The Rumours of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Things were pretty crazy when I got back from Vienna, what with rehearsals and mad last-minute practicing for the competition. But then I had to most ridiculous day ever on Monday. I was at school practicing, and had a lesson, but since it was the first day of the spring vacation the school closed at 4. Crazy, I know. So at 4 I headed over to the gym to get in a little working out, since it's also supposed to help with stress relief. I finished at about 6 and hopped on my bike to go home. It was dark and rainy, but that's not very unusual for Amsterdam. I was taking my usual route home, and lo and behold I get hit by a car! It was totally ridiculous. I was on the main street and the car was coming up on one of the side streets, and I saw him coming so I was keeping an eye on him. He started to slow down as he approached the intersection so I thought "great, he's going to yield like he's supposed to" and I keep on going. Then as soon as I'm in the intersection he just speeds up and runs right into me! I was completely in shock - shock that I had actually just been hit by a car. But luckily for me, I'm used to getting in all kinds of accidents so I got out relatively unscathed. Over the years I've learned how to fall properly :) Just some bruises (hip and shoulder), scrapes (shoulder), and a super swollen toe. I'm not sure how I banged just my one toe, but I did and now I have to walk funny for 2 weeks. But the absolute best part is that I was pretty OK, my bike was OK, and my viola was OK. So I got back on my bike and proceeded on my way. And I shit you not, about 4 blocks later a frikkin scooter trying to run a light runs right into my front wheel. By this time I was just in total disbelief. And after very bitchily pointing out that he was totally in the wrong I got his details (so that he could pay to have my bike fixed) and locked my totally kaput bike up to a pole. I then hobbled over to catch the tram home.
The next day was the first round of the viola competition, and I'm not sure if getting hit by a car helped or hampered my chances. If anything, it gave me something to keep my mind off the 'big day'. I actually played quite well. I was really happy with my performance, but unfortunately didn't make it through to the 2nd round. The level was really high, but I can't really say how I compared since I didn't hear anyone but me play. I'm not sure if it's particularly kosher to say either, but I was kind of happy not to move on. It's sort of stupid, but the 2nd round was at 10 am and I was already so overtired and just sore...... I ended up spending yesterday in bed, popping pain killers and watching downloaded tv. I think was actually more sore yesterday than on Tuesday, but today I'm definitely feeling better. Although I seem to have sprung another bruise! Very strange indeed, but who can say whether it was from the car or just from me. The viola festival is still going, even though the competition is over, so i'll be busy for another couple of days with that. Saturday night is the big final concert where we're all playing a piece for solo viola (Nobuko, natuurlijk) and and orchestra of violas (the rest of us - including violists from most of the major orchestras in the Netherlands) by a composer from Haarlem. The first rehearsal is tomorrow morning, so we shall see how this crazy viola piece works out.

Wien: alles andere Tagen

Well I'm back home safe in Amsterdam, and recovering from Vienna. Really the only recovery necessary is the fact that I had to get up so darned early to go to the airport this morning so I'm a wee bit tired. But back to Wien. On Sunday we went out for a bit of sightseeing. Moody really wanted to take me to the Nachmarkt, but it ended up being all shut up. Hard to say whether it was the fact if was Sunday, or if it was just closed for the season, but everything was closed. So we ended up wandering through the rain to a little cafe where the waiter was rude and the food was ok. Ah, Vienna. Then we went our separate ways - Moody went back to his place to get some practicing in and I went exploring. I was on a mission to find as many composer's houses as I could. I started with the Mozarthaus, where he lived for 2 years when he composed the Marriage of Figaro. Then I went to the Johann Strauss haus, where Johann the younger lived and the very apartment where he composed the Blue Danube. Then I wandered over to the "Schubert commemorative rooms". Because though he didn't actually live there, he died in that apartment (it was his brother's place). But by then I was cold and wet and needed to practice so I headed back to Moody's place to dry out, warm up, and practice a bit myself. That night we headed to the Wiener Staatsoper to see Salome. We got last minute standing room tickets, and it was really great. I wouldn't want to stand for a long opera, but Salome was a very manageable 1.5 hours. Moody started talking to Emannuel (the guy standing next to him), and so we invited him out for a drink after with us. We went to this old cafe that was started by a Czech couple after the war. It was a very cool old bar, fairly unchanged by the years. These types of places are quite common in Vienna, where they really like to preserve things as the way they have been for hundreds of years. Tradition! Moody and I commented several times that it's a strange concept for us North Americans, since even if you live in an old building ideally it has been gutted and completely remodelled and renovated to be totally modern. But in Vienna they like to keep things just as they were for the last 100 years or so. It's good and bad - it's nice that these traditions are so important to them, but at the same time it seems like sometimes they are just being crushed by the weight of all this tradition because it doesn't allow them to explore new options.
On Monday I had my Verbier audition, so that kind of dominated the plans for the day. It went well (I thought), but I suppose I will just have to wait and see. We did go for a walk around town and then I went and wandered around Schloss Belvedere. It's a big old Baroque palace that now holds a really nice art gallery, which features A LOT of Klimt. We had originally planned to go see the Küchl-Quartett on Monday night, but both Moody and I felt like a night in so we just hung out and then met up with our new friend Emmanuel for a drink. Hilariously enough, he had gone to the Küchl-Quartett concert. Then on Tuesday we hung around in the morning until we were really starving, and then we went to an Irish pub in the centre to celebrate Moody's deportation. He's had no end of beauraucratic hassles in Austria, and now that his residence permit is finally ready they won't give it to him because they took longer than 3 months to process it (thus making him an illegal resident in Europe). So he has to leave the Euro-zone and then come back. Crazy. He was originally thinking of going to Zagreb (Croatia) but then a friend of his who's a diplomat told him that the Eastern non-Euro countries will charge you up to 400 Euros to enter if they see that you're past your three months. So he's going to London instead because at least in London we know how the beauraucracy works because it's so similar to Canada. Anyways, we went and ate some nice British Isles pub food in preparation for his trip to the homeland. Then we went to the Küchl-Quartett concert at the Musikverein. The Concertgebouw orchestra was playing in the big hall, and their concert was totally sold out so there was a billion people there. The Küchl-Quartett concert was very interesting - they're the principal players of the Vienna Phil, and they play very much in the traditional Viennese style. It was great for the first half of the program (Haydn and Mozart), but not so much for the second half (Shostakovich). They just played the Shosti too......nice. It was both boring and annoying, because they would really shy away from the grating harmonies and try and make them sound as pretty as they could. This is definitely an instance where the Viennese traditions don't allow them to explore new horizons. Anyways after the concert Moody and I were wandering through Stephansplatz on our way to the opera bar when who should we run into but Emmanuel! He was with a colleague of his, heading out for a drink after their meetings. So they joined us to the opera bar for a last night out on the Wiener town. Then this morning I got up at an ungodly early hour to catch the train to the airport. I got to have a nap this afternoon, but it was very necessary because I had a trio rehearsal and then a rehearsal for this Icelandic music day concert I'm playing on Saturday. Now I'm just preparing for the competition next week. No rest for the wicked.

