Michael Eriksson
A Swede in Germany
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What I did during my vacation II

2024 Introduction

While written in 2013, this page was not published until 2024. Some clean up has been made, but the contents otherwise match the 2013 version.

A particular issue during revisions was a number of to-dos and keywords, which show that the text was not entirely completed. In some cases, they have been replaced with an elaboration per addendum; in most, outright removed.


Side-note:

Something that went entirely unmentioned in the original: The morning coffee in my hotel might be the best that I have ever had.

There are many factors that play in with good coffee, including choice and preparation of beans, quality of water, and the machine or implement used. Here, a “perfect storm” is the likely explanation and pointing to specific factors might be pointless, even if my knowledge of the details had been great enough to do so. The implement, however, was some type of automatic maker labeled “Douwe Egberts”, a name that might or might not also tell us something about the beans used.


2012 Introduction and pre-vacation complications

In February 2013 I intended to go abroad again for a similar time-frame as in 2012. (In both cases because I live in the Düsseldorf “Old Town”, which is one of the centers of German carnival madness during the period in question—an exercise in drunkenness, inexcusably poor music, and general idiocy.) However, circumstances in my project made this hard: With an approaching deadline, I had agreed with the local VP of development that I could take Thursday, the 7th, and Friday, the 8th, of February off—if we managed to process a 90-thousand-record test-file successfully through “my” process step on the 6. In addition, the 11th (Monday) was free company-wide (due to one of the high-points of the aforementioned carnival). This gave me five days that I intended to spend in Luxembourg, likely getting a head start through taking off already during Wednesday evening.

(Obviously, with this insecurity, I did even less planing than usually.)

Here the complications started:

On the 5th, there were problems even getting the file delivered to us (from a business partner whose systems “interface” with ours). On the 6th, the file was there, but even the very first step of the process, removing the encryption, stymied the tester. After long delays, inter-company clarifications about what encryption-key had been used, and various tricks, this step was finally completed, and the second step could take place: Loading the data into our database for further processing. Alas, by the evening of the 6th, this step was not yet completed—and there were two further steps in the chain (validation and transformation) before my module even became active.

Almost needless to say, bringing the data through these two further steps took most of the 7th and the 8th, due to various over-sights and data incompatibilities, thereby reducing my vacation by the full two days. The fact that my module did its work without a hitch almost adds to the frustration—even with these delays, I could have taken the two days in good conscience, had this been known in advance. (But knowing in advance is not possible, or we would not need to test in the first place.)

2013-02-08: Planning and travel

As is, I had to do the best of a bad deal and a three day vacation. In order to maximize the time available and to avoid the expected-to-be-horrible disturbances on Friday evening, I, from work, researched train rides to various likely locations in the nearby countries (Düsseldorf is pleasantly close to both the “Benelux” countries and France), and eventually settled on Amsterdam, there being no train-ride to Luxembourg sufficiently close to the end of my work-day (and, IIRC, also none of sufficiently pleasant shortness). I also took the precaution to book a hotel (contrary to my usual practice), seeing that I would be arriving at 20:26 in Amsterdam and bought a ticket online—being faced with a useless user interface and an illegitimate number of mandatory fields, standing in stark contrast to the anonymous tickets bought at an ordinary counter.

I skipped work 30 minutes early to make the 17:46 from Cologne main-station. As planned, I arrived at roughly 17:30, allowing me to pick up a guide-book without risking missing the train. However, I immediately found that my train had a delay of 90 (!) minutes...


Addendum:

Concerning the mixed mentions of Cologne and Düsseldorf, I suspect the following:

The project at hand took place in Cologne and, with the post-work departure, I left from the Cologne station. Had everything gone according to the original plan, I would have begun my travels on a work-free day and left from Düsseldorf, where I lived.


Left with almost 100 minutes to wait after having bought the guide-book, I retired to a nearby restaurant where I tried to save some productiveness through an intense study of the guide-book. This happened to be a Chinese restaurant—and China and South-East Asia were to remain surprisingly important over the following few days.

