The Amsterdam Cram

20th August 2012 (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

Boff was apologetic about yesterday's botched travel plans so let me decide all the activities today. I managed to show him how to cram a lot into a day without it feeling rushed.

Anne Frank's House: We couldn't buy tickets over the internet or via our hotel so queued
up around the block. I sent Boff out for poffertjes and coffee and orange juice. The experience was excellent, everything a museum should be: preservation, explanation, anecdotes. I got incredibly teary when I saw Anne's room with the pics from magazines she'd glued up on the walls and I don't think I stopped feeling heavy until after I left.

Boff said it was the ultimate tragedy that Mr Frank, obviously a smart man, had put a lot of thought into saving his family. He'd tracked the Allies' movements via radio reports and knew they were on their way before they were ratted out by someone. The most tragic part was that he alone survived while the rest of the family perished in various concentration camps around Europe.

Photo of the day is of the street outside Anne Frank's house, a rather amusing juxtaposition. The thing about Amsterdam is that you have to look out for canals, trams, cars and bikes when crossing the road.

The Tulip Museum: A very different museum explaining the history of tulips, their journey from the Middle East, the Dutch obsession with them, the Tulip Crash, different varieties and current farming techniques. There were a lot of interesting presentation techniques that made this exhibition worth ther 3 euro entry fee despite its small size.

I decided we'd go to Rembrandthuis so we had lunch on the way at a typical cafe (I had croquettes and tomato soup and beer) and then sort of lost each other in a street market. I waited at the corner for 10 minutes then decided to go to Rembrandthuis and just sat in the foyer waiting for Boff to realise that that was the best place to look for me. This is the tragedy of not having working phones overseas. He did eventually find me.

Rembrandthuis: When Rembrandt went bankrupt, the repo people had to do an inventory of everything in his house, which is why the museum has such an accurate record of what it contained. While some of the objects are replicas, a lot of the furniture was actually Rembrandt's and has been preserved in the place where they were kept. Interesting snippet: People in those days used to sleeping sitting up because they believed you would die if too much blood went to your head. That's why all the beds are so small (not because people were 50cm shorter in those days, as I hypothesised).

Apart from containing the painter's domestic artefacts, the museum also held his and his contemporaries' paintings (he was a dealer as well as an artist), a storeroom for his interesting ephemera and, of course, his studio. The studio contained two demos that were also fascinating in themselves: a guy did a paint mixing demo and the lady did an etching demo.

Artis Zoo: We eventually found ourselves at Artis Zoo (what did you expect of 'my day'?!). It had just gone 4.30pm and the staff kept reminding us that they would close at 6pm. We told them it was okay, we would go through quite quickly. It didn't look like Artis had any animals that I hadn't seen before so we just headed for my favourites only to find out that there were a lot of areas where the animals roamed free, for example lemur 'island', which the ruffed lemurs could leave if they wanted to (there were no physical barriers) but were content to stay on.

Artis also had a few humid houses where they kept saki monkeys and iguanas and birds. These tripled-doored enclosures meant that observers could wander through in commune with the animals without accidentally letting them out. We got some great photos. I also saw a hyrax for the first time. Also sat in front of the penguin pool watching one female get chased by a dozen males and constantly escaping but then going back into the fray (crazy chick) and the seal pool where babies were nursing and the mothers barked while feeding them. Eventually a security guard on a bike told us we had to leave in 15 minutes, at 7.30pm; they had let us stay in an extra 90 minutes.

Had dinner at an Indonesian restaurant (this was actually Boff's suggestion but it turned out to be a good one because the banquet was delicious) and then visited the red light district on the way home. There wasn't anything there that I found shocking (no, we didn't go to the live sex show) though we did spend our last 14 euro or so on double entry to The Erotic Museum (see what I did there?). It wasn't as titillating as I'd hoped, but it did have some interesting historic stuff on the lower floors.

We spent a lot of money in Amsterdam, about 300 euro, which was about twice what we were doing in comparable cities. In some ways maybe it was a good thing we were only there for a day.

Mess and noise

15th August 2012 (Lille, France)

Lille has a cute little zoo near the Citadelle with free entry. Considering this, I was quite impressed with the kinds of animals they had, including two white rhinos and a kinkajou, the first time I've seen these, quite a collection of American animals like tapirs, capybara (with babies), mara and macaws, and semi-exotics like red pandas and a fishing cat. I witnessed a small capuchin monkey teasing a baby pelican.

I'd budgeted the morning for the zoo but was struggling after just over one hour so went to the Palais des Beaux Arts. Upstairs they have European paintings from the 16th-20th century (and take particular pride in their Rubens—is the plural of Rubens 'Rubenses'?) but I found a lot of the paintings of religious saints gazing in agony during martyrdom boring compared to the temporary exhibition on Babel.

Photo of the day is a Tower of Babel made with books. No particular books, just lots of them. There were a lot of photo collages done by Chinese artists with tower-like structure showing the end of civilisation which were also striking, plus the original Bruegel, on loan from somewhere or other. I found the sculpture section interesting too.

