted to go to KFC, but luckily the line was too long. I wasn't hungry so I just bought a soda and nibbled on their food. Eva was disappointed with the quality, said it wasn't really like this, usually it was much better... I could have told her that, before we went in! But she says she has had pretty good Chinese food in similar places before, and I suppose she would know.

After this, we worked our way back to the train station. It was cold and very windy, and it was starting to rain a little, just enough to make it somewhat miserable. Our last bit of excitement came on the train platform, when an old couple approached us and the man said, "Well, see you tomorrow, in Middelburg!"

We all looked at him with very confused expressions on our faces, and he explained that he had seen us this morning in Middelburg and now he saw us again, getting the train back home.

We played a Bulgarian game, very similar to M.A.S.H., on the ride home, and said good evening to the man and his wife as we crossed the bridge over the first canal and into Middelburg.

Another nice thing about leaving Middelburg is that when you come back, it feels more like home.

Please forgive any awful and/or inexcusable typos; I had a hard enough getting the picture layout right and no patience remains for capitalizations, punctuation, spelling, or grammar, so please excuse me.