At roughly 19:00 I returned to the train station—and found that my train had now disappeared entirely, presumably cancelled. Through a stroke of sheer luck, a second train travelling to Amsterdam left at 19:17, allowing me to not lose more than a marginal additional amount of time.

However, with a further > 20 minutes delay under way, I arrived in Amsterdam roughly two hours later than I had intended. To be specific > 22:20. In another departure from my normal procedure (and in very stark contrast to my 2012 travel), I took a taxi to my hotel, checked-in, and dropped dead in bed.

2013-02-09: Tropenmuseum, southern part of the city

I had semi-deliberately picked a hotel close to the Museumplein, which contains several of the main museums of Amsterdam (and Holland, in general). Reading up, however, it seemed that all but the van-Gogh-museum were undergoing renovations at the time. Thus, this became my first choice for the day.


Side-note:

Why “semi-”? My investigations had been comparatively short and focused on finding a reasonably priced hotel in a sensible spot. The closeness of Museumplein saved my hotel (Hotel City Garden) from missing out on the second criterion, being unnecessarily far from the inner city and the train station.


The museum, however, did not open until ten–and I was finished with breakfast before eight. Therefore, I decided to spend the interim time seeing a bit of the local surroundings. While this was rewarding (including some early street-activity to set up outdoor markets and a surprising World Trade Center), I was also met with several signs that depressingly claimed that the van-Gogh-museum was ... under-going renovation. (With some parts of the collection available elsewhere.) Of course, I could still give the Museumplein a try; however, during my wanderings, I ran into the Tropenmuseum (“tropical museum”, dealing mostly with the countries with which the VOC, the Dutch East-Indian company, had interacted).

In the circumstances, this seemed a natural choice, even if it moved the focus of my visit away from the country that I actually was visiting.

The museum contained three main floors:

The ground-floor contained a temporary exhibition with a number of interesting objects, although most of these were things that I had already seen in variations elsewhere. The one thing that truly stood out, both literally and figuratively, was ancestral sculptures of the [see addendum], which stretched two stories upwards. (And stood were they stood for reasons of space—they were actually part of the permanent exhibits.) While somewhat akin to the totem poles of North-America, they were still quite different—indeed, different from anything I had so far seen or conceived of: Grotesque, yet fascinating, assemblages of human (or near human) figures carved out of wood, forming high poles with a beak (for want of a better word, “beak” is misleading) of further figures standing out into the room. I rarely see something truly novel (to me; to the locals these items were, obviously, old news) these days, and the benefit of a completely new impulse and the opportunity to experience the fascinated surprise of a small child again, well, that I deeply appreciate.


Addendum:

I had noted the creators of the ancestral sculptures as “TODO”, with the apparent intention of later providing an unremembered name. By 2024, my memory is chanceless and the further research would be needed to “fill in the blank”—maybe, even an inquiry with the museum.


Unfortunately, many other parts of the ground floor were downright uninteresting, there were problems with screaming and running children (what idiot brings them to a museum?!?), and parts of the exhibition seemed to have a decidedly “Westerns/colonials are bad; Easterners/natives are good” angle. The latter included many formulations going in the direction of “You are all prejudiced, let us enlighten you!”, the grossly incorrect claim that the very existence of races were an outdated prejudice rejected by modern science, and almost ridiculing a beautiful painting of a native (by a Dutchman) in comparison to a crude shadow-theater doll by a native [see addendum] (even failing to consider that the one was art, in it self, while the other was a tool for artistic performance and should, in it self, be seen only as craft. Indeed, a highly disturbing formulation on one of the later floors went as far as too claim that after 9/11 all Westerners thought of Arabs (Muslims?) as terrorists—which says more about the intellectual level and lack of objectivity of the museum staff than of the average Westerner.


Addendum:

Here, we have the same issue of a long-standing “TODO”. Contextually, something like “Indonesian”, “Balinese”, “Javanese” might be correct.


The second floor was considerably more interesting, the lack of a second revelation aside and with some reservations for the insufficient amounts of written information to accompany and explain the displayed items—often resulting in more of a visual experience than a learning experience.

