The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

The Netherlands would not be the Netherlands without the phenomenon that is Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day). This, for those not familiar with it, is held every year on the 30th of April, officially the birthday of Queen Beatrix, although in fact it is actually that of her late mother Juliana.

In reality it has precious little to do with royalty, and is instead more of an excuse to take the day off work, dress up in orange, and generally have a good time. This is not a problem for the Dutch; in my experience they generally seem to take work quite seriously, but at the same time are determined to enjoy their free time as much as possible. They also do not find it necessary to get blind drunk at every available opportunity such as is the norm in Britain, although for today they do seem to make an exception.

There are all sorts of processions of boats along the canals, and the whole city (and indeed the whole county) turns into a gigantic fleamarket due to a law which allows anyone to sell almost anything without taxes needing to be paid or permission needing to be sought, as is usually the case here for just about everything. I love this kind of thing, and if I had had a bit more time, money, and a place to store things, then I would have truly been in my element.

Unfortunately though I had quite a lot of work to do in the morning, and so it was not until about 3pm that I was able to take a walk into town and see what was up. Of course it was really busy in the centre, and it took quite an effort and a lot of time to get through the crowds and towards the Marnixstraat, where I had agreed to meet Andy and Laura.

When I finally did, they were standing outside Café de Koe watching Nuff said. The band were perched upon a dangerous looking platform belting out the tunes with as much energy as always (I’ve seen them quite a few times already), and the weather was lovely. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves, except me who couldn’t get my head out of ‘work mode’. I find this quite difficult sometimes, and when I do it is sometimes easy to long for the days of working a salaried job with regular hours when you could be sure of the time that was your own. But then again, that gets boring after a while.

We moved on later to the Soundgarden, where a frankly awful English band were the entertainment out the back. I stayed for a few beers, still not quite in the party mood, and later headed down to the Vondelpark, where Astrid and some friends had been selling home-made poi balls at €10 a set. Not a bad wee business it would seem, and they had almost sold out.

We headed out afterwards for an Indian; I think only my second since being in Holland, since they aren’t nearly so common as back home. Delicious nonetheless, and by the time we left the restaurant it was already almost dark. The drifting groups of semi/totally drunken people and the endless stream of litter on the street weren’t really enticing us to stay out much longer, so it ended up being an unexpectedly early night. A bit of a change from Koninginnedag last year, which turned into a drunken shambles (with Andy going missing without a trace), but a nice change all the same. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I’m getting old for sure.

I have been working very hard over the last week, most of the time on the computer. This has been driving nuts and, what with the lovely weather at the moment, it seemed about time to do something outside, in fact anything other than staring at a bloody screen.

When we first moved into this flat back in November, I built a desk, bed, and furniture for my room. In the meantime of course I have ended up with a lot more stuff, to such a degree that I had no more space for books or indeed anything much else.

So this afternoon I built some more shelves. I have to say that I am quite pleased with the results. There’s even a wee shelf for a cup of tea right next to my bed!

And once again, it’s all recycled timber from the street. So total cost about €3.50 – for some screws.

By the way, the little bird on the middle shelf is Greg, a small friend of mine. He is made of plastic, but has real feathers; he was €1 from a Chinese shop in the Albert Cuypmarkt. I am never lonely while he is around.

Last week Gabriëlle, course director at the DAI, had asked myself and Rana, a fellow student, to do a little presentation this week at the Rietveld Academie. What this was basically to be was an introduction to the DAI for potential future students, who would presently be about to graduate from their batchelors programme. For this we were to be paid €50 each, although in any case I thought it would be an interesting enough experience in itself. Not that I was going to refuse the money.

We had been of course a bit stressed about the whole thing, and had spent quite a while putting together a Powerpoint presentation with loads of photos and on-message titles, since we had been led to believe that we would need to talk for half an hour. It turned out though that it was more like ten minutes, and in contrast to us most of the representatives of the various other masters programmes didn’t have anything to show at all.

Of course it is just about impossible to explain what such a course as ours is like in ten minutes, but we did our best. There were almost as many speakers as students present, so I would not be too sure that it will generate an instant flood of invitations to the DAI.

It’s that time again; after not being in Enschede for 2 months due to our trip to Diyarbakir, it was back to the DAI for another 5 days of intensive art education.

