Good Ol' Apple Pie.

Who doesn't like a good old apple pie? Dutch cuisine is not the most elaborate one (mashed potatoes and cabbage seem to be two most important ingredients), but I do like Dutch apple pie. In Amsterdam there is a cafe called Winkel 43, where they serve probably the best apple pie in the city. However, making a 40 minute train trip to Amsterdam every time you feel like having a piece of an apple pie might not be the most cost-effective way to deal with your sweet tooth. Alas!

Thankfully, making an apple pie is dead simple. Here is a recipe which I used to make mine this time. I've made it in a lasagne dish 22cm x 17cm, halving all the amounts from a recipe for 22cm round cake tin.

INGREDIENTS

Pastry

150g flour + extra for dusting

60g caster sugar

salt

100g chilled butter + extra for greasing

1 egg yolk

Apple filling

1/4cupbutter

1.5 tbls flour

1/8 cup water
1/3 cup white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar

3-4 firm apples (Elsar, Jona Gold), peeled and sliced
handful of raisins (optional)

2 tsp cinnamon

METHOD

1. Combine flour, sugar and a pinch of salt. Dice butter and mix into the floor using a knife to cut butter into smaller pieces. Add egg yolk and knead everything together. Press 2/3 of the pastry into a bottom and sides of a 24cm spring form greased with butter. Refrigerate the form and remaining dough while you make the apple filling.

2. Preheat the over to 220C.

3. Melt butter in a pan. Add flour to make paste. Then add water, white sugar and brown sugar, bring to boil and then turn down the heat and simmer for a couple of minutes.

4. Combine apples, raisins and cinnamon. Mix with half of flour mixture. Spread over the pastry base.

5. Roll out the rest of the pastry and cut into 1 cm strips. Arrange a criss-cross pattern on the top of the apple mixture, pressing the pastry edges together. Slowly pour the rest of the

6. Bake for 15 minutes, then turn down the heat to 175C and bake for another 35-45 minutes until apples are soft. Let cool down so that the filling sets.

I think that my apple pie looks rather grand.

Enjoy!

Efteling!

Captain America has been absolutely wonderful and took me to Efteling for our 6 month anniversary! 

Efteling is a theme park and I've been there before, but really wanted to go again. I had so much fun on all of the rides, including the Python on which I was too scared to go last time (a double loop is not necessarily my favourite thing). Conquering my fears it was! Quite frankly, I was pretty excited about it going to a theme park, just like a little child, and I think I really needed to spend a day without thinking about anything serious. And we had ice creams, and baklava, and hot dogs, it was nice and sunny, so what else could I want?

And I found TEA!

It was a wonderful day, made me so happy! Just a perfect way to celebrate ;)

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 ;)

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.

Weather gone berserk.

The wind is blowing here from literally every possible direction and I try to hide in my little second floor hollow as much as possible since any attempts to conquer the weather inevitably end up with me being almost blown off from my bike. Staying indoors is definitely safer.

Although having said that, I left my window open for a little while and ended up with sand/dust being blown into and all over my room, so it's only safe inside if you're prepared not to let any fresh air in.

***

Only a few days till Easter left, but we don't get much time off for this occasion, barely two days (Good Friday and Easter Monday) which is pathetic compared to 6 weeks we get off around Easter at Oxford. In any case, Easter weekend will be so packed! I always try to slow down on such occasions and retain some sanity when everyone else is stressing out about cleaning, shopping and cooking, and this time it might have a different edge to it. I'll probably miss all the cleaning and shopping, contributing to baking more than anything else (well, maybe packing the dishwasher too), but apart from that we'll be doing some exploring with Captain America, so it will be a slow down on a home side and a bit of speeding on having fun side. I definitely need to get away from Leiden somewhere further than Amsterdam to take a deep breath and recharge.

Doing it the Dutch way.

Year abroad is an excellent opportunity to make some anthropological observations. These observations even have a linguistic twist in them.

It appears that the Dutch do not have a phrase 'excuse me' (or sorry for that matter), in their vocabulary. After four years on a Small Island, a placed filled with these phrases to the brim, it was, and still is quite frankly, a rather shocking experience.

So if you want to go through a narrow passage which is obstructed by an unfortunate fellow human being, and if you want to do it the Dutch way, make sure you follow either of these two procedures:

1) mute option: approach the unfortunate fellow human being and stand next to him, very close. Crucially, don't make any sounds whatsoever. Just stand very close to the unfortunate human being and look rather absent-minded.

