A day in Amsterdam
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:
A day in Amsterdam 1
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.
A day in Amsterdam 2
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).
A day in Amsterdam 3
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).
A day in Amsterdam 4
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:
A day in Amsterdam 5
Matryoshka Dolls
I noticed these dolls at a shop near Dam Square during our visit to Amsterdam in January. It’s been 3 years since Obama was elected, but he continues to capture an entire generation’s imagination. He was everywhere - from Madame Tussads to Matryoshka Dolls.
Matryoshka Dolls
And oh, a few changes to the blog:
- Larger images
- No watermark
- Creative Commons (Attribution, Share Alike) license
After the storm
The light here in the evening, especially after a thunderstorm, is very beautiful. Everything looks washed clean (as indeed things are). If photons could sing, we would hear Bach.
Here is how it looked last night:
After the storm 1
And if B&W is more of your thing:
After the storm 2
No, the buildings weren’t damanged by the storm. They’ve been like this since we moved into our house and the rate at which the work is progessing, they’ll probably stay like this till we are gone. While the view from our living room has been spared, the bedroom and the guest room windows don’t open into anything that might pass for a view. I shouldn’t be complaining here, I am sure our building must’ve ruined quite a few views!
On a Saturday
It was probably our rainiest morning in Amsterdam. Usually on a Saturday like this, we would just sit by our window, sip hot tea, and pity the poor, soaking wretches scrambling to their respective destinations (or as is often the case here, walking their dogs). I am sure it was someone else’s turn to do the same today, because we were out to catch the morning Kung Fu Panda II show.
These new fangled Senz umbrellas are very popular here. Never before has something done so right looked so wrong.
Aerodynamically designed and what not…
After my umbrella had turned inside out twice, I was beginning to see their appeal. Then I looked at my wife to see how she was coping with it. Each time her umbrella would invert, she would sagely point it against the wind and have the wind fix what the wind broke. Both our brollies survived today, although it was the sort of day when a lot of tattered umbrellas turn up inside bins all over the city:
The sort of day when umbrellas go to trash
Since the train we usually take to Bijlmer ArenA wasn’t scheduled to arrive for the next 10 minutes, we decided to hop on to another train which would get us to a station from where we would have two more choices to the ArenA. Except that we were so busy chatting that we didn’t get down at that double-choice station. We got off at the next station, took a train back to the double-choice station, (finally) got down there and caught the train to Bijlmer ArenA.
The panda sees you…
This icon on all the doors on the metro, looked especially relevant today (and kept reminding me of that Amitabh Bachchan - Smita Patil song from Coolie).
Aaj rapat jayen to…
Despite the rain and the mini-adventure with trains we were there 20 minutes early. The wife used the time at the automatic booking kiosks to find out how crowded the morning show was going to be. Turns out that in a hall with a capacity of 534, only 17 seats were going to be full.
Now that I am off all social networks I can (somewhat) control the flow of information into my life. After a long time I was going to a movie without reading up anything on it or hearing what other people in my circle had to say about it. It makes the movie doubly enjoyable. In the same spirit, I will not say anything about the movie and give the unsuspecting readers a chance to go to the movie with a blank slate. Ok I will say one thing but it’s hidden so you should want to see it no longer hidden.
Lord Shen (the peacock), reminded me a lot of Irfan Khan - or rather the Irfan Khan in 7 Khoon Maaf. Most likely it is a combination of those bulging eyes and long flowing robes. 
p.s. Indulgence of the day: A couple of unruled pocket Moleskines for jotting down ideas on the move.
On movies
Whenever a big Hollywood sequel is due for a release, at least one TV channel here is sure to show the movie(s) that preceded it. This happened with X-Men and more recently with Kung Fu Panda. We wonder whether it’s a ploy on the part of the movie studios to pull more viewers into the theatre by showing what is effectively a 90 minute ad, or on the part of the TV channels to gain viewership riding on the buzz that a new sequel generates.
A giant poster of Kung Fu Panda overlooks the Bijlmer Arena station these days.
On movies 1
On Monday, we let ourselves be persuaded by it to buy the tickets for the 3D IMAX show this weekend.
Talking of movies, we caught Goldmember this weekend on the telly. This is a movie we least expected to be broadcast by a channel in The Netherlands. After all, the archvillain in the movie introduces himself as:
“Hey everybody I am from Holland, isn’t that weird? Yessss!”
And as far as Dutch (or even Benelux) references are concerned, it’s pretty much downhill from there.
Both Dutch and English news channels here show Dutch subtitles. I was curious to see what they do to this scene which is a brilliant satire on sub-titles of foreign language movies being occasionally unreadable because they blend with the background:
On movies 2
On movies 3
The double sub-titling definitely took some punch off the jokes.
Cave Canem
Cave Canem
I once had a passing fascination with Latin. I was twenty something, had free time on my hands and facebook was not yet invented. I am glad that I stuck to Perl instead. Latin might have many virtues, but in circa 2011, putting food on the table isn’t probably one of them.