tour

I'm sitting here in the windowsill of my room, looking out at the castle. The clouds hanging over the Netherlands like an umbrella have parted today, and for the first time since we've been here, the sun is shining down on us. It's still on the cooler side - I can breathe out my window and have my breath billow back at me like steam - but the sun is out and the sky is a cloudless blue.

Kasteel Well is a fully restored castle dating back to the twelfth century - it's brick, not stone, and doesn't really look like the epic grey stone castle of children's imaginations. It's quieter, really, more welcoming and less imposing. It's not a Sleeping Beauty castle, turrets and walkways; it's more low-key than that, a relaxed sort of castle, with wooden saircases, brick paths and trees everywhere.

Surrounding the entire castle is a garden, populated by a smattering of birds - geese and swans and white birds with black markings that cackle and caw in the early morning, before the sun has even thought about yawning and getting up. Around the perimeter of the garden is the first moat, wide and strong - about half of it is covered by a thick mucusy film of green algae that hides the water underneath. There are trees in the garden, forest green and deep yellow, and those that haven't sprouted with leaves just yet. Once they do, I imagine an explosion of green, crackling up and down branches, spring spreading like wildfire. There is an old, crumbling ruined tower towards the back of the garden that hints at what the castle was like all those years ago. 

There's a bridge you have to cross, with arms of brick, and you reach the castle proper. The castle itself is divided into two main buildings - approaching it over the bridge leads you to to the Voorburcht first, which is where Greg and I live. The VB is shaped like a squared-off letter U, with the bottom facing the road from which you approach it. It frames a large courtyard of grass and brick paths - there are benches, and small stone walls to lean over and look artsy. You can enter the VB through a door within the entrance archway, which will lead you to mostly dorms - on the left side of the VB, in one of the two smaller sides, is the laundry room and computer lab. The blue flatscreen Dell computers stick out and look entirely out of place on the wooden tables, especially considering the two flights of creaking wooden stairs you have to climb to get to them.

There's also an entrance to the VB at the tip of the opposite side - the other side of the U. Walking through that presents you with another wooden staircase - you climb it, each stair groaning beneath your foot, and reach one of the castle's two towers. On the second and third floors are more dorms - including mine. Take a right upon entering that door leads to a lounge populated with a pool table, a television, and earthtones leather couches. At the far end of the lounge is another staircase that leads to the castle's two classrooms - one is long and white, adorned with colorful maps of the Netherlands, and the other is more stout, more sparse, with long tables instead of desks.

Standing in the VB courtyard, directly in front of you is the Main Castle; it's surrounded by the second moat, which flows around and around. The brick building rises straight out of the water - three floors of stairs and glass windows. It, too, is shaped like a square, with a small stone courtyard at the center. You cross a bridge over the moat and walk through another rounded archway into the courtyard, and there are glass doors in front of you and to your right. 

Turn to the right, you can walk through the doors and down stairs of brick to reach our cavelike dining hall. It is, for all intents and purposes, in the basement - peering out the windows brings you almost level with the surface of the inner moat. Everything in the dining hall is white - the walls, ceiling, tables, chairs. It is far more intimate that the Boston DH, with tall chairs and round tables for four and five people. At one end of the hall is a spread of bread of all kinds - sliced and in roll form, as cookies and crackers. Large glass pitchers of water and juice litter the table, and condiments like a thick chocolate spread and ground cinnamon live in a little wicker basket.

If you choose to walk straight through the MC courtyard, you are presented with - that's right, more stairs. Up a narrow staircase to the left leads to the second tower, more dorms, and the castle resource center, a library with bookshelves against every wall. Up a wider staircase to the right are the rest of the dorms, as well as Sophie's Lounge, a bright blue room with these vivid cherry-red couches. Along the walls of the staircase and the hallways outside Sophie's are group pictures of every group of students to come to the castle. At the top is a crisp picture of last semester's familiar faces, spiralling down, down, all the way to spring 1985, a picture of students whose bright, colorful smiles have faded, the photo worn down by twenty three years of wear and tear. You can climb the stairs and watch clothing change, watch haircuts come in and out of style. The students at the bottom look like miniature adults in slacks and sweatervests - the students at the top are in bright sweatshirts and jeans, the image of college kids that our culture has embraced and generalized in books, television and movies.

One thing is the same about each and every picture. Aesthetics aside, from each group, you can feel the glowing mix of excitement and disbelief that they are actually here, standing in a castle in Europe. They are all preserved forever in the state I now find myself in - curiosity, wonder, a sense of adventure, of recklessness, of not taking one minute of this experience for granted. It is something we all share, each of us, from myself, to my friends of this fall, of two years ago, to strangers captured in a photo years before I was born.

Wow.

Things have been pretty low-key around the castle for the past day or so. We're all taking things easy, sitting around with Eurail maps splayed out in front of us, computer screens glowing, trying to plan thirteen weekends traveling across an entire continent. It's not easy - common expressions are scrunched, frustrated faces, wrinkled brows, eyes widening at prices - screams of "We're never going to get out of Croatia!" echo through the castle.

This weekend, a whole mess of us are headed down to Bruges in Belgium to enjoy chocolate, waffles and beer, and experience the first chaos of traveling abroad from the castle. The next weekend is mostly one-night or day trips, as Carnival parades through Well.

There are now pillows light as air floating through the sky, white clouds in stark contrast to the blankets of grey that we've seen for the past five days.

I'm going to walk in the sun while it's still around, turn my face into the light and bake like a cold-blooded animal seeking warmth. You forget what the sun is like after days of rain, and - let's face it - I've got even more days of rain ahead, so I'd best bask and take it all in while I can.

life's what you make it.

(no, for the record, not every blog will end with hannah. it just fits here.)