Fish with Whiskey

Cala D’Or was a rather beautiful port.

Although some of my bias may have stemmed from the fresh feeling of un-seasickness, another part came from wonderful deliverance of Spain of that which it offers:

Bright blue skies….

acting as a perfect backdrop for pure white buildings….

And sticky, Mediterranean trees, that smell like home:

Andy, Martin and I headed out for breakfast, at a time that was more appropriate for brunch, but seemed to the Spanish to be ungodly as an hour for the service of food.

We sat down at a cafe brimming with life, most of it Dutch (a crowd of orange-clad people had come to see the crowning of the new king), but were told that it was just too early for any food, so had to move across to the next cafe for some breaky.

It was quite a nice feeling to just sit in the sun, and stock up on some vitamin D after the long, long, long, long winter.

But sooner or later we had to head back to the boat, the plan being to sail at noon.

Cala D’Or is situated in a kind of inlet, and the view on the way out was really quite stunning.

(Alvaro thinks so too)

This… THIS, is sailing weather.

Although, unfortunately, it’s not really. The sky was blue and the sea was calm and… there was not the tiniest whisper of wind to be found.

So we had to go by motor.

But I don’t think anyone was complaining too much about spending a day gliding through the ocean (on autopilot), sunning oneself, reading a book, occasionally looking up to take some photos or admire some coastline or eat some olives and prosciutto.

(Did I introduce Kuba #2 yet? This one is the Cap’n)

I might note that we all got sunburnt.

Personally, I was working on the belief that
a) my legs never burn,
b) even if they do they tan straight away
c) the Spanish sun is way less harsh (i.e. it is more ozone-y in Spain) that that of Australia
d) my people are Spanish, there should be some sort of natural adaptation thing going on.

So I didn’t really apply much sunscreen to my legs.

As a consequence, they spent the rest of the trip lobster red and pulsating with heat (although not too painful thankfully), and later on peeled. They did eventually tan though, but if I get leg-skin cancer in 20 years time, you know that I only have myself to blame.

This is also the reason that I spent almost the entire remaining part of the trip wearing the same dress- a nice long one that protected my upper thighs from any more UV.

We arrived in Cala Ratjada, and after some teething problems that involved the port people wanting us to park our boat against a dock practically in open water (very wavy, very hard to dismount, very bad for the boat because of all the knocking about), we headed to find some dinner.

One of the first things we noticed were the cats:

Heeerre kitty kitty kitty!

And then, we noticed how very very very German everything was.

It is a totally surreal experience as a non-German living in Germany to go to Spain and have everyone assume you are German.

Especially because I’m pretty sure most of the people in Germany can still recognise that I’m an Auslander.

All the waiters would greet you in German, and everywhere offers German translations. All the restaurants served German options- including one store dedicated to Wurst and Doner!

Truly weird though, that the default second language was Deutsch.

Anyway, we headed out to find some fish, presumably served with a side of Kartoffel

GRUPPENFOTO (stolen again from Marta)- possibly one of the only ones with all eight of us

Panorama from Marta, showing the view over the bay

(Photo of Andy looking cute also from Marta)

Sorry for the bad image- it’s really quite inappropriate to provide food porn of low quality.

As part of their promotion of the OM-D E-M5, Olympus held a ‘Photography Playground’ in the centre of Berlin.

One quiet Friday, Andy and I headed with Mercedes, and her lovely friend Babs, to what can only be described as a very hipster looking warehouse, in order to get our play on.

The general concept is that they give you one of their shiny new cameras to play with for a couple of hours as you make your way through the floors filled with a mixture of art and play equipment. You look, you photograph, you get occasional instructions for use, and you fall in love. At the end, you hand over the rights to any photos you took, and they give you the SD card on which you took all the shots for free.

When we arrived, despite bunking off work quite early, there was a massive queue, and only a couple of cameras left, so instead of waiting we decided to frolick on our own.

Luckily I already had my (brand appropriate) camera with me.

I have to hand it to them for the set up. On the first floor, there was just some cameras, and some lenses to lust over,

… plus these giant balls

Plus a giant pile of powdered Oasis foam (you know the stuff you use for flower arrangements). Apparently it started of as a sculpture, and its disintegration symbolises the ‘human urge to move’ that ‘leads to complete destruction of the space and neutralizes architecture’s control on human beings’.

Deep.

