Delft, The Hague, and Evening Fun

Today we spent the morning in the city of Delft, where we got a private tour of the city by Mr. Jan Vijftigschild, a great tour guide. We walked through the city and even went to an area of cobblestone that formally held a medieval marketplace. Around the wide-open area was shops. Most were closed and the square was empty due to the fact that it was Sunday and a lot of people were sleeping in and others were at church. On one side was a huge Gothic church, Nieuwe Kerk, made out of three different kinds of materials. The tombs of the Dutch royal family starting with William of Orange, lie in the crypt of the church.  On the other side was an old Dutch townhall, Stadhuis.

The highlight of the day was when we went to a Pancake shop (the Dutch are known for pancakes) named William van Orange. It was the same one which Bill Clinton ate while he was in the Netherlands. Most of us got either strawberries or bananas on ours. It was GOOD!!! Afterward we walked to a souvenir shop where most of us bought Delft Blue pottery.

We then traveled back to The Hague and registered for the conference. We each got conference ID cards with our names and pictures on them. Later, Tyler and Idrienne went to the Heads of Non-Member Delegations briefing conference meeting ( we will represent a non-member state:  the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) and the rest of us went to the Gemeentemuseum, a municipal museum with lots of art. There, we saw an exhibit on 1950’s clothing, another on the history of Delft Blue pottery, and a third on the Dutch masters including Rembrandt and Vermeer.

At night we took a tram to the city center and attempted to eat at an Indonesian restaurant that our tour guide recommended. We sat down and the waiter told us what we wanted to order as not big enough for everyone, but the real reason was that it was not expensive enough. We decided to leave and go to another restaurant but the line to get food was too long (full of MUN delegates from all over the world) and there were no tables for nine of us. Three times the charm we ended up eating at an Italian restaurant that had great pizza. 

Once we left the restaurant we went to the tram station where we met a fellow conference delegation originally from the US but now stationed on a US naval base in Belgium. Two of them were siblings and originally lived outside DC in Calvert County and even knew someone some of us know.

In the process of talking to them our tram came but we did not open the door fast enough. It seems you have to push a button on the outside of the tram to open.  Then we had to wait an extra ten plus minutes for another tram to come. While waiting for the second tram a bus got stuck behind a car parked in the middle of the street and started honking a rhythm until the car driver came out and moved their car. Once the driver came out, he started mimicking the horn rhythm with his horn. It went on for a few minutes and we laughed really hard. Then, the tram finally ended up coming and we realized it was the same one that left us earlier.

Before bed we all met and talked about the upcoming conference. Good Night!!!

  

Fun Facts from our tour guide:

•  The Dutch flag is the French flag turned sideways
•  Orange is the national color due to the fact that an orange ribbon is put on each Dutch flag when there is a major royal event happening

•  The Queen of the Netherlands, Queen Beatrice, has her birthday this week. She will be 75 years old.
•  The Dutch were the inventors of artificial turf, so that they can play field hockey in the rain more easily

•  The reason why Field Hockey is so popular to the Dutch, is because it hugely involves balance, a skill used a lot in biking, and The Hague is the biking capital of the world

•  Locals in the Netherlands call bikers “killer bikers”, because they go fast and almost run you over

•  The reason why this city is called The Hague (Den Haag), is because Haag, in Dutch, means Hedge, and the city was built between two rows of trees

(by Andrew Goldberg)