I emerged from the museum a few hours later only to find that it had been a public holiday the whole time and a lot of the cafes and restaurants were closed. I ended up having a supermarket lunch by the fountain before going to meet Boff, who had won his afternoon game.

He wanted to see the zoo so we ended up walking there despite the fact that he thought I should be conserving energy to fight my lurgy (well, we had no choice as buses and taxis were scarce) and then ate dinner at a restaurant that used to be a porn cinema. It was one of very few open.

We decided to catch the metro back to the hotel and had these horrible children flock around us trying to steal our money without taking it from us. I put money in the ticket machine and a girl pressed the 'cancel' button and a boy shoved his hand in the return slot to grab it. Another girl stood nearby as a lookout, I'm guessing also to provide cover from CCTV. Luckily we were cluey enough to figure out what was happening so Boff covered the buttons so the girl couldn't press them and I guarded the return slot shoving the boy's hands out of the way shouting "ne touchez pas" (don't touch). Oh the irony: I didn't have enough French to swear at them.

Ich bin kein Berliner

4th August 2012 (Berlin, Germany)

Berlin has two zoos: the oldest one is located in the west (just a couple of train stops from our hotel—merely a coincidence, I protest) and the newer, bigger Tierpark was created after the wall went up in the east. As a result, Berlin has the most zoo animals of any city.

We went to see the original one and were lucky to catch a lot of active animals, in particular the primates, a pacing panda waiting to be fed, and swimming, playing penguins. Photo of the day is some baboons. The little one scrambled down the rocks then turned around, only to lose its footing; luckily there were some helping hands close by.

We found it hard to leave, mostly because we couldn't find the exit but also because we kept seeing animal displays we hadn't seen before.

Headed to Potsdamer Platz and the Dali Museum. I'm still not entirely sure why it's in Berlin as opposed to his native Spain but I'm not complaining. It was the third Dali exhibition I've seen, the others being in Melbourne and Singapore, and different to both of those. The Melbourne exhibition focused a lot on his paintings and some sculpture and objects, while the Singapore exhibition had a lot of sculpture and illustrations. This one consisted of commissioned illustrations in the main, as well as sketches, commercial commissions (medals from the LA Olympic Games, travel ads etc) and a couple of sculpted works. Every time I see his work I'm reminded how much of a genius he is. Have you noticed the way he draws hair?

Boff wanted to see a bombed out church in the Tiergarten but we got to where the map said it was and there was a perfectly intact church in its place. We later found out that they decided to build a church next to the ruins so we "missed it by that much".

Also went up the Victory Monument, which cemented the fact that Berlin just isn't a very interesting city from above, and then went to Checkpoint Charlie where there is a vast museum that the owner started after World War II, even before the wall went up.

We arrived a touch under 80 minutes before closing and had to convince the cashier to sell us tickets because she was adamant it would take 90 minutes to do the whole thing. Well, after doing what ended up being a cursory tour of the place, you could spend three days there and still not see everything. My favourite part was all the escape stories (I don't care much for the politics) and even they were hard to single out among the collage of stuff in the place unless they had an artefact attached (e.g. cars in which people smuggled other people).

After the museum closed (the cash register closed, giving us no warning while we were browsing the souvenir shop) we went out to take photos of Checkpoint Charlie then, in true Berlin style, had a kebab for dinner.

P.S: The title of this post is a reference to JFK's speech in which he utters the words "Ich bin ein Berliner"—I am a Berliner—whereas mine says I am not a Berliner.

Getting busy

26th July 2012 (Budapest, Hungary)
Walked to the train station (Keleti) via yet another on-the-go cheese and bread breakfast. Pekseg, I quickly learnt, is the Hungarian word for bakery. We went to get my Eurail pass stamped and reserve a sleeper ticket for our journey to Poprad-Tatry (in the High Tatras) but the lady refused to sell us a reservation, citing the short journey (2.5 hours to Bratislava, 4 hours from Bratislava to Poprad-Tatry) as a reason not to get sleepers.

We then walked through City Park to Heroes' Square. There is a castle on the lake there that looks like different parts of it was made in different eras, but charming all the same.

We wanted to go to the art gallery, which was highly receommended by my Hungarian friend Emese but it was closed as it was in between exhibitions. Instead we wandered through Heroes' Square and then went to the fine art museum on the other side, which had ancient pottery on the bottom level and European art on the top. Things began to devolve when I started saying things like, "he's going in for the blowjob" about a painting of Diana and Actaeon, then Boff and I started making up stories about the paintings until we could walk the galleries no more and went downstairs to have lunch.

After that we went to Budapest Zoo next door. It was quite a good zoo, very big (too much to see in the few hours we had allocated) and mostly modern, especially a natural history education centre in the middle that had live exhibits. The photo of the day is a pair of tamarins. I stood at the window trying to see them when one came and sat on the window sill and chittered at me. I called Boff over and as he bent down to take a photo another came along...

We ate dinner at a place called The Owl House, whose menu promised some authentic Hungarian cuisine. Yes, there was goulash and paprikash involved. They played George Michael's 'Ladies & Gentlemen' right the way through.

