Previous – Archeon

The morning of my last day, we went back into downtown Amsterdam: I had a mission. We were up kind of early because I really wanted to go to Fantasy Shop Chimera, a goth/witchy shop that I’d learned about a few years ago. It is a very big shop, two stories tall, and filled with many things. I didn’t really walk in with a specific desire in mind, I just wanted to look at everything. They had hundreds of statuettes of different themes – Norse gods, Egyptian gods, fairies, dragons, unicorns, mermaids, elves, if it was fantasy-themed they had some. Of course they had incense and gemstones, notebooks and tote bags and little signs that said “Frog Parking Only – All Others Will Be Toad”.

The clothing in general appealed to me less than I thought, even though I had vaguely hoped to get some really cool clothes completely different from clothes I already had. Getting a graphic T-shirt like with a unicorn or a dragon on it kind of appealed to me, but I already have plenty of T-shirts (and if I got one with a hot fairy then I would just look less hot in comparison, wouldn’t I?). The goth/rave stuff had a pre-distressed look that doesn’t really appeal to me. But eventually I found a cobalt blue handkerchief-hem dress that looked an awful lot like the “pirate princess” dress I bought at a summer festival in my last place of residence many years ago and wore until the skirt started falling apart at the seams (which wasn’t that hard, really, it was not the best-made thing). This one looks a bit better made. Cost $100CAD, but honestly for something hand-made from natural fibres that’s way too cheap. Although the shop lady asked if I’d tried it on, and I said no, because it was a “one-size-only” deal, and she reminded me that there were no returns on clothes, and I said I was going back to Canada tomorrow, and she said that if it didn’t fit I could always gift it or something. Which… I was over the weight I want to be, but I wasn’t that big!! What the hecc!? It actually fits perfectly so I don’t know what she was worried about. It has a lace-up top so when I lose the weight I want to, it will still fit fine.

Anyway, Betameche also bought a little owl figurine and named it Ada as a gift for a friend. : )

We continued through Dam Square, getting fresh stroopwafels at the same place we’d been with my teacher, giving Betameche an abbreviated tour – it was his first time in Amsterdam. It was surprisingly dirty, like there had been a massive party the night before and the ground was still covered in paper and other litter o_O We walked past several garbage trucks working on collecting trash, not sure if they were cleaning up the litter too or if that would be other people’s jobs.

We bought sandwiches at a chain bakery in Amsterdam Centraal (they really have awesome sandwiches, and I love the chocoladebroodjes), but we didn’t eat them until we got to Haarlem.

In the town square, we sat on a little wall and ate our sandwiches, watched carefully by pigeons, crows… and seagulls. But I’d learned my lesson.

We’d thought of doing a longer walk to see the other big historic church in Haarlem, but I was kind of tired. So we went to see Teylers Museum early. Our ticket entry time wasn’t until a couple hours, but we figured we’d try anyway, and it seems entry times are more of a formality at this museum now (not like the van Gogh museum a couple years ago) so we were allowed in right away.

Teylers Museum is the answer to the question “what do you do when you have a ton of money, no heirs, an interest in science and the betterment of [his own] society, and the Age of Enlightenment is in full swing?” It was founded in 1778 in memory of Pieter Teyler by the executors of his will, who Teyler gave his money to in a trust for the purpose. One of the first modern museums in the world, if not the first. What’s really neat is that if you look at illustrations of the Oval Hall from its opening, and look at it now, it looks identical.

It started with just one big oval hall built behind his house, and then they added more rooms – another hall for scientific instruments, another one for fossils, a huge fancy entry on another street so they didn’t have to use his house for an entry, and a couple of painting galleries. There is also a coin collection room and a print room and exhibition gallery, but those were all under restoration while we were there.

The first point of entry leads you now directly to the fossils, where you can see the charming fellow above, and SO MANY FOSSILS. So may unusual and interesting fossils, especially of insects and other hard-to-fossilize things, that I was questioning if they were real. But in one corner of the room were a couple of actual fake fossils and then I remembered “oh yeah they had no idea what a fossil actually was, so no one knew how to fake them”. They were just carvings of fish, reliefs basically, quite pathetic after looking at the actual fish fossils.

The room between the fossils and the Oval Room is used to house antique scientific instruments. A couple in the middle of the room are gigantic; most are in glass cases around the outside of the room. I glanced at them, but the descriptions were all in Dutch with words I don’t know yet, and there was a tour in the middle in Dutch, and the instruments were not as visually interesting as fossils, so I mostly skipped past it.

The Oval Room still houses a gemstone collection, which was full of shiny things. Some minerals manifest in such long, slender, thread-like spiny crystals that I was wondering how on earth you transport them. This page about crystals might give you an idea of what I saw walking around in that room, except in the museum there were hundreds of examples, dozens of each formation type, from all over the world in many different colours and shapes.

Off to one side were two painting galleries, one more set up for serious study, one more designed for casual appreciation with pillows on the floor. The important one for me was this one, titled Piano Lesson.

On the other side was Teyler’s home, preserved just as it had been. The kitchen was designed to let in a lot of natural light, it would still be a great kitchen to cook in.

We had all split up to look at the museum in our own pace (for one thing it was really crowded when we got there, and we soon got separated even if we had wanted to stick together) and I couldn’t find the guys for like half an hour?? I sent them text messages and browsed everything in the gift shop before we met up again.

Our entry tickets gave us a discount on a drink at the café, and the guys, who went to check it out while I was elsewhere, were very insistent that I come. And behold:

It brought us our drinks (and cake, someone had cake and it wasn’t me) and made a happy face when we told it we got our stuff! I’ve seen these in videos of Japanese restaurants so I was super excited to see one in real life!!

