Acoustically pleasing concert halls! Van Gogh!

April 20

Every Wednesday, the Concertgebouw, a famous concert hall downtown, holds a free concert in the middle of the day. Being fans of music and all things free, some of the people from the calvin group had been planning on attending one of the concerts for a while, but had not been able to because it clashed with one of our classes. That class ended for the semester, so we were able to attend.  The concert hall is world famous because it has great acoustics (I learned that offa wikipedia), and because its so great it has hosted famous musicians and composers such as Debussy, Bach, and Beethoven.

Panorama of the concertgebouw.

The concert wasn't very long (less than an hour), but just getting the chance to sit in the building and listen to music was a worthwhile opportunity.  Afterwards, most of the group headed off to go grab some ice cream, while I left to explore the Van Gogh museum.  For any art-loving fans of van gogh who are looking to visit: do not go in the early afternoon on a wednesday.  I had to wait in line for probably around 45 minutes, which wasn't unbearable but still a longer wait than anything else around here that I've been to thus far.

I didn't know too much about van gogh other than the fact that he painted a few sunflowers and a starry night at one point, so I learned a lot at the museum. One of the things I found really interesting was that van gogh didn't start painting till his mid/late 20's.  That seems really late for a world-renowned painter to begin his career.  In addition to having a wide selection of paintings by Van Gogh (but not Starry Night), the museum had other paintings by artists that influenced van gogh or were from the same school of art.  While this might have just been an attempt to fill up a museum with more paintings, it added another level of context to his work.  The museum was both interesting and educational, and more importantly, allowed me to check another museum off of my museum list!

I found a print of one of van gogh's painting
on the side of the street and stuck it on top of my fridge.  
That's pretty much the extent of my art connoisseurship.

I mentioned in my post about things i still oughta do while still in europe that I wanted to go to most of the major museums in amsterdam before I left.  Here's the list of museums in Amsterdam that I can access for free:


attended!
Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdams Historisch Museum, Rijksmuseum, FOAM Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam.

not yet attended!
Allard Pierson Museum / Archeologisch Museum Der Universiteit Van Amsterdam,  Bijbels Museum, De Appel , De Burcht / Vakbondsmuseum, De Nieuwe Kerk, EnergeticA, Filmmuseum, Hermitage Amsterdam, Huis Marseille, Stichting voor Fotografie, Joods Historisch Museum, Tropenmuseum, Max Euwe-Centrum, Museum Amstelkring, Museum Geelvinck-Hinlopen, Museum Het Rembrandthuis, Museum Het Schip, Museum Van Loon, Willet-Holthuysen Museum, Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum, Oude Kerk, Persmuseum, Stedelijk Museum CS, Theatermuseum / Theater Instituut Nederland, Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam

As you can see, the second list is a lot longer than the first.  Even though I'm not planning on attending all of them, I still have my work cut out for me.

Pump stations! Water Filtration! Confusing spelling!

April 17
We embarked on another set of excursions to see more water-related things. Turns out, when 25% of a country is below sea level and 2/3s of the country is vulnerable to flooding, a lot of the interesting things in the country are going to be about dealing with water - kind of like that awesome movie Waterworld (with Kevin Costner), where the majority of the world has been flooded.  Maybe it all could have been avoided had Kevin utilized an effective system of dikes and polders...
Our first stop was the Museum de Cruquius, a building that was converted from a pumping station into a museum.  It used to pump the water out of the Haarlemmermeer, the lake that used to occupy Haarlem. After 3 years of pumping, the lake was drained, so the pump essentially worked itself out of a job (really inspiring, yeah?). It was one of the first steam-powered pumping stations, so its kinda historically significant.  Its now a museum, but didn't really have much inside it in terms of informative material - instead, it was just interesting seeing the inside workings of the museum.

At the pumping station, there was some sort of live reenactment going on. It was in dutch, so I didn't have any idea what was happening.  I just
thought it was interesting because that that beer glass he was holding was HUGE.

We left the cruquius musuem and drove to Amsterdamse Duinwater Leiding, a park in Haarlem.  Our professor told us that in order to get drinking water for the Netherlands, water is filtered and then sent to the park.  The park is on top of sand dunes, so letting the water seep through the sand provides further filtration.  The water is then filtered once more and is ready for household use.  The park played a more vital role in the water filtration process in the past, and is now largely used for tradition's sake.  It was really beautiful, and the great weather that day definitely helped.

Also, "de cruquius"? "amsterdamse duinwater"?  Dutch spelling bees must be impossibly hard.

