It's the End of the World (as we know it)...

If the Mayans were right, the world is scheduled to end later this week, on Friday, 21/12/12, to be exact. (Can’t we at least have one last weekend??) Regardless of whether the world ends, the year soon will. Perhaps it is time to take stock. I am going back to Phoenix for the holidays, and technically I will be landing in Phoenix just as doomsday begins across the pond. For me, being in transit at such a time is most befitting! And, landing in a city whose namesake is the mythical firebird, consumed by flames and then arising from the ashes, even more so.

When this year began, I was a respected, well-paid lawyer with job security, excellent benefits, and a pension that would only improve the longer I worked. I was a home owner, with a minimal mortgage kept only for tax purposes.  Many would say – and did say -- that I had it made; I should just relax, enjoy the fruits of my labor, and be grateful for an enviable position in a very bad economy. Instead, I applied to UU, retired, sold my house, condensed my life to an assortment of boxes, stashed, along with my car, at my mother’s house, and moved to the Netherlands, where I was born, to begin anew as a student. Leaving home and coming home – all in one fell swoop. Beginning a whole new chapter: a tale of two cities, a tale of Christmas past, present and future. Which is my past, and which my future? I don’t really know.

What I do know, cliché as it may sound, is that it is the journey and not the destination that counts. Terrifying (and exhilarating) endings, exhilarating (and terrifying) beginnings, embracing and letting go, destruction followed by renewal, winter to spring, old year to new, forever going back to the future. Every place you have lived, every challenge you have undertaken, every person you have loved, leave their mark on your soul. For good or for ill, you take them with you wherever you go. But you never know what lies around the next corner. Sometimes the past is just the past; a nice place to visit but you really can’t live there anymore. And sometimes the past revisited will surprise you by transforming into the future. You just have to wait and see, remain open to all possibilities, and savor the moments that go by on the way to… who knows? Just have faith that you will know when you have arrived, and will also know enough to act on it; choosing a future that embraces the past with no regrets, only hope.

My two beautiful cites: Phoenix, built on the ashes of the ancient Hohokam, again claiming a fertile land from the harsh Arizona desert with irrigation canals. And Utrecht, with its medieval canals and nearby new polder land, in a country whose existence is dependent on the constant effort of reclaiming land from all that water. In transit between the two, it may very well be the end of the world as we know it… and I feel fine!

Happy holidays to all, see you next year!

Gasping through the Snow…

It’s snowing! The snowflakes, first drifting lazily, pick up speed and turn the scene outside your window into a snow globe. You tug on your boots and gleefully go out to take those first snow-photos, it is a winter wonderland! So nice to watch out the window as you sip some warm gluhwine at a local pub, and it is magical walking at midnight the short distance home with all that twinkling snow. But in the cold, hard light of day comes the moment of truth. You have someplace to go a bit further than just down the street, and face the prospect of riding your bike on a street surface that resembles a glazed donut. Suddenly everything you thought you’d learned about biking around Utrecht must be reconsidered!  

So, which is least likely to result in an awkward spill, walking or biking? Opinions vary, and of course cycling on icy streets is precarious. Turn too sharply or quickly, and you will find yourself breathlessly sliding onto the cold, hard street, seeing stars even in broad daylight. However, walking on icy, uneven cobblestone and brick is quite treacherous as well, and the snow does not soften the surface one bit!  The ice and snow do not prevent the intrepid Dutch from cycling; they just dress in more layers and pedal along with the usual aplomb, multi-tasking away. What’s more, the bike lanes seem to have salting priority over sidewalks or streets and look far more inviting than either. The final deciding factor, not only will you reach your destination far more quickly on a bike, but your feet will stay much drier! 

