Amsterdam, Home of the Oranje!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 at 8:39 AM
We've arrived in Amsterdam! Amsterdam seems to be a pretty cool place. We happened to come right after the World Cup finals, in which the Netherlands lost to Spain, 1-0. I find the people to be pretty friendly, and it's almost as if I'm in Canada. The people have goodwill, and speak funny english.

So the first thing we do in Amsterdam is to go to a bar, and drink beer. Beer here is funny, because people just ask for a "beer". Doesn't seem to matter what kind. They might say "white beer," or "dark beer," or just "beer," but they don't seem to specify which kind. Most places have one brand of beer on tap. Then again, we are in a very touristy area. Our hotel is right on the edge of the red light district, so we are next to a lot of small pubs and restaurants. At the pub we went to, we ended up meeting 3 Americans who work for 3M. They were here on business, and popped in for a drink. We ended up talking about business, and they bought a round of drinks for us in the end. We skipped dinner that night, due to all the beer we had, but we did find deliciously tasty pitas with lamb shwarma in them later.

The next day, we kind of lazed around until mid afternoon, where we went out in search of Indonesian food. Because of the Dutch trading past, there's a huge influence of foreign cultures in Amsterdam. Indonesian food here is supposed to be really good. We failed to find one, but popped into a Chinese restaurant instead. Compared to Paris, everything here was much cheaper, so we were really happy all the same.

Because this was the second day after the World Cup final, the country was celebrating the return of the Dutch national soccer team. As such, everyone was wearing orange, their team colors. The Dutch team is nicknamed the Oranje, in reference to the royal House of Orange-Nassau. Everyone was outside celebrating like crazy that day. There was a traffic jam on the canals, because one boat stopped to blast music for everyone to sing along with. I think they were singing some popular soccer song, but people crowded everywhere around the music and sang. They even sang Zombie Nation! I was extremely happy that everyone was wearing orange. And I mean, more than 60% of the people were wearing orange, if not more. I even went out and bought an orange holland polo, with matching orange shoe laces. I don't know how I'm going to be able to wear them back in the US.

Allez l'Oranje!

So that was pretty fun.

Today, I went to the Rijksmuseum, which houses many pieces of Dutch artwork, from paintings to ceramics, to kitchenware. I think I formed a new appreciation for Dutch paintings from today's visit. I really saw how they focused on realistic representation. When I learned in Humanities class in school about the different paintings, we looked at the paintings through slides on the projector. I ended up really liking the Impressionist and Renaissance painting more, and kind of just wrote off the Dutch ones. Seeing things in person today really changed my opinion on Dutch art. I really liked seeing the different strokes used to represent subject matter. For example, Franz Hal used thick brush strokes, while Rembrandt was a master of light, among other things. Ruysdael was awesome with animating his clouds and his waterfalls; they almost seemed as if they were rolling towards you. I didn't know why Rembrandt was such an acclaimed artist before today. Now I understand that the man was simply a genius at technique. His paintings were just so lifelike in detail. And it's not just that he recreated real life accurately on the easel. He mixed da Vinci's sfumato with high detail in his art. That is, he made the unimportant and far away subjects hazy and undefined, while putting all the detail into the subject he wanted you to focus on. Brilliant.

It was probably much harder for me to see Dutch technique on the projector, where everything is limited by the pixel density and resolution of the image. That's probably why I never liked it that much. It also makes sense why I liked the Impressionist and Renaissance paintings more; Renaissance focuses more with choice of subject matter, style, and composition. Impressionistic brushstrokes are thick, and anyways the focus is on the entire scene, rather than the details. These were all things I could easily see on the projector screen.

So later that night, Phil and I went to the music bar that we went to before. I really like this bar because it's small, and it plays a lot of music. I can see it as a place that I would hang out in, if I had one near me back home. So tonight, we met a bunch of people. First, we met two Americans who were traveling around the world, literally. These guys were going everywhere from Asia to Australia to South America. Typical American dudes. Then, we met this group of highschool graduates from the UK, who were on a graduation trip. Finally, we met a couple of guys from North Carolina. They actually bought us a jaeger bomb. Yet again, my knack for getting free drinks at bars comes through. Pretty fun night overall. It was very chill, yet we met a lot of guys. I really wish I had this kind of place at home.

Not many pictures while I'm in Amsterdam. Unfortunately, the food here isn't that interesting, and pictures would just be of us in the bars. No Rembrandt pictures allowed.

-Howitzer

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