Landscapes

 Goededag!

I am Too Cool.  Three of my comments published on Velonews’s live update coverage of the Tour de France.  I see it on TV with Dutch commentary, but I get the English info on line.

Some people abroad become angry and frustrated when things aren’t like home, but I’m the opposite. I travel for a break in routine and an appropriate challenge of figuring out a strange place and culture.  A trip to the grocery store is as good as a museum.  What do they have?  What don’t they have?  Orange juice is called Sinaasapfel, which I think translates to Chinese apple.  A lot of fruit and vegetables are some kind of “apfel.”  And then there’s using the plumbing.  Hot and cold are conveniently indicated in red and blue, but the taps turn perpendicular to the user and in different directions.  The microwave continues to be a real puzzle.  Fortunately the word stop is the same in both languages.

Nevertheless Amsterdam is an easy city.  It’s well sign posted, and I have not yet come across a Dutch person who did not speak good English.

I love the sound of falling rain as I breakfast snugly.  Being out in it for days on end is not as much fun.  The sky looked threatening yesterday, so I returned to the Van Gogh Museum getting there shortly before it opened.  There was already an impressive line, but I didn’t have to stand in it having my museum card.  It’s also possible to book tickets in advance on line for all the big museums, but one has to be able to print the tickets, I think.

The great thing about staying in a city for a few weeks is the chance to revisit to places one wants to see again.  Mid afternoon is a miserable time for visiting the justly popular Van Gogh Museum.  The morning was so much better!  I got to see many more of the works and take my time studying them.  The museum does an excellent job of tracing Vincent’s development as an artist and his creation of a unique style.  It also discusses influences from other artists and cultures and what he took and what he eventually rejected, and how his paintings reflected the places in which he lived.  Many of the paintings are wonderful. Van Gogh’s ferocious Sunflowers are here as well as landscapes both serene and bursting with energy.  I like to think the brilliant colors helped keep his demons away for a while, especially the yellow, which he saw as the color of love.

Because Amsterdam is a city of canals, the light reflecting off the water creates a magical atmosphere made even stronger when the sky is overcast.  I walked around licking windows and hunting souvenirs.  I like to buy presents on my trips, so that’s mainly what I was looking for.

Then the clouds cleared and the sun came out.  I headed for Vondelpark.  I appreciate European cities, but being closed in by the buildings so crowded together gets me down sometimes. One of the reasons I come to Europe is my hunger for green and my love of walking in the woods—appetites that cannot be satisfied at home. Vondelpark is pretty big and provided hours of wandering and even some woodland paths under tall chestnuts and spreading oaks. I didn’t recognize any of the other types of trees or shrubs.  Part of the park seems to have been designated a nature reserve, because people and their dogs were fenced out.  I saw a pair of nesting—storks?  herons?  There are a lot of birds and water fowl, but I didn’t see other sorts of animals possibly because so many dogs are around.

But then the sky turned threatening, so I came home just in time, too, because it began to pour.  The former Dutch colony of Suriname provided dinner.  I had Roti, a popular dish like a green curry with chicken, green beans, potato, and a hard boiled egg.  This was accompanied by a thick tortilla sort of thing.  To drink I had one of my favorites from Belgium called Duvel.  You can get this at Trader Joe, but be warned. It’s not called “devil” for nothing.  It goes down sweet and smooth, but it’s very strong, so too much and you pay the penalty for sin.

Dag!