The Stedelijk

There’s nothing like a trip to a museum of modern art to get the old creative juices flowing again. We were entertaining friends from the UK this weekend and headed into Amsterdam on Saturday for a spot of sightseeing.  Friends wanted to see the Van Gogh museum – we’ve done Van Gogh so we left them happily browsing amongst the sunflowers and irises while we popped next door to The  Stedelijk Museum, home to Amsterdam’s largest collection of modern and contemporary art.

As the rain outside turned to sleet, I was filled with a warm, rosy, glow. What a joy! I’d forgotten how much of a smile the contemplation of modern ‘art’ can put on your face.  Bemusement, bewilderment.....

Sometimes I think I must be missing something.  I know art is subjective, but a pair of copper plated Y-fronts, a table covered in brown paper and tied with jute, and and the obligatory pile of rocks on the floor. Really??

Take the packing crate for example. When is a plywood packing crate not a plywood packing crate? When it has a light bulb inside. Then, apparently, it becomes a work of art and warrants it's own room in a museum. 

In another room the security guard gave a little dance as we entered – wacky Dutch sense of humour or maybe he was another exhibit? Who knows? Perhaps  he'd just returned from a quick stroll around the less salubrious streets of Amsterdam, where the air seemed to be particularly more pungent than usual this weekend.  I'm pretty sure the artist behind this piece of work must have been visiting a coffee shop or two.

In all seriousness the museum is full of fantastic and interesting exhibits, from examples of early 20th century innovative furniture and homewares, to very thought provoking 'underground' photographs taken during the German occupation in the Second World War. It has fair share of Picassos, Pollocks and Lictensteins, and there is even some work by old friend Jeff Koons, first encountered at the Los Angeles County Museum of Modern Art way back in April 2011 in another jaw-dropping 'how do they get away with it?' moment. Although in Jeff's defence I'd have to say the work on show in the Stedelijk was a vast improvement on the giant balloon poodle in LA.

(http://lifeinthelabubble.blogspot.nl/2011/04/art-for-arts-sake.html).

I suppose the fact that it has compelled me to write a post, provoked a reaction and made me question and 'think', proves that there is a point to it all. The Stedelijk is definitely my favourite museum in Amsterdam so far.

Een Thee

I more or less gave up drinking tea when out and about in the US.  I soon learned that the Liptons tea-bags offered up in cafes and restaurants were insipid imposters and best left well alone.  I’m a pretty traditional girl at heart and a cuppa just isn’t a cuppa when it’s served with a slice of lemon and a squirt of honey. I hoarded a secret supply of Sainsburys Red Label in my cupboards and the daily cuppa became a guilty pleasure enjoyed in the comfort of my own home.

A good old fashioned cup of milky tea is the perfect  pick-me-up; it’s refreshing, comforting and calming. It makes you stop, sit down and relax.  It doesn’t get your heart pumping at ninety miles an hour like a  shot of caffeine loaded coffee, and it doesn’t rot your teeth or pile on the calories like a sweet sickly cup of hot chocolate.

It was hot and sunny in California. It didn’t matter if I stuck to cold  drinks while out socialising with friends, but when it’s grey and wet, like it is in the Netherlands 90% of the time, I want tea.

So, what do they serve up in the café’s here? You ask for een thee and you will be provided with a glass of hot water.  If you’re lucky it may be accompanied by a selection of tea-bags, or sometimes the tea-leaves will already sit infusing in the water. Either way I have discovered the only way to elicit any great taste from either the bags, or the leaves, is to leave them in the water for a very long time.  It would help of course, if the water was boiling, but when it’s served in a glass, this is simply not practical.

I never thought I’d end up writing an entire blog about a cup of tea, but today I encountered the most pretentious tea-bag ever, and I just have to show and tell.

It was the usual thing, ask for een thee, be presented with the glass of hot, or in this case, not particularly hot, water, followed by the presentation of an impressive tea-chest full of tea bags. The selection is usually the same wherever you go, Earl Grey, Chamomile, Green Tea, White Tea, Fruit Tea. Today, I choose aardbei – strawberry, and it wasn’t a case of picking a tea-bag from the box, but a heavy duty envelope, bearing an artist’s colourful impression of a juicy strawberry. Wow, I thought, this is way better than the usual sachets - it was like opening up an Oscar nomination, and there inside, not just a tea-bag, but a letter. Yes, a letter, for me, Beste theedrinker (dear tea drinker…) from the tea-leaf picker himself. Strawberry, he wrote, is his favourite fruit (I suspect he says that about every flavour) and the fruit is chosen to ‘soften’ the taste of the tea, which as it had very little taste, I took to mean total dilution. I also learned from my letter that my theeplukster picks 18 kilos of tea leaves a day which produces 4 kilos of pure black tea. Incidentally, the Dutch for tea leaves is theebladeren, which sounds particularly unpleasant.

So who knew one tea-bag could produce such a fascinating insight into the world of an entire tea plantation. Ten out of ten to the packaging guys. Just a shame they didn't put quite the same amount of effort into the actual taste of the tea.

Leiden

This Saturday we visited Leiden for another Dutch cultural experience.  Very shortly we’re going to get fed up of this –  No, please don’t make me go….not another old town full of attractive gabled houses and tiny cobbled streets, not more canals and quaint little bridges, not another  street market full of fresh produce and the wafting aroma of sticky sweet stroop waffles…..

Leiden's university is the oldest in the Netherlands and the town is twinned with Oxford in the UK. It was also home to the original Pilgrim Fathers who fled there from the UK before setting sail in the Mayflower for a new life in the US.  As we’ve visited Plymouth in Massachusettes and admired the preserved rock where these intrepid Pilgrims made their first footsteps on US soil, and as we’re from Southampton, where the Mayflower stopped en route, it seemed quite fitting that we should eventually end up one day in Leiden –  admiring yet another Pilgrim memorial.

Another interesting fact we learned about Leiden as we followed the Leidse Loope signposts around the town – a sort of treasure hunt of its most significant spots – was that like Haarlem, Leiden was also besieged by the Spanish back in the 1500’s.  Having seen the fate that had befallen the starving inhabitants of Haarlem, apparently the Mayor of Leiden offered to be sacrificed so that the population of Leiden could eat his body!! Fortunately (for him) they declined his offer and decided to flood the town instead so that they could be saved by the Dutch fleet. Who knew??

History lesson over and life ticks over quite happily, tulips are popping up in the garden and in the public parks the daffodils are already out. We've had our first significant snow fall, and yes the Dutch do still cycle in the snow.  All that ice just adds to the challenge.  I've had my hair cut, and highlighted by a lovely young Dutch hairdresser who tells me she will make me more 'playful' (??) a message that has obviously been adopted by Ed the cat who has now taken to hiding in a black sports bag in the closet just in case  the 'find the black cat on the black carpet' game wasn't fun enough. Honestly it took me ages to find him, I seriously thought he'd been cat-napped.....