Entirely unrelated song post - now, with twice as many songs!:
Glue was one of the first indie-rap groups that I really got into.  They were made up of maker (the producer), dj dq (a turntablist), and adeem (the rapper).  They made 3 great albums from 2004-2006 and then, to my dismay, split up.  Here's one of their songs offa their Catch as Catch Can album, called Beat Beat Beat. Anyways, I'm bringing this up because Adeem is releasing an album in less than a month, called "The Volume in the Ground".  This song is off of that album.  Its kinda reminiscent of a lot of flobots' music, which is a good thing.  It's called "Meet Death With a Handshake". I'm excited.

Product Placement! Flips and Tricks!

April 15
In keeping with my plan to visit a lot of museums, on Friday I went to the Rijksmuseum with the other Matt (from Calvin). The Rijksmuseum is a dutch art and culture museum with paintings by Rembrandt, Vermeer, and a bunch of other artists. I'm not a huge fan of the Rembrandt paintings that I've seen - the paintings are obviously really good, but I don't find them very exciting. I don't have any pictures of the inside of the museum, because my camera's battery was almost dead (and photography was prohibited).

After the museum, Matt and I went to find a Subway. When not getting lost downtown or toiling away at my studies, I have been watching the tv show Chuck throughout the semester. It is about a computer nerd working a dead-end IT job who, one night, has a bunch of top-secret spy things downloaded into his brain. Its a pretty good show, but apparently didn't have a large enough viewer base to keep going through advertiser support.   Subway ended up taking a large sponsorship role in the show, and so in the later few seasons, there is a LOT of obvious product placement for subway. As such, I have developed a craving for subway over the past couple weeks- luckily there are several Subway restaurants around the city.
I've had better sandwiches, but having one after craving it for weeks is really satisfying.  It was also cool eating "American" food.

Matt and I eating our sandwiches.

That night, I went to a local(well, 40 minute bike ride) gymnastics place to work on flips and stuff to add to my dancing. Much like the amsterdam bboy scene, the trickers/free runners in amsterdam are experienced and talented, and so its a helpful place to learn.  I've practiced before at a gymnastics spot in GR called Aerials and Baranis, which can be a good spot to practice. However, its often overcrowded - there simply isn't enough space there for everyone to do their own thing comfortably. I always feel like I'm about to step on a small child at Aerials, but the dutch spot is huge.

After hanging out and talking to people from the gym for a while, I biked home and got back around 11. 'Twas a good day.

Things I still oughta do while still in europe

The semester is coming to a close - at the point of writing, there are only 6 or 7 weeks left. As a result, I've felt a push to make sure I do a lot of stuff before the end of the semester and do everything I've been planning to do, but have put off. It's kind of like a "bucket list" for the semester, except I just fly back to America at the end, instead of dying.

Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson are welcome to accompany me in any of the listed activities.

Things I want to do before heading back to the states:
-Go to most or all of the major museums in amsterdam - when we arrived into the Netherlands, all of the Calvin students got museum cards which give us access to 28 different museums around Amsterdam. I've visited 3 of those and probably won't be able to make it to the other 24 in the last few weeks, so I am going to need to hone down the list.
-Visit every major park in amsterdam
-Travel to Switzerland, France, and maybe somewhere in the UK.
-Attend another 2 or 3 bboying jams
-Have a cookout somewhere around amsterdam

I'm sure there are other things I'm going to do before leaving, but those are the basics. I'll probably add to this list in the next few weeks.

Entirely unrelated song post:
This song isn't at all new, but still dope. The Glitch Mob is an electronic/glitch-hop band that I got a chance to see live last semester in Grand Rapids. For being an electronic band, a surprisingly large amount of their music is reproduced through live sampling rather than just mixing their tracks like a traditional dj set. They sound sorta like a glitchy version of Ratatat with heavier beats. The song below is a track called "Beyond Monday", which they put up for download on RCRD LBL.

Other amsterdam semester abroad blogs

Because blogging about our semester here is a super cool thing to do (as is using phrases like "super cool"), a few of the other students are blogging as well.  It might be interesting to check them out as well: Nate's blog http://nateinamsterdam.blogspot.com/ or Matt's blog http://canadainamerica.wordpress.com/. Although we do a lot of the same activities, they have different perpectives on those things.  Check em out!

Goya! Secret Gardens! Executive Summaries! (end of Spain trip)

Saturday March 26
The bus ride to Madrid was 6 hours long, leaving Seville at 11pm friday, and arriving in madrid 5am on saturday. It was a cramped and uncomfortably warm ride, resulting in a less-than-restful night. When we arrived into madrid, we crashed at the bus station for a few hours before heading out into the city. The station in Madrid has this odd rule that you can't put your head on the ground, probably to avoid the station from being overrun by miscreants and ne'er-do-wells like us, but we tried to get a couple hours of sleep anyway. A bit later in the morning, we walked through the Parque del Buen Retiro, and saw the historical highlights downtown, one of which was the Royal Palace of Madrid.