Wien: erster Tag

It's been a while I know. Busy like a beaver, as they say. I had a good trip to Groningen last weekend, and played a very fun concert on Tuesday in the Oosterport with a string orchestra + jazz combo. Fun times. I caught the train back to Amsterdam on Tuesday after the concert since I had to be back in A'dam for a class at 10 am on Wednesday morning. I caught the train that runs straight from Groningen to Schiphol airport (which is just one stop from mine), and sat back with my magazine and iPod. I glanced outside and noticed it had started snowing, and thought nothing of it. Then the train stopped at Amsersfoort, and everybody mysteriously got off. Then I noticed the sign outside said that the train was going back to Groningen. So because it snowed 1 cm, it got all the trains off schedule and instead of going to Schiphol it was just turning around at Amersfoort. So annoying. So I had to jump on a stop-trein (one of those slow commuter trains that stops at every station) to Amsterdam Centraal, and then catch another train to my stop. It was very annoying. Nobuko Imai also came again this week to give some lessons, and since I'm missing two weeks worth of lessons with my own teacher due to my travelling schedule I got two lessons booked with her - 1 hour on Thursday and 1 hour on Friday. But luckily for me (and unluckily for them) the person with the lesson after me on Thursday didn't show up, so Nobuko just gave me a two hour lesson. It was pretty sweet. And she gave me the strings off her viola. Not quite literally, but close. She was convinced that I could produce a bigger sound with different strings and so she dug around in her case and found some of her used strings to try out on my viola. She assured me she only used them for a few days, and gave me 3 out of 4 new strings. And she was right - I can produce a bigger sound! Bully for me. Today I got up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am to go to the airport to catch my flight to Vienna. My flight wasn't until 7:15, and getting there at 6:15 would have been fine, but so many years of flying Air Canada and getting hassled and treated like shit all the time has made me fearful of flying, so I decided to go almost 2 hours early just because. It puts my mind at ease, even though at Schiphol nobody bats their eyes twice and me and my viola. It was also funny because I didn't have to go through passport control (because I was travelling within the EU), but I still got to shop duty-free and got breakfast on my flight (because I guess it's still technically international). I was actually a little surprised when they said they would be coming around with breakfast, since I'm now used to flights in Canada up to 5 hours where they give you jack and make you pay $10 for a crusty old sandwich. God I love Europe. Anyways, my trip to Vienna is slightly business and slightly pleasure. On Monday I have an audition for the Verbier Festival Orchestra, but since my old pal Moody (fellow Canadian violist) is going to school in Vienna now I'm also taking a sort of mini-break to stay with him and do some sight-seeing. Today we walked around, and then took a tour of the Vienna State Opera House. It was pretty cool - and we're going to try to go see Salome tomorrow night. They sell standing room only tickets they day of for only 4 euros! And they have this big section where there's just these boards to lean against (for all the standers). It's a pretty sweet deal considering how expensive the normal seats are there, though I'd probably think twice about going to see something like Wagner if I had to stand the whole time...... Then we got some street meat from a vendor (I had a Frankfurter, he had a Currywurst), sat in a park, then went to a cafe for coffee and Sachertorte. Yum. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. We're pondering an overnighter to Zagreb (Croatia) on Monday after my audition. Mostly because Moody has to leave the EU for min 24 hours due to some slight deportation issues, but that's a story for another time. Gute Nacht und gutes Glück.

Nothing To Report

I have nothing new to report, but I'm a little bored since I've been sick in bed since Thursday. Saturday I ventured out to school for a rehearsal, but it was actually quite exhausting. I used up all my energy during the rehearsal, and so during my bike ride home I was sort of in a trance-like state.... Today I was supposed to have a rehearsal but it got cancelled, and since I'm still not feeling well I've decided to take another sick day. I firmly believe that the best thing is rest, especially since this was definitely caused by my over tiredness and over working during the last 2 weeks. However usually a few days in bed and lots of vitamin C takes care of this for me. But not this time apparently. I'm feeling OK now, aside from general tiredness and the fact that I'm so stuffed up is ridiculous. Anyways, I digress. I just had a few things to share. I got this book out of the public library on Saturday called "The Trudeau Vector". It caught my eye because of the title, and it's a medical mystery/conspiracy at a Canadian arctic scientific research base. There was a really funny line in it, where the lone Inuit staffer there was explaining his culture to the protagonist: "We thought that death made storms, that killing a spider would cause rain, that Pierre Trudeau was a shit." It made me laugh :) And secondly, the picture. It's me, trying to break into a nunnery. It's from December, when I met up with someone else from Saskatchewan through Couchsurfing. She's been living in Hong Kong for the last 15 years or so, and she was travelling through during the Christmas holidays. We were both so astonished to be meeting another Saskatchewanite, since the chances of that are statistically quite slim. I took her to the Begijnhof convent in Amsterdam, and she took this picture of me trying to break into the English Reformed Church in the middle of the courtyard. Enjoy, and send me your good energies - I need to get better soon or else!!!