We took the night train to Bratislava. It turned out that I'd forgotten to get my Eurail pass stamped so I had to pay for a ticket from Budapest to the Slovakian border, then a Slovak inspector charged me from the border to Bratislava. We had nice carriage of passengers, a Czech businessman, a young Hungarian couple on their way to Berlin who helped us with the militant Hungarian ticket inspector, and a Canadian lady called Kathleen who ended up travelling with us to Poprad-Tatry.

Boff, Kathleen and I switched trains at Bratislava (I got my pass stamped at the station) and ended up in a crowded carriage of dodgy-looking Slavic men and found it very difficult to sleep for the four-hour journey.

Self Portrait with Goat

At Kyoto Zoo

Yeah, that's right, I went to the ZOO in a city of world heritage-listed temples. You got a PROBLEM with that?

Recovery

In Which Dr Witmol Starts With A Champagne, Argues About Nachos, Eats At Krispy Kreme, Shoots a Jager Bomb And Wakes Up In A Pool Of Giraffe Saliva.

Said goodbye to my editor who moves on to greener pastures with no hard feelings. Drank lots. Ate food that I shouldn't have. Ripped open my hand on the zipper of my boot (this was quite surprising to me at the time - all I could do was watch the blood drip onto the footpath with a strange sense of amazement).

Went to Gla's birthday/end of exams gathering at The Royal George (the downmarket version of The Ivy) and met a bunch of accounting types. Between bars we stopped at Krispy Kreme, the fount of all that's evil in the world, and vaguely remember losing my bag of cinnamon fun bun (their sugary version of an Easter bun) between the counter and the ice cream fridge. Rescued by Gla's friend, who I later repaid by destroying his cigarettes. I like to think of it as saving his life.

Bar 333 was loud so instead of yelling at each other we just had Jager bombs and started dancing. At some point, Bun Rescuer's friend took a photo of me and later asked me for my number, of which I gave him, and he asked me out yesterday so I mustn't have looked as trashed as I felt. Then five of us went to karaoke at Echo Point and then I used my last $20 to get a taxi home.

Not long after I fell asleep I had to wake up again because I'd been invited to a behind-the-scenes of the zoo (one of Skippy's friends works there) and had to walk to Neutral Bay to catch a bus. It was awesome!

Keeper does tours in the Australian mammals section so we started at the education centre patting snakes and lizards, then moved into the nocturnal section where we saw the zoo kitchen; the funniest part was seeing Keeper take out a plastic container full of frozen baby mice and then waving around a frozen rat. We fed the bilbies and the potoroos and then headed out to take a look at a koala, pat an echidna and a quokka. The quokka was especially adorable (right).

Then Keeper managed to get us into the Giraffe Encounters later in the afternoon but then had to start her shift. We had some time to wander around so saw the bird show (finally managed to see my condor in action) and then I split from the group to go and see the condor habitat and wander around on my own. Due to lack of sleep I kept finding all these areas devoid of animals and seriously slowed down quite a bit as the afternoon became drowsier.

By the time I arrived at the giraffe enclosure for my Encounter I was practically crawling up the hill. But after I handed over my ticket and fed the four of them carrots, I perked up significantly. There's nothing quite like having your hands covered in giraffe saliva to make you more alert. One of the giraffes, who I think went by the name of Safara (below), kept lolling her tongue around and slobbering everywhere. It was quite endearing.



Nothing else quite as interesting happened for the rest of the weekend (I turned off all the electricity in my apartment during Earth Hour, then promptly fell asleep in the couch) so that's where I'll leave you.

The Zuman Race

I went to Taronga Zoo today. I don't generally make a habit of going when it's a) a weekend; or b) sunny because then there are likely to be people around and I wouldn't want that, would I? However, as I'd bought a yearly pass (which expires at the end of this month) and hadn't used it at all, I thought I'd go at least once so I didn't feel as if I'd wasted $80 (or whatever it is now... I forget). I may even be able to squeeze in another visit during the Easter break. I found out that the entrance fee has gone up to a phenomenal $37 for an adult, which is $10 more than it was five years ago so I may only need to visit one more time to get close to what I paid.

Anyway, part of the reason I went is because I have writer's block. I have so many ideas running around in my head on things to write that not only am I not writing any of them, I'm not furthering the most important project ie my novel. Going to the zoo, I believed, would be a great idea because sitting on the lawn in front of the aviary of my South American friends, the Andean condors, has yielded quite a lot in the past. Besides, I thought the concept of captivity would rub off nicely to aid my novel.

Instead, I managed to think of two solid plots for short stories and an ephemeral one for a novel. Sigh. And I took lots of photos. Here are a few of my favourites:

Zebra

Meerkat acting as a sentinel

Giraffes in a row

Dingo contemplating a nap

As you can see, I like when animals look pensive. I would also like to note that it is the first time I've ever seen the Clouded Leopard at Taronga. Every time prior to this, the enclosure has either been empty or I couldn't find the beast. It's a lot smaller than I thought (no pics, sorry), about the size of a medium dog, but very prettily patterned.

On the way home I remembered to buy laundry liquid but forgot to buy myself a Creme Egg.