Week 12: Chilling out...and Amsterdam!

Relaxing and traveling have been the names of the game this week. Not too much of either, to be sure (everything in moderation, of course ), but just enough to make this week interesting.

Two unexpected vacation days marked the start of this week, which was awesome! Tuesday was Veterans’ Day, as we know it in the States, but here it’s le jour de l’Armistice or Armistice Day, and it seems to be more prominent here than back home. Once they figured out that the holiday was on Tuesday, they decided to faire le pont (literally, “make the bridge” in French), which means they just gave us Monday off as well. Yay for holidays! Both of these days I took the time to clean my room, organize my life, and just chill. On Tuesday I even started trying to catch up on my blog (which is still in the works), and I also started thinking about travel plans for Christmas break. Finally, on Tuesday night I went out to prendre un verre with Manon and Amandine for a nice girls night. A great start to the week in general, I’d say.

Wednesday and Thursday morning I always have class at 8am, which is a little bit of a drag, but the classes are interesting (although they’re both literature classes with older professors who lecture on and on), and it helps that I agree with the religious and political views of Wednesday morning professor in particular. I also went for a run on Wednesday after being in class all morning, which was a nice way to get some fresh air, and then I hung out with Ellen, one of my Belgian friends, for a while. We went to get juices and ingredients for a mocktail night with my other Belgian friend Fatima, and the two Brits (Rob and Walker). It ended up being a great night full of camaraderie and laughs, and we all had a fun time (and left that night with lots more inside jokes than we had had before!). Thursday I spent a little more time writing for my blog, and then the night was spent once again chilling…and preparing for Friday.

Friday ended up being a pretty exciting day: I took a day trip to Amsterdam! I decided to go at the last minute (I booked my bus ticket only a couple days before), but it made for a great day of exploring a wonderful new city. Actually getting to Amsterdam proved to be a little stressful and headache-inducing, because the bus ended up being almost two hours late (which made me seriously question ever booking a 4:40AM bus again), but the day improved as I got off the bus (after a 5-hour ride), the sun came out, and I started walking around. I made my way from Centraal Station to St. Nicolas Basilica, looked around for a bit, and then made my way to the Tourism Office to get a map (for 2.50€!!) and a day pass for the tram. One of the first things I noticed about Amsterdam was that everybody and their brother rides a bicycle everywhere; bike lanes aren’t just a thing in Amsterdam, they are truly necessary.

St. Nicolas Basilica

This doesn't even begin to show how many bikes and bicyclists there are in Amsterdam.

I spent the rest of the morning and ate lunch in the Openbare Biblioteek, or the public library. It was cool going through all the books and even seeing a few familiar favorites, and of course plenty of books and different media in Dutch. The view from the top floor was amazing – I really could see the whole city and all its canals!

The Openbare Biblioteek - public library.

The view from the top floor of the library. Incredible!

After lunch, the first place I made it to thanks to my map and the tram was the “iamsterdam” letters (pictured below). These are a part of a tourism campaign in the city, and everybody who comes to Amsterdam takes their picture with them (be it selfies or otherwise), except for me – I would have had to take a selfie, and there were too many people to merit that. Then, just behind the letters was the Rijksmuseum, one of the most famous art museums in the Netherlands, and I decided to spend a while looking through all the paintings, sculptures, and art.

The crowd swarming the letters, and behind, the Rijksmuseum

Plates showing the different provinces of the Netherlands

Standard weights & measures

The next stop on my trip was the Anne Frank House. This experience alone was worth the trip, and I would go back to do this alone again. What a powerful place… So much fear, so much pain, so much history, all inside this one annex where the Frank family hid with others from the Nazis for a while. The line to get in was decently long, and seeing as I hadn’t booked a ticket in advance I had to wait, but thankfully the line had wifi, so I contacted my friends and family to let them know that I was safe and happy and alone in Amsterdam. Unfortunately photos aren’t allowed of the inside, but I would highly recommend to anybody who wants to see what it’s like to make the trip. It was a solemn reminder of the wrongdoings of the Holocaust and World War II, and why we all need to work together in the world. After seeing the space itself, I took my time working on a cappuccino and a brownie in the café in the building (and enjoyed some more free wifi), and then I signed the guest book and made my way back out into the city.

A view of the line that included wifi

The café in the same building as the museum/annex

Guest book!

View from the outside

The last thing I wanted to make sure to do, besides admire the million and one canals throughout the city, was to the bench where Augustus and Hazel Grace sit in the bestselling novel-turned-movie The Fault in Our Stars. In a funny turn of events, I actually had Alex look up where it was, and she communicated the location to me over Viber, and then suddenly I was there! It was so cool to see the messages written on the bench, and I even found a copy of the book in Centraal Station before I left with a picture of the actors sitting on the bench to prove that it’s the same one! After that, I jumped back on the Megabus at 9pm for another 5-hour journey back to Lille, and cuddled in for a late night around 2am. (Yes, you did read everything right – I didn’t bother with the Red Light District at all when I was in Amsterdam.) All in all, it was a great experience!

The bench!

Sitting on the bench, after having finished the dinner I brought :)

Almost the same picture that's on the book (except without the actors)!

Coming down from the excitement of traveling to Amsterdam, I had another relaxing day on Saturday to do homework and to chill. Then I had the opportunity to go to an American diner just around the corner from my residence in Vieux Lille to celebrate Karla, my Portuguese friend, for her birthday! It was a night full of American jokes and stereotypes, burgers and milkshakes, and friends and fun.

On Sunday, I did actually make it to mass at the Cathedral just around the corner from my residence…and honestly, I now have absolutely no idea why I haven’t been doing this all semester. Mass at the Cathedral is the closest I’ve been able to find to mass back at St. William, at least environment-wise, and I definitely prefer it to the mass that is held inside my residence in the chapel; the latter is an extremely traditional mass in Latin with just a little French, whereas the Cathedral mass is all in French and therefore at least a little bit more accessible to me. After mass, I went to the market also around the corner from my residence with Ayano, my Japanese friend, and made a quiche with her for brunch. It was delicious, and it made for a very good Sunday indeed!

Looking toward the future, I have been starting to get things together for next semester in Toledo, Spain, things like a host family interest form, insurance paperwork, visa paperwork and the like. I am already starting to get excited for study abroad round 2! It has been great meeting all the wonderful people I’ve met here in Lille, but I’m also starting to be ready for a new adventure. I will write to you all next week – à bientôt!

P.S. Check out all my Amsterdam pics on Facebook - click here!