Last day in Amsterdam...there are a few last museums on the list- the Rembrandt House and the Dutch Resistance Museum- and I want to finish the drawing I started the first day we were here, but other than that, nothing planned. Scott and I split up in the morning, him to go check the trains to Belgium the next day and wander about, me to go find my sketching spot and paint it, planning to meet up at noon at the Rembrandt House. It proved to not be difficult as far as finding it, as I remembered what the clocktower next to it looked like, and I knew what direction it was in. Once there and settled in, painting went well, the occasional brisk wind not being too distracting as I had cautiously bundled up after the previous day's error. The shifting sun and clouds proved to make painting shadows a bit trying, but other than that the weather wasn´t too against me. Though, there was a painting crew across the canal blocking the road, and so every 20 minutes someone would drive halfway down the road and honk at the truck to move so they could get by. They never did, and eventually the car would have to back out down the road. Another interesting thing was that a distribution outlet for the Amsterdam post was apparently in the building right behind me, so they started arriving on their bikes to pick up a new shipment about halfway through. After about a half an hour, one of the postal workers had noticed what I was doing as he was loading up his bike nearby and came up to have a chat. He mentioned that there's apparently a painting conservation college here. (maybe? his english was good, but it might not have been that good) At any rate we chatted amiably about the difficulty of painting details and how maybe I should make studies of parts and then paint the whole picture back home in a studio, and I tried explaining that painting out in the city was the whole point, but he didnt seem entirely convinced this was the best way to go about things. Regardless, he went back to work and I finished up- I had looked at the map previously and realized that I only needed about ten minutes, tops, to get to the Rembrandt House from where I was, so I pushed it to the very last minute. Turns out I only needed about 5 minutes, but whatever, I was on time and that was what mattered. Scott was there in a minute and we both went in.
As expected, the Rembrandt House turned out to be the closest thing to a religious pilgrimage that I could possibly make. This was so true I even wrote it in the guestbook. They had all the pulverized pigment makings in his studio and everything, and we got to see his wunderkammer (though that's a German word, presumably he called it something in Dutch), which is essentially the Baroque era concept of a nifty collection of rarities and unique things, ranging from antlers to shells to skulls to weapons and armor. It was impressive how they pulled together all the period furniture and utensils into this one house, and convenient for them how when Rembrandt went bankrupt, they drew up a complete list of everything he owned! They had a etching demonstration there, a nice break from the overemphasis on Rembrandt the brilliant painter instead of Rembrandt the brilliant printmaker. Few people know he actually revolutionized printmaking as much as anything else he did. I, for one, did not know that he had a printmaking studio full of equipment in his own home.
Once out of the Rembrandthouse, we stopped for a quick lunch and then made our way over to the last place on our list- the Dutch Resistance Museum. It was quite informative, and presented its material in some really novel ways, eschewing the general musem plan of 'things on walls with plaques'. They had quoted interviews, sound bites, lots of ephermera, video reels- actually home movies, most of them, just for period ambiance and a sense of what life was like. They even had a table where you could try to determine which were the fake identification and ration cards versus the real ones, magnifying glass provided! The floorplan of the museum was also unique in how it followed not one straight path but had many nooks and crannies and side paths and such- it was explained that the "main" path was the life of the majority of the Dutch people, whereas the smaller offshoots were devoted to the individual resistance groups and places and people. It was really quite fascinating. Turns out (inevitably, with these things) that the only factoid I thought I knew about the Dutch Resistance, aside from that there was one, was that when the Nazis tried to force Holland's Jews to wear the Star of David, the whole country rallied and did so as well, making segregation and selection impossible. This turns out to have been a fabrication, but for the most part only of history, not mentality.