We still had plenty of time to spend before the concert in the evening, so we wandered the town a bit.

Then we wandered with a bit of purpose; apparently we had walked past a boardgame café on our way in, and they were having trouble finding it again. I hadn’t seen it at all, so I couldn’t guess where it was, and even though I had learned earlier on this trip how to connect to the internet via mobile data on my phone, for some reason it wasn’t loading! So I was no help at all. But eventually we found it and settled in for an afternoon.

Our first game was Portal: The Uncooperative Cake Acquisition Game. It is very silly; among other things, the instructions tell you to read parts aloud in the most condescending voice you can muster. The objective is to get your little guys to the end of the board, which may reward you with cake, but not to let your cake get to the end of the board, because then it will get incinerated. Really it was a very creative interpretation of the game, and I love that all the cake slices for each player fit together into a whole cake. : )

As expected, the two guys were being very strategic and competitive. I was doing okay, but then Betameche screwed me over to get some extra points, so I got revenge… which led to Tharash winning the game. Oh well.

Then we started playing another game that Tharash had played before, called Forest Shuffle: a game in which you assemble a forest of trees, and then play wildlife cards on those trees, some of which give points, some of which act as point multipliers, and so on. Also Betameche went up to order us some dinner because we were having too much fun to go to some other restaurant, and he ordered quite early because it had taken them a LONG time to bring out our veggie snack tray of olives and cucumber and hummus and crackers and stuff. And he mentioned that, which must have embarrassed them a bit, because it was much less time before we got our dinner food. I had a flammkuchen and the others had pizzas.

And I went up to ask for an Apple Bandit cider (the same kind I’d had in Utrecht, that tastes so strongly appley without any alcohol flavour – but is alcoholic) and the guy running the bar asked me “eentje?” which means “just one?” (I asked in Dutch) and it took me a moment to process that. For one thing, it sounds like the word “eendje” which means duckling. And by the time I’d figured out what he meant, he’d switched to English, sadly. But anyway I got my cider and it was good.

Betameche won the forest game… by 2 points, it was really close. We all agreed that just hanging out and playing games together was the most fun use of our time, and we should do it next time too. Then off to the church, where a carillonneur had been playing for some time, actually. We hadn’t known. We could hear the carillon from quite far! But it was time to go inside already.

I had time to grab a few pictures before the concert actually started. It’s so nice to see this organ again! I still have the poster from 2012 somewhere. It really is a monster organ, it takes up so much of the wall.

Performer: Dariusz Bąkowski-Kois

Mikołaj z Krakowa – Preambulum in F pro introductionis peduum applicare
– Aliud preambulum in F

José de Torres – Batalla de 5° tono

J.S. Bach – ‘Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich’, BWV 668a
– ‘Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir’, BWV 1099
– ‘O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß’, BWV 622

C.P.E. Bach – ‘Aus der Tiefe rufe ich’, BWV Anh. 745
– Pedal-Exercitium, BWV Anh. 598
– Fuga in Es, H 102 / Wq 119/6

Feliks Nowowiejski – Poolse Fantasie opus 9 nr. 1 (‘Middernachtmis op de Wawel’)

Sigfried Karg-Elert – ‘Nun danket alle Gott’ (Marche triomphale), opus 65 nr. 59
– ‘Herzliebster Jesu, was hast du verbrochen’, opus 65 nr. 17

Max Reger – Variations and Fugue on The English National Anthem

As you can tell, the organist is Polish. The concert was pretty good! The organ was still spectacular. The organist seemed to make a couple of weird crunchy notes I wasn’t expecting, but I couldn’t tell you if they were mistakes or not. But overall he played well. I appreciated that he alternated between soft and loud pieces. Even the Reger wasn’t too bad (though maybe that’s because the tune is something familiar…) The C.P.E. Bach fugue maybe went on a bit long… Tharash liked the Bach pieces, though.

I got another commemorative coin on my way out. :3

The walk back to the station had spectacular sunset clouds. Very Renaissance. We don’t get that effervescent poofiness where I live.

Then I went to pack my stuff, including my new dress. In the morning when I was getting ready to head to the airport, I noticed I still had mud on my pants from Zuid Limburg, lol. I didn’t have to wake up at a ridiculous hour for AMS-YYZ, fortunately, which is nice. Betameche was able to take the same train for a few stops, before switching trains to head back to Belgium.

By the way, during the trip I read 8 Dutch children’s books, and 4 pages of a grown-up history book.

On the flight back, many people were watching movies. And being the easily-distracted (ADHD?) person I am, I watched about six movies over other people’s shoulders (consecutively, not more than 2 at a time) as well as playing Empire Strikes Back on my own seatback screen. I picked ESB because it was going to have the fewest dumb special edition edits so I’d enjoy it the most. But I listened to it without plugging my headphones in because honestly I just wanted as little noise as possible, and even with the sound-cancelling headphones there was still a bunch of noise, and I know the script more or less (less than I thought, tbh lol). But now I’ve technically seen the new Jack and the Beanstalk movie. Kind of meh. Gotta say, Geostorm which someone was watching in front of me is a shining example of American arrogance and self-centredness. But it was more visually entertaining than the Korean drama about a cleaning lady who took down a crime syndicate (???).

I tried to take some pictures of BC clouds to send to the guys to explain why I feel that Dutch clouds are different, but Tharash said these ones do look pretty Dutch to him. Idk, maybe it’s just because I took these while on the bus through the Delta? Which is flat like the Netherlands? It doesn’t have what I’d consider the Rembrandt je ne sais quoi.

Disembarking from the ferry there was a great big full moon hanging over the water, and every single foot passenger came out of the side door that would connect to the gangplank when we were docked, stopped in their tracks, and took a picture.

Stay tuned for a winter excursion this January!