jeff commented that Tuesdays are the new Sundays. I suppose he means the fact that Tuesday nights we go out to the borrel and then have to face morning classes the next day, but realistically that's every day. we've worked out this rhythm: weeknights are for partying, weekends are for travelling. somewhere in there we also try to study too.
Tuesday night i went out to the weekly borrel that we have at the Cafe Heffer. It got way too crowded and hot there, and i'm not actually a fan of being packt like sardines in a crushed tin box (being 5 foot 2 inches means that i am about nose-to-armpit level to the average dutchman), so after the bar closed, i followed jeff and colin to a speakeasy near their place. it's this underground bar that's unlicensed so anything goes - you can smoke anything inside or just hang out. me, i was a fan of the one euro beers and the cosy dimly lit atmosphere - just a bunch of dutch folks keeping to themselves and relaxing while some old school blues plays in the background. jeff says that some nights they put a movie up on the projector and you can just curl up on the couch and just zone out for the night. i could *really* use a place like this near my place.
last night i went out to hang out in the Containers. yes, i'm serious, that's how we refer to the houses there. there is a major housing shortage crisis in Amsterdam (which is why i'm way out in Diemen) so they've been making pretty creative solutions to accommodate the massive amounts of foreign students that come in every year. like sticking them in this giant plastic containers, which i joke is a few steps above living in a refrigerator box. i kid. they're actually quite nice, sturdy and clean - probably the equivalent of the portables that we went to school in as a kid. but they do have the strangest look: my friend Ioana who lives there, describes them as having almost a simulated digital look, as though they are pixelated, these plastic buildings oddly juxtaposed with the green green grass. Picture the SITE building on the University of Ottawa campus, only more...pixelated. inside, with the sterile clean plastic walls, you get the odd feeling of living inside an airplane. made for a pretty interesting party atmosphere.