So, I set off on my first biking sojourn in the snow, wearing my thickest coat for padding in case I hit the street and snow boots with plenty of traction in case I needed to suddenly plant my feet. Gingerly, I set off, keeping my eye on the road ahead, trying to determine whether it was just wet or a patch of ice. It was mostly wet and slushy and I relaxed into my usual rhythm, taking very wide, slow turns and using my brakes judiciously. One nuisance is wearing a hat and a hood makes it difficult to look behind you before you move over, but of the usual pinging bells warn if you get in anyone’s way. I arrived safely, after a few slides and wobbles, and was grateful to peel off all my layers and be offered a lekker kopje koffie. Think I might survive winter in the Netherlands after all! After a Phoenix summer, in a mere four months, out of the frying pan and into the freezer – without shattering! 

 

I leave you with a holiday biking song I improvised along the way: 

Gasping through snow

On a one-bike open sleigh

Over the ice we go

Screaming all the way (oh non oh on, oh no!) 

Bells on bikes do ping

Making spirits fright

What fun it is to gasp and swing

A-splaying wrong tonight! 

Oh, pinging bells, pinging bells

Pinging all the way

Oh what fun it is to slide

In such a disarray - hey! 

Pinging bells, pinging bells

Pinging all the way

Oh what fun it is to ride

Right into that café!

Dutch Oven

As winter looms, what traditional Dutch comfort food will keep you warm?

Stamppot, a mash-up of potatoes and boerenkool (curly kale), served with rookworst (smoked sausage) or gehaktballen (meatballs). Or Hutspot, a mash-up of potatoes and carrots, also served with rookworst or spek (bacon). A very quintessential Dutch mainstay, you can buy a microwave-ready version at the supermarket, although it is simple enough to make yourself. Comfort food on many levels, as it is healthy, high in carbs and really does keep you warm on those cold nights!

Soups. There is quite an array of wonderful soups, including tomato with goat cheese, beet, lentil and more exotic fare like Surinamese peanut soup. But my all-time favorite is good old-fashioned Dutch pea soup, also known as snert. Traditionally, it is very thick, like stew, and you know it is especially good if your spoon can stand up straight in your bowl! My mother used to make a huge pot from scratch, soaking the peas, slow-cooking with sausage or an actual pigs foot. The huge pot being necessary because the older it gets, the more times re-heated, the thicker and better it gets. In later years, she used shortcuts, using quick-cooking peas and hot dogs, and as healthy eating became the norm, using turkey hot dogs. (This was California, after all.) But her most clever addition was a pinch of baking soda to alleviate the by-product of all that pea soup in a small house; the proverbial Dutch Oven effect!

Sandwiches. A  brodje kaas (bread with cheese), to go along with your soup. But also high on the comfort food scale, hagel slag. Literally meaning hail storm, hagel slag is actually chocolate sprinkles used as a sandwich topping. Yes, a chocolate sandwich! What could be better? Available in milk or dark chocolate, and my own twist on this childhood favorite is using peanut butter rather than regular butter. Pick your jaw back up and just try it!

A bucket of mosselen (mussels), hot and steaming. Admittedly an acquired taste, as is raw herring. (The latter being a taste I have never managed to acquire, not even when washed down with copious beer chasers!)

Kroketten. Deep-fried rolls filled with ragout, although you can get vegetarian versions and even satay versions. A staple of every Dutch Automat, they are quite ubiquitous, as are their small meatball-sized cousins, bitterballen. You can even buy them at McDonalds, which features a sandwich called, you guessed it, McKroket! And then there is the McFlurry Kruidnoten…

Which brings me to Sinterklaas comfort food. Speculaas are cookies or pastries made with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, ginger, topped with almonds or filled with almond paste. Kruidnoten are button-sized cookies featuring much of the same spices. One thing I miss is seasonal pumpkin-flavored everything, particularly pumpkin lattes at Starbucks. Pumpkins just don’t feature here, nor does Starbucks for that matter, except in train stations and the airport. My cousin informs me this is because Dutch people are far too sensible (and cheap!)  to buy such expensive coffee. But I recently went to Starbucks and had a seasonal speculaas latte. (You see, even Starbucks and McDonalds must give the Dutch their due!) Quite tasty, and quite a comfort!

What Not to Wear

What to pack for living in Utrecht? In short, a little of everything. The weather is quite unpredictable. The whole country is quite flat and much of it is below sea level, with ever-present low, scudding clouds. You can have rain, sun, and icy, nearly gale-force winds. All in the same day. So, what to wear?

