Leiden

I am currently living in Leiden, The Netherlands. It is a quaint little town about a half-hour train ride from Amsterdam. After the hustle and bustle and taking-forever-to-get-anywhere-ness of London, I am happy to be in a smaller town where I don’t have to get on the subway/tram/bus to get where I need to go. Some of the other Globals complain that it’s boring, but I love it. We live in the town center and almost everything is within walking distance. The weather is cold (sometimes bitterly so, the kind of cold where it hurts to go outside for more than 5 minutes with uncovered skin), but we also have mild winter days and occasionally the sun shines. I have been putting my coat and new faux fur earmuffs to good use.

The city is very old and has lots of charm—the many canals are lined with row houses, and people use bikes as one of the main forms of transportation. The people are in my opinion the friendliest we’ve encountered thus far, and everyone is willing to speak English. I haven’t had problems yet communicating with the locals. There are lots of restaurants and pubs, and students as well (The University of Leiden is one of the Netherland’s largest).

I live in a Webster-owned building that is a 5 minute, across the street walk from the Leiden campus, which makes quite a good commute to class (well, only one of the classes considering the other is held in Amsterdam). The building we live in is a converted Catholic school for girls, and with its terrazzo floors and long halls, I sometimes feel like I am living in my grade school, St. Gabriel. The individual rooms are renovated and I have a cute little studio apartment, complete with my smallest bathroom yet to date. It’s like mixture of a cruise ship bathroom and a port-a-potty. I can’t complain, though, because the building is clean and quiet and laundry is FREE!

Picture: My room in Leiden