2) vocal option: if you would rather use your voice strings, embark on the task as in option 1: approach the unfortunate fellow human being and stand next to him, very close. This time, however, you are allowed to make a sound: 'aaaaa' or some similar expression of unidentified emotions. Absent-minded look also welcomed here.

After following either of the procedures, stand there hoping that the person obstructing your way can read your mind even when he cannot see you since he has his back turned to you and is engaged in some intellectually demanding activity which makes it impossible to him to register slight air disturbances when another person approaches. 

***

On a more serious note, this is actually bloody annoying. Don't people know how to use their mouth? I've conducted an experiment this evening: I was washing the dishes when a girl came in and grabbed a kettle. She then stood right next to me with a kettle, but haven't said a word. So I carried on my washing up, silently making bets with myself as to how long she would stand so uncomfortably close to me. Nothing changed for a while, and I started feeling rather weird with her by my side, so I asked whether she wanted to fill up her kettle. What a stupid question to be directed at a person standing with a kettle in her hand next to the sink! But I had no choice! How else could I remedy this situation when she would not use her words? I really don't get it, maybe the Dutch really read each others mind?

God help me.

Do you ever feel like you had absolutely enough? This was definitely me yesterday.

This year abroad has drained me a bit: it hasn't been intellectually challenging and I struggled to find some stimuli to avoid going mad, I still cannot comprehend the culture here, including terrible smoking habits, a lack of any sensitivity toward fellow human beings and an annoying assumption that you know ins and outs of everything, so no explanation of anything is ever given. Also, what sort of a person starts working outside your window (on the second floor I need to point out) at 8:20am? In any civilised country you are simply not allowed to start any noisy activity before 9am (or 10am, to be on the safe side). Here there's no sense of people simply wanting to sleep in the morning or to have a peaceful morning.

On the other hand, expect for those moments of complete frustration, I'm having such a good time here. Even the Dutch crudeness has it's good sides, since I can get away with saying things rather bluntly. The advantage is that taking a very direct approach ensures you are understood. If you say 'I think this is rather unpleasant to have you singing right outside my window when I'm trying to study', the message won't get through. It's another matter if instead you say 'Be quiet, your singing is awfully annoying.' In this case there's no doubt as to what message you try to convey. No linguistic complications. A clear message (which does sound a bit rude to me who is used to very polite manner, but here in NL it's a safer option).

***

It's only just over two months of classes! And even during these two months it's about 4 hours a week anyway, so I'll have plenty of time in between to have some fun (and revise, of course). After a bit of finals panic, I think I managed to calm myself down: it's over a year until I have to sit these exams so I'll just take my time and do whatever I can to sort myself out. Coming back to intellectually unchallenging courses here, being thrown out of the Oxford system was not pleasant, so I guess being thrown back into it will be a bit painful too, but apparently people after a year abroad get better results in finals, so...

In the world of tulips.

Today we made a trip to Keukenhof. This is a big garden about half an hour from Leiden, open from the end of March till mid-May and filled with tulips. Luckily, the weather was beautiful, so we enjoyed a good few hours there, just walking around, enjoying the sunshine and taking pictures of all those beautiful flowers. I think the pictures speak for themselves: Keukenhof is definitely worth a visit.

Rushing out of the house.

You know, I laughed at all of the Dutch who would flood the streets whenever even the smallest ray of sun would poke from behind the clouds.

I laughed, but after months of living here, I've done exactly the same thing.

Today was a beautiful day again but apart from the sun, we were also blessed with a rather high temperature. It felt like everyone who could decided to live the house. Including myself.

In this country where your life is a constant battle with rain and wind, the sunny spells are fully embraced and made most of. After a string of grim days you just crave some sun and it's impossible to resist the temptation to just abandon whatever you are doing and instead just sit on the grass by the canal and enjoy yourself.

So I rushed out of the house this afternoon in an attempt to hyper-dose myself with vitamin D. Almost like a real Leidener.

A morning at Hortus.

Today is such a beautiful day! It's warm and sunny, the wind is not too bad, so given how scarce such days are here in the Netherlands, I've decided to do a bit of exploration today and went to Hortus: Leiden's botanic garden. Leiden lacks a big park in the city centre where I could go for a long walk, so Hortus proved perfect, especially that LU students can enjoy a free entry.

