There's a lot to tell and show, so I decided to split it up, especially since there are a lot of photos.
I left the house at 6 AM on Sunday to catch the bus to the station. My ticket was a sensational special offer, only 38 € the return trip to Amsterdam, but which meant I had to change trains several times, 3 times on the way there and 4 times on the way back home.
My first stop was in Venlo where I had a stay of about 20 minutes, so I left the station to look around a bit, enjoying the sunshine and meeting T-Rex.
I arrived in Amsterdam around noon and, after taking up lodging at the hostel by the Vondelpark again, went to grab some lunch: a nice chicken leg at a BBQ stand at a mall I already knew - good, real meat for little money, unlike the "pink slime" you can get at certain other places for easily twice the price...
At the supermarket I still found myself some summer shoes for 3 € - I'm sick of flip flops since I hate wearing shoes that you can't run in at high speed when you want to, but these even have ankle straps, so they're better, and I even got to wear them on this first day of my trip.
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| Amsterdam Centraal Station |
The construction site in front of Central Station is finally gone, and after all these years I could for the first time view the beautiful building unobstructed by it.
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| Rijksmuseum |
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| Boerenwetering Canal |
It was a beautiful, sunny evening, and at Vondelpark, which is celebrating its 150th year, there was a cool, kind of "interactive" installation, consisting of a row of 16 large swings arranged in pairs in a near semi-circle. Above each swing there was a speaker playing musical sounds, cables running down the chains of the swings were keeping the sounds in sync with the motion, and the swings were to be freely used by everyone - which of course I did. The music was changed occasionally but was most of the time just some gentle soprano voice, and this soothing voice along with the motion of the swing and the light of the setting sun made for a really trippy, ***dreamlike*** experience. And then from the north, airplanes started coming in low overhead (certainly bound for the nearby Schiphol Airport), making the scenery even more surreal because it somehow gave the illusion that all these airplanes were also brought up by the united effort of the swinging - swing some more, cause another airplane to appear...
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| Sunset from dorm window |
I had some dramatic thoughts of how I'm both a creature of darkness as much as of the sun and forever torn between them - how this is my tragedy! But perhaps also my triumph?
Sounds really nice! I love to be in surreal scenes in the waking world :) Is there a Dinosaur Expo at Venlo? I've been to Venlo quite often but last time I was there the T-Rex wasn't there then. Must be new
ReplyDeleteI didn't check any further, my stay was too brief, but the dinosaur was in front of that "Limburgs Museum".
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