The Review

So the morning after my last post, bright and early at 6:30 am, I caught the train to Groningen to start rehearsing with the chamber orchestra there - Camerata Ardesko. I was there for two days (one night spent on the floor of a Conservatory student house) before heading back to Amsterdam for my Schleswig-Holstein audition on Saturday morning in Den Haag. Of course I was foiled by construction on the route I had mapped out to the Conservatory in Den Haag from the train station. It's actually quite close to the station, but I swear this entire country is always under construction! Every day on my ride to school a new area of my route is under construction and I have to . So, needless to say I was a bit later getting to the Conservatory before my audition that I had planned.....it went OK, but auditions are a funny thing. You practice for hours, and you end up playing for about 5 minutes. And you ALWAYS play worse than you know you can. Gah, auditions. Such a frustrating exercise. Anyways, then on Sunday I played another concert with the Trajectum chamber orchestra from Utrecht, but this time in Amsterdam. Then on Monday morning it was off to Groningen again. It's about a 2.5 hour train ride from Amsterdam, which is of course considered extremely far away. But I have really come to enjoy the train ride - bring a book, sit back with my iPod and relax. It passes so quickly I hardly even notice......I'm so used to travelling much longer distances. One summer I took the Greyound back and forth from Saskatoon to Calgary about 3 times, and those 8 hours just seemed to fly by - so a 2.5 hour train ride to Groningen is a piece of cake! Anyway, while in Groningen the second time I couchsurfed with a family there - Jolanda, Jan and their son Ruben.
I was there from Mon-Thurs, and during my days I hung out with Jolanda and Ruben, and then rehearsed with Camerata Ardesko in the evenings. Ruben is almost 4, and playing with him was a very good opportunity to practice my Dutch since it's the only language he speaks. We had some good times, Ruben and I. He's really into playing the violin, so I even let him play my viola.....it was highly exciting for him. Thursday was the concert, but the concert was in the Grote Kerk in Naarden - which is actually quite close to Amsterdam. So they hired two vans to transport us and our instruments to Naarden from Groningen, but when we were loading them in Groningen the sliding side door on one of them literally fell off when we went to close it. So, the rental place had to be called, and they had to bring a replacement van, and then we had to re-load all our stuff into it, blah blah blah. Needless to say we were late for our soundcheck.
It was a pretty fancy shindig - a private concert bankrolled by the big bank ABN-AMRO for their richest clients. In order to get an invitation to the concert you had to have over 500 000 Euros in your private bank account with ABN-AMRO. So, lots of really rich people. The concert went quite well, and then they had a reception after and we mingled with the audience a bit. Though as these things always go, the musicians were in a corner joking amongst themselves and trying to drink as much free alcohol as could be possible imbibed before getting back into the van, and our interaction with the audience basically consisted of every so often someone coming up to tell us that they enjoyed the concert. Good times. The vans dropped the 4 of us who were heading back to Amsterdam off at Hilversum station, and we caught one of the last trains into Amsterdam. But unfortunately I missed the last train from Amsterdam Centraal to my house, and because I always bike I have no idea how the night buses work or even which one goes to my house so I ended up crashing at Noelle's - she's a cellist on exchange to my school from Sarah Lawrence in the US, and not only was she playing the concert but she also lived not too far from the station and had a spare mattress. Score! But next morning I dutifully got up and went to school to practice, because from Sat-Wed I had an audition every second day. It was horrible. Wargh! But it's over now. It's all over........except for my Verbier audition in February. Saturday was my Britten-Pears orchestra audition, again in Den Haag. Then on Monday I auditioned for PMF (the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan), and on Wed I auditioned for the Concertgebouw. The last was my hilarious long-shot. I really didn't have enough time to prepare properly to actually stand a chance, but I just want to get in the swing of doing auditions. It's a completely different skill-set from actual performing, and since I want to get a job when I graduate I better start practicing auditions now! Anyhoo, I somehow kept myself going through all that craziness, but promptly on Wednesday evening after my last audition I got sick. I think the adrenaline kept my immune system going, and then as soon as the stress was gone it just gave out. So I ended up spending Thursday and Friday in bed, trying to sweat my fever out. Good times. Though last night I did manage to haul my arse out of bed to go see Laurence Power play the Bartok Viola Concerto with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was well worth the 10 euros admission - great stuff. Anyways, I'm still kinda sick, so I'm trying to rest up. Have to keep up my strength for all the very busy and important things I am doing!

Hoe? Wat? Waar?

The holidays are over! It went by too soon........so sad. But also sort of nice to be back at the grind. It's quite a grind though. I'm sort of "commuting" to Groningen to rehearse with a chamber orchestra there for a concert next week, I have an audition this Saturday for the Schleswig-Holstein music festival, then on Sunday I'm playing a concert with Trajectum (the chamber orchestra in Utrecht I sub in). Then it's back to Groningen for rehearsals leading up to the private concert on Thursday next week - it's for the 100 wealthiest clients of the big bank ABN-AMRO. Then I have another audition next Saturday for the Britten-Pears orchestra. Then two days later I have an audition for the Pacific Music Festival, and two days after that is the first round audition for the Concertgebouw! Yeesh.......that's a crazy couple of weeks. Hopefully I'll keep my sanity through it. Check back with me in a couple weeks :S Hope everyone had a happy holidays en een gelukkige nieuw jaar.

Black Angels

I don't have anything new to say. But I thought I'd share the video of our performance of Black Angels. The video quality itself isn't that great, but the sound quality is (the recording guy video'd it on his hand-held camera, but synched it with the quality audio recording). To read up on the piece, you can check this out. The video is hosted by Google video, here. Enjoy!

Prettige Kerstdagen!

Well, not so much has happened since my last post. I'm on holidays, so I've been creating some diversions for myself. Sleeping. Gym. Researching for my Master's project. But no "normal" Christmas activities to be found. It's weird too, because it didn't feel so Christmas-y to me here, partly because it's been such balmy weather! I'm used to freezing my ass off at Christmas time - that's what makes it festive! But it's been anywhere between +5-10C here, so it feels kind of like fall weather to me. It's probably just me though, since I grew up in a sick and twisted atmosphere.....known as Saskatchewan...... I'm getting together this afternoon with some of us ex-pats from the Conservatory who are still hanging around town. We're all kind of bored and lonely, because our social life (aka the school) is closed. :) Just a group of us who are too far from home to go for Xmas - America, Canada, Australia....the non-European continents. Then tomorrow I'm going to a Couchsurfing Boxing Day dinner. But not your traditional fare - it's going to be some sort of vegan Asian food. Starting a new Christmas tradition! Funny tidbit - there's no such thing as boxing day here. There's the Eerste Kerstmas Dag (1st Christmas Day) which is Christmas Day, and the Tweede Kerstmas Dag (Second Christmas Day) which is Boxing Day. Prettige Kerstdagen allemaal!

Holiday!

What an exhausting week! The orchestra concert went quite well, and was a lot of fun. And as is usually the case with tours, we had a bus party after the concert on Sunday. And the best part was that the school bought us beer, wine, and munchies to consume on the bus. They really know how to placate the music student masses! Yesterday was Melissa's end exam, and our performance of Black Angels. It was really amazing to perform, and I must confess I'm a little sad that we don't have a chance to perform it again. And after Melissa's exam we went out with her parents for dinner and then went to the Waterhole (a dive bar at the Liedseplein). Greg's band performed a set at the open mic night there, and then we hung out and partied it up. Then Raf, Jimmy, Olaf, Mel, and I all headed back to Melissa's place in Amsterdam North and had a slumber party! Today I've been catching up on things that have fallen by the way-side a bit. Already planning my schedule for January and February....... I'm looking forward to the holidays, but I have a lot of work to do! It's unfortunate that the school is going to be closed for 2 weeks, from December 22-Jan 5th. I can practice at home, but it's just not the same.... And speaking of home, I just found out today that I'm going to be moving in February to Amsterdam North. My landlady is buying an apartment there, so we're moving on up. It's actually closer to school than I am now, so that will be nice. And it's a really nice neighbourhood with a big park nearby. And I'll ride the ferry every day!

