J'aime les gauffres!

Bonjour aux Bruxelles!

The study tour is off to a great start, and now I know I definitely need to get back to Holland at some point. We got there Sunday night after a long drive from Copenhagen, which included a ferry and two unhappy Danish films (for having the happiest citizens in the world, that does seem to be the only kind of movie they make). Upon arrival, we enjoyed dinner at a local Thai place (yes, Mom and Dad, I ate Thai!) and spent the evening exploring the town center. Monday started delightfully late, with a meeting with a University of Amsterdam professor on the Dutch veto of the proposed EU constitution a few years ago. After lunch, we took a canal tour in the rain-- fortunately, the boats are glassed in and heated, so we didn't miss out on too much, including photo opportunities. We also did the Van Gogh (apparently pronounced Van Gock?) Museum, which involved getting slightly lost with my friend Carrie on the way back to the hotel, and a fantastic three-course meal at a place called Simpel. Yum! A bunch of us hung with the trip leaders afterwards-- they're both pretty young and pretty great, so that was fun, too.

Tuesday dawned much earlier than Monday, and it took us to the Hague, where we passed through security into the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). A prosecutor there from Dallas gave us a talk explaining their operation, which was quite interesting. Most of the guys they have on trial everyone pretty much knows are definite war criminals, it seems, so a lot of the challenge lies in making that into a fair, balanced, and valid legal argument, which gets interesting because this tribunal is the first court of its kind since Nuremberg. After the talk, we actually got to watch the proceedings for one case for a bit. We listened to a man testify in Serbo-Croatian (with simultaneous translation--it was odd hearing this big Slavic guy speak in a British woman's voice) about his detainment and torture at the hands of soliders who answered to an uninterested but smirking guy sitting just a few yards and one glass panel away from me. Very creepy.

After a quick bus ride and a screening of Dr. Strangelove (!), we reached Brussels, met with Denmark's permanent representative to the EU Commission (the legislature, or sorts), and then had a free evening. I wandered extensively with a group of five or so. We dined on crêpes and Belgian waffles and marveled over every church and fancy building we could find, and believe me, there are a lot. Also, only two of us knew any French, which was kind of fun for me. We loved how a city so utterly different from dear Copenhagen could be equally awesome, if more grandiose.

This morning, we have a really early start, as apparently NATO security takes forever to go through. Au revoir, mes amis!