antwerpen

yesterday i went to antwerpen for the day. it is a small city near the border of belgium and the netherlands. it is compact and gorgeous. most of the buildings are from the 18th century and before and are ornately figured. the streets are narrow stone canyons with cafes and high fashion boutiques everywhere you look. people speak dutch. people speak french. there is a developed asia-town where i explored a thai grocery store. there is also a large african population and i saw stores advertised as "afro-asian markets." that covers a lot of territory. the city is beautiful to explore. the southern part of downtown is newer and more the fashion district but still cool. i walked around for three hours or so and then had a pizza. after dark i went to go hang out with teenage cool kids who were playing a gig there. it was really good to see them again and it reminded me how much i miss being in denton and how cool that town is. i will go back there soon though. i had to leave early because the cheapest train i could find was leaving that night and not in the morning, so i ran (for the first time in a while) part of the way to the train station, barely making my IC train. but, here i am to tell you about it. antwerpen is beautiful.

today i am packing and doing a little work because tonight i am flying to london to visit my uncle charlie! that should be a blast. three days in london. i will report back sometime.

i took a lot of pictures of antwerpen. check them out on the flickr.

amster(damn)

on sunday i went to amsterdam. i didn't leave until the middle of the afternoon because i had to finish some school work beforehand. i hoped to have enough time to walk around before going to see a concert. on the way to the train station i ran into my friend jurrian who was also going towards amsterdam. i asked him about how the canals fill with water quickly if there isn't much runoff. he said it is because the land is below sea level so when there is a void the water comes through the ground to fill it, i guess due to pressure. he said the bigger problem is keeping the water out. there is a massive set of locks and pumps throughout the polders in holland that are controlled by computers to regulate water levels in the major canals. he has seen one of the controller substations. i should check out this infrastructure.


this is what you see when you leave amsterdam centraal train station. lots and lots of bikes.


i walked along the western docks. they are tearing this older building down. there are impressive new condos and apartments being built in the area. some had trendy design studios on the first floor.


ok, this is really why i was walking here, to see silodam. it is a housing project by MVRDV. it sits on pylons above the water. i don't think the tides here are drastic which is odd because of the latitude. anyways some apartments on the first two floors have gangways directly to the street while the upper units have a separate lobby. there is a public deck that you have to cross under the building to find, navigating between the thick columns. in one of the upper units there was a party and the sounds drifted into the road.



the building's visual interest comes from its diversity of cladding and window types. i was disappointed by how flat the building reads. it is just a standard set of apartments (with generously sized windows) with a bunch of different materials slapped on. so its block-ness is a bit deceiving. it would've been more interesting to me if there was more push/pull action going on so you got some overhang, some shadow, some recession, some sense of depth. the building does it twice on the upper floors to create some deck space but it isn't enough. it is odd because stacking as an organizational idea is something MVRDV uses a lot: for references, see their housing block in spain that just finished or the new bank that construction just started on or the fiero milano tower. but maybe this is an early project so they weren't all about stacking yet? maybe the budget was too tight to allow that type of excess? anyways.


ok. now we're talking. this is more typical. i started walking back towards the downtown area.


canals here are wider than anywhere else i've seen in a city. most were lined with houseboats. amsterdam, if you haven't seen a map, is arranged radially outward from its downtown node. canals run in a circular fashion like rings. some frenchman (sartre? camus?) compared the layout of amsterdam to the seven levels of hell. the red light district is on the east side. i wandered mostly in the western areas and downtown. the city is hugely devoted to leisure of all types, from movies to shopping to a vodka museum to coffeeshops (i.e. doobie dens) to galleries to whatever. everybody seemed pretty relaxed. i passed some french hippies smoking joints on the street. in a society where everything is allowed not much is abused.


there is a lot of shopping here. and trams.




after i got downtown i followed the main street south to leidseplein where lots of people where out. i bought a ticket for the concert and kept wandering around, mostly in the oud west and jordaan area. jordaan is the hipster part of amsterdam, with galleries and bars and good-looking restaurants. it gave off sort of a new york east village vibe but here things felt older.




i ate a cheap pizza in jordaan and walked back towards the melkweg, the club where i was going to hear a band. there was a concert in the leidesplein too so i stood and watched a dutch group go through the funk hits of the 70s. i met up with my friend sebastian and his friend helen and we went back towards the melkweg.


