As of today, I’ve been in the Hague for exactly one month. I can’t believe I’m already 1/3 of the way through the summer! At the same time, it’s hard to believe that I’ve ONLY been here for a month. I fell into personal, professional, and social routines so easily and immediately that I feel like I’ve been here much longer.

That being said, this is going to be my first real weekend in the Hague! The only other weekend I was here (the weekend after I arrived), I worked all day Saturday and then was still so tired the next day that I didn’t do much except hang out at the beach. I still haven’t seen a lot of the city; I think Dad managed to see more in his one afternoon here than I have seen in the last month! Last night I was reading through the Lonely Planet’s couple of pages on the Hague and realized that very little of its contents looked familiar to me. Clearly, I need to take my bike and venture a little further afield!

I’m generally enjoying the Hague; my only major complaint (and that of everyone else here) is that the weather sucks. Today the sun is out, but that’s unfortunately the exception rather than the rule. It’s warmed up slightly, meaning that the temperature has reached its likely peak of highs in the low- to mid-60’s. Fingers crossed for nice weather this weekend so I can spend a bit more time on the beach!

In terms of other aspects of European life, I’m gradually starting to figure things out. I succeeded in opening a Dutch bank account last week (though I am still figuring out how to actually put money in it). I got my washing machine properly hooked up to the faucet of my bathroom sink (though now I don’t know how to remove it, so I’m now brushing my teeth in the kitchen). I am still experimenting with the settings of the washing machine – clothes often come out, paradoxically, either too wet (and often still a bit soapy) or too dry; ultimately, I have to do some serious wringing out of everything that goes through, so clearly the spin cycle leaves something to be desired. I think I’m going to continue taking a few articles of clothing to be professionally laundered just so I can be assured that they’re truly clean (not convinced anything is; it just smells better) and not wrinkled and/or oddly stressed out as a result of all the wringing! I think laundry is really the only thing I truly miss about the U.S. at this point.

My internship continues to be great. The other interns are 100% awesome – we’re a fun-loving group of people who also happen to be very smart and committed to the work that the Tribunal is doing. I look forward to lunch every day when we can hang out in the cafeteria (or on rare nice days, on the terrace) and just chat about things. We’re still making lots of plans for travel and other activities; for example, tomorrow night a group of us is going to Delft for dinner at a tavern that is like a more authentic version of Medieval Times, complete with rentable costumes. (Pictures absolutely forthcoming.) Every Monday morning is a time for catching up on everyone’s travels over the past weekend. I’ve gone to three countries over the past three weekends, and I am not alone in that record!

The other Tribunal employees are really wonderful as well. We interns are truly treated like lawyers; sometimes we have “grunt” work to do, but it’s work that the lawyers are doing too, so I don’t find it at all annoying. Everything, no matter how small or how tedious, is an important part of the work to bring Mladic to justice and help to provide some sense of closure to the victims as well. All of the attorneys I’ve worked with are warm, friendly, and good-natured, and they’re not afraid to give us real work. I got to draft another motion on Monday, which was pretty great. I’ve been doing a wide variety of work, both a combination of proactive (scheduled) and reactive tasks depending on the needs of the team.

I think this is the first time I’ve truly had no complaints about a job. Teaching was obviously tremendously rewarding and challenging in a good way, but it was also emotionally draining and exhausting. Working for the DC school system was a lot like the experience here except that there were so many issues of management and very little structure, so it was very frustrating. Consulting was just boring; I was under-utilized and uninterested in the work I did receive. Here, I’m learning a great deal about the Balkans conflict (which I’ve wanted to do for years), getting an inside look at the international justice system, and applying a lot of my innate and learned skills in order to further work that I fully believe in. I feel very, very lucky.

I’ve now been here in Den Haag for seven whole days. I feel much more at home than I did on Sunday even though I still haven’t quite settled in or figured everything out. Part of this is because I have some really awesome fellow interns who are struggling through the same stuff and are as fun-loving as my fellow LawHoos!

Thursday after work a group of us went to a bar near my house for an outdoor happy hour that ended up lasting about seven hours (for some of us). I introduced We Will Rock You (shout-out to World at Play!), and we tried a number of different kinds of beer. I even went on the darker end of the spectrum, which is NOT normally my thing! See pics below:

One thing I’ve learned is that as hard as it often is for law students not to talk about law, it’s even harder for ICTY employees not to talk about work. This is partially because we interns bombard them with questions; there is just so much that we want/need to understand about how the tribunal works, where things are with the various cases we’re working on, and about the Balkans more generally. (I think so far I am the most knowledgeable intern when it comes to what happened during the 90’s and what it’s like now, but there is still a TON that I don’t know.) My case has of course prompted a lot of conversation this week thanks first to the significance of the opening statements and second to the decision to postpone indefinitely while the disclosure stuff is sorted out. It’s all very interesting, but at some point it’s also important for someone to cut off the work talk! (I did that once or twice, but I think we only managed to stay off-topic for a few minutes each time.)