After finishing our museum list, we returned back to our home sweet hostel and tried to figure out somewhere to eat dinner. Scott's parents had told us to treat ourselves to a nice quality meal, so he found a neat vegetarian restaurant not so very far from us with excellent ratings. His justification for vegetarian food is that it's very easy to screw up vegetables, so they must be doing something right. And indeed, they were doing something very well. The restaurant was a nice little cosy neighborhood place, though still on the upscale side. They coped with our English excellently, and we decided to really go all out and get the full meals, not just an entree. I ordered the Indian selection and Scott got their other option, the non-ethnicitied one, I suppose. It was delicious, and incredibly reasonable for the price we were paying, which is always a nice feeling. It was a really comfortable respite from street vendors and grocery stores, and an excellent end to our stay in Amsterdam.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
3rd of September
Den Haag Day 2! Did we wake up nice an early to catch a train? Yes we did! Did we manage to get to the museums we wanted to go to in a timely manner? Yes we did! Did I manage to completely underdress and freeze to death? Yes I did. For whatever poorly thoughtout reason, primarily because I had run out of other shirts, and wasn't terribly inclined to dig into my Istanbul long sleeves, I determined that this day would be the best one to wear the only tank top I had brought with me in case of warmer weather. Well, it was the wrong day. I enjoyed the Escher museum very much, and the Panorama Mesdag was interesting, but it was so cold. We got some french onion soup for lunch that was quite tasty and that helped a bit (so did the beer) but there was only so much my light knit jersey sweater could do. I ended up pinning the drop neckline closer to my neck with a safety pin, I was that cold.
Finally, we escaped Den Haag and made our way to Delft, buying ourselves sandwich makings at the trainstation. Its a very pretty place, and once I found something to draw, I sat down and was enthralled. Scott gave me his jacket for warmth (that space heater) and went off in search of pasteries and returned some time later with some tasty carrot cake for me and a rocky road like confection for himself. As I painted away happily, he watched the incoming storm clouds with trepidation. Eventually, it started thundering and he began to mention maybe getting undercover, reminding me that while the sky wasn't that bad from where I was sitting, the clouds behind me were dead ominous. When the first large raindrops began to splash down, I quickly closed the sketchbook and packed everything away, but by then it was too late. The frantic run through the town to reach the train station again saw us completely poured on, drenched to the bone. When we took refuge in a bus stop, we realized that it was hailing. Hailing. And I was wearing sandals. In the next lull we made it to the station, and from there we realized that if we had just taken cover in the city center for ten to fifteen minutes we would have missed the whole thing. Sadly it was still windy, so of course now I was colder than ever. One short but shivery train ride home and we arrived in what became an equally damp Amsterdam. When we reached the hostel, we were soaked and miserable, so we took warm showers to clean off/warm up, and then we crashed, literally, and fell sound asleep.
Finally, we escaped Den Haag and made our way to Delft, buying ourselves sandwich makings at the trainstation. Its a very pretty place, and once I found something to draw, I sat down and was enthralled. Scott gave me his jacket for warmth (that space heater) and went off in search of pasteries and returned some time later with some tasty carrot cake for me and a rocky road like confection for himself. As I painted away happily, he watched the incoming storm clouds with trepidation. Eventually, it started thundering and he began to mention maybe getting undercover, reminding me that while the sky wasn't that bad from where I was sitting, the clouds behind me were dead ominous. When the first large raindrops began to splash down, I quickly closed the sketchbook and packed everything away, but by then it was too late. The frantic run through the town to reach the train station again saw us completely poured on, drenched to the bone. When we took refuge in a bus stop, we realized that it was hailing. Hailing. And I was wearing sandals. In the next lull we made it to the station, and from there we realized that if we had just taken cover in the city center for ten to fifteen minutes we would have missed the whole thing. Sadly it was still windy, so of course now I was colder than ever. One short but shivery train ride home and we arrived in what became an equally damp Amsterdam. When we reached the hostel, we were soaked and miserable, so we took warm showers to clean off/warm up, and then we crashed, literally, and fell sound asleep.
2nd of September
Den Haag Day! We hopped on an early train with the (absurd) goal of hitting the Rijksmuseum, Escher Museum and a nifty Panorama before heading to spend the rest of the day in Delft. Yes, we literally thought we could accomplish all this. What ACTUALLY ended up happening is hitting the Rijksmuseum, having to take short catnaps in the last stretch of rooms (there weren't even that many) and stumbling out, feeling very much so like not visiting any other museums that day, not that they had that much time left to be open anyway. Most of the problem probably stemmed from being awakened the previous night at 4:30am by a constant cacophony of clatterupstairs-knockknockknock-doorslungopen-doorslamshut-trompdownstairs. Eventually, we ended up wandering around the city, looking at the outside of churches since they were all closed, and traversing the streets. We even went into a huge department store housed in a really lovely interesting looking old building, though the store inside was pretty basic, though pretty high class- though maybe not for European standards. Five stories though! We went up all the escalators, walked around, and went back down again. Its a nice enough place, Den Haag, but it suffers from a bit of an inferiority complex methinks because Amsterdam outshines it so much in popularity. I did notice it seemed pretty metropolitan and cosmopolitan, in some ways more than its neighbor to the north.