Mijn Sinterklaas-gedichte

For my Dutch class part of our homework for this week was to write a Sinterklaas poem. So here it is, for your perusal (the translation follows the Dutch).

Op de avond van Sinterklaas
Eten wij broodjes en kaas.
De mannen hebben lange baarden,
Maar geen appelen voor the paarden.
Dan horen wij een geluid klop:
Kijk! Daar draait de deur knop!
Het was de zwarte man, naam Piet,
Hij heeft zijn zak niet.
In plaats daar van brangt hij ons niets
Uitgezondered nieuwe lichten voor mijn fiets.
Piet ons aan te keuken een haas
Maar wij veel liever onze kaas.

Translation (approximate):
On the evening of Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas)
We eat broodjes and cheese (broodjes are a Dutch roll that you can get with various fillings)
The men have long beards
But no apples for the horses (Sinterklaas comes on horseback)
Then we hear a loud knock
Look! There turns the door knob!
It was the black man, named Piet (Sinterklaas' "friend" Zwarte Pieter)
He has his sack niet (not)
In its place he brings nothing
Except new lights for my bike
Piet wants to cook us a hare
But we much prefer our cheese.

Isn't is wonderful?????? I wasn't really going for sense-making, to be quite honest I was just trying to find words that rhymed. Hence Sinterklaas rhymed with kaas. I think my teacher was quite impressed with that one ;) Tot ziens!

Holy pants Batman!

Holy pants. I have been pretty busy lately, partly because I got recruited into this week's orchestra project at the last minute. One of the violists had to back out, and so I'm filling in her place. So I have orchestra rehearsals every day this week from 10-5, and then I have to squeeze in Black Angels rehearsals and practicing around that. And last week we had two days of rehearsals as well, which messed up my schedule a bit. But the program is pretty cool - it's all American music. Two pieces by classical American composers (John Adams and Samuel Barber), and then three jazz pieces - two with jazz orchestra and one with jazz quartet. Last night I also went to see the Tokyo String Quartet play at the Concertgebouw. I managed to score the very last ticket for the concert, so I was pretty stoked. It was really fabubus, and after the concert I went backstage and surprised Martin Beaver (the first violinist). He was faculty for the chamber music session at Domaine Forget when I was last there a few years back, and he created this running joke wherein he would sing my name while choral-conducting it (Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-tya). You know, music geek fun. So he was pretty surprised to see me, but I ended up going out with him and the quartet for a late dinner and drinks. I also got to manhandle the violist's Stradivarius viola. But being me, and being that I'm rather clumsy, I didn't hold it for too long since I was afraid I'd drop it or something. Today I had a really good study session for my Dutch class. It was just three of us, and we basically went through the two chapters that were our homework and talked a lot, answering all the questions and helping each other out with vocabulary and stuff. But 3 hours of having to think really really hard about everything you're saying was exhausting! Tomorrow the hell that is orchestra week begins. I will most likely be very exhausted and will lead a very boring life until after the concerts on the weekend and Melissa's end exam next Monday. Then the holidays start (for me at least - I don't have any exams).

Say What??

I've been a bad blogger. What can I say - I'm very busy and important. Tuesday last week was the tango recital in Rotterdam. It was a lot of fun, and we got mad props for our killer tango playing. Unfortunately I couldn't join in the celebrations, since I had to run and catch the train back to Amsterdam for my Dutch lesson and another voorspiel (class recital). I think that if this classical thing doesn't work out, maybe I'll get a degree in tango viola. That would be awesome. On Wednesday last week I had my very first Couchsurfing dutch lesson. I'm in this weird in-between level, where I'm not a beginner but I'm not really advanced either. Last week I tried out the beginner class but it was way too boring, so this week I was in the advanced class and it was better. It's a little above my level, but it's better than learning how to say "I have, you have, we have" again.......The lessons are really nice though - the teacher are all locals who are volunteering their time, and the students are from all over the world. And I have to say I like the text we're using for this class much better than the text we used for my CvA class. It's laid out so much better, especially vis a vis vocab. Friday night was the Kammerorkest Tryptich concert in Utrecht. The Walton was interesting (as always), but it was a really fun concert. Afterwards we went out for a drink at a bar nearby the church, and then caught the midnight train back to Amsterdam. I was so exhausted though - I went out with Hayley to Karma's on Thursday night and was working on Friday with 4 hours sleep. My own fault of course, but by the time we got to the train station in Utrecht to go home, I was so exhausted. And then I didn't get home until around 2 because after we got the train back from Utrecht I had to catch the night train to my station from Amsterdam Centraal. Ugh. And Saturday morning was our Dutch lesson, bright and early. THEN Saturday night I went out again with Hayley, first to Karma's and then to the Kring. Then after the Kring we met up with some people from school, but I bowed out early because I was so horrifically tired. On Sunday I got to sleep in a little, but I went to school in the afternoon to listen to my friend Simona's run-through of her concerto for the competition to play with the orchestra in April. And I also make 2 presentations - one for my Musical Body class, and the other for my dutch class. So I hung out at school working on my presentation until it closed, then I wandered into town to meet up with Josh (from TO) for dinner. It was snowing on Sunday night, so I got to bike in the snow! We ended up going for tasty Indonesian food, because the place I picked out was closed. There was a street full of restaurants, and it was the only one closed. Just my luck.
Monday I gave my presentation in my Musical Body class, and it went well. My presentation was on everyday actions that can affect our body adversly when playing - ie carrying around heavy things, posture, not sleeping in a good bed. I was supposed to have a lesson at 9 pm but I rescheduled it with Sven because I was still really tired and didn't think I'd make it to 9 pm. I went home early, and was in bed by about 10. It worked better for Sven too, since he has to commute to Den Haag. Getting home earlier is always good. Then on Tuesday evening was our very last CvA dutch lesson. We finished up our presentations, then drank champagne and ate chocolate. Celebration! I also had a couple of Memos this week, and since Sinterklaasavond is around the corner a bunch of the kids I've seen have been dressed up like either Sinterklaas or Zwarte Piet. Seeing small children in Cardinal hats (Sinterklaas) or 17th century Spanish hats with feathers (Zwarte Piet). I just got back from watching the Concertgebouw Orchestra play Shostakovich 5. I absolutely love this symphony, especially the 3rd movement. It was so amazing, I wish I could go again on Sunday. I'll just have to put it on repeat on my iPod now.