Here’s a picture of the seemingly ever-present bitte ballen (bitter balls), the mysterious “meatballs” with an unidentifiable, liquidy meat-based substance inside. They are the ultimate Dutch bar food:

Anyway, yesterday several of us had the first of a series of computer program trainings, and this one was slated to take all day. We ended up with a bit over an hour for lunch, so we headed over to the Fred (the street that’s actually called Frederik Hendriklaan and home to lots of shops) in search of a deli we’d heard could make excellent sandwiches. We found it and felt quite overwhelmed: aside from being a full-service deli, they had several display cases full of lots of different foods. I ended up getting a pepper stuff with a gigantic veal meatball and some stir fried vegetables. After about 15 minutes, we all had our food and headed out to a park across the street to picnic. The sun was out, and the air was warmer than it had been the rest of the week, so it was a really nice thing to do in the middle of the day.

Our training ended up only lasting until about 1:45, and since we weren’t expected back at work (my supervisor at least had dismissed us until Monday, and we knew we didn’t have any work to do), several of us picked up a bottle of prosecco and went back to the park for a little mid-afternoon refresher. Sitting there in the grass and the sun while watching two little Dutch kids attempt to play tennis with their grandfather was just the most relaxing way to spend a Friday afternoon!

When the weather started turning colder and cloudier, we headed back to my apartment and hung out there for a few more hours. On the way, we stopped into one of the cheese shops on the Fred. If you’ve ever been to Spain and seen the shops with a hundred legs of ham hanging from the ceiling, this was kind of like that, except with huge wheels of cheese. We sampled a few, including a truffle oil cheese that was absolutely heavenly but cost 30 euros per kilo! (our little sample slices must have been worth at least 50 cents!) We ended up buying a basic Dutch cheese (I don’t know the name) that was very mild and paired well with some crackers and wine that we also brought home.

Around 6:45 we walked a few blocks over to the cafe where I’d eaten lunch with Rachel and Linda on Sunday. Once a month, a local Expat organization puts on something called Friday Expat Drinks (FED) at a different venue and offers free drinks and finger food if you arrive before a certain time. We didn’t see anyone we knew and weren’t particularly impressed with the drinks, but it was an interesting event to check out. Most of the people there actually seemed to be something other than American, which just goes to show how diverse the Hague is.

Next weekend the plan is for a bunch of us to go to Oslo. We have a three-day weekend (Monday the 28th is a holiday) and spent some time yesterday just looking to see what was the cheapest flight we could find. Oslo won out by about $70. We have decided that we will try to plan our travel like this for the rest of the summer – wherever the price blows us! We’re all quite excited.

I’m heading to bed now after a long day at work (yes, it’s Saturday). We’re working through some of the stuff related to the trial delay. It’s not how I envisioned spending my first Saturday here, but it’s interesting to continue getting a very detailed, inside look at how a huge trial like this actually works. The sheer amount of documentation and information involved is nothing short of incredible.

Hopefully the nice weather will continue tomorrow – I’m looking forward to a leisurely day!

Today was obviously a pretty important day here in the Hague.

I arrived at the ICTY around 8:30 (earlier than usual) and, as directed, used the back entrance so as not to be part of the managed chaos at the front entrance. As I approached the gate, I realized that the police had stopped traffic on the street, and I could hear the sound of approaching sirens. Just as I was walking through the gate, two cars pulled through: one police car with the siren and lights on, and a black van. After consulting with others, we’ve concluded there is a good chance that this was Mladić arriving. Talk about timing!

A few of us went down to the second floor terrace to get a closer look at the various tv crews and protesters in front of the building.

It wasn’t possible for us to watch the trial in the actual courtroom (seating is limited for regular trials, let alone for a big one like this, and priority goes to victims and others who have a personal connection to the case). Fortunately, we were able to watch via live stream and joined a few other people from OTP in a conference room.

It wasn’t immediately apparent to us which one Mladić was – I had missed the very beginning of the proceedings, and none of the various people the cameras showed made me think of someone capable of so much hatred and murder. (I also had just seen a picture of Mladić from shortly after his capture, and no one matched that picture.) It turns out that Mladić was someone they’d shown several times before I asked about him. As the pictures show, he was wearing a gray suit – and I swear, he could have been a law professor. There were times when he’d take off his glasses and hold them with a pensive look on his face exactly like a typical academic. I wish we could have watched a split screen with both him and the prosecutor so that we could have watched his reactions more closely. In general, he looked pretty calm and confident… perhaps a bit TOO confident.

The lucky (?) timing I might have had in terms of seeing him arrive did not continue long enough to let me catch the first few minutes of the trial, so I missed the threatening gesture he apparently made towards some members of the public audience. I did, however, see Judge Orie remark on it when court resumed after the first break; he said there had been inappropriate interaction between Mladić and the audience (he did not place blame on who initiated) and that if it continued he would have to do something about it. I saw nothing else happen.

I did see Mladić smile at one point. I don’t remember what the prosecutor was talking about at that moment, but it was enough that I gasped out loud at the impropriety of that action. It was a very “yes, I killed all those people, and I’m proud of it” kind of look.

Court recessed around 1:30 and resumes again tomorrow at 9. Tomorrow the rest of the opening statement concerns Srebrenica, so it should be a particularly memorable couple of hours.

Finally, these people were protesting outside the Tribunal today:

They were holding various signs with country flags on them and the words “also guilty” – I think I saw Germany, the UK, and the Netherlands. (We were wondering why the US was not among them.) Not entirely sure what that’s all about.

More tomorrow!