After living in Leiden for about a month and a half, I've become acquainted with Leiden nightlife. Nightlife is not neglected in this small town. Though the shops on Haarlemmerstraat are closed for the night, small restaurants open their doors for the evening crowd. The Döner Company serves a popular Turkish food, the equivalent of a Greek Gyro, which is basically a pita sandwich made of shaved lamb and dressed with onions, coleslaw and lettuce. A friend and I each picked up a sandwich for 2.50 Euro on the way to a late movie at Lido theatre.

The Lido movie theatre in Leiden is located near the train station, surrounded by pancake houses and coffeeshops. The theatre is tiny compared to say, Cinemark Egyptian 24. The rooms are small: some have fewer than a dozen seats, making the movie-viewing experience very intimate. Nevertheless, the theater still contains the familiar smell of buttered popcorn and sells sodas, but in glass bottles that aren't full of food coloring and artificial sugar. Oh, and beer. When I went to Lido, it was playing mostly American films: The Lovely Bones, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Sherlock Holmes, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and so on. Luckily, movies are always shown in their original language (in this case English) with Dutch subtitles, which makes going to movies possible. Movies here, like in a theater, have a brief intermission, where people can stretch, talk, or go buy another beer. It's all very civilized.

After the movies, the younger generation usually flocks to the all-night McDonald's across the street, which surprisingly has a swanky interior with modern light fixtures and automatic sliding glass doors. Even at midnight the restaurant is filled with teenagers eating McFlurries with stroopwafel topping or McCroquettes, McDonald's' take on authentic Dutch food.

There are plenty of dance clubs in Leiden, but the most notable is probably the one located inside of the Town Hall. While most of the building is used for what the name implies-typical governmental services (such as confirming my residence in Leiden)- a section is a restaurant by day and dance club by night. For a five Euro cover, one can experience the pleasure of dancing alongside some Dutch groovemasters to electronic music and a light show in the modern atmosphere of the Town Hall nightclub. Dutch nightclubs seem to be more reserved than those back in Baltimore. The electronic music (thank god) is not really conducive to grinding, but rather gentle bobbing and swaying with a beer in your hand.

If dancing isn't your thing, then there are plenty of local bars where people sit outside by the canal and drink with friends until the wee hours of the morning. Proost, for example, is a little bar tucked away just yards from the Lipsius Humanities Building of Leiden University. The final destination on day one of my orientation to Leiden University, Proost sponsored a pub quiz, where half-coherent international students got to answer trivia about things that would be impossible to answer even while sober.

Because Leiden is such a small town, students feel pretty safe walking home from a night out, though perhaps it would be better for all involved if the bikes were left at home.