I had been working in the Sláinte ’til 1am on Sunday evening, which was not ideal preparation for Monday morning’s journey. I had first to rush into town to deliver some information to the IB-Groep about my student finances, and then because of works on the line there were fewer trains than normal running. This wasn’t too much of a problem, though, and myself, Julien and Nikos caught the 10:57 train to Szczecin Glowny, some unpronouncable place in Poland which as it happens is served by a train which passes through Hengelo, just a very short distance from the DAI. Good, eh?

It was a DB (German) train, which are generally a bit nicer inside than the Dutch ones. More leg room at least, and even a socket to plug in your laptop! It’s the future, people.

Not too much to say about the time in Enschede, except that I was a bit annoyed because I didn’t have even one studio visit from the tutors, that there was at least one very interesting and one very boring lecture, and that it was necessary to give a presentation on Friday morning about our time in Diyarbakir. This went quite well actually. Also, some more discussions were had about our impending project in Beetsterzwaag. I’ve been quite worried about my lack of preparedness for this, and it was good to see that the others seem mostly to be in the same position…

Not including Turkey, this was the seventh time in Enschede. The time surely has gone quickly, and before long the year will be over. That means of course that I need to make and eventually show some more work, which is another thing to get stressed about.

I have been back in Scotland for a few days, once again very briefly. On this occasion I had some work to do on a couple of websites for which I am responsible, and in this case it could unfortunately not be done from Holland. I wasn’t paying for it, but I still could have done without the journey.

In any case it was nice though to see the homeland for a wee bit, and my parents as well. Hopefully next time I can make a slightly longer trip of it and see some friends in Glasgow – not to mention pick up what is left of my things.

I had received an message on this website a few months ago from my old school friend and former flatmate Sinclair, whom I had not seen for, oh, the best part of seven years. Of course I was really glad to hear from him, but even more pleased when I got an email last week saying that himself and Suzanne, who I have known just as long, would be in Amsterdam this week for a wee break.

Unfortunately I need to be myself in Scotland from this evening until Friday doing some work, so Tuesday night was the only time we could meet. Obviously I was very curious as well as looking forward to seeing them, since it has been so long. Of course people can change a lot in all that time.

As it so happened it was just as if we had seen each other last week, and it was great to hear that life is going well with them. Sinclair tells me he cycles to work every day, which although obviously normal here is quite unusual for Scotland; I was impressed, and hopefully as more people see what a good idea it is it will become more common.

Apparently there was a school reunion recently, which of course I didn’t know about, and it was funny to hear that half the people in our year have kids by now. I feel so un-grown-up. In a good way.

I felt like I should really have done my best to show them the sights of the city, but as it happened we just ended up having a few (rather potent) Belgian beers and chatting away ’til about 4am.

This afternoon we met up once again, nursing sore heads, to see Bodies. This is the show with bits of plasticised dead people which has been touring Europe and beyond for several years now; I have been wanting to go for a long time, and this is its last week in Amsterdam.

Due to this it was pretty crowded, and not cheap at nearly €20 a ticket, but definately worth the visit. Despite what you are seeing it is not gruesome at all, and we agreed that we’d probably learned more in 2 hours than in all the Biology lessons we’d had at school. Did you know that the skin is the heaviest organ of the body, or that the intestines are altogether 6.5m long? And dammit, people are just so complicated inside! I don’t think I would have been much use as a doctor.

Some students from the DAI (myself included) are to be taking part in a project at Kunsthuis SYB in Beetsterzwaag, Friesland over the next two months. This project is entitled “The Expanding Pie“, and is to be based upon connections between economy and art.

I have been part of the group who have been responsible for preparing promotional materials (poster, flyer) for this project. We were not really sure where to start with this one, but it seemed like a nice idea to actually have a pie made. If it could expand, so much the better.

We placed an order with the only bakery in Beetsterzwaag on Wednesday, and Julien and Astrid went to pick it up on Friday. As should probably have been expected, in the end it was really quite an ordinary sort of pie. This was a little disappointing, but to make the most of the situation we organised a little party with tea and cake in the Vondelpark this afternoon. As you can see, we had a good time (and the cake was delicious).

Following a recommendation by Laura, myself and Andy went to see Tinariwen at the Melkweg tonight. Due to my stupidity in leaving home without the tickets, we ended up missing the start, but what we did see was really good.

They’re former rebel fighters, members of the Taureg people from Mali, north Africa. Their sound is really something different, really powerful but without the appearance of a great deal of energy being expended. Finished a lot earlier than I would have liked; I could have listened for twice as long. That’s always the sign of a good concert.