The Getz Files

I know I should have told you all earlier, but I finally have a bike. I buckled under and paid real (well, some) money for a nice bike. I really like him. He's the Beta Bulldog and is an 18-gear mountain bike, with two types of locks, so burglars specialising in one type will be stymied. Ha-ha!

We have had a fine time, the 2 of us, riding once through the sand dunes (where there are hills!), and once down to Delft, about 10km. (Delft - very nice town - lovely churches - picturesque streets - historic museum where you can see the bulletholes where William the Silent was assassinated in 1584 - no, really, I kid you not!!! - William of course was the father of William, I'm sorry I mean the father of the nation - in fact, he was just about the only William who wasn't a father of William, except for William III - who had no children - William the Silent had 15 - one wonders if silence was cause or effect - also tried mustard soup (me, not William (actually, possibly William as well))) However, much as I love him, getting a mountain bike may not have been the smartest, what with its big tyres being a bit slow and tougher work on city roads than other bikes. Add to that the natural slowth of my legs, and I am sometimes embarrassed by who passes me on the road, though it usually spurs me to go faster.

I intend to ride as much as possible, ie, every weekend that I'm not away, family isn't visiting me and it isn't raining too hard, so I think that leaves me one more weekend before I go.

My Internet Explorer just went down after I'd written a long, funny post about my day in Amsterdam with my Mom, and I hate rewriting things, so this'll be another bullet point list.

• Raining in Den Haag, not raining in Amsterdam when we leave station. Starts raining (hard) as soon as we start walking. Stops raining when we go inside. Starts raining again as we leave. Continue till damp.
• Mother increasingly disconsolate at lack of good coffee in Holland. At Rough Guide's suggestion, go to Arnot's, 441 Singel, where the coffee is good. As are the sandwiches.
• Walk halfway across town to Stedelijk Museum (modern and contemporary art). Closed for refurbishment. Moved to temporary location by Central Station.
• Tram back across town, find museum in really ugly building apparently now inhabited by artists.
• None of the permanent collection is there, so no malevich, matisse, rauschenberg, judd, kiefer. But the price is the same.
• First floor devoted to best-designed books and photos by one photographer of famous Dutch authors. (I don't use scare quotes, but if I did, there would have been one around famous. If anybody who isn't Dutch has read any Dutch authors (of the last 100 years), please let me know - I'd be slightly amazed. I've read a detective writer, Janwillem van de Wettering, who's OK, but not much more.) Really disappointing.
• Second floor much better, restores my faith in Dutch curators. A great Vito Acconci show. Check out the video here. I particularly enjoyed swinging (1:20 in the clip) to jazz and Italians talking about cocks.
• Awesome huge portraits from Rineke Dijkstra, who I think is great. Here's one:
• On the 11th floor is 11, a very cool bar and restaurant with great views of Amsterdam, which is really a beautiful city when you're not in the rain. (Good thing Alan names his bars after street numbers, otherwise they'd all be called 0, 1 0r 2.)
• Tried to find Eenvistweevis, a restaurant that serves green eggs and ham, but the restaurant and the street it's on both seem to have disappeared--a very impressive double act--so wound up in the Red Light District ("Look Ma, a 14-inch dildo.") at an excellent Spanish restaurant called Centra. Another recommendation - Lange Niezel 29. Incidentally, Lange Niezel turns into Korte Niezel, which i don't think is a very helpful way of naming your streets.
• And that's that.

I have been most remiss about updating the blog. I have a partial excuse in that my computer still doesn't want to talk to other computers, so I can't do it at home, and the only Internet cafe near me is a coffee shop, so I write rather slowly when I get there. But still... Hope you enjoy the new posts, if anybody has not despaired of ever seeing anything new again. Either way, talking into the void is nothing new.

Tuesday - after spending the morning dealing with the hundred or so e-mail addresses that bounced mail back to me -- where did everyone go? -- I got my first assignment. By now (Wednesday evening) I have 3.

The first one was a nice simple introduction: I had to incorporate judges' comments into one judge's draft (or say why they were not incoporated). Editing, checking up things, nothing too hectic.

Second one gets a lot more interesting -- and a lot tougher. It's dealing with an appeal from a trial order provisionally releasing a man who had been indicted. (The details are a lot more interesting than that, but my lips are sealed.) So I've got to read the previous decisions, prosecution and defence documents (of which there are a lot - no lazy lawyers here), go through case law (also a lot - no lazy interns, either*) and then - ulp - write a decision.