I like how I do have enough time to spend a few hours out in the park, without stressing out about deadlines, reading and all this stuff. I've just finished two out of five courses I'm taking this semester, and exams are in one month time, so my schedule will not be that tight now. And since it coupled with nice weather, I can finally enjoy Leiden.

Now enough talking, here come the pictures.

This is the Observatory, in which I also have some of the classes. Unfortunately, because the classes are cramped and most of them don't have proper tables but only chairs with ridiculously small folding 'desks'.

The blessing of open book exams.

I had my first open book exam in the upper sixth. It was a history exam on historical controversies, in particular witch-hunting in early modern Europe. I had a pile of books and my notes with me, but I haven't used these much: there wasn't enough time to skim through the pages and in any case I've read everything a couple of times, so most of it stuck to my memory anyway.

Oxford knows no concept of open book exams, unless you count in a statute book and a case list. This is why I was surprise to see so many open book exams at Leiden. Labour law, children's rights, IT law, EU competition law, 4 freedoms in the EU, aerospace law- for all of these I can bring in pretty much everything I want except electronic devices (not the case, quite appropriately in IT law course when I actually typed up my exam on my very own laptop). At first I wasn't really fond of those exams, thinking that they don't really reflect what people have learnt during the course. But now I've reconsidered my opinion and I think that actually such exams make much more sense as a way of testing law students.

What I've learnt by observing lawyers in their work is that they don't have all the legal knowledge in their heads. Admittedly it comes with practice: when you deal with a specific issue on daily basis the pieces of legislation and cases become somewhat burnt into your brain, but as for things that are untypical, you have infinite resources to consult: textbooks, journals, magazines, publications, guidelines etc. Most of which is accessible online. At the end of the day lawyers are not valued for how many quirky case facts they can remember or whether they can recite all relevant statutory provisions. Lawyers are valued for how their brains work.

I find it much more useful to have an exam where I can bring printed cases and articles, because then I don't need to stress out about remembering relevant details and instead can concentrate on applying what I know to the problem I need to solve. I still need to have at least a vague idea (or sometimes a rather specific idea, since, again, there is no time to look for information if you don't know what you're looking for) where to find what I need. Which provisions of the Treaty apply. Whether there is some case or a regulation. 

And although open book exams can be ridiculously easy, they can also be rather challenging. Everything depends on the type of questions asked. Not on the fact that you have your books with you.

Post Modern Jukebox!

Inside Paradiso

So last night we went to Paradiso in Amsterdam to see Scott Bradley and Post Modern Jukebox. This was by far the best thing I've seen in my life, had so much fun. We danced, sung along, laughed a lot, because PMJ was just hilarious. I wished a had some proper pictures from yesterday, but it was far too enjoyable to spoil it by being busy with a camera. 

Also, it was the first time when we actually had TIME to wander around Amsterdam without rushing anywhere, so it was a treat for me do go on a little adventure and just explore.

Alto jazz bar with the kindest staff ever AND bonus live music.

Bagels, cheese and all that jazz.

I had such a great day yesterday. After a failure to make our way to Amsterdam, Captain America and I indulged in baking activities and made two batches of bagels. I love how everyone assumed we were expecting many guests that evening when in fact all of this was for us. Yes, we love food. And we love it to be plenty (and delicious: cinnamon bagels topped with sugar are divine).

Also, it seems that the Dutch are getting much nicer and open as they age. I'm not sure whether this is a matter of more life experience, but some of the loveliest people I've met here were those in the autumn of their lives. For instance the lovely cheese seller who I met at the market yesterday and we had a lovely chat about how beautiful Krakow was and about his Polish neighbours. The man was definitely not impressed by the fact that I was buying emmental rather than some Dutch variety of cheese, but he has given me a lovely bag as a present. Faith in humanity restored. This might confirm my theory that cheese makes people happy, so those who work with cheese are automatically nice and spread their happiness around them.

Next two weeks will be extremely busy for me with social events, work-related stuff and just life in general. Getting busy again! At last!

Struggle.

If anyone wonders what I've been up to recently, I've been trying to retrieve my academic transcript from PostNL for almost a week now and it feels like spitting into the wind. 

