![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
my cultural activities in Holland
Saturday - flight out - massive delays. not happy.
Sunday – Amsterdam. Anne Frank House – crowded, claustrophobic, queued outside for twenty-five minutes then walked round in a queue and there were some irritating people and I tried to put myself in there for years and… urgh. impossible. like I said, claustrophobic, virtually ran out of there. then lunch, and Van Gogh Museum – guess from the name. lots of paintings by Van Gogh. one version of Sunflowers, some nice landscapes, self-portraits… he did an awful lot of copies of the same one, or the same view. there was one of him by Gaugain, from when they stayed together. bought postcards – one for the house here was of a skull with a lit cigarette – it seemed to fit.
Monday – Haarlem, everything shut, so we went to Bergen Aan Zee for lunch (there were, like, hills! old sand dunes, actually, but still…) and saw the sea, and it was sunny, and then we went back to Bergen and wandered around the shops a bit.
Tuesday – Leiden. Can’t remember the names of the museums, but the first we went to because of the rain – it had some stuff on the history of the town, some paintings – the one to see was a triptych, noted for “the fitting of the wings on the saved and the enthusiasm of the devils”, or some such. Then we met up with Sofie’s mother again (she’d driven us) and went to the museum of antiquities, and she took us around the Ancient Greek section – she studied that, you see, so she had quite a bit to tell us. And she’d lent me the Letters of Younger Pliny, so when we saw the statue of Emperor Trajan, it was like “there’s the guy he was writing to!” because book 10 is back and forth between Pliny and Trajan – the letter about the treatment of the Christians is in there, which is quite interesting.
Wednesday – Den Haag – train and tram and going through security and get to the courtroom in time for them to break for twenty minutes. but then they came back, and we sat in the Visitor’s part – quite small, actually, somewhat odd – and they finished questioning a female doctor about stuff that had gone on at her hospital and some of her colleagues – that was kind of… yeah. and then there was a General who was telling about the command structure of the JNA (Yugoslavian People’s Army) which was kind of boring. And at one point he corrected the translation into Serbian. After that finished we went for lunch – I was still a bit shook up, didn’t talk much while they discussed how “interesting” it was. I’m oddly visceral, I find. Anyway… then went to the Mauritshuis, which is a fairly small museum. Bought a few postcards and a reduced-price calendar. Their most famous painting is Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Vermeer. There were a few Rembrandts as well, though there were more at the Rijksmuseum. Lighting was very irritating, though, reflections stopped you seeing some of the pictures as more than parts, you had to move around… oh, and they bugged me too, I was trying to point out bits to them and they just. didn’t. see. Like, there was a picture of Diana and her huntresses, and they couldn’t pick out the crescent on her forehead, and I was pointing, like, “it’s right there!” but, yeah. and then I got happy, and then later I warned Julie that I would crash again (because I do that, you know I do that) and she asked if I was sure, she asked how I knew. I knew because I’ve been living with it for as long as I can remember, thank you very much, little miss self-righteous.
Thursday – Amsterdam again. Rijksmuseum (state museum) – big place. I ended up playing tour-guide because apparently neither of them could read the floor-plan. And the way it’s constructed, sometimes you have to go through a whole lot of rooms to see something (eg the Doll House which was on their list of things to see – very impressive, big and detailed) and then you have to go all the way back through all the rooms, and it makes you feel like a far-from-heroic Theseus. Other things to see were: “The Nightwatch”, which is feckin’ huge, ”The Jewish Bride”, where I preferred its neighbours, all by Rembrandt; Van Gogh Self-portrait – uh, yeah, that’s new; “The Battle of Waterloo” – feckin’ huger, and you can’t tell who the hell anyone is, and when you try to see the people pointed out in the background you really can’t. And… oh yeah, the Treasure Chamber. I decided we had to go see that, they weren’t hugely enthralled with the concept but it was on the list of things to see and we’d decided we’d do that, so off we went… saw some nice wood on the way too, intricate cabinets and the like, a choir screen dividing one room, nice stuff… and we got there. And it was this darkened room, with all these glass cabinets, and they were stuffed with the most amazing things – cups made out of coconut shells, and pendants made out of precious gems, and a map of the world in semi-precious stone and enamel and gilt, and all these pretty shiny things, and so… and there was a pair of globe cups, the stem being Atlas, an eagle perched on top, and one was engraved with the Earth and the other was the constellations, and… eee. and there was a skeleton that was a pendant, and… I’ll stop now. wonderous things. Also, there was a little room all panelled round with Chinese screens, which just rocked. postcards from there too. then we went shopping. and we went on a canal-boat tour which was fun, but the commentary was in Dutch, then German, then French, then English, so by the time it got round to English you had a fair idea what was going on.
Friday – Alkmaar (nearby town) shopping, then Bergen shopping again. so. that was good.
Saturday – airport – not as many delays as on the way – back to St A’s. Joy.