Finally, we headed back to Amsterdam, and finally crashed like we'd have liked to earlier when we were in the wrong city to do so. Waking up late, having forgotten to set an alarm, we got the brilliant idea of going and getting fries and a belgian waffle for dinner. Stupid idea. Not because there was somehow a better option open at, like, 11pm, or because fries and flemish mayonnaise are nasty, because they are not, but because there was no way to distinguish the size of the portion we were ordering at the stand. We got the largest, as we were splitting it, and ended up having to throw a third of it away. It was enormous. When trying to sleep that night, it was impossible, because we had giant piles of fries and mayonnaise in our stomachs.
Finally, we headed back to Amsterdam, and finally crashed like we'd have liked to earlier when we were in the wrong city to do so. Waking up late, having forgotten to set an alarm, we got the brilliant idea of going and getting fries and a belgian waffle for dinner. Stupid idea. Not because there was somehow a better option open at, like, 11pm, or because fries and flemish mayonnaise are nasty, because they are not, but because there was no way to distinguish the size of the portion we were ordering at the stand. We got the largest, as we were splitting it, and ended up having to throw a third of it away. It was enormous. When trying to sleep that night, it was impossible, because we had giant piles of fries and mayonnaise in our stomachs.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
1st of September
Plan: to hit as many Amsterdam museums in one day as is humanly possible. Problem being, I don't exactly glide swiftly through art museums, there's too much friction involved, the friction between a piece of art and an art historian's brain. We managed to get through the Rijksmuseum mostly because it's undergoing major renovations right now so only The Masterpieces were on display. Given the size of the rest of the building, I feel that the museum as a whole when it's finished will be comparable to the Louvre, it's that huge. Even then I was failing fast, fighting both sore feet and a tired body. Turns out, I lean predominantly on my heels and I've already done so for too long in one my sets of shoes, which I really need to remember.
Anyway, it wasn't so bad afterwards, and we stopped at the museum campus' restaurant for food and coffee before heading to the next museum on the list: The van Gogh Museum. It was really well done, obviously they don't have most of his very famous ones, but what they did have covered his entire oeuvre pretty thoroughly, and it was nice to see some undiscovered gems. I never knew he could paint flowering trees so deftly, for example. I managed to survive through the van Gogh exhibit, but was felled by the two extra stories of Odilon Redon, the Frenchman with the best name, and Emile Bernard, which was especially nice as I'm quite fond of Redon's work. I ending up skipping the floor of prints, though since most of what I enjoy about Redon is his use of color, I probably didn't miss much. After all this artsy sensory overload, it was convenient to be able to hop a tram and return to the hostel for a nap, cause I desperately needed it.
At 5, after a good 2 hours of regaining strength, we went back to the train station for some 5-day tram passes, some euros for me, and to get some dinner at the grocery store there, which has a name which sounds like the american chain Albertson's but without any relation. From there, we hopped on a tram, incidentally to the same area of the city that we were in earlier for the museums, headed for a giant park. The sandwiches were quite tasty, and we had some orange-kiwi juice that we both agreed was tasty, but extremely tart. The Dutch word for orange, like most Dutch words for fruits and vegetables, called it a special type of apple, a sinaasappel. (maybe it was mandarin oranges??) For comparison, the Dutch word for potato is aardappel, 'ground apple'. I don't get it either. Scott surmises it has something to do with the history of orchards here.