Lemmings

Well, it was a weekend all right. Friday night I played a piece by Rudolph Escher in a concert of Dutch chamber music, and then headed over to the Couchsurfing weekly meet-up for a drink. It was pretty fun, but I had to head out early to because I had to get up early to catch the my ride to Gronigen. Luckily for me, Greg (the conductor of the orchestra) texted me at 8 am, because otherwise I wouldn't have made it. I slept right through my alarm - I don't even remember it going off!!! We were meeting at Central Station at 8:30 to leave for Gronigen, and I didn't leave my house until 8:15! But it's a good thing I'm a crazy fast biker. And also good that there was pretty much no traffic out, so that worked in my favour. I booked it to Centraal, and ended up pulling up just before 8:30. But then I had to find a place to lock my bike, which took me an extra 10 minutes. As it turns out, the orchestra had booked a whole lodge-type place outside of Gronigen. Oh yeah, and on our way to Gronigen we drove past Lemmer, which is the small town in Friesland that my Dutch side came from. We rehearsed there in the afternoon, and then went into Gronigen at around 4:30 for our dress rehearsal before the concert. The concert was in a synagogue in the medieval centre. It went well, but my plan to catch the train back to Amsterdam after the concert was foiled by the fact that the last train to Amsterdam left at 10:04 and our concert didn't end until 9:55. The one other person who was taking the train did make a run for it, but I had too much stuff with me to really be able to do that. So I ended up crashing with the orchestra at the lodge and coming back to Amsterdam on Sunday. It was nice to have a lazy weekend trip, but it meant that I didn't accomplish too much. Today I finally got my package in the mail from my mom, that she sent back in September. Moral of the story I guess, don't send mail to another continent by ground.....but I got some of my clothes left behind, and my rain gear, and socks! I love socks.

Railrunner

It's been a busy week - and it's not over yet! On Monday evening I went with my friend Simona to check out a big band that her friend from Bucharest plays in - The Konrad Kosseleck Big Band. They have a standing date at the Sugar Factory once a month, and every month they are joined by some special guests. This month's guests were two tap dancers. At first I was skeptical - I mean, tap dancers? Seriously. But it was actually pretty cool. One of the tap dancers was definitely more interesting than the other to watch, more of a showman. But they ended up like being another percussion section. They even got their own improv solos just like all the other instruments. It was pretty cool. On Tuesday evening I went to Utrecht to rehearse with a community orchestra. The conductor is Canadian, and is a friend of my friend Melissa. He needed an extra violist to fill out the section, and I was hankering to do some orchestra-ing. It's actually kind of cool because they're playing the Walton Viola Concerto with a viola teacher from Amsterdam as the soloist. It's fun to be playing on the other side of the concerto, since you spend so much time practicing the stupid solo parts of concertos. The orchestra is all amateur players and they're all just playing for the love of it, which is refreshing. Somehow that joy can get sucked out of professionals, even music students. Music schools almost have a survival of the fittest atmosphere in that respect - I know many people who've finished their music degree and then decided to go to law school, or fashion design school, or business school. Or whatever. Anyways, I digress.
Wednesday I just had rehearsals and rehearsals and more rehearsals. Then this morning I had to get up ungodly early (7 am!) because I had to catch the train at 8:50 to Rotterdam for a coaching. On Tuesday I'm playing in an end exam for a friend of Melissa's, Xabier. He's in the tango department of the Rotterdam Conservatory. Yes, that's correct. They have a tango department. They actually have a whole world music and dance academy, and the tango department is within that. So we're playing a piece by a contemporary South American composer (that has tango influences), and then a Piazolla tango. The coaching was quite funny, if only for his teacher's declarations about tango. "Tango is like a conversation with your friends, and everybody's talking at once. Tango is the difference in a car between leather seats and plastic seats". But it was really interesting, and a good coaching. Unfortunately I didn't really get to enjoy Rotterdam, since immediately after our coaching I had to run for the tram so that I could catch the train back to Amsterdam to try and make my next coaching at 2. The difficulty level was that my coaching in Rotterdam went until 12:30, and I had to catch a tram to the station, and then the train to Amsterdam takes about an hour. Then I had to hi-tail it from the train station to school. Luckily school's very close to the train station, and when I arrived at Amsterdam Centraal in the morning I deliberately locked my bike up beside the station in the direction of school, so I basically ran to my bike, unlocked it, biked like a fiend for 4 minutes to the school, parked my bike in the square out front, locked it, and made a run for the coaching. I was only 15 minutes late, which was impressive considering that my train didn't get into Centraal until about 2:05. This coaching was for my viola flute and harp trio - the Debussy sonata for viola flute and harp. The coaching was with the flautist's teacher, and it was really helpful because it's a very confusing piece and it's easy to just be totally lost in the mishmash. So she really helped us figure everything out and make sense of things. By the end of that coaching I was kind of exhausted, partly from the lack of sleep, and partly from the stress of rushing around all morning. So I ended up sitting in the canteen at school for about an hour I think, just visiting with people. Then I ended up going for dinner with my friend Hayley at the new restaurant that just opened in the library next door. That frikkin library now has two gourmet restaurants in it. The big fancy one on the top floor, and this smaller one at the front of the building that just serves pasta and pizza. But they make it all fresh, including the sauces. My favourite part was how they cook the noodles - they have the noodles all packaged by serving, and they just grab a package of whatever type of noodle you want and pop it in what looks like a deep fryer. It's the same idea as the deep fryers for french fries at fast food restaurants, but instead of boiling oil you have boiling water - ie. you put the noodles in a little basket thing and lower them into the water. It was pretty nifty, I must say. And tasty. Now I'm just chilling at home, trying to take it easy. Tomorrow evening I have the concert of Dutch chamber music that we're playing the Escher in, and then on Saturday I'm probably going to Gronigen to play a concert with the community orchestra. I'm quite a prodigious traveller this week!