Roughly 3/7ths of the floor contained an interesting exhibition on Indonesia, the VOC, and the Dutch-Indonesian interaction, with minor parts dealing with other nearby countries. A notable observation is that the pre-VOC Indonesia appeared to be very highly developed, more comparable to India than to e.g. the nearby New Guinea. A particular focus was put on Java (incidentally including several pictures of extraordinarily pretty girls). The many krises were particularly notable—and this was one of the points were additional background information was given in decent manner. (Including that the handle traditionally was formed in the image of Garuda, but that this tradition waned with the increasing Muslim influence.)

A further 3/7ths dealt with just New Guinea, which lived up to its reputation as a stone-age society. This included considerable ancestor worship (which tends to be a starting point of religion), use of crude ceremonial masks, absence of actual ships in favour of canoes or raft-like constructs (the use of the catamaran principle notwithstanding), and very primitive weapons.


Addendum:

The “ships” is from the original, written with a reasonably fresh memory; however, based on first principles, “boats” seems a better match from a memory-less 2024 perspective.



Side-note:

However, I noted some interesting parallels to my own not-so-far-away ancestors—the Vikings. While the Vikings lived in a considerably more highly developed society, and moved on considerably earlier, it should not be forgotten that the northern parts of Europe trailed the southern parts until comparatively recently, e.g. with the onset of the Middle Ages coming some five hundred years later and nothing even resembling a Greek or Roman civilisation a thousand years earlier.

Consider e.g. similarities in some pattering, the comparatively martially oriented society, and the use of ships/canoes with dragon respectively crocodile heads.


Unfortunately, with a great repetition of objects and little discussion of these objects, it would have taken considerable effort to gain a true benefit (through deeper comparisons) than I had the energy for at this stage, seeing that I had hit the four hour mark at the end of this part.

The remaining 1/7th focused on India; however, contained mostly things that I already knew (at least to some degree) from other contexts, e.g. the traditional clothes that I have seen in a number of “Bollywood” movies.

The third floor contained mostly attempts to capture the “street feeling” or general living conditions/way-of-life in various countries in southwest Asia, north Africa and Latin-America. Again the proportion of things that I was already somewhat familiar with was too high too really keep my interest at this late stage, although there was some additional background information present that added value to e.g. the parts dealing with Mexico. (Then again, one might come away with the stereotypical impression that Mexicans drink cervesa, watch professional wrestling, obsess about the dead, etc. Whether this is truly helpful in building an image of Mexicans could be disputed.) In all, I likely spent roughly half-an hour here; and while I would likely have put in more time, had I been fresher, I doubt that I would have moved beyond an hour.

I probably left the museum around four o’clock and proceeding to walk around a little more, slowly drawing near to the hotel. I bought some edibles and retired for the day at roughly five.

2013-02-10: Grachten, Anne Frank, city centre

The Sunday started in a similar manner: A hearty breakfast, a long walk seeing parts of the city (in particular, the “Grachten” or canals), and then a museum (of sorts)—“Anne Frank Huis”, the famous building in which Anne Frank was in hiding during most of the time of her diary writing.

Having read the diary on no less than four occasions, I was deeply interested in actually seeing the house and getting a better understanding of the (physical) living conditions, the layout of the house, how the rooms actually looked, ... Notably, there were some aspects which simply does not come across when just reading the diary, e.g. break-neck stairs, the depressing light, or how small specifically Anne’s and Fritz’ room was for two persons to live in. A particular bonus was seeing some very concrete traces of her life through images of e.g. movie stars still glued to the walls.


Side-note:

Assuming that the window covers and electric lights currently in use are roughly as strong as the originals, light was not a problem for most activities—they did not live in an underground cellar at candle light. However, the overall impression is a depressing dreariness, unlikely to have done anything positive for their already severely strained happiness.

Then there is the possibility that the modern lights are stronger, even though the old sockets appear to be used (with no additional light sources).