At any rate, when we'd finished everything but the leftover bread and the huge Toblerone we got (we got licorice too, but we devoured it) I got out my sketching material, planning on the time for both ink and watercolor, since Scott was taking a walk, but for whatever reason I kept getting approached on the basis of my artwork. Seriously, it was really weird. The first guy wanted me to make a drawing of Spinoza for him, for his little paperbound book (I seem to recall catching that it was originally a yearbook or something) of photos of people taken in front of the statue and his own child-like drawings. It was really peculiar. He assured me he would provide the paper, and would reimburse me for my time with some kind of Amsterdam tourist thing which I never fully caught the name of but since he said something like 'that they're always giving out' I suspected that it wasn't anything too unique. I apologized that I was on a limited amount of time, and wanted to be able to finish my own drawing first, so I couldn't help him out, and so after a bit he left on his bike again.
Sadly, soon after Spinoza guy left, another art lover arrived, wanting to show me his portfolio. Having never heard this one before, I was vague for a while to see if he'd go away of his own accord, but he pulled out his cardboard portfolio binder instead. Oh, well, so much for drawing the Filmmuseum. His stuff was all portraits, and he gave me a scanned copy of one "my kung fu master" he called it. (Scott: maybe it WAS actually his kung fu master; maybe he knew kung fu!) Anyway, Scott soon arrived, back from his walk, and I assumed this meant that the guy would leave and I'd get to get back to drawing, but no, they introduced themselves and Otto, as his name turned out to be, started in with the stories. Stories about how he lost his two front teeth (a mugging in California), when he lived in Acapulco (lotsa beaches), how he bought and lost a classic car in Mexico City, how Finnish drivers are insane, and how tomorrow he was going to go get his passport, since traveling was his only necessity. (He also needed the remainder of our sandwich bread and 2€.) I suppose if I had to miss drawing it could at least be for some pretty wild stories, and it kept Scott entertained, which I always fear is not happening when I'm engrossed in sketching, heh.
Anyway, it wasn't so bad afterwards, and we stopped at the museum campus' restaurant for food and coffee before heading to the next museum on the list: The van Gogh Museum. It was really well done, obviously they don't have most of his very famous ones, but what they did have covered his entire oeuvre pretty thoroughly, and it was nice to see some undiscovered gems. I never knew he could paint flowering trees so deftly, for example. I managed to survive through the van Gogh exhibit, but was felled by the two extra stories of Odilon Redon, the Frenchman with the best name, and Emile Bernard, which was especially nice as I'm quite fond of Redon's work. I ending up skipping the floor of prints, though since most of what I enjoy about Redon is his use of color, I probably didn't miss much. After all this artsy sensory overload, it was convenient to be able to hop a tram and return to the hostel for a nap, cause I desperately needed it.
At 5, after a good 2 hours of regaining strength, we went back to the train station for some 5-day tram passes, some euros for me, and to get some dinner at the grocery store there, which has a name which sounds like the american chain Albertson's but without any relation. From there, we hopped on a tram, incidentally to the same area of the city that we were in earlier for the museums, headed for a giant park. The sandwiches were quite tasty, and we had some orange-kiwi juice that we both agreed was tasty, but extremely tart. The Dutch word for orange, like most Dutch words for fruits and vegetables, called it a special type of apple, a sinaasappel. (maybe it was mandarin oranges??) For comparison, the Dutch word for potato is aardappel, 'ground apple'. I don't get it either. Scott surmises it has something to do with the history of orchards here.
At any rate, when we'd finished everything but the leftover bread and the huge Toblerone we got (we got licorice too, but we devoured it) I got out my sketching material, planning on the time for both ink and watercolor, since Scott was taking a walk, but for whatever reason I kept getting approached on the basis of my artwork. Seriously, it was really weird. The first guy wanted me to make a drawing of Spinoza for him, for his little paperbound book (I seem to recall catching that it was originally a yearbook or something) of photos of people taken in front of the statue and his own child-like drawings. It was really peculiar. He assured me he would provide the paper, and would reimburse me for my time with some kind of Amsterdam tourist thing which I never fully caught the name of but since he said something like 'that they're always giving out' I suspected that it wasn't anything too unique. I apologized that I was on a limited amount of time, and wanted to be able to finish my own drawing first, so I couldn't help him out, and so after a bit he left on his bike again.