It really made us contemplate…. things like ‘did they pay money for this?’

But everything got a lot more fun on the next floor!

Of course, we had to wait aaaaggges for the tiny children with boundless energy for mesh castles to get out, and then rather quickly found out that mesh castles are very hard on the feet and that we do not have boundless energy.

Nonetheless.  It’s a friggin’ giant hanging three dimensional spider web people (I may have pretended to be spider man for some seconds, before realising that spider man has much better upper arm strength than me).

Next in line, Dressups!

I’m pretty sure that Mercedes is visually measuring Andy, and mentally concluding that he is perfect for the crazy-shiny skirt

I apologise to any small children we may have elbowed out of the way in our grab for the shiniest costumes.

Onwards and upwards, where the world got a lot trippier, and a lot more filled with awesome.

(Ok, that’s just Andy’s hair.. but there was more!)

This room was rather strange. If you ‘played’ the record, the music started, and the two dresses spun and danced around and around, with the scene punctuated occasionally by bright flashes.

Andy made friends with the record player.

And then…

LASERS!!

Ok, so they weren’t technically lasers, but actually bits of white string in a dark room with a black light shining on them.

But I refuse to recant the exclamation marks!!!

Come! How AWESOME is that. It makes me think of Tron, although I’ve never seen it and really have no concept of it and I think it might even be from before I was born… but still… Tron-y.

Of course Mercedes was cool enough to have pale pants and patterned socks that glowed in the black light:

Although admittedly her outfit was not as cool as this girl’s:

We had to play instead with what we artistes call ‘negative light’.

For this bit I put my SD card into one of their tripod-mounted camera.

And then came the actual lasers, in a small, mist-filled room, where they used beams of light to define the distance and spaces in between.

And more: in this one the light created liquid oily-looking sheets, which I wasn’t able to properly capture on film.

And then, we left the future, and headed into Wonderland.

This room was actually kind of strange, because we got told after about 5 minutes of playing around that actually it was supposed to be art, so could we kindly put the props down, and, that while it was agreed by all that Andy looked very nice on the chair, it would be possibly better in the long run if he removed himself.

Which explains our looks in this photo (these are our ‘trying to work out what the Nice German Man is saying’ faces)

Take that Reality!

The QR code room was rather beautiful, and came with bonus gimmick- we were given a tablet with which to scan the different codes in the room and see some slightly boring videos about some Scandinavian company.

While my cousin was here, we made an attempt to throw as many loud and colourful things at her as possible. The first weekend: Holi Festival of Colours, the second: Karneval der Kulturen in Kreuzberg.

The day started off with forced labour: I made our houseguest cook everyone breakfast.

I’m fairly certain that we don’t have this in Australia- my certainty in this case stems from the belief that my sister and I would be all over it if we did.

In Germany, they have these little ‘authentic french’ croissants, and right next to them, also in tubes, Sonntag Brötchen (Sunday Bread Rolls). I’m assuming these are ‘a thing’, because in Germany, the concept of going a single day without fresh bread is akin to a violation of human rights (I’m pretty sure the ‘right to awesome fresh bread’ is on the German Constitution), and the supermarkets are closed on Sundays. Although the bakeries and the flowershops seem to be the two things that are perpetually open, so maybe it’s just emergency bread to keep in your handbag for when you feel peckish and happen by an oven.

Anyway, you follow the instructions and peel back the card….

… and at a certain time, the whole thing just… *POPS*

And then you must free your dough, unroll it, and roll it up into roughly-croissant shaped beings:

And then bake.

I wasn’t super happy with the way the croissants came out. I like my croissants to be flakey and airy, and these were more of a ‘buttery but solid’ on the outside with a chewy inside.

So my ultimate decision was that I’d probably rather just buy them ready-made from the bakery.. but that this would make a mighty-fine crust for a rich goulash-y pie!

Anyway, on Sunday Morning Ashleigh made chocolate croissants, which followed a very similar procedure but produced nicer results (what can I say, they had chocolate inside!)

After a small amount of face-stuffing, we headed into Berlin.

Ashleigh wanted to check out the Dorotheenstadt cemetery, situated near the Natural History Museum. It turned out to be absolutely beautiful: all the spring flowers in bloom with dapples of shade and sun. I’m personally pro the whole being burned thing, but this took me as a very nice place to take your final rest.

