David, Muiden
Trip Start
Apr 06, 2003
1
13
69
Trip End
Ongoing
Amsterdam,
Netherlands
Sunday, June 22, 2003
Happy Monday everyone.
I'm sure this will be fairly short since we just sent a mammoth T-Pod late last week. Presently Julie and I are sitting in our rooftop garden. It's about 4:00, we stopped at the Albert Heijn grocery and bought a few little things to nosh on before dinner. We have some fresh-baked French bread (still warm), Brie cheese, olive tapenada, yellow peppers and baby carrots, purple grapes, and a couple of nice local beers (although it is tough to find, the Dutch do brew beer other than Heineken and Amstel).
We've got our E30 portable CD player with us playing the new Coldplay CD as we are driving to a big 4-day music festival next week in Belgium called RockWerchter and Coldplay is one of the bands that Julie is trying to become somewhat familiar with. I'm sure we'll tell you all about the festival next week but if you're interested in taking a look, go to www.rockwerchter.be. There's a ton of music I'm intereseted in seeing (Radiohead, Bjork, Metalica, REM, Counting Crows, and Coldplay to name a few) and Julie is being a good wife by going with me. I have a few friends who are planning on going as well so it should be fun. I'm not sure how I feel about camping and no showers for 3 nights but we'll see what happens. Not to mention that I have to be at work the following Monday after a Sunday of music that doesn't end until midnight.
Today we walked around town, visiting about 25 canal homes that had opened up their gardens for visitors to see. They were pretty cool, as well as the homes themselves, and have given us some ideas for our own garden.
With that, here is what I have to say about the last few days...
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DAVID
Julie's brother David ended up not coming to Amsterdam. After changing his mind about a half dozen times, he realized this is new-found fame in the television commercial industry just wouldn't allow him to leave France before the end of the week-long parties. I spoke to David for some time on Friday morning - at that point he was planning on coming to Amsterdam the next evening. The more we talked about the week in France and the very influencial people he was meeting, the more I think he realized that this is really a great opportunity for him and he needs to take advantage of it. When I got home from work later that day, Julie told me she talked to David and he had decided he was coming to Amsterdam. When we woke up the next morning, there was a voicemail from David saying he wasn't coming again.
I think David really wanted to come to Amsterdam (and believe me, we wanted to have him here) but I think he had some appointments that he just couldn't miss. In the end, I think he made the right decision as it seems like his career is really beginning to move and as a result of some of the people he met this past week in Cannes, he will likely be coming to Europe often - both for work and pleasure.
MUIDEN
With David enjoying all that southern France has to offer, Julie and I tried to enjoy all that Amsterdam has to offer. Actually, we enjoyed all that Muiden has to offer. Muiden is a small town (basically 1 small street with shops) which is a 30-minute bus ride from Amsterdam. It was founded in 1050 and is along a large body of water, so everyone has a boat - usually big seaworthy sailboats.
The Netherlands has a national bus service which is inexpensive (the ride to Muiden was E1.50), clean, and comfortable - very un-Greyhoundlike. We arrived in Muiden, walked from the busstop to the main thoroughfare in town and realized that we were definitely experiencing something different.
Almost everyone in town was dressed in Rennaisance costume. It was like being at Medevil Times. There were stages on both sides of the main street basting music (later in the night, there would be live bands - playing mostly American music). There was a strange Beatles medley where they had almost every Beatles song within a 10 minutes span. Not much food but lots of beer. The townspeople were certainly enjoying themselves. Adults, children, babies, everyone. I did see one guy in a Favre jersey though - apparently the Dutch were big Packers fans in the 1400s. Julie actually commented that despite the Dutch founding New York, they are actually a lot more like Wisconsinites - typically from small towns, farmers, friendly, and big fans of beer.
Julie and I were in Muiden to see a performance of Shakespeare's "Two Gentlemen from Verona" at Muiden castle. An English touring company is performing Shakespeare all over Europe in castles, trying to reproduce how Shakespeare actually presented the plays during his life. There were no sets, only 6 actors, 1 harpist to add some texture to the show, and about 100 people seated in one of the castle's entertaining rooms. The castle itself was pretty cool. It is a reddish brick surrounded by a moat. I am not a huge Shakespeare fan but given the surroundings, I really enjoyed myself.
Coincidentally, last night was the Summer Solstice. With it being the longest day of the year, it was barely dark when we returned home last night at midnight. I found it strange that so much was made of yesterday being the Summer Solstice but I can hardly remember anyone in the US ever saying anything about it. I guess when you suffer though weeks and months of darkness in the winter, they try to really take advantage of the long summer nights.
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Well, that's it for now. See ya soon.
-Stephen
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