Have I told you that they don't care about their customers here at all? I honestly feel absolutely hopeless now, I need the transcripts for vac scheme interviews and can do nothing to get them. 'Wait a few more days' they said. But how long can you wait? The letter should have been delivered on Saturday, we have Thursday today and no visible prospects of a delivery. Order a new transcript, you could say, but I have no guarantee that the same thing won't happen again, causing me to spend more money and become even more frustrated.

So here I am, colouring my colouring book (yes) to destress a bit. This is all beyond me, what is left is to keep pestering the mail people and getting annoyed at their incompetence. Welcome to Holland.

White fluff outside.

Josh has posted some pictures of snowy St Anne's on Facebook the other day, so I won;t want to be left behind at here are some pictures of Leiden in snow. (No need to say that it has all melted now, so the pretty view outside my window was rather short-lived)

I must say that I am rather unsatisfied with winter this year, there's been only a few days when there was white outside. My Dutch teacher kept saying that we'll get proper seasons in the Netherlands, but so far we have, indeed, had proper seasons, just all in one day, and it probably doesn't count. Let's hope that summer here is a bit more like summer.

Looking ahead.

Classes have finally started!

For those of you who don't understand how one can be happy about it, I've spent two months on the edge of being idle because all of my courses finished by the end on November and the new semester hasn't started until today. I did, however, have time to fill in quite a few vac scheme applications which I've mentioned in one of the previous posts, a luxury that most law students can't afford.

After those two months I actually can't wait to have classes, especially that I have signed up to only five courses, including a much awaited aerospace law and criminalistics (with a field trip!). Also having a more structured week and actual deadlines would be great: I'm a kind of a person who puts leisure activities into a diary to keep track of everything, so having blank pages is not a pleasant view for me.

My fitness schedule has also been sorted out more or less, although it will be a living thing anyway. On the novelty side, the sports centre introduces fingerprint-based entrance replacing old-fashioned cards (even though they are magnetic, which is in itself an advancement compared to what I've seen in some places).  So now I'll need to make my way to the desk there and get my finger scanned with an assurance that no one will be able to hack the information and use it for illegitimate purposes. Somehow this assurance makes me even more weary about the entire idea, but what can I do, the world goes forward.

Finally, weather-wise, it feels like March: it's not too cold, but it rains pretty much every day. I really don't know how people function in this country. It sometimes feels like my entire life is waiting for this very short moment when it stops raining so that I can't get out of the house and move from A to B. This website, however, is a great help showing me when it'll rain so that I can avid getting wet. And, surprisingly enough, it is actually quite accurate. This is why Dutch classmates come handy, they tell you about all these apps and website that make your life in the Netherlands easier.

A little bit of anthropology.

It's interesting how the way people use language shows their attitudes to others. I came across a phrase 'going Dutch' (on this see below) before I came to Netherlands and since then read a bit around the topics, making some interesting findings.

In Paxman's book to which I referred in one of the earlier posts, he talks about the animosity between the English and the French reflected in the phrases used by the two nations. So for instance the English would use a term 'French kiss' to describe, objectively, bizarre (though undoubtedly pleasurable) practice of sticking one' tongue to another person's mouth. Or 'French disease' to refer to syphilis. Obscene drawings were called 'French postcards', whereas prostitutes were referred to as 'French Consular Guard'. Not to forget excusing swearing by  saying 'pardon my French'.  The French, however, didn't fail to counter this with expressions such as le vice anglais (flagellation), avoir les anglais (menstruation), filer à l'anglaise (equivalent for 'taking French leave') and damné comme un Anglais.

With regard to the Dutch, the English also devised a few phrases, dating from the time when the Dutch became England's main trading rivals. There's 'Dutch courage' that I've just learnt, meaning getting courage from intoxication with alcohol. And of course 'double Dutch' as a hard to understand language, gibberish in short. There is also another one, 'going Dutch' (with variations such like 'Dutch date' and 'Dutch treat'), a practice of paying for yourself in a restaurant for instance, which probably reveals the perception of the Dutch as rather stingy people.

Language is such an interesting topic that I sometimes wish I had studied linguistics to have time to dig into it more. I remember the when I took Latin classes in high school I as really excited to find out the origin of some Polish words. And now I could learn about the sociological background of it. It's fantastic to do something else than law every now and then. For the sake of retaining sanity.

I love how I actually have time now to write posts like this, which do require some research etc.