A Glimpse of Life in Leiden

This morning, as I was walking into town and noticing the little things that are becoming more and more familiar to me, I started thinking about the phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

What a stupid phrase! Sure, it works for some things, but only if those things can’t be explained in less than a thousand words.

I could take one picture of my new life and post it here, or I could write a thousand words about my new life here. And the words would be much more valuable and descriptive.

So I decided to try writing a thousand words about me in Leiden.

I live in a little house on the Groenesteeg. It’s a small bike street that leads off of the Hooigracht, one of the streets marking off the center of the city. I have four housemates, all girls, none of whom I know. I’ve met each of them once or twice, but they’re never in the kitchen at the same time as me.

My room is halfway between the ground floor and the first floor. I have a big window, and everyone’s heads can look in just at the bottom of it. I need to buy some of those privacy stickers that blur the window.

It’s a small-ish room, with a built-in table and shelves. Now that I have a bed, it’s more or less home, though I still need to hang pictures and assign everything to a specific place.

Around the corner from me, on the Hooigracht, is an organic food store. They’re hiring for part-time workers to start this month, but I can’t work there. One employee asked me, during my last transaction, if I could understand him. If they think I don’t understand simple customer-employee interaction, there’s no way they’ll ever hire me.

Keep walking, past the Belgian pub and the University housing for international students, and you come to the Lange Rijn. Turn right and walk along the canal for the equivalent of one city block, and you get to the first of three bridges. The first bridge is mainly a big street bridge, it doesn’t really feel like a bridge when you’re on it. The next bridge is a pedestrian and bicycling bridge. It’s made of wooden planks, and the metal railings are painted white and hung with flower boxes, and it is further decorated with the bikes that are locked along the railing. The third bridge is a market bridge, sort of like the bridge over the Rialto in Venice, only not as amazing.

On the right side of the canal – my side of the canal – there are some shops and bakeries, and then, after the third bridge, pubs. On the left side of the canal, there are lots of cafes – all bad or mediocre. (My brother agrees with me on that.)

On Wednesdays and Saturdays, market is held here. When I came to Leiden with Annarita last February, we walked along this canal and looked at the market, how could I have known that this would one day be my neighborhood?

I turn left at the third bridge and walk past the Stadhuis, or City Hall, to get to my classes, which are mostly held in the Lipsius Building. If I walk straight along the canal, I come to the V&D Department store (they have a department store here!). Cross back to the right side of the canal and walk up an alley, I arrive at Harlemmerstraat, the main shopping street in Leiden. (Easier to pronounce than Lange Delft, the shopping street in Middelburg.)

Last night I went for a drink at the Meneer Jan with a classmate from the Roosevelt Academy who I ran into for the first time. We meant to meet people in her literature department, but didn’t. Then we went to the Einstein, where they have international student drinks every Wednesday, but I only recognized one person and she was speaking her native language with a group of fellow countrymen so I didn’t say hello. (Man, RA really had it figured out, with the English-only rule!)

The walk to my classes is nice, a little longer than I am used to, and very busy. There are so many people here, so many more than I am used to! And still, the disenchanted students who have been here for three years already complain and go to Amsterdam and the Hague when they want to have a good time. To me, Leiden is a metropolis. Riding my bike is a scary undertaking, completed only three times.

Classes are interesting, although so far, not especially stimulating. And, when I look at the screen with the class directory, I get excited at the names of courses like, “The World According to Beowulf”, which are no longer in my field. On the other hand, things like New Media and Society will be interesting, though I think I am a traditionalist and will get annoyed/depressed about books. Digital Media and Technology will surely be a good and rather useful course, in which I get to learn about things like HTML and TEI encoding. (I’d never even heard of TEI before class on Thursday, and now I’m supposed to work on encoding 100-year-old letters [or older?] in TEI for homework.)

The grading is strange; I have to get used to the Dutch grading system (on a scale of 1-10, 6 being a pass, so actually not all that different from the American system). My courses mainly have two graded components: a paper and an exam, each worth 50% of the grade. In one class I only have a take home exam and one thousand-word paper. (I’m pretty sure I couldn’t just take a picture instead…) I wonder how the difficult the assignments and reading will be in the meantime?

So, here it is, one thousand words about my new life. It’s still not very exciting, but then, it’s only been one week. I’ll just be patient.

Pictures will come later.