Of course, all that contemplation of life and its meaning left us feeling hungry, so we stopped off for some pretty decent Asian food (I’m not going to try to classify it, all the restaurants seem to just be a fusion of everything that might seem vaguely oriental).

And then slowly made our way to Kreuzberg, via Alexanderplatz…

I’ll admit, we didn’t play the festival very well. We started at the same end that the floats started from, which meant we were walking with the tide. Although they were moving very slowly, what with the crowds, and stopping for drinks and food and to look at the shops, we ended up going at a similar pace, and as such saw the same three or four floats in perpetuity.

In addition to that, our friends had started at the other end of the parade, and we thought that the ‘walking towards eachother’ would work. Unfortunately this plan was thwarted by the thousands and thousands of mobile users gathered in the same spot, which made the networks drop in and out. At a certain stage we realized that we had switched positions: they were now behind us, so we gave up.

Ultimately, it was fun to watch the people, and look at the stalls, and drink the bubble tea and so on. I think Germans are generally really great at throwing outdoor events. They know how to have big crowds, and even have large amounts of alcohol circulating in these crowds, and not have it get agitated or angry. I’m not sure if our society has matured to that level yet in Australia.

Next year, we’ll try to play it better- see more of the floats, and check out some stages playing music- which we didn’t even know existed.

But it was a nice first attempt.

Day Three: In Which Things Can Only Get Better

By the morning I still wasn’t totally convinced of this whole ‘eating’ concept, but after a few dry things went down and stayed, I soon got back into the swing- and in no time had resumed my normal shoving of large fistfuls of cake into my mouth.

In the six hours of horror, we had somehow made our way from Palma (pictured below, above Alvaro’s head), to Sa Rapita (near his stage-right shoulder).

Day 2: I don’t feel so…..

I have photographic evidence that the day started off just fine.

Here is me, being a poser on the boat….

(This and the one beneath from Marta)

 … and looking relatively happy.

Some of these photos I even took myself.

We sleep in:

 then started our day with our new Mediterranean diet- Spanish bread, Jamon, tomatoes, cheese

And then our Captain set sail. It was a little bit cold, there were hints of rain.

That’s the last photo I have of the day.

The pharmacist told me that I couldn’t take the sea-sickness tablets before I felt sick- that I had to wait.

It was too late.

I spent the next 6 or so hours vomiting over the side of the boat. Intermittent time spent clinging to the side of the boat with my eyes closed, perched in the most uncomfortable position imaginable. Moving, opening my eyes, lying down, looking at anything, made me vomit. About two hours in I started begging Andy to stop the boat. About three hours in they made an executive decision to tie me to the boat so that I wouldn’t fall over the side on one of my repeated trips to the edge.

The Captain kept saying ‘Wheeee’ when we went over a particularly big wave. I did not appreciate this.

After about 5 hours, I was so exhausted that, following a few extra vomits for good value, I was able to move my head onto Andy’s lap and cling to him for the remaining hour.

When the boat finally stopped I poured my self into my bed, drank half a cup of tea on the insistence of the crew, and refused to move.

I’m told that everyone else had a lovely dinner of calamari at a local restaurant.

It’s gonna be slow my friends. There were eight people with DLSRs (or the equivalent) taking, if we go on Marta’s count, something close to 1000 photos each. I’m going to use primarily my own stuff, but I have to say it was nice to have someone else taking some photos and thus be included in some of the shots- so there’s going to be some degree of integration. Sometimes I give my camera to Andy, and sometimes it works, but often the mere fact of him holding it seems to make my nose beaky(er), my hair oilier and all of me much more awkward. So thanks Marta for some pretty shots, and all the awesome group photos!

Day 1: They Wanted To Escape The German Grey (Palma)

I’m not sure if I told you all yet, but we headed off to Mallorca/Majorca a couple of weeks back. Our friend from work, Marta, came into my office one day and asked if Andy and I felt like sailing around an island for a week. Seeming like something we would never do by ourselves, and possibly never have an opportunity to do again, we jumped on it.

I’ll save you some google-ing. This is Mallorca:

I’ll have some better photos later on I think… but this is a taster.

After stashing our stuff, the six of us (minus the Captain and his girl), headed into Palma to do so sight seeing.

I got quite excited by the sheer number of cats on the island. Germany just doesn’t seem to have any cats- I guess it’s possible that the ones that are here just never leave the warmth of the heated apartment- but it’s also possible that there just isn’t a high enough (read any) availability of fresh fish for them here.

