Albeit one that was longer than anticipated (including a couple of changes of plans), I had another fantastic weekend in the Amsterdam area.
I was very lucky; no hours of clutching in traffic jams, a parking spot right outside the door of my friends house, and no traffic jams when I drove back on Monday morning. (It was extremely foggy on Sunday night, so my friend Mirthe wanted me to stay another night to be on the safe side.)
After my arrival at my friends house - Mirthe - on Saturday, she, her boyfriend EJ, and I went through the program of the annual "Museum Night" (abbreviated into "N8") and ended up with a list four addresses. We agreed in having dinner at Wagamama, before joining thousands of others for the night. (Museum Night was, again, sold out; people need to get tickets, which enables them to visit any of the 42 participating Amsterdam museums that night, AND one free visit - with said ticket - before the January 1st of next year.)
From Wagamama it's a short walk to the Filmmuseum where, in spirit of the upcoming celebrations of the destruction of the Berlin Wall, cartoon shorts and music videos from former East Germany were being shown: "Cinema DDR". There was a wall made of white cardboard bricks, and visitors were invited to leave a message. I scrawled "NO H8", EJ wrote he loves Mirthe... We watched some shorts and music videos before hopping onto public transport to Bijzondere Collecties van de Universiteit van Amsterdam (a museum consisting of pieces acquired by the University of Amsterdam throughout the ages. There was samples of several Jewish dishes (they didn't seem kosher to me, but interesting and the smells were delicious). We watched a collection of Esther Scrolls in the most beautiful casings. And some books depicting some delicately drawn pictures.
We also sat in at a 15-minute lecture on Jewish food in today's NYC. I thought it was interesting, and even though the food for show look very appetizing I didn't feel peckish at all.
Next stop was the Amsterdams Historisch Museum (Amsterdam Historical Museum) where we watched an exhibition on mini skirts in the Netherlands, and enjoyed some hip and happening music from those days.
There was a seperate wing (an outside corridor) where paintings of "schutterijen" were exhibited. On the ground were several bunches of Fat Boys - scattered along the length of the wing, inviting people to lie down and look at the paintings from a different point of view. Of course I plopped down and looked at a couple of them that way:
And this is part of what I saw:
The last stop of the night (it was closing in on midnight) was the old Olympic Stadium; Amsterdam's hosted the Olympics back in 1928! (Read a little of its history here.)
As EJ, Mirthe and I approached the stadium I spotted the winners podium, and of course I wanted my pic taken:
Funnily enough, that set off a trend of people wanting to have their pictures taken in a similar fashion after me. At one point we briefly watched two kids who were hesitant in having their pics taken by their mother, until she pointed out that they weren't ever going to see any of the people walking around at that moment again.
The tour started at midnight. The tourguide (the man in the track suit on my left on the pic above) told a lot of interesting first hand stories, which made the tour more lively in a way. Great stuff. After the tour was over Ej actually wanted to go home (he was the one who really wanted to take the tour at the stadium!), but Mirthe and I were curious about the museum located inside the stadium. So, he decided to follow us in and spend a little time in there as well. What I really liked about it is that it's an interactive one: visitors can try and set a time doing a very short sprint, cycle against the Dutch equivalent of Lance Armstrong and feel the difference between swimming suits back in the days and now. At around 1am I challenged EJ for a round of soccer in the PANNA cage. (PANNA is something akin to street soccer - played one on one.) It was fun! We started out pretty much equals, but after two minutes my body decided it had enough and pretty much started to slowly shut down. The more I tried to score another goal, the harder it got (I know I'm not that young anymore, but still...) so I called it quits after about four minutes. As EJ and I exited the cage I found out a PANNA round lasts ONE minute. Yea, my luck. Needless to say I was glad to crawl into bed and go sweepy bye bye less than thirty minutes later :D
No comments:
Post a Comment