Layers. Unless you are staying close to home and can change every few hours, do not go out for the day dressed entirely for warm or cold weather. Even on the warmest day, the air temperature drops considerably when the sun ducks behind a cloud and a cold breeze comes out of nowhere. And even on the coldest day, the sun can peek out and add warmth to the moist air. Besides, you can get quite warm biking, and there is nothing worse than sweating under your clothes while your nose is frozen. So, dress like you are going through menopause; peel the layers off and then put them back on as both external and internal temperatures fluctuate!

Comfortable, sturdy footwear. Bear in mind that you will be walking or biking most of the time. What not to wear? Cobblestone and uneven bricked streets are hell on heels! Nothing like sashaying down the street in your favorite pair of strappy sandals, getting the heel caught in the brickwork, lurching awkwardly, and grabbing onto some hapless passerby. If you don’t break your ankle, you land on a most unforgiving surface. What to wear? Athletic shoes or dressy flat shoes. When it is cold, boots, and when it is really cold, Uggs (you can get cheap knock-offs at the open market). You can always bring your heels and change into them when you arrive at a more even-surfaced destination.

Jeans, tights, and leggings. Jeans of course are easy, stylish and thick enough to keep you warm. However, do bear in mind that they stay wet a VERY long time if you get caught in a downpour. Not recommended for biking in the rain, unless you bring along a spare, dry pair and have place to stash your now-sodden pair. What to wear? Lighter stretch jeans, and with dresses or skirts, tights or leggings. You can even get thermal leggings at the open market.

Accessories: Scarves, long scarves that you can drape in layers around your neck to keep out the cold. Just not so long that they get caught in the wheel of your bike. Awkward!  And gloves. LOTS of pairs, as they seem to have a high divorce rate. Half of each pair runs off to find itself, and you never do find it again.  

Lastly, don’t forget the most important accessory of all, an umbrella. Never leave home without at least a small fold-up umbrella tucked into your bag. It can rain at the drop of a hat. Sometimes just a light misty rain, sometimes bucket-loads, but it’s always handy to whip out an umbrella, even on a bike. Of course, if the rain is accompanied by those gale-force winds, that little umbrella will turn inside out to comical effect almost immediately, so bring LOTS of those, too. What to do with the broken ones? Perhaps there is a recycling bin for them. After all, this is the Netherlands!

Gray Matter

I am often asked what it is like, at my age, to begin anew with my life and my education, in a new country. Well, I do find myself in a bit of a “gray” area, as it were.

My position in the LLM program is somewhat awkward at times. For one thing, I am far older than most students. For another, I have many years of experience practicing criminal law, and there is a world of difference between the realities of practicing criminal law and simply reading and writing about it from the ivory tower of academia. Unsurprisingly, my perspective is a bit different than the average student, or teacher for that matter. My background sometimes leads others to assume that by some sort of legal osmosis, I must understand international criminal law as well, or that it must be very easy for me. I don’t, and it isn’t.

International criminal law is a very young practice area, a truly brave new world. It is very exciting. And all very, very, new to me. A complete mash-up of common law adversarial and civil law inquisitorial systems, it is a surreal landscape of the comfortably familiar juxtaposed with the wholly unexpected. All those tribunals, no real precedential authority from one to the other, and no one convenient place to find case law. Court web sites are not all very user-friendly, and I often have better luck finding cases with Google. All those acronyms, not to mention Latin and French phrases. Dutch is far easier to learn than this lingo!

My life is the same surreal mash-up of the old and the new, the young and the old. This dichotomy can be confusing, for me as well as everyone else. Most people my age are not doing what I am doing; they are either comfortably entrenched with careers and family or else simply retired. And most of the people who are doing what I am doing are half my age and have yet to begin a career, let alone think about a second one. Like the former group, I am accustomed to a certain comfort level; like the latter group, I still am not always sure what I want to be when I grow up. Both groups ask me, and I often ask myself, what am DOING, exactly? I am not always sure how to answer that question.