Anyway- check out the size of that gull relative to the size of that cat. Terrifying!

Palma is very pretty, especially in the centre where the old buildings and churches are. It’s amazing how different the architecture is from that of Berlin/Potsdam- and in fact how everything makes you aware that you ain’t in Kansas anymore.

That’s pretty much the ugliest looking bird I’ve ever seen!

The other thing that really caught our attention, especially when we travelled a bit along the coast and away from the ‘big’ city, was the plants, and the smell. I recently discussed this with a German girl at work who also just went to Spain with her Australian boyfriend, and she said that he agreed- Spain smells like home. She mentioned that the Spanish got really into Eucalypts for a while, because of how fast they grow, and now they’ve become a bit of a pest (and a problem, because they burn-baby-burn). But I drank it in: Mallorca has that Mediterranean climate, and these beautiful oily plants that perfume the air.

The old city centre of Palma has the highest density of churches I’ve ever seen. There are at least 11 within a couple of km raidus, and all are ancient and stony and magnificent looking.

Did I mention that the cherry-blossoms are out?
(I know these might not be actual cherries, but they all look like sakura to me)

And that there is beautiful, intricately detailed stonework everywhere?

We spent a good few hours wandering around- with Marta guiding us down the oldest and smallest streets she could find- checking out trees and architecture and marvelling and photographing and posing.

Time to meet two more team members. Marta, our friend from work, and Kuba, her friend from Poland.

This one you know already:

Because I was good, I was allowed icecream!

 (This one stolen from Marta)

Marta had this great quality of occasionally crying ‘GRUPPENFOTO’, and we’d all rush behind Marcin (only Marcin could do it right) and try to cram into the background. All the gruppenfotos shown are from her:

(Left to Right: Marcin, Marta, Andy, Kuba, Me)

Apart from the churches, Palma also has a really high density of sculptures. These guys I found to be particularly cool:

We stepped into a small, very local bar- which seemed to be the front room of an actual house. We chose a few Bocadillos, which were very tasty, very cheap (2 euro or something), and came with a healthy amount of much-better-than-the-german-ones olives. We could work out most of the fillings, but one of the options translated on Andy’s dictionary as something like ‘Wide Openings’, we went with it to get an answer.

Tiny, pickled, very tasty fish.

We also got a couple with Calamari. I’m pretty sure that as a group we ate our way through at least 20 squid on the trip- with a large contribution by Marta, who I’m pretty sure would sell her grandma for some good calamari.

 (Above photo also from Marta)

One of these churches is not like the others!

The view from the other side: looking back down to the marina.

 As it became darker, we headed to meet up with Rafa, a friend of a friend from the institute. Rafa is pretty much the kindest, most generous person I’ve ever met- he joyfully agreed to meet up with a bunch of strangers and, with some of his close friends, took us on a wonderful tour of some of the best eating and drinking in Palma, not only on the first night, but also the last two days of our visit.

Here’s the group of us at Bar Espana- which has some pretty killer Tapas!

(Photo from Marta)

Some new faces! On the far left- Carmen, a friend of Rafa’s, Then Marta, Andy, myself and Kuba, and our Chilean group member, who was smart enough to take an afternoon flight: Alvaro. Rafa is on the right.

I look pensive. Probably contemplating how I can fit a whole Tapas sandwich into my mouth in one go.

This is the last one.

And then we realised that Andy’s stomach was making increasingly angry sounds, so we slowed it all down and took in a massive and leisurely breakfast. Which included these delights:

To the NeMo!- the National Centre for Science and Technology on the (R)Oosterdok (I told you it’s a funny language).

As you probably guessed, NeMo is like Scitech.
But on speed.
Squared or to the power of eight or something!

I was stunned and amazed and in love with the sheer volume of science they were pushing at these kids, plus the incredible level of interactivity they managed for every exhibit, even when it came to trickier subjects like DNA and genetics.

I cannot think of a better way to ignite your kid’s passion for science. Everyone needs to go there now. If I ever have children, I will deposit them in this place and not let them come out until they have a PhD.

It is super!

Here are some of the cool things they had going on:

This one I think had a lot of science history, and described basic discoveries, such as the fact that meat cannot spontaneously generate maggots.