Now, I don't mind telling you that I'm a little nervous. Fully understanding that more experienced and capable hands will go through this after I have written it, may even change it around totally, I am about to write something that will determine the course of a man's life for the next couple years. It may do some other things as well, including establishing some new law on REDACTED. Also, writing a real opinion (as opposed to one for a seminar at law school) isn't easy -- you need to be rigorous, logical, cite lots of things. But that's what I've been training for and at the same time, the prospect (and the process) excites me enormously. It's also a really interesting issue, so I've been spending the last day or so thinking about it -- and thinking is a good thing†.

My third assignment is another editing job, which will also require research, fact-checking and diligence, but it's quite nice having different types of legal work to do. Also, in keeping with my experience here, all three assignments involve different regions.

Away from the job, I love the cafeteria here. Not because the food's great (although it isn't bad, considering), but for its democratic nature -- interns, security guards, judges, even the president, all eat there.

And I didn't get a bike yesterday because I got on the wrong tram. I realized my mistake instantly (by looking back at the tram stop and seeing the tram I should have taken pull up), but once I got off, walked back to the tram stop, and missed 2 (two!) trams, the bike shop was closed. Still walking.

* Slight joke. Very slight.
† Although my old acting teacher, Dick Pinter, used to make us chant in unison, "Think, think, think means you stink, stink, stink! Feel, feel, feel means you're real, real, real!"

Monday night went to a jazz bar. It was called Murphy's Law. Of course. Smallest jazz venue I ever went to - saxophonist was 6 inches from me. Jazz by the North Sea - it's got a ring to it.

Earlier, went looking for a bike - the shop I was directed to didn't seem to exist. Still walking.

There will be pictures. I just have to surmount some technological obstacles.

Mainly taken up with administrative stuff, none of which is terribly exciting, though I do now have a UN badge, which excites me no end.

I will be working here for 6 months. In the first 2 months I will be in the Office of the President, Theodor Meron, whom I met. (He's a Polish-American who, like me, went to the Hebrew University. Must be why I got the job.) The president hears interlocutory appeals from the trial and appeals courts on various procedural matters. I imagine I'll be involved with writing and researching those.

For the following 4 months, I will be in Trial Chamber III, working on the Milosevic trial. My judges are from Scotland, Jamaica and South Korea. (And my housemates are from Norway, Sweden and the US. And my office mates are from Canada, France, Ireland and Bosnia via the UK.) What exactly I will be doing I don't know yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it involved research and writing. I think my legal writing will improve a lot here.

In between seeing various admin people, I sat in on two of the trials, in the public gallery. (I don't want to breach any confidentiality--though I know nothing confidential yet--so when I write about trials or hearings, it will only be about those things fully available to the public. You can watch, listen to or read about them here. And I think it would be wiser not to write about the trial I am working on at all. But I'll get a better picture closer to the time.)

I took away some impressions from each trial.

In the first, the difficulty of translation comes through (all open proceedings are simultaneously translated into English, French, Albanian and Serbo-Croatian). The time lag while everybody waits for translations gives it a strange drawn-out character, and renders virtually impossible any chance (for the lawyers, at least) of getting a rhythm going. I think it must be very tough for an examining lawyer, though I guess people get used to it. What also may make it difficult, especially for those reared in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, is the ability and propensity of the judges to question the witnesses directly. It can take things places where the attorney had no desire of going. (Alternatively, I guess it could be a nice little break for the attorney.)

Sometimes the translation only makes things more confused: the English lawyer was asking the Serbian witness if there was a difference between the "ëxtended" and the "expanded" presidency, and I thought it quite possible that the translator was translating those 2 words the same way.

(As an aside, different languages can be a real difficulty in law, where the particular meaning of words is so important. Most treaties are written in English and French, and a large number in other languages as well. Sometimes, as we all know, words in different languages have quite different nuances and connotations. So how does the law resolve these potential problems? The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (and many treaties themselves) says versions of the treaty in different languages should be given equal authority, and the terms of the treaty are presumed to have the same meaning in each language, which just ignores reality. OK, rant over.)

The translator, interestingly, would become indignant when the witness became indignant. In the other trial, by contrast, the translator was very calm while the witness seemed distraught. I say seemed because the witness was a protected witness, so her face was very pixillated on the screen and her voice sounded like a weeping giant.

But the translators play such an important role - it's vital, for justice and other reasons, that everybody know what's going on. I remember watching a capital trial in Johannesburg in 1990 where the only things translated to the witness, who didn't speak English, were direct questions to him: public discussions between the judge and the attorneys, questions to witnesses, nothing was translated. I really felt for this guy sitting there not comprehending the large majority of what was happening while his life literally hung in the balance.

One other impression: when the UN security guards (at least one of whom is South African, and a number, intriguingly, are American) entered or left the court, they bowed to the judge, like karateka in a dojo.

Coming Up: Our House

That's all that needs to be said about Sunday, except to congratulate Darren Fletcher on a miraculous header. I was very happy.