But perhaps the answer is not important. Perhaps, like this hybrid creature that is international criminal law, I will make it up as I go along. Perhaps like Utrecht itself, where the 600-year-old Dom tower plays carillon versions of the Beatles or Adele, I can juxtapose a medieval core with an ever-evolving new outlook. Neither abandoning the past nor entrenched in it, moving steadily forward…cracks of age, gray areas and all!

Final Thoughts

A final exam, a moot court project, and three final essays later, and the first quarter is finally finished. Hooray!  Friends ask, so how do you feel?

 

First, exhausted! The last several weeks seem like a blur, after seemingly doing nothing but studying, doing research, writing, meeting with study groups and project groups. Oh, you do eat, sleep, go to class, and venture out of your lair when you run out of coffee (desperate times, and all). But sort of like that long, snarled drive to work, you find yourself at your destination with no clear recollection of the journey. Just mighty glad it’s over!

Second, relieved! You have crossed everything off your academic to-do list; whatever you coulda-shoulda-woulda done, it’s a moot point now (moot court pun intended!). You can sleep in without waking up to the sword of Damocles. You can clean house, stock up on groceries, get caught up with family and friends, and have a little fun. Read a novel instead of another law treatise. Watch some really bad TV. With Dutch subtitles. Go see a movie, stay out late and drink just enough to get out and dance!

Third, euphoric! You did it! One fourth of the program is behind you and now the rest seems so much more manageable. Externship, master’s thesis and all! Yeah baby, you rocked it!

Fourth, oh nooo! The next quarter starts not even a week later. And externship work begins before that, even. And that other to-do list, which you so studiously ignored, now beckons and does not look like any more fun than when you abandoned it for finals. You know, all those mundane chores that have a way of piling up; banking, solving vexing computer issues instead of patching them, addressing random household appliances that have mysteriously stopped working. Reality rains all over your parade. As if there isn't enough rain around here!

Not to mention, suddenly the holidays loom! While you were busy studying, little elves came out and decorated the streets of the city center with Sinter Klaas lights and stocked the stores with chocolate, marzipan, kruidnoten, and almond staffs. When did that happen? No matter, this presents a whole ‘nother to-do list. Guess reality will have to wait!

Group Murk

Oh, the joys of group work. UU seems to fancy group assignments. I am not a fan. There are wonderful people who are a joy to work with, who do quality work, understand the meaning of the word deadline, and would never dream of letting down their group mates. And then there are the rest. You know, the ones who wait until the last minute to do anything, throwing off everyone’s schedule. The ones who turn in minimal or substandard work and then wax indignant when called on it. The ones who feel victimized by the audacity of those who actually expect them to do their fair share of the work. You get to share a grade with these folks.

Of course, you encounter this ilk in the working world, as well. However, in that context there are real consequences for having a pattern of telling colleagues that you just don’t want to do it, you have other priorities, or the dog ate your brief. For one thing, you can get fired. At the very least, you acquire a reputation that won’t be putting you on anyone’s short list. Indeed, you may wind up on quite another list. For good or for ill, a professional reputation is earned through not only how well you do your own work (or not), but how well you function as a team player (or not). You can either be relied upon, or you cannot. Word gets out.

I suppose that is the reasoning behind required group work in academia. The problem with that is that there really are no consequences for being a slacker in this context. Those who take their work seriously have a few very unpleasant options. First, bite your tongue, say nothing, do nothing more, and watch your grade sink to the level of the lowest common denominator on your team. Second, bite your tongue, say nothing, do more than your share, and share a good grade with those who contributed too little, too late. Third, insist that people step up and do their fair share of the work, and live with the ensuing drama.

The first two options are more peaceful externally, but internally can be the stuff of ulcers. The third option can sometimes turn out quite well. Some people actually get it; they step up and the resulting good grade is appreciated – and earned – by the whole team. But some people just never seem to learn. So what is the solution? If given a choice in group mates, choose well. If not given a choice, hope for the best and give the benefit of the doubt. If the worst happens, you just do the best you can, even if others do not. In the end, we all have to live with what we have (or have not) done.