Don't worry - I will always be a purple ribbon

Obama! What a win - I mean, he won the popular vote AND the electoral colleges. What a joke of a democratic system. But at least he won. That's what counts. And now we all want to know: what kind of puppy will Sacha and Malia get??????!!!!! But on to my life. On Wednesday I went out with Melissa (who I'm playing Black Angles with) and her friend Jimmy (aka James) who was visiting from Ireland. He's also Canadian - they went to school together at Laurier. We went to this crazy underground club to see an experimental jazz show that some friends of Mel's from school were playing in. There were three acts, and the group from the Con was the first. The music itself was pretty cool, but they also had this projector that they put overheads up on - different colours of transparencies and little sentences. It was a little weird - some of the sentences were just hilarious in their absurdity, but overall it was a little silly. But that's artsy-fartsy people for ya. The second act was a one-man-band that was hilarious. His songs were all two chords, and lyrics like "Everything is hypocrisy! Everything is hypocrisy! Everything is hypocrisy!" repeated ad nauseum. We were just killing ourselves laughing at the back of the performance space. The last act was similar to the first one, and they were pretty cool. And no overheads, so that was a plus. It's always cool to go to things like this, because it's really easy to get into a bubble and never go to any concerts but classical ones. It's always good to experience new things!
Yesterday was my lesson with Nobuko Imai. She's a badass violist, and is pretty much as close as you can get to an internationally reknowned viola soloist. I played the Hindemith 11/4 Sonata I played in our studio class last week, and it went really well. She really liked my playing, and we basically just worked on adding more expressiveness to the piece. There was even one part that she just skipped over because she said it didn't need anything else. Hilariously enough it was a variation in the last movement in which the directions are "bizarre, with hesitation to speak". But I already knew I do bizarre well. Anyhoo, Nobuko was really great and it was a good lesson. This coming week I have rehearsals in Utrecht and Rotterdam for two different concerts, and I have the Escher concert on Friday. And I desperately need to do laundry.

Into the Void

So, Saturday was Museumnacht 2008! Museumnacht is one night a year, where 40 museums throughout Amsterdam open up and have all sorts of activites going on - live music, cheap beer, artwork, and a rumoured champagne fountain at the Rijksmuseum (but we never made it there, so I don't know for sure). Tickets were just 17 euros for as many museums as you could hit between 7 pm and 2 am. And considering the entrance to one museum can run you upwards of 10 euros, it's a pretty sweet deal. I went with a group of friends mainly from my Dutch class - Bernie (jazz bass player), Bernie's jazz friend Ben, Ana (pianist), Ana's boyfriend Guillaume, Simona (pianist/conductor), Takashi (chorale conductor), Niels (music theory), and Niels' brother Jens. Our first stop was the Pianola Museum in the Jordaan. They were having combiniation live + pianola performances, and I we ended up seeing a classical guitar player + pianola. Pianolas are those nifty old pianos that play a recording off a paper roll. The guitarist played some Granados, and then played a roll of Granados playing the same song recorded in like 1912 or something absurd like that. Anyways, it was the perfect place for a bunch of music geeks like us! Next stop was the Anne Frank Huis. I've been meaning and meaning to go here, but there's always a huge line and it's a private museum so my museumkaart doesn't work there. But it was surprisingly not packed, and we got to walk through the whole museum - they built it around her father's office building that held the secret annex that they lived in during the war. It was a little crazy to see how tiny the space was that they lived in for years. It was depressing, but also very interesting. Our next stop was NIMk, the Nederlands Insitute voor Mediakunst - ie. school for media art. They had all these wacky installation pieces, including a super trippy Bjork music video in 3-D. Very cool stuff. Then we went to the Huise Marseille Museum voor Fotographie - a photography museum. This venue was a little boring, but they did have a cool jazz ensemble playing in one of the rooms. Then we headed over to the Rembrandt Huis. I'd already been there in June, but it's a cool place to visit anyways. And the big attraction was the "low-cost bar" in the basement - 1 euro beer! At 1:30 we decided we had to hit one other place before the night ended, so we ended up going to the Portugese Synagogue nearby. It's the big old brick synagogue, and was lit entirely by candles. There was no electricity - so no heat and no light (other than the candles). Earlier in the night they had choirs and stuff in there, but since it was pretty much closing time we just wandered around and then left. It was pretty nifty though. So I guess the count is 6 museums in a night, which is pretty good.
After the Portugese Synagogue the group split up due to differing ideas about what to do next. Ana and Guillaume went home; Bernie, Ben, and Niels went to a pub at the Nieuwemarkt; and Simona, Jens, and I went to the Leiseplein to go clubbing. Part of museumnacht was that they had "afterparties" at certain clubs, which basically meant that by showing your ticket for museumnacht you got dicounted cover into the club. First we tried Paradiso, but they had an actual show happening and it was sold out. So we headed over to the Milkweg, and partied the night away. And I mean that literally. Amsterdam knows how to party, and when we left at 5:30 am the party was still going. Needless to say I was exhausted on Sunday and spent pretty much the whole day in bed. And no mom, I wasn't hungover. I was just really freaking tired - the kind of tired where you've been up for 23 hours, biked all over the city, and then danced for a couple hours. Today is US election day - very big news all over the world. In fact, the Milkweg is having a big election party tonight that's completely sold out, and the idea is to stay up until the results are in (which over here is expected to be about 4-5 am). It hypothetically sounds like a good idea, but I have stuff to do tomorrow! I guess I'll just find out in the morning if Obama lost. But this morning I had a Memo at a preschool run by the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and one of the little girls was wearing an Obama T-shirt. I thought it was pretty funny. In fact, on the weekend they did a poll of Dutch people and something like 80% wanted Obama to win, and only about 8% wanted McCain to win.......it's a little scary that we have to trust in the American electorate to make the right choice!!!!!

The Viola as Prima Donna and Other Improbabilities

Another lackluster week. I played a couple of Memos, played in my studio class on Tuesday night, and had a few rehearsals. Other than that, it's the normal eat, practice, sleep, repeat deal. However, I have been reading a book about the history of the Bartók viola concerto, and I was inspired to share this awesomely scathing review the concerto got when it was first premiered in the early 50s. (The title of this post is the title of the article). So here it goes:

The diverse efforts of Mozart, Berlioz, Hindemith, Walton, Arthur Benjamin, "Handel-Barbirolli" and others have succeeded in convincing us that the best viola concerto is one which isn't really a concerto, and that the fingerboard of the viola ought to be cut off, until further notice, at a point to be determined by a Committee of Chamber Musicians, but none too near the regions of the eternal resin. Only thus will the viola cease to lead into temptation. Meanwhile, painstaking musicological research has unearthed the inspirations, primary as well as pre-disposing, which make for a viola concerto. They are precisely four. The first inspiration is that the composer is fond of playing the viola. The second is that Paganini wants a viola concerto. The third is that Primrose wants a viola concerto. The fourth is that nobody, least of all the composer, wants a viola concerto, but that he hopes that once it's there someone will want it, since there are so few viola concertos. As for "exploring the virtuoso possibilities of the instrument," there aren't any, unless you want to change the viola's character, which nowadays isn't at all difficult, though Mozart has done far more in this direction than you with your whimpering and whining viola parts, simply by tuning the instrument up half a tone. If, however, you think that exploring impossibilities will give you ideas, you ought to turn to the saxophone, which offers the richest variety of them; or, since these have been dealt with by Ibert and Phyllis Tate, you might try a concerto for cow-horn. At least this wouldn't tempt you to throw in strings of semiquavers whenever you thought that virtuosity was called for - a game in which almost all modern composers of concertos for the violin family indulge. Beethoven started it, and indeed, with the deepest admiration for the content of the violin concerto, I do not find much reason to consider it a violin concerto. In our own time, the sense of the genuinely virtuosic possibilities of the violin family has largely been lost (for reasons that in my opinion lie ultimately in the development of harmony), which in part accounts for people's increasing readiness to write viola concertos. I personally would propose to every composer who writes a string concerto, including the great geniuses, to re-study the Mendelssohn which qua violin concerto has remained unequalled, and which incidentally goes to support Hindemith's discerning suggestion to Stravinsky, who is not a violinist, that his lack of executive ability, far from being a hindrance, would actually be "a very good thing" for writing a violin concerto.
Bartok's last work does not seem to lessen the improbablility of the viola concerto; even the would-be brilliant semiquavers are all there, in the last movement. At the same time the chief problem of the Concerto, which in places one hardly recognizes as Bartók (let alone the great Bartók), is more fundamental: should this music have been published at all?....If someone told me that I would find Elisabeth Lutyens' Viola Concerto immeasurably more satisfying than Bartók's I should have laughed in his face - which goes to warn us of even our most justified prejudices.

I love this review because it hardly mentions the Bartók concerto at all, and is instead an opportunity for the author to voice his great dislike of the viola. If only all viola bashing were this eloquent! Granted the Bartók concerto has a lot of flaws. But that's because he died in the middle of writing it. It's still a pretty cool piece, and just imagine how kick-ass it would have been had he finished the orchestration and finalized the viola part before he died. Course, this was a review of the Serly version, and it does sound decidedly un-Bartókian at times. Which is probably why they kept the manuscript under lock and key until the 1990s. But since the manuscript became available for study, 2 other versions have been published, not to mention countless others that may have been worked on but not published. The author of the book I'm reading created his own reconstruction! The most widely available new version is the Peter Bartók/Nelson Dellamaggiore version, but Csaba Erdelyi has published and recorded his version in Australia/NZ, but it is as of yet unavailable in the rest of the world due to differing statues of limitations on copyrights. Which is also why others haven't published their own versions (like the author, for example). Anyways, I'm reading this book, and I thought this was worth sharing. Enjoy.

Just livin my life, ayo ayo ayo

So Tuesday I went to Den Haag to my teacher's house to get my instrument adjusted. Some friends of his from Germany who just happen to be really great instrument repair people were stopping by to look at his viola and whoever of his students as well, so me and one other of his students came with our instruments. They filed down my bridge a little, adjusted my soundpost, and my viola sounds so good! Whoa! It was pretty sweet. And luckily it stopped raining by the time we were done the adjustments, so I took the opportunity to wander around Den Haag a little. I went to the Binnenhof, which is an inner courtyard surrounded by all the buildings of the Dutch parliament. The central courtyard was once used for executions, and has a big 13th century Gothic dining hall called the Ridderzaal (Knight's Hall) on the one end. There must have been something going on because there was a red carpet of sorts and barricades with people crowded around them. Maybe the Queen was there. But waiting in a mob is actually kind of boring so I just had a look around and left. I wandered around for a bit, found the Canadian Embassy (since I figured it's probably a good idea to know where the embassy is if I ever need to go there), walked past the Paleis Noordeinde, the king and queen's official residence. I eventually made my way back to the Binnenhof, and visited the Mauritshuis museum. The building was actually a mansion dating from 1640, and in 1822 it was converted to a museum to host the royal collection. I saw Vermeer's "View of Delft" and "Girl with a Pearl Earring", as well as Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp". Pretty cool stuff. Aside from the biggies that are always on show (if they're not being lent out) they have rotating exhibitions of course, and the one showing was of Dutch cityscapes. The Netherlands has had a strong tradition of strong city-states, so as far back as the 1600 artists had started painting cityscapes. It was pretty cool, but there's only so many times you can see a painting entitled "View of ". I was a little sad I didn't get to see Andy Warhol's "Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands", but it wasn't on display. I considered going to a few other museums, namely the Galerij Prins Willem V (which was opened in 1773 and paintings are still hung in the manner popular in the 18th century - every possible space on the wall is covered in art), and Escher in het Paleis Museum (a permanent collection spanning MC Escher's entire career, housed in the former residences of Queen Emma). As well, it would have been supercool to tour the Vredespaleis, the home of the UN International Court of Justice, but you need to book ahead to take a tour since security is understandably pretty strict. But instead I decided to head back home. There's so many cool things to see! It's too overwhelming! Also I was tired from getting up early to catch the train, and sort of travel fatigued since I'd just gotten back from Maastricht the afternoon before.
The rest of the week passed by pretty quietly. I practiced, and went to the gym. I had a Memo in Amstelveen on Thursday morning, which is one of the suburbs of Amsterdam. But it was all good because I got paid an extra 12 euros for extra travel, and it's not like I had anything to do! Holidays! The only stupid thing about the holidays is that the school was on limited hours - 9-4. Which is just ridiculous. On a normal school day nobody is there at 9 am, or pretty much before 11 or 12 for that matter. And we have even less incentive to get up early on our holidays! I think if they wanted limited hours, they should have done them from 12-8 or something like that. But apparently most schools just shut down altogether, but music schools can't do that because we need to practice. The library was closed entirely for the whole week which was annoying, since it already has limited enough hours as it is (it's only open monday to friday, mon 12-5:30, tues-fri 10-5:30). Yeah, that's another weird thing I don't know if I've mentioned yet. Not only is everything in the entire country (pretty much) closed on Sundays, but everything's also closed on Monday mornings. And most things close quite early compared to in big cities in Canada - there's no such thing as grocery stores open until midnight, let alone the awesome 24 hour stores - here most close at 6, and the late ones close at 9 or 10. I can only compare it to living in Saskatoon, and every day is on Sunday hours. It's frustrating because I don't keep 9-5 normal hours, and so when I have free time everything's closed. Boo-urns. Also, another interesting thing I've discovered while working for Memo - all the preschools and primary schools are locked up tight, and you have to get buzzed in. There's no such thing as just walking in the front doors of a school. You have to call and get buzzed in. And most of them have playgrounds in an inner courtyard, so there's no way that you can really get at the playground either. I'm not sure if it makes me feel more or less safe, because it's a little worrying that they feel they have to take such precautions. I just think of the elementary schools I went to, where all the doors were unlocked and open at all times, the the playground was a big field that was completely open. It's the same way that when you see lots of police around you feel more afraid rather than more safe. Anyways, I just thought it was strange.