On the downside, the attic was sealed off and could not be visited, even if parts of it could be seen looking up from Peter’s room (which contains the stairs to the attic). A disputable decision (but one made by Otto Frank, himself) is to keep the rooms bare of furniture: On the one hand, this gives the visitors more space and gives a better impression of the rooms, per se, but it also gives worse insight into the living conditions. Some remedy is given by scale models of the two main floors which do contain an approximation of the original furniture. A further argument anti-furniture is that it would have been necessary to use copies that could have given an incorrect impression. (For one thing, the originals were large cleared out after the raid and need not have been restorable; for another, keeping the originals touchable by tourists would likely be a bad idea.)

Eventually leaving the building (after roughly two hours), I was surprised to see a very long queue leading up to the entry—I had been wise to take my guide-book’s advice of an early visit. While I found the visit very worth-while to me, considering that I have at times had a genuine interest in Anne Frank, I doubt that a visit makes sense for such a large number of visitors: Apart from the bare rooms, there is not much additional content in the more “museumy” parts and, in my experience, genuine interest tends to be somewhat rare. Likely, a considerable part of the visitors are more on wants-to-see-the-home-of-someone-famous level, which to me seems both wasteful and a little tasteless, considering the circumstances. (Of course, this is just conjuncture and could be unfair.)

Following this, from possibly 11:30 to roughly 18:00, I spent time walking the city centre, parts of the Grachten, visiting a few stores, and having a steak dinner. Visiting the mall “Bijenkorf” proved an unexpected delight and highlight—not because there was anything special to see or (contemplate) buying, but due to a performance of three excellent (in my highly limited judgment) Chinese [see addendum] players, which I had the opportunity to observe from above for possibly half-an-hour. (Apparently, my visit overlapped with the Chinese New Year, and this performance was part of the celebrations in Chinese-rich Amsterdam.)


Addendum:

And again a “TODO”: The correct term might have been “guzheng”, based on some very quick research, but my memory is too faded to say for certain—and I might not be able to tell two too similar instruments from each other.


The rest of the day I spent in bed, reading, and with a comparatively early sleep.

2013-02-11: Rijksmuseum, city centre, travel back

After the “van Gogh”-fiasko two days earlier, I wanted to have at least some advantage from the Museumsplein and (after checking out shortly after nine) decided to investigate what opportunities might still be left. As promised by the guide-book, one wing of the Rijksmuseum was still open—and sufficiently full of interesting things that my ability to concentrate was not up to the task of even giving half of what there was to see a fair viewing. In the end, I spent roughly five-and-a-half hours there, with an understandably greater benefit from the first half of the exhibits, including a very interesting model of a VOC-ship in the entry hall, four large grisaille paintings at the beginning of the first floor, and various other paintings. In the continuation, the mini-hall with landscape paintings was also very interesting, as were some rich-in-perspective paintings. The main draw of the exhibit was Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”. Unfortunately, this painting came very close to the end, which reduced the gains possible at that stage. However, seeing it in real-life and full-format was still very different from seeing it in smaller copies. I was particular struck by how the two center characters literally seem to reach out of the painting—I cannot recall ever seeing such a 3D-effect in anything two-dimensional not using far later technologies (e.g. holograms; even “3D” drawings made by computer might be insufficient).


Addendum:

The original contained a few cases of “TODO” referring to specific painters. At the time, this might have been to check spellings; in 2024, I have no clue about the names by any spelling.


After the museum, now well past 15 o’clock, I walked into town passing through the city center (but without any greater interest), reached the main station, and bought a ticket for the 18:34 back home. (I could have managed the 16:34 with a margin; however, I was wary of getting back “too soon” due to the intense carnival activities of the day, and I also wanted to spend some more time getting an impression of the city—after a quick meal and some time to rest my legs and brain.)

My walks covered mostly a sub-set of what I had already seen; however, with some more time spent actually looking at specific buildings e.g. the Oude Kerk and improving my “mental map” somewhat.

I arrived back at the station a little pre-maturely, shortly after 18 o’clock, and had problems killing the time with comparatively few stores of interest available. Fortunately, the train arrived at the track well ahead of time, making it easier to read in comfort. The journey back was uneventful and I, surprisingly, arrived home on schedule.