Sadly, soon after Spinoza guy left, another art lover arrived, wanting to show me his portfolio. Having never heard this one before, I was vague for a while to see if he'd go away of his own accord, but he pulled out his cardboard portfolio binder instead. Oh, well, so much for drawing the Filmmuseum. His stuff was all portraits, and he gave me a scanned copy of one "my kung fu master" he called it. (Scott: maybe it WAS actually his kung fu master; maybe he knew kung fu!) Anyway, Scott soon arrived, back from his walk, and I assumed this meant that the guy would leave and I'd get to get back to drawing, but no, they introduced themselves and Otto, as his name turned out to be, started in with the stories. Stories about how he lost his two front teeth (a mugging in California), when he lived in Acapulco (lotsa beaches), how he bought and lost a classic car in Mexico City, how Finnish drivers are insane, and how tomorrow he was going to go get his passport, since traveling was his only necessity. (He also needed the remainder of our sandwich bread and 2€.) I suppose if I had to miss drawing it could at least be for some pretty wild stories, and it kept Scott entertained, which I always fear is not happening when I'm engrossed in sketching, heh.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
31st of August
Perhaps taking a transatlantic flight that arrived at 8 in the morning was not the smartest decision we'd ever made. The flight itself was quite nice, Coach was underbooked, so Scott and I had the whole row to ourselves, which we attempted to utilize for napping as much as we could, though that proved to be as futile as sleeping on airplanes usually is. Not that the flight was boring or tedious, since Continental saw fit to provide us with a staggering variety of entertainment options, including board games that you could play with other passengers (Scott trounced me at backgammon) and 300some movies of every variety. Scott watched some zany Chinese film and I watched The Italian Job, the original one. So, while we weren't bored while failing to sleep, it hardly mattered by the time we arrived at Amsterdam Schipol, 1am our time. We caught the train to the city center easily enough, and made it to the hostel without much delay, only to find that the cleaning crew wouldn't be done until 2pm. Reasonable, butunfortuate. Resiliant, we dumped our bags in the luggage room and ate breakfast there, then went out in search of coffee. Getting european espresso again was heavenly! We decided that despite coffee and breakfast, actually visiting a museum or site was probably going to require too much from our addled senses, so we walked about the city instead. Found a perfect place to sketch and took the opportunity, too. I plan to ink the pencil and then return to the spot and watercolor it.
After a while though, the double espresso was bound to wear off, and it didn't gradually either. No, all of a sudden, while visiting an english language bookstore, the familiar loathesome all-nighter headache set in. It was only 1-ish, but we made our way back to the hostel, me clutching my head, Scott insuring I didn't stumble into anyone. At the hostel we got water and food while we waited for our room to be ready, so we could end this sleeplessness once and for all. When 2 finally rolled around, we dashed upstairs only to find that maybe the room wasn't actually clean yet. We asked, and were assured that they were done and we were fine, but soon after, another couple of cleaners came by to apoligize that no, it wasn't clean yet. So by 3 we finally closed the room-darkening curtains and passed out with an alarm set to wake us by 5. Not only do you get whatever alarms you set, but you also get the belltower ringing the time. It's got a great ring, I'm going to try to get a video of it, cause it's lovely. Regardless, we went out for dinner, Thai, and then spent quite a lot of time wandering around the city. There's not really much else to do after 5pm, when all the museums and churches are closed. Ideally I should turn that into prime sketching time- the sun doesn't set until 7:30-ish...
After a while though, the double espresso was bound to wear off, and it didn't gradually either. No, all of a sudden, while visiting an english language bookstore, the familiar loathesome all-nighter headache set in. It was only 1-ish, but we made our way back to the hostel, me clutching my head, Scott insuring I didn't stumble into anyone. At the hostel we got water and food while we waited for our room to be ready, so we could end this sleeplessness once and for all. When 2 finally rolled around, we dashed upstairs only to find that maybe the room wasn't actually clean yet. We asked, and were assured that they were done and we were fine, but soon after, another couple of cleaners came by to apoligize that no, it wasn't clean yet. So by 3 we finally closed the room-darkening curtains and passed out with an alarm set to wake us by 5. Not only do you get whatever alarms you set, but you also get the belltower ringing the time. It's got a great ring, I'm going to try to get a video of it, cause it's lovely. Regardless, we went out for dinner, Thai, and then spent quite a lot of time wandering around the city. There's not really much else to do after 5pm, when all the museums and churches are closed. Ideally I should turn that into prime sketching time- the sun doesn't set until 7:30-ish...
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