Being a tourist in my own town

My fellow Sydney Law mate Tu Sen (exchanging at Oslo) came with his Scottish friend Jennifer for a few days. In these few days, unlike in all my time at Leiden, except for the brief breaking-in period at the beginning, I saw my own town through tourist binoculars.

Thorsten and I decided to take Tu Sen and Jennifer to nearby Noordwijk beach as it was a beautiful spring day. Hailed as 'Holland's Finest Beach', the beach was a busride away and bathed in sunlight, but its brown sand and freezing murky water was by no means comparable to Australian beaches. Leiden won against Oslo in beach soccer.

On the second day, we visited the Hortus Botanicus, Leiden's Botanical Gardens. As it was Spring, there was an excellent Orchid exhibition on as well as the Gardens' usual greenhouse and upstairs carnivorous plant walkthrough, amongst other things.

The Tun Donker Gallery, opposite the train station, whose artist creates the portraits on display around the law school and also welcomed me in as a couchsurfer.

The Gardens' 'Mexican walking fish' was an incredibly startling little creature. It is a weird, disgusting little alien that is like an underwater Gollum. Although a fish, it has four legs and external gills that flap outside its body. Within one of the warm, tropical-climate, humid greenhouses, a black Mexican walking fish shared an aquarium tank with an albino one. Afterwards, as I tried to enjoy a broodje harring (Dutch cured herring with bread) with Tus, I had to try hard to keep that fishy alien out of my mind. But its fishy, MOIST, white/red skin, flesh and thin bones was just too uncannily similar. Shudder.

As host, I nobly arose early the next morning to accompany Tus to the Saturday markets which Tus quipped was 'the best in all of Europe' - while I was flattered, it is obvious he has not been to London's Borough Markets.