They had a specimen room, showing siamese twin monkey babies:

 and cow foetuses complete with placentae:

They had this awesome thing where kids had to concentrate beams of light onto little light-powered planes to make them fly around:

They had a massive water feature for the learning of hydro-power (and damning- very important for the Dutch!):

They had a Huge wall filled with different things and you had to guess if they were animal, vegetable or mineral. It included all these fossil-like, calcareous sea creatures and worms and their tubings… I had a go at a few and was incredibly bad at it:

They had this absolutely stunning game, which Andy attached himself onto and refused to let go of. It involved Making A Protein! You get given little chips with amino acid structures on them. When the chips contact the screen their amino acid appears and vibrates and twists. If you take the correct amino acid shown as the one required to build the protein, and move it to the terminus of your amino acid chain, the two ends react, and your chain grows!

If I was more articulate I could express how incredibly impressed I am that they made something like this interactive and fun.

They had a teenage area, which talked about pimples and hormones and sex and moodiness, and which included this creepy display in which you could put your arm into the tongue and french kiss a partner:

 Plus everything you needed to know about sex, and how to have fun doing it without getting pregnant:

 They had an interactive lab, running workshops starting every hour or so:

 And a cool ‘electrical’ section, which had this fancy glowing dress, which I covet deeply:

(You could change the led lights to make different colours and patterns. Plus it could flash!)

… and also an electric car, and explanations of the effect of usage on the environments, and suggestions about how to minimise waste:

Amster-DAHyum! (tehee)

We also headed to the Amsterdam museum. Unfortunately we didn’t have much time, so really had to run through. It’s primarily about the history of Amsterdam, and looked fairly interesting if you’re into that sort of thing. A lot or reading and information though, so not really something you can do in just over an hour.

Because of the rush I didn’t take many photos, unless something really stood out.
As we turned the corner to go into a certain room, I noted to Andy that something smelled fishy.
I mean, literally, fishy.
Lo!

I’m sure some of you have seen the work of Hendrik Kersten before, and his photos of his daughter Paula, but if not, you should go and check them out online. Very, very cool.

If you’re into that, there’s a similar (slightly wackier and less polished) version by Nina Katchadourian- ‘Lavatory self portraits in the Flemish style’.
You can find them here: http://www.ninakatchadourian.com/photography/sa-flemish.php 

And this kid just has awesome style:

So that’s it for the Amsterdam museum. I can’t say much about it- you guys will just have to go and check it out for yourselves- and then get back to me on its level of awesomeness.

So we got ready to head to the airport, but not before we made the most of the food:

Yeah. I’m pretty sure there was at least one Oliebol in there too… probably I snaffled it before it could be photographed.

I think this month is going to be crazy. We just got back from a week sailing around Majorca, my cousin has rocked up on our doorstep, we have the festival of colours, it’s the Kreuzberg Culture Carnival, there are a couple of public holidays ripe for the frolicking, there’s an ‘Institute Day’ and Summer Party plus the world is going mad getting it’s Spring On!

So let me finish telling you about last month.

Back to Amsterdam:

Day Three, and Andy and I headed to the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam’s answer to the Tate Modern.

They had some pretty amazing stuff there, including a room of ‘Scandinavian Art’ which was pretty much the prototypes of every single item Ikea has ever sold, plus a room just full of awesome and funky chairs- which made us think of Mr J. Russel and his soon-to-be chair fame.

They had this, which reminded me a little of Mondrian:

 and, low and behold- some actual Mondrians:

 With which he can reflect upon his magnificence.

This next piece Assaulted me as I turned a corner. I immediately knew the devil for what it was, and thousands of repressed memories flooded back.

In 2009, Ashlee and Lauren and I visited Versailles, one of the most beautiful and renowned palaces in the world. We were excited to behold the historic wonder. There was supposed to be gaping and gasping and oohing and aahing after all the treasures and richness and antiquities.

Instead, we got ‘Jeff Koons in Versailles’.

It featured such modern art atrocities as: a vacuum cleaner (I believe in Marie Antoinette’s bedroom), a giant inflatable pool lobster (hanging from the ceiling of course), and a life size gold statue of Michael Jackson reclining with his pet monkey bubbles.

I suspect we have never collectively hated something so much.