i was really excited to hear the dirty projectors live again. i saw them once in june in boston and it was good. seeing a concert at a rock club in holland is like seeing a concert at a rock club anywhere else, with the same etiquette, lights, etc. the opening band (tune yards) was interesting, with just a woman on ukelele and loops and a guy who sometimes laid down some basslines. they both wore face paint. the dirty projectors were good despite a persistent hum in the sound system throughout their set. they played pretty much the same set as i saw in boston three months ago but with some additions in the middle. tempos seemed a bit slow but they have been on the road for a while. it was still a good concert. "bitte orca" means a lot to me.

afterwards we walked to the train station. a woman hit sebastian on her bike and was very angry. we managed to miss the 12:45 train because were distracted and sitting on the wrong end of the platform (15a instead of 15b). what to do? hit the late night albert heijn for some grolsch and wait for the 1:45 nachtrein. good times. and when that train finally came, we sat in a cabin with two kids flying back to barcelona. they talked about how cheap the prostitutes were in amsterdam compared to spain. and the lack of discoteques. they asked us if the security at schiphol would find the weed in their checked luggage. they had it stored in their shampoo bottles. they seemed pretty paranoid, but it was probably the herb talking.

den haag & scheveningen

here is another picture-based post. sort of.

on thursday i went to den haag for the late afternoon and walked to the north sea (only 5 or 6 kilometers). den haag is the hague, the government center of the netherlands. while the capital is still amsterdam, all of the country's government business goes on here. queen beatrix lives here. in addition, i know the hague is important for lots of international justice reasons. you've all heard about war crimes tribunals being held in the hague and herr X from the nazis finally got tried, well, this is where all that happens. when you arrive at the central train station, you are confronted with a forest of tall government buildings. one of them has two tall pointy towers and on the other end has a tall building that finishes in a dome. i heard that the dutch call this the "tits and penis" building. i'm sorry if you're reading this and are offended by the previous statement, but it is true.

so, there is this big clump of highrise buildings and lots of construction going on. there is a large new courthouse by richard meier that is unremarkable. i wish he would finally build some shit with color. there is even a book published of all the richard meier variants of white. disgusting.

ok, sorry, so den haag is pretty old. there aren't as many canals as in other cities in this region, though there are a few. the city is quite old and throughout the city center it is very nice, with some good-looking plazas and shops. there was one street where i saw my first organic grocery store and a place that had some really good-looking kaas (cheese). as a relic of netherland's time as a colonizer, one neighborhood had streets named things like javastraat.

i arrived to den haag around 1600 or so. some of you might be thinking, why so late? well i still get up late. for some reason it is difficult to secure really good sleep here. i don't really like the pillows i have and at first the room was too light, but i tacked a comforter over the window so now it is quite dark and that helps a little bit but not too much. i roll around in my sleep as if i'm on fire so that doesn't help either. i generally sleep OK until around 8 or so and then have shallow sleep with overly vivid dreams that have been consistently grotesque and tiring. so by the time i actually wake up, my mind has been spinning for a few hours and i have wade through all of that mentally before engaging the real world. so if i wake up around noon, restart my mind, shower and eat, check the email, plan my itinerary in the place i'm going, pack a backpack, walk to the train station, wait, ride the train, and step off the train, it is usually around 3:30 or 4 by the time the adventure starts. another reason i waited that late is because it rained consistently until around 3:30 so i didn't leave until i knew it wouldn't rain a lot there. so, i could blame it on the rain too. AND i made a really vicious omelette with broccoli, jalapenos, and cheese with home fries for breakfast so that took a while.

now, on to den haag. when i arrived there were lots of cranes.




there were large administrative hives like this. this one has weird trusses jutting out and huge glass atria cutting through the building.


then you get into the older city and things get a lot better.




this building is part of the binnenhof, an old set of buildings used for parliament and government purposes.


nice brick-streeted neighborhood with some really lovely homes.


a) do not saran wrap your pet monkeys. they will not be pleased.
b) there is a sale on monkey heads at albert heijn.
c) please saran wrap your left over monkey parts or else they will spoil quickly.
d) using plastic products is killing our planet's biodiversity.
e) none of the above

i walked for a while through some nice neighborhoods with a similar feel. this is where i encountered the organic store and cheese heaven. it seemed like a nice place to live, with a mix of older rowhouses and newer developments and good places to buy food. i passed the peruvian embassy too. then the neighborhood started to taper off as i crossed a tramline and started to walk through the park section of den haag. i thought about hopping on the tram to the beach, but i wasn't sure how the payment system worked so i just kept walking because it was a nice day. after walking away from the main road, i entered a regal and suburban part of the city, first with attractive apartment complexes and then huge old houses that have been carefully maintained. the curvy street was called nieuwe parklaan and was shaded by large trees. many more embassies were on this street, all with heavy gates and black sedans in the driveway. i don't think this area had changed much since the 19th century. it gave the feel of oak park in late 19th century chicago just before frank lloyd wright started to do his thing. also, if there was a dutch film version of jumanji, the main house would've been on this street.

