One of my constant refrains is never having enough time to walk around Amsterdam. The weekends are for playing tourist in smaller towns to escape other people playing tourist in Amsterdam. Weekdays are for work and for recovering from it. A few weeks ago I took a day off to break this routine and wandered around Amsterdam with no fixed destination in mind. Here are a few photos from the day:
You can come across some really bizarre posters in the streets of Amsterdam:
It was a rainy and windy day – not the best day to be outdoors – but I only had to remind myself of those torturous Delhi summers to start enjoying myself. The wind was so strong that it kept knocking down the bicycles parked in Dam Square. It looked as if a fierce bicycle battle had just taken place, leaving bodies of fallen warriors strewn about.
Ravenous pigeons – the hallmark of every major European square – were around too. As usual, they kept flocking at the junk food thrown at them by equally ravenous (and numerous) tourists. I pondered on such weighty matters as the existence of pigenous ravens. Then the seed of a science fiction novella planted itself in my head: one day the pigeons will peel off their masks and we’ll find tiny vintage robots (intricate clockwork and all) sent by aliens to deplete Earth’s food reserves (poor aliens, they don’t need tiny robots, they’ve got us).
At the Blauwbrug (literally “blue bridge” – once that colour, but no longer, alas) over river Amstel it’s hard to miss these beautifully decorated lampposts. Especially on a day when the Austrian imperial crown decorating them seems like the real thing. The bridge, like most roads in the Amsterdam city center, is used by trams (hence the cables in the picture below), motor vehicles and pedestrians (more often than not, all at the same time).
That white spot on the left is not sensor un-dust but a seagull that I don’t feel like cropping out (just think of the enormousness of this coincidence that got me, my camera, the lamppost and the sea-gull to come together for 1/250 seconds – amazing eh?)
The wife is utterly disgusted at this blog post and wonders what I am having for lunch at office these days. On asking how I could weave this remaining photo of bicycles into my clever narrative, she suggests that my pigeon robot army could come on these bicycles:
