Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The Netherlands!!!

Trip: 4

Life: 15

Sorry its been so long I just got back from my long study tour last night, first stop THE NETHERLANDS!! Very exciting. We started in the Hague, which was unlike any city I'd ever been to before. It was VERY clean and it went from really new buildings/ cool modern archetecture to old row houses to peace palaces? I dunno its a bit strange, it seemed like a city that had been entirely intentionally structured, so everything seemed to work seemlessly but i wasn't really able to get a feel for the culture at all. It was an interesting time to be in the Netherlands as many of you may know because their coalition government just resigned over inreconcilable differences over the War in Afghanistan. The collapse has kind of made the Dutch people loose some faith in the Christian Democrats and Labor who were behind the dissolvement so an extremely right wing party who's entire platform is based on Anti- Muslim policies may gain power after the next election. Very interesting, and in my opinion REALLY irresponsible on the part of the current government. Alright enough politics here are the pictures!

the metro outside our hotel, like I said very chic new age architecture dominated half of the city.
The "peace palace" our second visit in the Hague, where the International Court of Arbitration and the ICJ are housed, created in 1899 to end conflicts between states. It was the brain child of Czar Nicholas II in an attempt to prevent small disputes between states from turning into wars... not very effective but still a pertty building.
Second stop in the Netherlands was at a Trappist monestary. Only 6 Trappist breweries still exist in the world today so it was very cool. Basically the idea behind it is that benedictine monks believe that hard work and prayer are the way to go in life, so they like to be 100% self sufficent. And a while back it occured to some genious monk that the easiest way to make enough money to keep a monestary running was to brew great beer. And the Trappist tradition was born.
(Jesus and the beer kettle)


Me and some new friends at the beer tasting! Very good is I may say so myself, and a fun time. That was it for the Netherlands, next stop Belgium!

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