Saturday night was Museum Night in Amstredam, when 42 museums stay open until 2 am and do untraditional things, like speed dating in the Van Gogh museum and techno music in the botanical gardens. Still on no sleep after the flights and train ride, I caught the train up to Amsterdam with a whole bunch of people, all working for various international tribunals. There were people from the ICJ, ICC, ICTY, PCA and, of course, the IUSCT (first person who tells me what that stands for gets a prize).

This seems the right time for my first bulleted list:

• Dinner in the maritime museum, then a walk on a real Dutch East India Company ship. Pirates were singing Dutch sea shanties, and I walked around the captain's quarters, poop deck ("Last night, when you kissed me on the..." "Poop.""No, that won't do."") and quarter deck. Wondered where that ship went back in the day - had it stopped in Table Bay? Probably. Also saw a steam-powered ice breaker, which reminded me of an excellent book I read (there will be odd book recommendations in here as well): Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford. Totally gripping.
• Van Gogh Museum via canal boat. Aforementioned speed dating, with everyone given an animal sign based on the year of birth. It wasn't quite Chinese, though, because my year, 1972, was given not a rat but a pig. Anyway, looked dreadful, so I looked at the art. Unfortunately, art was not suiting my mood (though I did see a very interesting pair of paintings - a picture by Gauguin of XXX in Van Gogh's house and the corresponding picture by XXX of Gauguin) and I moved on to...
• Hortus, the botanical gardens. Really cool and weird communing with the plants and wandering around the greenhouses in the middle of the night, especially with hundreds of young Dutch people around. (Amsterdam was full of people going to these museums, mainly Dutch and a real mix of young and old. I like it when people really enjoy their city.) One tent had this guy playing some quite out-there electronic music, kind of like Autechre, and a bunch of people watching rapt. These people are very sophisticated. I found some nice repetitive techno, and had a great dance.
• The Science Museum had an incredible laser display, over the water to the accompaniment of more weird (but totally suitable) electronic music. On the roof was an intelligent chill zone, with these huge multicoloured neon plastic cones. Inside was all the usual science museum stuff, plus a whole section where you get to mimic running a ball-bearing factory. These people are very industrious.
• We caught the 1:43 trian back to The Hague. There are trains from Amsterdam toThe Hague and Rotterdam all through the night. These people are very impressive.

Next: Man United 1, Chelsea 0

Over the past couple of days, I've been pondering what this blog will be like, what format the content will take. I've decided that, for now at least, it will be largely a day-to-day diary interspersed with whatever the Internet equivalent of bon mot is. The diary will (hopefully) be of the more interesting things I see and do; there shouldn't be much öf the "Got up. Went to work. Weather cold." If that's all I can say, I'll start pasting excerpts of great cases in international criminal law, which should please Tadic fans.

So there you have it - part diary, part blog, which would of course make it a bliary. I hope you enjoy.

Flew in Friday night via Keflavik, Reykjavik's charming little airport. (Bill Bryson did the same in 1972, flying via Keflavik to Luxembourg because it was the only cheap flight available. Not quite in the footsteps of Dr. Johnson, but you take what you can get.) The airport has wooden floors, an Icelandic drink so dangerous it had to be packaged in black to deter people from buying it, and lots of sweater shops. I think the Icelandics are pretty tough people - it wasn't yet 7 in the morning and I saw people drinking brandy, beer, and disconcertingly, Amarula. The rest of the journey had the normal set of mishaps attendant on travel in the modern world, but I arrived in my new room in Den Haag safe and sound.

Next: Brief Interlude

Now is a most exciting time for me. Once again, I am about to embark on a new adventure. With law school, law firm, Internet ups and downs all behind me, I head out on Friday for The Hague, Den Haag, seat of Holland's government but NOT its capital. Home of not only the longest beach in Holland and the world's largest indoor painting, but also the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Permanent Court of Arbitration, and the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, the last of which will soon be my employer, if you can honestly call an organization that doesn't pay you an employer.

For 6 months, I will be a law clerk, working for the judges of the court. For most of that time, I will be working on the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. I feel that I will be taking part in something historic, even if the trial doesn't finish while I'm there (which it won't).

But it won't all be fun and games. The Hague is located inconveniently close to Amsterdam, Paris, London, Brussels, and it is unfortunately easy to fly just about anywhere in Europe for 60 euros (plus another 60 euros tax). So I may be forced to visit these various dens of iniquity.

This blog will thus, for the next 6 months, be devoted to life in The Hague, as much about the judging process as I can discuss while sticking true to the values of confidentiality and impartiality, and my travels in Europe and further afield. There may also be odd musings on other things that strike my interest.

Next update: culture clash - spending all night in the museums of Amsterdam.