Uno Maas(tricht)

So I'm back. Back again. My friend Hayley and I went on a weekend trip to Maastricht, in the very south of the Netherlands. It's right at the bottom of the country, and about 5 km one way in Belgium and 20 km the other way is Germany. We took the train out Saturday morning, and after brief confusion finally arrived in Maastricht around noon. Unbeknownst to us, the train from Amsterdam seperates at Sittard, and one half goes on to Maastricht while the other half goes to Heeren. And we just happened to be sitting on the Heeren side of the train. So we arrive in Heeren, and can't figure out what happened. So we had to catch a puddle-jumping "stop-trein" from Heeren to Maastricht. But it turned out quite nice though, because we saw some South Limburg countryside that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. Maastricht is the "Crown Jewel of the south", and is about as far away from windmills, clogs, and tulips as you can get. There are Spanish and Roman ruins, since it got its start as a Roman town and then was occupied by the Spanish for a long period of time. As well, the city hosted two key moments in the history of the EU - in 1991 the 12 members of the European Community met to sign the treaty for economic, monetary, and political union, and they reconvened the next year to sign the Maastricht Treaty, which officially created the EU. So part of Maastricht's new revitalized Ceramique district (which used to be filled with ceramics factories) has a big square called Plein 1992, in celebration of the EU and the Maastricht Treaty.
We met up with our host Marten at his flat, which is about 3 blocks from the train station. We dumped our stuff off there, and then headed out with Marten who took us on walking tour of Maastricht. This was my first adventure using Couchsurfing.com to find a host to stay with. And I must say it worked out great. Marten was a great host, and we had a really fun time in Maastricht. He took us all around the city on Saturday. We visited the church with the Zwarte Christ, a statue of christ that's "black" because it's made out of very dark wood. We checked out the old city walls and fortifications, the Sint Servaasbasiliek which is a church that dates from around 1000, walked by Sint Janskerk but it was closed for repairs, went to the Onze Lieve Vrowebasiliek which has parts dating before 1000 and may well have been built on the foundations of a Roman cathedral. We got some coffee at the Markt Square, visited a water powered granary, and then got some groceries and went back to Marten's where he cooked us a very tasty Thai curry for dinner. We then proceeded to drink copious amounts of wine and discuss life until about 2 am. Good times.
On Sunday 'morning' (and by morning I mean around 12:30 pm) Hayley and I set off with a mission to visit Sint Pietersberg, a Roman fort 2 km south of the city. It's a nice walk from town, and it lies just on top of a hillside overlooking Maastricht. We didn't get to go on a tour of the fort since we missed the 1 tour they run every day, but we did get to go on a supercool tour of the Northern Corridor System Tunnels, which were built by the Romans throughout the hills over a period of 2000 years. The Romans developed the tunnels by quarrying soft marlstone at a rate of just 4 blocks per day, creating an underground system that provided refuge to the citizens of Maastricht whenever they found themselves under attack. During WWII for example, the tunnels housed a well, a storeroom, a chapel, a kitchen, a bakery, and a pen for livestock. At one stage the Northern Corridor System Tunnels had over 20 000 separate passageways adding up to a length of over 200 km and stretching underneath the Belgian border - until the French blew up a big chunk during the war, thinking they were under the Sint Pietersberg fort. However, they only succeeded in entombing hundreds of French soldiers. Geniuses at work. The caves are quite chilly, and are really really dark. Also, they're full of graffiti from across the ages. The tunnels were only closed to the public in the 1980s, so up until then people could just wander in and write their name on the walls. I saw a lot of English/American names written with the date 1944 - Allied soldiers no doubt. I even found some names carved in the wall somewhat ornately with the date 1698. Cool stuff. The guide's favourite game is (with your permission) to leave with the lamps and go to the end of a long curved passageway, and then we have to walk through the tunnel in the pitch black, using our hand on the wall to guide us. It is so dark and so ominously silent down there, that apparently grown men break down and cry when left without a light. In our tour group, one of the kids piped up as soon as the light disappeared around the bend: "Ik kan niet see!" It was pretty funny. After our tunnel adventure we walked back into town, and ate some food at a nice little cafe in the Markt Square. Then we headed back to Marten's and hung out with him some more. But we ended up turning in at a more reasonable hour since we were all very tired from our late night before. This morning we got up and did some dishes for Marten before we left - he was already at work so we decided to leave him a little present. We caught the train at about 11:50 and got home to our doorsteps at about 3:00. Not too bad. Now it's back to real life, somewhat. It's still the fall break, so the school has limited hours. I may make use of my Museumkaart and go to some museums around town, and I was also thinking of taking day trips to Den Haag, Rotterdam, or Utrecht. We'll see.

Walk this way

I feel like I should be walking around like a cowboy, all bow-legged. Yesterday I met up with a guy from Israel who messaged me on couchsurfing.com to go for a bike ride in the countryside north of Amsterdam. He (and another tourist from Seattle who he met on a city tour the day before) met me at school, and we headed out into the countryside. Beautiful weather, all sunny with a breeze to keep cool. Perfect biking weather. The Netherlands has a huge network of bike paths, and really great signage all over the place so that you never get lost. We biked north, and more north, and passed some very quaint towns like Volendam and Edam (yes like the cheese), until we got to Hoorn. The catch is, Hoorn is 31 km north of Amsterdam. And once we got there, we had to bike all the way back. So that was a 62 km round trip. And then counting the distance I bike to school and back, I biked around 80 km yesterday. And also because I'm crazy, I went to the gym and worked out. I lifted all my weights, and ran for a couple miles, and then did a yoga class. Surprisingly, I'm not very sore today. Pretty much only saddle sore. I also got to take some pretty pictures yesterday, so enjoy - on Saturday I have my own couchsurfing adventure in Maastricht!