(Although there was a rather funny moment when our audio guide explained to us that a certain room contained the most precious gift ever given to Louis, and we all turned around and pointed at the massive Balloon Dog statue standing behind us – http://www.art-magazin.de/asset/Image/KUNST/aAusstellungen/koons-versailles/20080910_L1040854_ar.jpg)

 KOOOOONS!

Thankfully only the one that I could be nauseated by.

Oh and there was a Warhol. And a group of people who suddenly saw a name they recognised and became instantaneously contemplative.

Pfft.

This:

 THIS IS ART!

 Also this:

(Although I may have thought it was just a really cool wall decoration for a modern art museum to have, and not an actual exhibit, and may have been rather curtly told off by one of the security guards for getting too close. It’s almost as if they don’t appreciate my appreciation).

 More in the black and white theme:

Something beautiful that Andy and I both rather loved (it’s a bit Starry Night-ish)

And this, which I think was taking the piss. I was convinced that they were phallic, and was quite shocked to see that the thing actually owned up to it, instead of being all coy.

 Ah, I just hate it when I have the ‘boat full of penises’ dream.

 And now, for something a little more Yonic:

 Something ugly that my cat could make:

 And something absolutely fabulous, which could have come out of the imagination of Chas Adam’s and Hayao Miyazaki’s lovechild:

I guess it’s just a matter of taste.

Some people clearly don’t have any.

The featured exhibition at the time was Mike Kelley (http://www.stedelijk.nl/en/40051/exhibition-mike-kelley), a man who rather obviously had a somewhat screwy youth. Many of his exhibits involved toys or dolls or children, but always made warped or disfigured or unnerving.

One display contained TVs with static, which would occasionally flash on with short Youtube clips showing some kid or another being traumatised in small ways. It wasn’t really for me- but some of his stuff with lights and colours was interesting:

 These two images kept on switching between the two screens- you can check it out in the movie on the page I linked.

There was also a very creepy video of him dressed in a dress and girl face mask and dragging himself around the floor. Andy was convinced it was going to get better. I was convinced I was ready to leave.

But before we leave the museum- a final beautiful thing- there was a long corridor, filled with rainbow faces and their famous words:

Cool huh? Maybe I’ll have this for the spare room instead of the ink.

Once again, the day was getting on a bit, so we didn’t have time to visit another museum. So instead we headed to the Apple, a very tiny little gallery, that contains this shiny treat:

A wall (and part of the ceiling), containing thousands of glowing orbs that fluctuated through oranges, pinks and purpled-blues, imitating a perpetual sunset.

That evening we went on the Red Light District tour, which gives a fairly interesting insight into how the area became what it is today (how the district co-evolved with the religious and business parts of the city), how the operations are run (for the maximum health and safety of the girls)
and also looks into the future, and the possible repercussions of the Amsterdam governments currently underway initiative to ‘buy out’ and transform many of the windows.

Fun times, and a good chance to have a quick look at the sex trade if you’re not really into indulging in that side of things. Plus, as always, the view is quite lovely.

In fact, we were blessed with slightly more view than we’d expected- egged on by his friends, one guy stripped to his boxers, dove into the canal, and swam to the other side.

I am shocked he didn’t get impaled, tetanus, or hypothermia.

After the tour, we treated ourselves to some much deserved dinner at Umami.

The food was frankly delicious. We ordered a kind of semi-degustation, which allowed us to pick two-each of the dishes for each course, plus rice and noodles.

 It was fabulous-  we bathed our tastebuds in the many things that we had not eaten for months in Germany: seafood, lamb, beef, curries, and it was all as tender and succulent and umami-filled as you could ever hope for! Can you not see the glazed look of satisfaction in Andy’s face?

A pretty great way to end the day!

As it turns out, if you want to write about The Holiday have to write about The Holiday during The Holiday, or immediately after The Holiday. Because if not I guess the rest of life starts to happen, and the blogging does not.

Two Fridays ago, Andy and I joined a gym.
It’s something we’ve been talking about for a while- I’m terrified about my inability to breathe hard enough to even run for the bus, Andy’s terrified of his ol’ bones getting older- and we’re desperate to get into the habit of exercise before, as above, ‘life happens’, and we just don’t.

So we’re trying to work out the new routine of work+German lessons+homework that comes with that+ exercise. Plus blogging. Plus sleeping: the sun is getting summery and setting after 8pm, and rising in the unholy hours, and what with our lack of curtains and our confused body clocks, out sleeping patterns are super-disrupted.