Sunday – Amsterdam. Anne Frank House – crowded, claustrophobic, queued outside for twenty-five minutes then walked round in a queue and there were some irritating people and I tried to put myself in there for years and… urgh. impossible. like I said, claustrophobic, virtually ran out of there. then lunch, and Van Gogh Museum – guess from the name. lots of paintings by Van Gogh. one version of Sunflowers, some nice landscapes, self-portraits… he did an awful lot of copies of the same one, or the same view. there was one of him by Gaugain, from when they stayed together. bought postcards – one for the house here was of a skull with a lit cigarette – it seemed to fit.
Monday – Haarlem, everything shut, so we went to Bergen Aan Zee for lunch (there were, like, hills! old sand dunes, actually, but still…) and saw the sea, and it was sunny, and then we went back to Bergen and wandered around the shops a bit.
Tuesday – Leiden. Can’t remember the names of the museums, but the first we went to because of the rain – it had some stuff on the history of the town, some paintings – the one to see was a triptych, noted for “the fitting of the wings on the saved and the enthusiasm of the devils”, or some such. Then we met up with Sofie’s mother again (she’d driven us) and went to the museum of antiquities, and she took us around the Ancient Greek section – she studied that, you see, so she had quite a bit to tell us. And she’d lent me the Letters of Younger Pliny, so when we saw the statue of Emperor Trajan, it was like “there’s the guy he was writing to!” because book 10 is back and forth between Pliny and Trajan – the letter about the treatment of the Christians is in there, which is quite interesting.
Wednesday – Den Haag – train and tram and going through security and get to the courtroom in time for them to break for twenty minutes. but then they came back, and we sat in the Visitor’s part – quite small, actually, somewhat odd – and they finished questioning a female doctor about stuff that had gone on at her hospital and some of her colleagues – that was kind of… yeah. and then there was a General who was telling about the command structure of the JNA (Yugoslavian People’s Army) which was kind of boring. And at one point he corrected the translation into Serbian. After that finished we went for lunch – I was still a bit shook up, didn’t talk much while they discussed how “interesting” it was. I’m oddly visceral, I find. Anyway… then went to the Mauritshuis, which is a fairly small museum. Bought a few postcards and a reduced-price calendar. Their most famous painting is Girl With a Pearl Earring, by Vermeer. There were a few Rembrandts as well, though there were more at the Rijksmuseum. Lighting was very irritating, though, reflections stopped you seeing some of the pictures as more than parts, you had to move around… oh, and they bugged me too, I was trying to point out bits to them and they just. didn’t. see. Like, there was a picture of Diana and her huntresses, and they couldn’t pick out the crescent on her forehead, and I was pointing, like, “it’s right there!” but, yeah. and then I got happy, and then later I warned Julie that I would crash again (because I do that, you know I do that) and she asked if I was sure, she asked how I knew. I knew because I’ve been living with it for as long as I can remember, thank you very much, little miss self-righteous.
Thursday – Amsterdam again. Rijksmuseum (state museum) – big place. I ended up playing tour-guide because apparently neither of them could read the floor-plan. And the way it’s constructed, sometimes you have to go through a whole lot of rooms to see something (eg the Doll House which was on their list of things to see – very impressive, big and detailed) and then you have to go all the way back through all the rooms, and it makes you feel like a far-from-heroic Theseus. Other things to see were: “The Nightwatch”, which is feckin’ huge, ”The Jewish Bride”, where I preferred its neighbours, all by Rembrandt; Van Gogh Self-portrait – uh, yeah, that’s new; “The Battle of Waterloo” – feckin’ huger, and you can’t tell who the hell anyone is, and when you try to see the people pointed out in the background you really can’t. And… oh yeah, the Treasure Chamber. I decided we had to go see that, they weren’t hugely enthralled with the concept but it was on the list of things to see and we’d decided we’d do that, so off we went… saw some nice wood on the way too, intricate cabinets and the like, a choir screen dividing one room, nice stuff… and we got there. And it was this darkened room, with all these glass cabinets, and they were stuffed with the most amazing things – cups made out of coconut shells, and pendants made out of precious gems, and a map of the world in semi-precious stone and enamel and gilt, and all these pretty shiny things, and so… and there was a pair of globe cups, the stem being Atlas, an eagle perched on top, and one was engraved with the Earth and the other was the constellations, and… eee. and there was a skeleton that was a pendant, and… I’ll stop now. wonderous things. Also, there was a little room all panelled round with Chinese screens, which just rocked. postcards from there too. then we went shopping. and we went on a canal-boat tour which was fun, but the commentary was in Dutch, then German, then French, then English, so by the time it got round to English you had a fair idea what was going on.
Friday – Alkmaar (nearby town) shopping, then Bergen shopping again. so. that was good.
Saturday – airport – not as many delays as on the way – back to St A’s. Joy.