A day in court

 After teaching we went back to university, where we met Jel. After a bit of warm food we went to the courthouse to see if we could go to a case where there was an interpreter present. We had to go and write a report for one of the legendary advanced language classes. At 12.30 we were there and after going to a metal detector we went to desk number 1 for information. The people there sent us to desk number 5, but this one was unattended. We decided to wait there and see what would happen. At some point a hot lawyer (according to Jel) came to this desk and was quite disappointed that no one was present. At 13.00 finally someone came and informed us that there would by a case w/ an interpreter in half an hour. So we waited some more. The case concerned two violent Italians, which might have been interesting. But it wasn’t. Both suspects didn’t show, and the interpreter was sent away. We couldn’t use this in our assignment.

Then we asked when there would be another interesting case. The girl at desk number 5 sent us to desk number 1, and we had to run to get there on time. This case was about a girl who sold drugs, occasionally, when she was in trouble for money. Everything turned out to be in Dutch, so no help there.

Now we had to decide what to do, after waiting so much time we even started to think of just making everything up, I mean who’s going to notice? After discussing and thinking and smoking (not me) and eating we decided to stay. Fortunately for us we bumped into Magosha. She’s even more organised than I am, and she had called to ask when there would be a case. At 15.10 the Anderson case would start w/ an interpreter Dutch-English.

After waiting till about 15.45 the case finally started. And luckily the interpreter didn’t have to leave. The suspect did know some Dutch, which meant that the interpreter could lean back and relax for most of the time (and still get paid).

We should be able to write a good report on all this. At 16.30 we finally could leave and start doing something useful.