Overgrown with dirt.

Ever since I started sharing accommodation with other people, first in the boarding house, then in college and an apartment in Leiden, I had to deal with filthy people.

And I don't people people who don't shower, or have a bad breath, dirty long nails or something like that. I mean people who, whatever they do, always leave dirt behind. It's completely beyond me how you can go about life in such a way.

Hair in the shower drain or in the bathroom sink is like a never ending story. Same goes for toothpaste in the sink. But the battle really starts in the kitchen. After breakfast time, breadcrumbs take over the kitchen counters. I have a suspicion that people live under an illusion that there is some sort of a breadcrumb fairy in the house who sweeps away all of the breadcrumbs that they leave behind. They must live in Wonderland or something, because neither in Poland nor in the UK have I encountered any breadcrumb fairies. Needless to say, food in the sink is also, apparently, cleaned up by an appropriate set of fairies. Those fairies must be pretty busy by the way, since they also take out overflowing recycling bins, pack and unpack the dishwasher, clean the fridge from mould which inhabited the veg crisper and do all sorts of other stuff too. Oh, and dirty knives and forks left in the sink are the recent occurrence, so our housekeeping fairies need to deal with those now.

I'm quite far from a perfect housewife ideal, but all this dirt drives me crazy! How are people not disgusted to prepare food in a dirty kitchen? Or take a shower in a dirty bathroom? Goodness gracious, it's absolutely awful and this is all I have to say on this matter.

Apocalypse (or about King's Day again).

Preparing for Monday, I felt as if I was preparing for an apocalypse. My fridge has never been so full eggs, milk, butter, veggies, cake (of course!), meat and fish, everything is there so to make sure we, two very hungry people, survive Koningsdag.

I've even polished the entire house, so that when we are stuck at home for almost 48 hours, we don't need to worry about sticky floors,dusty corners and sinks covered with toothpaste. Apocalypse is definitely not the best time to do a spring clean.

And we've survived!

There was a flea market in Leiden: it seems like at least half of families in Leiden decided to get rid off their stuff that morning. There was nothing of particular interest to me there, but it was a sunny day, quite warm, so it was a pleasure to walk around for an hour or so. Party noise have withered away by 11pm (sic!) and the day in general wasn't as apocalyptic as I feared. But in any case I'm glad that we're back to normal now ;)

Not so Polish an attitude.

"This is so not Polish!" we both said after the man left the room.

He was a waiter and he served us food during scholarship interviews last weekend. As it turned out, he worked for the government, but since the Swiss franc have collapsed (and the man had a debt in Swiss francs), he had to take on extra weekend work to be able to pay off the debt. Time was tough for him, but what surprised us most was how positive the man was. He had a beautiful 'can do'

 attitude: he needed extra money to pay off his debt so he simply went out and found extra work. 'It isn't that bad with jobs in Poland' he said, 'you just need to go out and find it. Some people simply don't want to work.' The waiter talked about people who went crazy for money and kept buying unnecessary things which often led to (more) debt.

We were amazed because what I usually see in Poland is a 'can't do' sort of thinking. Can't find work, can't pay off my debt, can't reconcile with my mother, can't have a healthy relationship with my husband. Can't, can't, can't and everyone is against me, especially the government. And here, this man, who undoubtedly found himself in a difficult financial situation and instead of sitting at home and being crossed with the entire world he tried to sort himself out.

Poland would be a better country to live in if more people had such an attitude. If more people were bothered enough to do something with their lives, even when live gets tough and the future looks dark. I always say that your attitude brings you halfway to success.

Orange, Orange Everywhere.

As you probably know, the national colour of the Netherlands is orange. Orange is omnipresent at the moment since it's a week until the King's Day. Apparently the entire country goes crazy for a day (or a bit more, if you count the pre-King's Day parties on April 26th) and I already dread next Monday. I'm not particularily excited about this occassion: it's not my king, not my country and in general I avoid big congregations of people.

In case you doubt the omnipresence of orange, here is a selection of what it on offer in Dutch supermarkets. From donoughts through burgers to potatoes, everything is oranje. You open the frisge and oranje jumps onto your face.

 

Of course, apart from these bizzare orange food items, there are of course banners, wigs, trumpets, flags and whatever elseon sale, everything still in orange. I bet by Monday I'll be sick of all this orange. Until then I'll try to devise a plan how to avoid this craze, since I have no intention to participate. My home will be a safe haven with movies, tea, snacks and peace and quiet to keep us away from the orange.

Done! Now into the sunshine!

Finally, the exams are over!