But on to The Holiday.
And the pictures.
“Someone” recently complained about the picture to word ratio. I’ll try to get it right this time.

So let’s begin with Saturday, our second day in Amsterdam.

Lo! The Sun did Shineth.
And after many months of darkness, the people were confused, and squinty:

One of the lovely things about the weekend was that even though it started with snow and cold and very much not-unlike-and-only-several-degrees-warmer-than Germany, the thermometer rose and the sun shined more every day… building up to a crescendo cut horribly short as our plane flew out of Amsterdam, and back under the cloud cover that was Deutschland.

After becoming acquainted with another horrible aspect of our hotel: the breakfast buffet, we headed onwards. First, to check out a bookshop, because Andy is a little trufflepig when it comes to sniffing out anything that contains real live words.

I’ll be honest, this was a pretty awesome shop. Apart from the massiveness which included every type of book on multiple stories (and a long, winding staircase lined with books), it had…..a Printing Press!

Unfortunately we had to rush through a bit to get to the central square by 11 am and hook up with the Free Walking Tour group. These tours are run by the Sandeman group, and found in many of the major tourist cities across Europe. Basically you wander around the city centre and surrounding areas, check out all the major tourist things, learn a little history, hear some funny stories, walk a little (it’s about 3 hours long), and then pay by tips based on your estimation of the quality at the end.

Even though some of the facts might be exaggerated (a Dutch man, clearly a Killjoy for a living, came up to me while I was listening and told us ‘it’s all lies! the company isn’t even Dutch!’), I would recommend it. For the entertainment value alone, or as a good way to get your bearings, or as a way to meet up with fellow tourists.

Or just to see some of the beauty of the city:

As the only bit of history I’m going to bore you with, this guy (below) is Multatuli. Real name, Eduard Dekker, but prone to drama: multa tuli apparently means ‘I have carried much’ in Latin. He wrote ‘Max Havelaar’, an thinly veiled biography about the maltreatment of the Indonesian people by the Dutch colonialists, and through it is said to have ‘ended (Dutch) colonialism’.

Remind me to read that some day.

Anyway, I think that deserves a statue. I would think that it deserves a statue with actual arms, but the Dutch are a funny sort.

Onwards with the show. But first, let’s have a quick interval as we check into the closest Albert Heijn to look for Stroopwafels.
Alas! Also empty, but they did have this:

You know how most people dream of having a cellar with vintage wines when they’re older?
My dream cellar looks a lot more like this.

Anyway.
Out of all the museums in all of Amsterdam, the one that we both wanted to see the most was the Vincent van Gough Museum.

Of course it was closed.

Luckily, everything had been moved to the Hermitage Museum, so we headed there instead. I was a little worried about this, because in ’09 we went to the closed (I think it’s finally open this month after 10 years of renovations) Rijksmuseum, and had to pay the full price to see about 1/8th of the collection huddled into a shed.

When we got to the Hermitage, it had a really big line. Which I guess is a good sign. We bided our time by posing:

I guess we spent a few hours inside.
It was amazing. It was beautiful. You should go and see it.

I wasn’t sure about the photoing ability, and was a little worried about being shouted at, so these are web-stolen (via http://www.iamsterdam.com/en)

The points being:
1) It was beautifully set out (rooms divided for periods in his life- although strangely all of the details about him seemed to skirt the depression part, which seems non-trivial),
2) There were many famous and wonderful pictures,
3) They were breathtaking,
4) But really, Vincent cannot translate into photos,
5) You need to go to there.
6) Now.

 As I mentioned, at the time at least, Amsterdam was doing a lot better than Potsdam at the whole ‘getting out of winter’ thing. Not realising that they were just a normal part of a normal spring, I got very, very excited by the crocuses outside the Hermitage.

But then, I think you’ll agree that they are very, very pretty.

We briefly stopped to fill the gnawing pit in Andy’s stomach…

… and then, because it was too late to hit another museum, decided to ride some canals!

We went around sundown, which sounds romantic- but was not (we were sharing our little boat-table with some very loud Italian tourists), although it was definitely enjoyable.

Plus we got to hear some more Amsterdam facts, and, confirm our allegiance to Deutsch: each fact was said in Dutch (a.k.a-incomprehensible), then German (slightly more comprehensible, and much nobler), and then English.

 (These photos are all though the glass roof of the boat)

 Pretty huh?