I was walking back from the Museumplein on the weekend, and thinking about where I was, and realised that there were several things I'm gonna miss when I'm back in North America so I started making a list. I'm going to miss Amsterdam, quite a bit. It's the major European city that I've come to know the best at this point, and I enjoy it. It's old, it's got a fun vibe, it's easy to wander around in, and there's awesome museums. I'm going to miss M. He's quite the character, and he's fun. The rest has to do with being in Europe specifically. I'm going to miss the knowledge that if I have enough time and money I could just pop over to visit my cousins in Germany for a few days, or spend a week in Italy. I'm going to miss the sheer number of cultures within easy travel distance, and wealth of history and ideas you can stumble across. I'm going to miss my morning dose of NPR, 'cause I have a feeling I'm not going to listen to it as frequently as I do now once I get home. And I'm going to miss having the BBC on my television.
On another note, I spent most of last weekend in the van Gogh museum. I've seen pictures of his paintings before but I didn't really like the ones that get shown most frequently. A weekend surrounded by his work has changed my opinion quite a bit. You don't get the full impact of the colours and brushwork from a copy, especially if it's not actual size. And in many of the prints I've seen it hasn't shown the separation of the colours properly. His early work is good, but all the works I love are from after he went to Paris. The colours explode, and the subjects get more varied. I particularly like his Asian phase. Two of my favourites are from that period, and a couple from the last few months of his life. All in all, a very well spent weekend.
And this weekend was much slower, though I did manage to fit two museum/exhibitions in one day. The EYE film institutes current exhibit and the Rembrandthuis. That was pretty cool.
Seven weeks to go. Bye.
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