Now I have a few days off to recover before classes start again. I’m quite excited because on Monday I start criminalistics course and I really hope this will be interesting (I guess it cannot get more boring than my only other non-law course, entrepreneurship & innovation, which was absolutely awful). It involves a trip to the Netherlands Forensic Institute. Of course no actual information about the course have been provided so far, I have no idea what sort of reading I need to do and nobody seems to care about letting us know anything about criminalistics course, even though it’s three days till it starts, if we exclude the weekend.

Now it's time to make most of this beautiful weather in Leiden. Today: an afternoon picnic with fired chicken, salad, tuna macaroni and muffins. It was lovely to sit outside in the park and catch a few rays of sun. I hope there will be some more days like today. It was absolutely perfect.

Things you need to deal with on your year abroad.

You know these days when you come back home and find that your kitchen window is gone? 

Today was the day.

Currently we have a lovely breeze going round the kitchen. No one knows what actually happened: but one part of the window came off the frame and shattered all over the neighbours' garden. As a temporary solution we've employed a lot of packing tape and some cardboard. The result might be far from professional, but we couldn't really do much better on Sunday afternoon.

I've dealt with a lot of things during this year abroad, but haven't foreseen dealing with broken windows. Luckily the weather is nice now, the situation would be much more difficult if it happened a month ago.

Getting treated in the Netherlands.

It's interesting how medical profession differs in European countries, not only in terms of medical procedures used and technological advancement, but also in terms of attitudes towards health in general.

I'm not a fan of doctors, in fact I simply dislike any medical appointments, but since I arrived in the Netherlands in September I had a few contacts with the medical profession.

What needs to be noted is that healthcare in the Netherlands knows no such thing as NHS in Britain or NFZ in Poland. There are no government-provided medical services, even basic ones, so you need to take out a private medical insurance or pay out of pocket. A question about your insurance card is asked again and again, at a chemist's, gp, hospital and any other medically-related places.

The first instance of my Dutch medical exploration was when I needed a prescription. First surprise, the practice actually replied to my email. When sending emails to such institutions you never know whether you'd ever hear back, so it was a plus. The GP spoke English, which is always helpful, especially if your Dutch abilities are rather limited and the appointment was very smooth. So far so good.

What I found interesting was how prescriptions are organised here. You get a piece of paper with a barcode on it which holds all the details. Then, if the medicine is something you need to take regularly, on picking up a dose you get another piece of paper with a renewed prescription. In Poland prescriptions are still usually hand written and need to be renewed in person, which requires multiple trips to your gp, so it was a bit of a novelty. I don't like that prescriptions are tied to a specific chemist's. Your doctor will ask where you usually go to pick up your medicine and each renewed prescription will need to be used at this chemist's, which might sometimes be inconvenient. 

Later I had to see a doctor again. In the meantime I came across this blog post on how to approach Dutch doctors. Having done a bit of research into Dutch healthcare, I was aware that the GPs deal with most things (which is in contrast with health care in Poland which is rather specialist-dependent), medicine is not preventive (so many people see a doctor only when things go horribly wrong), and paracetamol is treated as a miraculous cure (but so is the case in Britain, so no surprises here for me). Equipped with this knowledge, and a list of things I wanted from the doctor, off I went for my appointment and, having come across a trainee doctor, got everything I've requested (probably due to a mixture of her little experience with patients and my inexplicable symptoms).

I also had a pleasure to got for a few medical scans to a nearby hospital (the practice has no diagnostic equipment) and encountered a ridiculous number of ticket dispenser. I guess the Dutch are not so good at forming a queue and a piece of paper with a number is absolutely necessary. What was really annoying is that no one really tells you you need to have a number. Thank God I understand enough Dutch to read the signs and labels on different buttons on those dispensers!

That's all about getting treated  in the Netherlands. Still, I prefer not to see doctors. I'll carry on eating my daily dose of oranges.

Back to normal.

Happy Easter everyone!

I've only got back from an Easter trip home. It was an intense weekend, with some appointments, a trip to Auschwitz, baking, exploring Krakow and Warsaw and enjoying delicious Polish food. Our bellies have been stretched as much as it was possible and I guess now it'll be the time to come back to shape after these few days of indulgence and gluttony.

I must say that showing Captain America around made me appreciate where I come from more. And I've noticed and learnt many things which my brain never registered before. There are so many beautiful details around, so many things to admire as you walk around. And it was a very enjoyable experience to be a tour guide: I like walking and being a guide involves educating people, so I'll keep it in the back of my mind in case no other summer job comes up. 

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Three exams next week, hooray! Fortunately, all of them are open book exams, so I just need to know my way round textbooks and notes and have an idea what the course is about and I'll be fine. EU law seems to be much more easy to learn, not sure why it is so, maybe just the fact that I've been doing it for the entire year rather than only 8 weeks of term time. I need time for learning. And now I actually have it.