Recently in LIfe in Holland Category
On Sunday we took a bike ride to Zeist. This is Slot Zeist:
We couldn't go on the guided tour of the Slot itself, being just 5c short of the amount we needed to get in, but we went instead into an exhibition of the work of Bernadien Sternheim being hosted by ING Bank. It was awesome! The exhibition hosted not only the work of Bernadien but also of some of her contemporaries and people who influenced her, and while we were there a docent came and gave a guided tour giving us the background on some of the pieces. I took two surreptitious photos, which I'm glad I did as I couldn' t find any of her work online.
This piece by Bernadien is entitled 'Getekend' which means 'Drawn'. Note the double meaning. I like the perfectionism in the way she paints.
This is a piece by Kik Zeiler, a contemporary, entitled 'Vaste Klanten' (Regulars). I love the pun in this.
I was captivated by her work although the pieces after she lost her husband are less bold and more spiritual.
Nearly forgot to mention I used my Sunday walks book to help guide us in where to go and there was a recommendation for coffee and cake in the Espresso Bar at Figi. Put shortly - the cake was a bit apathetic and the staff were worse. I asked the waitress what cakes she had and was told to go look in the cabinet! Then she answered me repeatedly in English when addressed in Dutch (which annoys me anyway!) So go to the Slot, but avoid Figi.
It was a nice day, a great bike ride, (and my legs still hurt now on Tuesday!) and a fantastic new artistic discovery.
Last night we went to the Rijksmuseum and just missed out on their picnic in the garden. You can buy a combi ticket for entry to the museum and a picnic basket but you have to ring ahead and reserve the basket. The music was fantastic but we were late so opted to go into the museum instead of sitting in the garden and listening. The next picnic in the garden is next week Friday, but next Friday I'll be in Heidelberg.
Another garden event is the Opera in the Garden at the Museum van Loon. My colleague was going on Thursday night when the weather was glorious. It is apparently sold out for tonight and tomorrow night, but what a lovely concept. The opera was Il Segreto di Susanna.
Earlier this week we went to Sal Gorda, a tapas bar in Amsterdam Zuid. It was good enough, but nowhere near fantastic. The food that was fresh was great but sadly, out of a choice of about 12 dishes only three were freshly made. The olives were nice, so was the bread, but the chicken wings in aioli were appalling and the meatballs in tomato sauce flavourless. The patatas bravas were good, but the sauce was far from spicy. The service was ok, made better by a very bouncy 20 year old and it was lovely sitting outside. I think if they paid more attention to not letting the food dry out before serving it they'd be much more successful.
Not in the evening, but also out - I went with the ex and kids to see Wall-E, which surprisingly has such glowing reviews all over the place. I found it to be long, and long-windedly moralistic. I enjoyed the message in an Inconvenient Truth. I suppose I'm just sick of kids' movies having to have a moral - can't they just be entertaining? Presto, the short film that's coupled with Wall-E was infinitely more entertaining.
I did a little motivational exercise recently where you make a 'tree' with the centre as what you want to achieve, like 'recapture happy moments' then with 'branches' off it for 'past', 'present', 'future considered' and 'future not considered'. I had forgotten how happy lying on the grass in the park made me feel, so I spent Thursday evening lying on the grass in the park. Perfect.
Making chilli beans on ciabatta for dinner. Watch this space.
Repeated scam attempts by Nigerians masquerading as real estate agents make her cynical. Huge rents (upward of 1200 euros) and deposits required by conventional rental agencies make her eyes water. The quality of accommodation is dismal.
Buying something is too much of a commitment and takes too long. Requesting an urgency for social housing will take another six months and is not guaranteed.
The prospect of working to pay rent and childcare and not having enough money left over for food, clothing or other bills makes her want to move back to Zimbabwe, where even though there is nothing to eat there is still a house with a pool.
They have Seurats! The neo-impressionist paintings were my favourite, including the Pissarros. Another artist who was striking, yet weirdly not tied to any one style was Jan Toorop. After seeing his work I had to go Google him.
The current exhibition of photographs running alongside the main collection, entitled Nature as Artifice was really fascinating. The photographers use different techniques to capture the Dutch landscape, ranging from creating dioramas of the landscape and photographing it as if it were real to attaching a camera to a kite and taking photos by remote control at precisely the moment when the landscape becomes abstract. Again I found the secondary exhibition to be more interesting than the main collection, maybe because it's more current.
I was pretty stunned when I saw that there are paintings dating from 550 AD! I wonder if those people who painted them ever thought that there would be people standing looking at their work in a building so far removed from the monasteries of the 5th century? We are all so contained in our own 'now' that this as a possibility just seems absolutely surreal.
Not as surreal though as the discussion we had cycling back to the car park where we listened to the birdsong and then wondered aloud whether town birds go on vacation to the country in the summer ...
The museum cafe is lovely (beware the richness of the chocolate cake, but order the ham and cheese sandwich as the ham is some of the nicest I've ever tasted) and the surroundings are beautiful and unspoiled. This specific Sunday afternoon was part of one of the nicest days of my life. I started off depressed about Africa and spent the morning in tears but by the afternoon it had all turned to sunshine. Later on there was icecream- mine was melon, pear and peach and then we watched Juno. It's a nice movie but a bit overacted.
And for the next 52 Sundays, (more or less), take a look at this website (Dutch only, sorry). It's the website linked to a great book that takes you for a walk and a meal every Sunday to unusual locations in the Netherlands and Belgium. Now just to decide where to go this Sunday!
Also I have to share the Verve kick I'm on right now ...
So even I might just have a bit of football fever now...
These are the flags decorating the street outside my friend's house in Utrecht.
Cool huh?