Some claim this palace to be the largest inhabited palace in the world, but as I later learned on the definitive wikipedia article on the topic, this title is up for heated debate. The royal family doesn't actually live in the palace, but it is still used for state functions. At the least, it is the largest palace in Europe, which is nothing to wag a finger at. (Just in case you were considering wagging a finger at the Royal Palace of Madrid).

As mentioned in an earlier post, during my trip to Belgium my stuff had been stolen, and later returned to the venue of the event I was attending during that trip. I received my bag back the same Monday that we left for our trip to Spain. This was great, because I had my passport, so I could actually fly, and my wallet was still in my bag (devoid of cash, of course). The weekend that my bag was taken, I canceled my bank cards, and had not yet received new ones by the time we left for Spain, so I had to go to a place that exchange cash for euros. This is a lot more expensive route than withdrawing money from an ATM, so I was trying to make it the rest of the trip without exchanging money again. The rest of the group was trying to keep the trip cheap as well, and so for the most of the trip we eschewed street vendors and restaurants for local grocery stores and street markets. Eating like this worked out great, as we ended up buying a lot of fresh bread, cheese, and produce on the cheap, and checking out the local markets.

Temple de Debod, a rebuilt ancient Egyptian temple in the Northwest of Madrid

One of the last things we checked out was the Museo del Prado, which has a lot of really interesting art, including pieces by Goya and Rembrandt. At this point in the trip, everyone was really exhausted, so we didn't spend too much time in the museum, but still had the chance to view a lot of interesting pieces. Side note: Goya's Black Paintings are pretty crazy, in a dark and creepy sort of way. He painted them on the inside walls of his house. They were meant to be expressive of the panic and hysteria caused by the social unrest at the time, though I feel that if he was stressing out, seeing paintings like "Satan Devouring His Son" while Goya was grabbing his morning coffee probably didn't help much with the stress.

After the museum, we walked to the bus station in order to find a ride to the airport. This station had a feature I haven't seen in any other bus stop: a giant greenhouse area, complete with turtle pond. We watched the turtles for a while, and finally grabbed the bus to the airport, where we would spend our last night in Spain.

Where we stayed saturday night

Final thoughts about the trip:
Seville was my favorite city that we visited. Its a lot smaller than the other two, so I think you get a better feel of a spanish town, whereas larger cities have a less unique feel. Although it didn't have the most to see or do, I think it was the most beautiful of the 3 - it was really enjoyable just walking around the town and looking at the old spanish houses or streets, or hanging out on the terrace on the top of our hostel. It also helped that it was more sunny and warm when we visited than the other two. However, all three

Before I embark on my next journey, I'm definitely going to research where I'm staying more - at the very least, find out if the bus stations or airports are open overnight. Sleeping outside = not fun. Also, I need to find out where the tourist stations are beforehand. Strangely enough, we had trouble finding them in every city we visited; you'd think that they would be really easy to find.

This was a really exhausting trip, but also a really great one. Its definitely one of the highlights of my semester so far.

Yet another Cathedral! Impossibly clever pop culture references!

Friday, March 25
Thursday, we had checked spent a lot of time checking out Seville and seeing most of the popular destinations, so on Friday we explored at a more relaxed pace.  One building we hadn't looked at yet was the Seville Cathedral, so we walked around inside for a while.  Fun facts: the cathedral was built on top of an old mosque, is the largest gothic cathedral in the world, and is the alleged burial site of Christopher Columbus. Later in the day we explored Triana, a neighborhood on the west side of the city-dividing Guadalquivir river.

The bridge connecting Triana and the Rest of Seville

The previous day, the tour guide had mentioned how there is some beef against Triana and the rest of Seville - apparently, Triana would rather be its own city than part of Seville. Luckily, we were able to avoid any Shark vs. Jet crossfire as we traversed the city, though a spontaneous musical number by a street gang would have been much appreciated.

Insanely impressive parallel parking skills

Because of the aforementioned construction at the hostel, friday night they offered a free barbecue dinner.  Our bus was leaving for madrid at 11pm, so we at the barbecue and hung out again on the hostel's rooftop terrace for a few hours.  As a whole, the day wasn't jam-packed with different museums or monuments, but it was still really good.

Entirely unrelated song post:
My roommate introduced this song to me a while back, and I've listened to it quite a few times.  Its a remix of Nancy Sinatra's song Bang Bang (click the link for the video of the original song).  The original is actually quite good in itself.  Anyways, Bare's remix is very different from the original, but also very good.   You can download the remix here.
Bare - Shot Me Down (FREE 320k DOWNLOAD) by Dieselboy