Sanctuary Of Random Keystrokes

Concerned colleagues had warned me about the New Year’s Eve celebrations in Amsterdam. I was told that people burst firecrackers from their roofs and in the streets. If they are too drunk (which on New Year’s Eve they inadvertently are), they throw them at you. And the air smells of burnt gunpowder. I thought to myself that it sounded exactly like Delhi on a Diwali night. I was wrong. The celebrations here were ten times bigger.

31st Dec was a typical wintery day in Amsterdam – dank and dreary. Perhaps to liven up the day, people started bursting firecrackers at 3:00 PM. Once the sun set, it was impossible to have a moment when a cracker would not go off somewhere. Sadly, the tales of unruliness were true. We witnessed at least one instance of rockets being fired from the window of one house into the other across a street, had a small firecracker thrown frighteningly close to us, saw a building burning far on the other side of the river and heard the dreaded fire engine siren several times.

We have a shared terrace on the 7th floor of our building. Someone had stuck a hastily scrawled missive on the door to the terrace with this curt message:

Geen vuurwerk (which translates to – no fireworks)

That meant that we could happily watch the show the city was putting up for us from a safe distance. It was still a long way to go before midnight, and while the terrace gave us a great vantage point, it also exposed us to the elements. We eventually retreated to the warmth of our apartment and decided to enjoy the fireworks from our window (which is more of a glass wall that looks onto the river). We weren’t disappointed.

Come midnight and the ships docked nearby started blowing their horns. The fireworks, which were already going strong by now, picked up further.

Their ephemeral reflections in the river made everything magical.

We saw some strange fireworks.

We were quite mesmerised by the variety that wouldn’t go off but just drift in the air like kite-lanterns. At least two of these rammed into the scaffolding of the under-construction building in front of our house but thankfully caused no damage.

Within 20 minutes, the air was so thick with smoke that we could hardly see the fireworks across the river. Just then, a ship which had docked minutes ago, started its onward journey through this man-made fog. It looked ghostly:

I am going to remember this night for a very long time.

P.S. It’s been raining here for the last two days or so and all the paper left by the firecrackers has turned into squishy, red pulp that is probably going to coat the footpaths and roads forever.

P.P.S. Further evidence that some high-caliber fireworks were involved in the New Year Eve’s celebrations

P.P.P.S. Christmas trees stripped of their ornamentation have started appearing near the various garbage bins across the city. It breaks my heart to think that just a day ago they were standing in a bright, warm corner of some house, covered in baubles, lights and surrounded with happy laughter of children and pets and are now vying for space in cold, wind and rain with rotting garbage by the noisy roadside.

We were in the Ikea store just a few days before Christmas and were quite amazed at the number of things available for decorating Christmas trees. All mass-produced and all very pretty. I saw boxes of snowflake-shaped, string lights lying in the bins they keep near billing aisles to nudge you into making those last-moment, things-I-never-needed-but-will-now-buy impulse purchases. There was a suction cup attached to each light in the string to allow you stick it to a glass window and that had enough of a novelty value for me to buy one box.

[The suction cups have proven to be dodgy and have had to be supplemented with some Sellotape]

The wife was in London to enjoy the build-up to Christmas. She brought a collection of colourful postcards from Tate Modern to put up on the living room wall. The white walls were in desperate need of holiday cheer and I was more than happy to play along. Here is what the collage of postcards on our wall finally looks like:

The problem with visiting countries that have a currency different from your home country is that you’ll always have some change left over at the end of your trip. This pocket diary was procured from a shop at the Prague Airport with spare change from the trip¹ (scans of the front and back cover):

I tend to doodle a lot – especially when I am told to sit down and listen to someone make a presentation. The “information density” in such a setting is too low for my mind to be fully occupied. It tends to wander off into distant lands of its own invention and has to be shanghaied into paying attention to the matters on hand by doodling. Here are some pages from the diary:

My trusted Pilot V5 ran out of ink during one of these sketches. I had to modify the lyrics of Emilíana Torrini’s Fireheads to suit the situation:

It’s not fair to say I wasted ink
in my view I used it all up

[1] This – Prague – trip.

Some random observations from our flight back to Amsterdam from Prague.

Czech Airlines’ ads had imagery that felt a bit odd for an airline ad. A commercial flight in which you get to experience zero gravity cannot be a very happy a one:

The in-flight sales catalog had a section dedicated to cigarettes. Dire warnings were plastered in big lettering. If this is the extent of their concern for smokers’ health, I wonder why they bother selling it on the flight anyway?

As our flight entered the Netherlands, we could see green fields with endless rows of windmills wind turbines through the clouds. They are quite a sight from that height:

I wish one could stop a flight mid-air, roll down the windows, and compose that perfect shot. Perhaps this is what the aforementioned Czech Airlines ad was trying to tell me?

The last day of a vacation is always an uneasy one. You are torn between the desire to visit another new place and the necessity of getting to the airport in time for your flight. And this while not wanting to rush things.

We wanted to visit the observation tower at the Petřín hill. By the time we checked out of our hotel, caught a tram and reached the hill, it was already noon. Bells tolled at the cathedral on the otherwise quiet hill and as we started walking towards the tower, their distant echo could be heard.

There were parks on the hill and benches under shady trees. We saw a local climb one of the pear trees there and throw pears on the grassy ground below for his partner to collect. The wife approached the couple, asked if she could pick some of them and returned with four juicy specimens of the fruit. By this time we had realized that we wouldn’t have time to make it all the way to the tower so we just grabbed one of the benches and munched on the pears.

Sometimes memories of things completely unrelated to the place that you are visiting linger the longest. One such memory that’s still with me is of an old man walking past us with a loud radio. The song on his radio was familiar – Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire – but in a language I didn’t understand (given where we were, it must be Czech).

On our walk from the hill to the nearest tram station we came across some fascinating buildings…

…street cafés…

…and other interesting things.

We stood for a few minutes staring at this ornate gate of the German embassy:

At the tram stop we turned around for one look back at the streets we had been walking through.

All along our stay in Prague, the light had either been too dull or too harsh. On the tram ride back to the hotel I saw Charles Bridge illuminated by the most perfect light that a photographer could ask for. Pity it wasn’t our first day here!