Den Haag: Dutch for either "War Crimes" or "Terrible Lunch"

Our trip to The Hague made for an interesting day's outing. We met with Jacqui's class-mates and professors early to board a quite nice Mercedes charter-bus. I am not disappointed we chose to stay in an apartment by ourselves rather than in the dorms with the other Tulane folks; we're several years older than most of the students, and one of only two couples I've noticed along on the outings. It doesn't bother me that the rest are younger as such, but I feel old because their concerns and priorities seem so silly to me. I tried to participate in idle conversation, but quickly decided head-phones would be a better option then trying to keep up with who had bunked with whom the previous evening. After a 45 minute drive through some lovely Dutch countryside (yes, windmills), we arrived at our destination: a squat building from the 1970's which once housed the Dutch Intelligence Service, now home to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon. (Fun fact -- the Dutch Intelligence Service is a real thing, and it was decided they deserved a better building, you see. So they bought an old telecommunications headquarters second-hand and moved it there, because ostensibly it's a much bigger and nicer thing than the ratty old building at which I visited the Tribunal. It's vitally important they have plenty of lines available to answer all of the calls that aren't coming in about Dutch Intelligence, apparently. The people who allegedly assassinated the Lebanese prime-minister can just deal with the shabby digs.)

We learned that tidbit and many other operational details of the court on the first leg of our tour, and then sat for a presentation by one of the judges, a member of the prosecution, of the defense, and of the registry. After this, we broke for "lunch".

"Lunch" was a glass of orange juice, a bowl of french fries shared among the table, and chintzy roast beef or lox sandwiches, which of course I couldn't eat. Oh well. (I had packed away provisions for just such an eventuality back on the quite nice Mercedes bus. Still, it was disappointing they would take us to a restaurant and provide so shabbily for us. Perhaps a less shiny bus and a nice bit of grilled fish for lunch next time, no?)

We arrived after "lunch" at the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and after 20 minutes of security checks and metal detectors got to see the final 8 minutes of court for the week, which if I interpreted them correctly consisted of every one telling each other "have a nice weekend" and "we'll get to that other stuff first thing bright and early Monday" in the sort of very complicated language you'd expect from folks who spend their work week trying to suss out just how many thousands of peasants the defendant might have allegedly ethnically cleansed in May of 1993. Interesting stuff, but not riveting even for the law students, I suspect. We had one last short Q/A with a lovely young woman; I even had the chance to ask a Q of my own that somehow did not completely embarrass my lawyer-ly wife. An abortive peer-vote averted us all having to endure stopping for iced-cream together, but did not unfortunately avert us having to endure the iced-cream proponents mutterings of discontent toward us negative nabobs, the iced-cream detractors. I learned that Law-school students can be petty when you get lots of them together in tight quarters such as a bus, which is fitting since they are training to be petty in tight quarters such as judge's chambers for a living as lawyers. Another 45 minute trip into headphone-land then, and we were back where we began that morning.

All things considered, it was an enjoyable morning and afternoon, but I was certainly ready for a nice large dinner upon our return to Amsterdam. If memory serves, I believe we had some really good roasted-lamb tacos from a Spanish place down the street from our flat. (Jacqui's been taking notes on meals and restaurants; we'll let you know what we think of all of them just in case any of you ever plan to visit.)

I hope everyone is well back home. I'm missing you guys more and more. Many people here CAN speak English, but they speak Dutch to each other most of the time, so it's hard to make polite conversation with folks. It gets a bit lonely.

I'll write soon about other things I've been doing while Jacqui's been in class; I took my guitar out and around for the first time today and, while sitting with a friend I'd met at Paradox a few days earlier, I played a few Beatles tunes and a random bloke at the table bought me a shot and offered to record me in his studio. That was quick. I'm hoping to meet him again Monday, so we'll see how that goes.

More later,

/ah