Friday, April 06, 2007
Footsore
It's been an energetic two days... Having finally made it to Amsterdam, hanging out with Emily and Adrian until about 2am, then crashing, I got up the next day, posted on my blog to keep the fans happy, and took off!
I took a pretty meandering route through the Hague to Mauritshuis, where Vermeer's paintings are. I got in free with Emily's Museumkarte, and they have a really good free audio tour. I could have stayed for ages it was so interesting. And normally I have a pretty limited attention span for looking at old oil, but the audio-thingy gave brief, interesting comments on techniques, historical context, anecdotes, art debates and symbols to look for.
From there I walked to the Peace Palace, where the Permanent Court of Arbitration was set up by Tsar Nicholas II and 26 original member countries in the early 20th century. Now it also houses the court where countries can sue each other. It's where Bosnia-Herzegovina sued Serbia for genocide, the first case of it's kind. It's most interesting for me because Emily has been working for the last three months on a case against war criminals of the former Yugoslavia, and she filled me in on some of the crazy history of that region, and Milosevic the uber-baddie. It's strange to think that a war that formed a constant backdrop to my childhood (on the news, talked about at school) is still being sorted out and put to rest, if something like that ever can be. Apart from history though, the Peace Palace is incredibly beautiful. They have four gigantic Ming vases in one room, that must be worth millions each. In the Japanese room the walls are covered in a giant tapestry that took 50,000 people five years to weave! Think about that for a second. One cool thing was that that room was set up for a meeting of all the ambassadors later in the afternoon, a meeting that only takes place once a year, and all the chairs were embroidered with the appropriate country's coat of arms. New Zealand's is much nicer than Australia's, I have to say.
After that I went to another museum to kill time, again for free on Emily's museumkarte, and arrived late at the buildings of the Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia, where Emily worked, and met her colleagues/bosses for drinks. It was some of the most interesting conversation of my life, listening to the Military Investigation team members talk about scurrying down Sniper Alley flanked by tanks, being shot at during take off in planes, and tracing witnesses for statements sometimes years after events only to find they had died six months before. Some of them have been here since the mid-nineties. It was Emily's last day, and I think she's going to miss it a lot.
Today involved mostly walking all over Amsterdam, which we visited by train. The Van Gogh museum was great, but I had very sore feet, probably aggravated by getting up at 6am and going for a run because I couldn't sleep. Oh, during my run there were crows all over the place and man are they creepy! Amsterdam was pretty, but super touristy and crowded (public holiday), so overall I prefer the Hague. Especially after coming back here in the evening and eating sizeable portions of fantastic Indonesian food on the cheap. Two people for 15.80 euros! So good, especially considering that one pancake in Amsterdam cost us 6 euros.
Anyway, my contact lenses are about to permanently fuse to my eyeballs, so I better go. Flying to London tomorrow to meet Pascale and get started on the great American Dream! Hang on...
I took a pretty meandering route through the Hague to Mauritshuis, where Vermeer's paintings are. I got in free with Emily's Museumkarte, and they have a really good free audio tour. I could have stayed for ages it was so interesting. And normally I have a pretty limited attention span for looking at old oil, but the audio-thingy gave brief, interesting comments on techniques, historical context, anecdotes, art debates and symbols to look for.
From there I walked to the Peace Palace, where the Permanent Court of Arbitration was set up by Tsar Nicholas II and 26 original member countries in the early 20th century. Now it also houses the court where countries can sue each other. It's where Bosnia-Herzegovina sued Serbia for genocide, the first case of it's kind. It's most interesting for me because Emily has been working for the last three months on a case against war criminals of the former Yugoslavia, and she filled me in on some of the crazy history of that region, and Milosevic the uber-baddie. It's strange to think that a war that formed a constant backdrop to my childhood (on the news, talked about at school) is still being sorted out and put to rest, if something like that ever can be. Apart from history though, the Peace Palace is incredibly beautiful. They have four gigantic Ming vases in one room, that must be worth millions each. In the Japanese room the walls are covered in a giant tapestry that took 50,000 people five years to weave! Think about that for a second. One cool thing was that that room was set up for a meeting of all the ambassadors later in the afternoon, a meeting that only takes place once a year, and all the chairs were embroidered with the appropriate country's coat of arms. New Zealand's is much nicer than Australia's, I have to say.
After that I went to another museum to kill time, again for free on Emily's museumkarte, and arrived late at the buildings of the Criminal Tribunal of the former Yugoslavia, where Emily worked, and met her colleagues/bosses for drinks. It was some of the most interesting conversation of my life, listening to the Military Investigation team members talk about scurrying down Sniper Alley flanked by tanks, being shot at during take off in planes, and tracing witnesses for statements sometimes years after events only to find they had died six months before. Some of them have been here since the mid-nineties. It was Emily's last day, and I think she's going to miss it a lot.
Today involved mostly walking all over Amsterdam, which we visited by train. The Van Gogh museum was great, but I had very sore feet, probably aggravated by getting up at 6am and going for a run because I couldn't sleep. Oh, during my run there were crows all over the place and man are they creepy! Amsterdam was pretty, but super touristy and crowded (public holiday), so overall I prefer the Hague. Especially after coming back here in the evening and eating sizeable portions of fantastic Indonesian food on the cheap. Two people for 15.80 euros! So good, especially considering that one pancake in Amsterdam cost us 6 euros.
Anyway, my contact lenses are about to permanently fuse to my eyeballs, so I better go. Flying to London tomorrow to meet Pascale and get started on the great American Dream! Hang on...
# posted by Doug @ 18:45 