after a while on that street, i took one that angled off, going further north into the beach neighborhood called scheveningen. i cannot pronounce that word so good luck if you're trying in your head. ahead, i could see the dome of a huge ancient hotel on the beach. the soil became even sandier and i thought of the delaware, with its scrub, sandy soil, and huddled beach towns. if you were confused, you could easily picture yourself entering dewey beach or the seaside parts of rehobeth, suspiciously empty as the summer season has just died. the setting was luxurious and it seemed like a great place to vacation where all you do is sit and read, walk the boardwalk at dusk, and hear the sea breeze push the branches against the side of your house.






once i got close enough, the same boardwalk attractions popped up, complete with the high-rise condos, indoor malls, and beach food. there was a big glass building with a movie theatre and inside the indoor mall was a small casino close to a united colors of benetton store. i pushed through all of this to get to the ocean.


the ocean was super rough today. you could see the tankers in the north sea off on the horizon. the gale whipped sand across the concrete boardwalk. i almost felt like i was in a desert sandstorm. you had to push yourself through the wind in order to walk. the place was deserted (it is the off-season now) but a few other people wandered around this barren place too.


there is a big pier here. there is a casino on this pier and also a place where you can bungee jump. that seems scary but i guess they make enough money to stay in business.






walking north off the boardwalk, the development ends abruptly at the end of the tramline and the dunes take over. a couple hundred meters beyond is an old nazi watchtower from WWII. it is overgrown and saturated with graffiti. large gabions filled with rocks kept the sand at bay and an old heineken can rattled around on the stone pavers. i walked up there and sat for a while in the downwind side.


the view was nice both over the dunes and the beach. dune ecosystems have a lot of diverse plants so seeing them in a large landscape gives a pleasing quilt effect. the sun kept moving behind clouds so sometimes the scene was heavy with contrast.



i started back. i had a slice of pizza at new york pizza and sat there watching "will and grace." it started to rain lightly and my right shoe was rubbing my foot so i decided to try to take the tram back. at the stop, i looked at the map and realized that this tram goes all the way to delft! i had seen trams around the western part of town but i didn't know the routes. so i could've taken it all the way back to the train station in delft but i wanted to walk around den haag a bit more before the sun set. i wasn't really sure of the payment system; some people went to a machine and had a ticket stamped. some people used coins at the front of the first car. some people didn't pay at all. i joined the last group and sat there until i got close to downtown and then hopped off near a huge shopping district. i had to pee and was feeling like a renegade so i ducked into mcdonalds to use the toilet and skipped out on paying the 25 eurocent fee. then i kept walking around.


i walked through this district to another more recent shopping area with basement level stores too. it started to rain really hard and i walked down a set of stairs to find an oriental grocery store. here i found tofu for the first time in the netherlands. i bought two packages (not enough) and 250g of red pepper before continuing to wander. i passed the richard meier courthouse again. i passed a small but delicious-looking thai restaurant. i thought about eating there but remembered my bank account and kept walking. it got dark and i found the train station downtown so i went back to delft, arriving around 9 at night and shuffling back to my room with my feet pulsing. on friday i had a meeting with the why factory so i was excited about starting my stint in dutch graduate school.


upon thinking about my walk, i was reminded of w.g. sebald's novel "the rings of saturn," where he presents in neurotic detail a series of walks he took near the sea in suffolk, england. his writing is long and stringy and sentences can go on for half a page. he trails off into the minutiae of the lives of those who might have inhabited the abandoned mansions and gardens he encounters, miraculously corralling all of his reflections into some mesmerizing narratives. there is no drama or plot, only an abundance of landscapes and the walker's thoughts. i really enjoyed reading it and with taking a lot of notes on my future trips it would be interesting to attempt to write a chapter in the style of sebald. this entry is a bit too ADD and unaware to pass for that, but it would be a fun literary exercise if i don't have tons of stuff to do when school actually starts.