i love the netherlands!!
utrecht is, as we expected from the first hour, completely amazing. we love our house. excuse the bad bad bad photography, but this is a picture of the artyness of the house:
i have a quick question for all of you out there who are more arty than me, yes, all of you, why are all my pictures blurry? especially with the flash off? and please don't say "try to hold the camera still" because i have actually tried that.
a quick reflection on the week so far:
we arrived on wednesday from paris, it took about 4 hours on the train which was really good, trains rock because you can see all this countryside that you obviously miss from the air. except they're bad because freaky staring people sit opposite you and no matter how obvious the "stop looking at me!" return stare is, they just keep gazing. we saw belgium for about 48 seconds, it looked industrial and grey so we looked away again and just waited for amsterdam.
we caught a connecting train from amsterdam to utrecht, navigated our way out of the station, and sat on the footpath like hobos for about an hour while we waited for maud who we're staying with, this is her:
i don't know why i took such a wide picture either, see above re bad photography.
maud is so busy with interplay, the big european playwriting festival, that we've hardly seen her which sucks. last night she got in at about 4:30am and left again at 8ish this morning. and yet she's never grumpy. amazing.
so anyway, we met her and resumed our laziness at her house, eating wok2go and watching telly. boring boring.
thursday we met with anna barnes who is a playwrite from melbourne here for interplay, and florian who lives in delft (nl) who dan knew from interplay last year. we got sammiches and i discovered my love for kahlua and milk, which goes for about euro3.50 and is amazing. they have a h&m in utrecht too, which leads to equal portions of joy and despair as my suitcase fills and my bank account empties...
that night maud brought some friends around and dan and i cooked a very stingey meal of pasta and bread, which everyone hated but politely ate. erik, yorit, maud, anna and florian, dan and jes, and ding ding the adorable 13 year old cat sat around the table and shouted in english and dutch, here they are in their top-hatted glory:
after dinner maud went to get a meat-ball fryer. which is as much as we know about that. dan and i did the typical tourist coffee-shop expedition, no questions!! and maud met up with us to show us some dutch drinks, i had a red martini which was the most disgusting thing in all of the netherlands, and then we went home because there was a frasier marathon.
friday we finally hit up amsterdam and it was yuk. i'm so glad we're staying outside the city because it's so awful. tacky tourists buying huge dildoes and talking about "spliffs" makes you want to run for the utrecht hills. there were nice canals but they are nicer in in utrecht anyway. we hung out with florian, anna and her friend eliza and they talked about exploitation of women and how sweden is the best country in the world (free education!!). we wandered through the red light district and felt uncomfortable around the women undulating from the red curtained windows. i really thought a sex show would be funny, but it's just not. it's weird and you feel bad for the 15 year olds, the 55 year olds and the women with slight mental issues who end up in this work. not to mention the porn lined walls in the shops which include animal sex and the apparently very popular "terror of rape" series. eugh.
so that was a bit lame.
saturday we woke up and dan decided he would stay in his pyjamas eating chocolate mousse and watching ally mcbeal, which incidentally is the worst show ever made in its unique combination of low quality production, unoriginality, hideous calista flockhart and offensive morality. i caught a train to den haag because the water sign in me was desperately craving the beach. it was too cold to swim but i paddled, though heaps of crazy dutch people were swimming. i found some awesome statues of fairy tales and other stories, this one is pinocchio being held by gepetto, and on gepetto's hand if you look closely is little jiminy cricket. pretty cool.
i came home with wok2go to entice dan off the couch, and of course it worked, he ate all of his before peering into mine hopefully with his puppy dog eyes. stupid labrador owners have skills we'll never know. then we went out to the interplay festival bar where we consumed inappropriate amounts of fried cheese and chatted with the wanky play delegates for a few hours.
sunday florian took us to rotterdam music festival. rotterdam is about an hour out of utrecht, but the huge free festival was worth the trek. the only big name was devotchka, but we saw some other up&comings including emmy the great, blood red shoes and harry merry and the must. it was pretty nuts, there are loads of dutch punks and scenesters in rotterdam which reminded me a bit too much of melbourne, but it was still fun. devotchka were absolutely amazing. i wish i had a non-blurry picture but i can't find one, will post if i do.
anyway, so now it's monday, i apologise for this boring list/post but hopefully we'll become funny again soon. looking everyday for a cheap vespa and a free course to do in utrecht. might have found one in den haag. see you never har har har har har xoxoxoxo
9 comments:
Jess, first, you should always use flash indoors whenever possible. Second, check the ISO setting on your camera, it should be set to 100 or 200. If it is set to 400 or higher, the pics could become grainy. Third make sure the best resolution is set. Fourth, hold the camera still. Fifth, read the first four again. Dad.
And.... did you know that Miffy was born in Utrecht - the cute little bunny with dots for eyes and a cross for a mouth. See:
www.miffy.com
But I am SURE that Steve would have known that and told you already.
Didn't know Miffy was born in Utrecht...
So, in Den Haag, you going to the ICJ/ICC places? Come on, be a social justice sorta girl and visit the important places...
why would steve know that, just because he´s a general genius? it's true, she was born here and we've seen her everywhere! except she's called ninche or something that sounds like that. thanks for the camera advice dad i'll check it out
i want some choco creeps (forget about the anti-krit spoeling though, there's only so much of that one can use...).
shutter speed.
hey lady. man, your world looks so fun. i keep going to email you then realising that i have nothing to say because ive done nothing everyday. (back there it kinda reads "ladyman" if you take out any puctuation. im so funny i dont even mean to be funny)next time ill probably facebook message you because my stupid mac wont access hotmail.
your dad is correct, and so is mit. are you still using the little canon ixus? without flash to brighten your subject, the shutter speed will be slower so any hand movement will show up. so turn on the flash and check you have image stabiliser on to compensate for any camera shake. it probably should be on anyway, but just check you didn't accidentally turned it off. also, make sure your camera knows what it is you want it to focus on. if it doesnt do that little "beep-beep" or little red lights not flashing on the LCD screen when you half press down the button, it is probably confused and that will happen especially in low light. if you can figure out how to put on a preliminary flash then that will definately help. anyway. hope that helps and isnt too confusing. keep having fun ladyman. xox
I was gonna say I really liked your photos but then I read your dad's comment and felt weird. Not in a 13 year old boy watching Baywatch sorta way, but more like a "oh.. am I stupid?" way. Oh yes.
Your journal is very nicely structured though, and I agree wholeheartedly about the microfiber towels!
Hope you're having fun =D
Give my regards to Dan!!
~Monkey
thanks guys, don't worry monkey you'll always be weird in a 13 year old watching baywatch kinda way. love to the melbourne homies xxxxxx
Post a Comment