This audio clip is sufficiently interesting that it gets its own post.
It's the voice of our parent guide, whom we'll call "Fred", expounding on a possible peaceful outcome of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was recorded on the bus intercom as we sped through the valleys on the way to Hebron.
30 August 2009
22 August 2009
Amsterdam
Author's note: I'll be skipping around chronologically a bit in the next few posts so I can remember enough of the details of what I write about.
When I flew home to Seattle this summer for vacation, I made a stop in Amsterdam, Netherlands. A very good friend from high school and college lives there, and as I had always wanted to see the city and I hadn't seen him in years, it was a great opportunity. I landed with my bulging summer suitcase and instantly felt the difference in culture and location from the Middle East..
Here is the sound a bell carillon outside the main train station (I think something is also being pressure-washed):
Amsterdam is now one of my favorite cities. Someone I knew described it as "Disneyland for adults" and there's certainly enough entertainment and debauchery for any one person, but the uniformity of the architecture and the singular beauty, quirkiness, and ORDER of the culture makes for the kind of "themed" experience that you could expect at a theme park.
Here is an example of the orderliness in the Netherlands:
This is at the light rail station information desk. Need a piece of information? If you take a number, everyone will get served equally and promptly.
While walking back home one evening, my friend (who is from Seattle) expounded on the deep-rooted idea of cooperation that is in the Dutch culture:
Amsterdam is built entirely below sea level, on reclaimed land. Early farmers found that soil that was once underwater was rich in nutrients and prime for growing crops, and so built dykes to reclaim greater portions of this valuable land from the sea. In time, so many people were living on reclaimed land that the pumping out of seawater and maintenance of the dykes became of paramount importance -- otherwise, the sea would rush in and ruin everyone's living situation. So, each person had be vigilant for the prosperity of the entire region. These areas were called "polder", which became the DNA of Dutch politics and shorthand for collective decision-making, which informs many aspects of living in the Netherlands, including taxes, welfare, and social norms.
href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCgvCnOv8zKn8KrMp1zW_o9Fv523dmpRfOTWLVvmdnYntJzemRgWOMWt_DlPhPRZcMCfQFvCZe9ElpL50H62YG_jCyzy9J5B5oWDCOPKEdbIsYEcqEKogrn7GApnCog6IZECH-p_KejH1z/s1600-h/a4.jpg">
As a result, Amsterdam is one of the most pleasant cities you're ever likely to visit. Everything is taken care of. The people are extremely friendly. Bicycles are everywhere and have right-of-way over cars and pedestrians (who also have right-of-way over cars.) If you're on unemployment, you get a vacation bonus in the summer (the idea being, if you didn't take a vacation, you'd get really depressed, and then you'd NEVER find a job.) The uniformity of the residential buildings is also a staple of Amsterdam and its cultural model, as seen above and below, the street near Oosterpark where I stayed:
However, according to my friend, there is a dark side to the Dutch culture, as there must be two sides to anything. The dark side is relatively innocuous, but there is an inordinate amount of societal pressure to "be normal". As in, there is nearly no subculture in Amsterdam, and after he pointed this out, I started looking for cliques or "scenes" and they were very difficult to find.
There is also a very Calvinist theme in Dutch culture which is absolutely fascinating: the idea of not having anything to hide. As Steak 'N Shake puts it: "In Sight, It Must Be Right!" This is manifested in, among other things, the quasi-legal and widely-accepted status of weed and prostitution, as well as the phenomenon of everyone keeping their blinds open all the time to show how clean and normal their houses are.
See these hooks on the beams above the houses?
This is fascinating. Every building has one of these. What are they for? Well, the staircases in the houses are so narrow, to accommodate the deep-but-narrow high-density housing, that large furniture can only be moved into the upper stories by being hoisted by a pulley through the large picture windows. I saw a couch being moved in this way. It was ingenious.
While dense, most buildings in central Amsterdam top out at three stories. Reason: too much vertical weight, and the pilings that keep the houses suspended on the silt would collapse and the houses would sink.
A few of the auditory delights that happened on this trip were a raucous drum-and-bugle corps (from a country whose name escapes me, now) practicing in the Oosterpark across the street (at the end, you can hear my friend say "Let's go see them!"):
And, no pictures, but there was a player-piano museum on the West side of the city. Those of you Marshalls or Harveys who remember the player piano back in the day would have loved this place. Players and rolls and rolls and rolls...!
So, there was an avant-garde composer named Conlon Nancarrow who wrote a series of astounding pieces for player piano by punching out holes in systematic patterns on piano rolls, and publishing them. I had studied this guy in college, but never heard one of his pieces. At the Pianola Museum, I happened to see one of his piano rolls (new edition) and I practically bribed the curator to play it on the machine. I only caught the second half. Here it is:
"That's amazing!"
There were lots of other things. I saw a Swedish romantic vampire movie (Let The Right One In, which I wholeheartedly recommend to ANYONE, even those who are not into vampire movies) with some friends from the house with Dutch subtitles. I went to a new music concert on the south side of town (kind of Zappa, really). I saw a bunch of museums of Dutch masters.
I was so happy being on vacation for a week that I didn't take very many pictures, and when I did, it was of architectural oddities, which stand out even more in the primness of the built landscape of the city. So, I hope you will enjoy these architectural oddities and other pictures:
This is a brilliant architectural trick in these modern homes: the "Crooked Frame Window" house:
Canals have their own street designations here:
A side view of how they accomplished the Crooked Frame Window:
Hard Core:
Bike parking at the train station. That is a lot of bikes.
Hearty bread from the local bakery. Yum.
Quick day bicycle trip to the countryside and a spit of land between two bodies of water. Check out the modern version of the windmill, as well as the tall ship hanging out in the harbor.
href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHJVkoY5fKTcRq0UWV_WTi3i5YTiPK_Pp75578VJ_tghYCyPL6bGcwh47JQGGSCzuIbxRMw0AlLvzQT_MykD3P5ooVAh0c_ihg3gItY7-SeI5zovq96fdHAMrbSe5qQPdQYxHW0uI7Bh-/s1600-h/A32.jpg">
The view from my room. The last day of the trip was my birthday, and I took Adam and his girlfriend Aura out to dinner for putting me up all week. Then it was off for some time at home, which I wanted most of all, but I was sad to leave this extraordinary place.
When I flew home to Seattle this summer for vacation, I made a stop in Amsterdam, Netherlands. A very good friend from high school and college lives there, and as I had always wanted to see the city and I hadn't seen him in years, it was a great opportunity. I landed with my bulging summer suitcase and instantly felt the difference in culture and location from the Middle East..
Here is the sound a bell carillon outside the main train station (I think something is also being pressure-washed):
Amsterdam is now one of my favorite cities. Someone I knew described it as "Disneyland for adults" and there's certainly enough entertainment and debauchery for any one person, but the uniformity of the architecture and the singular beauty, quirkiness, and ORDER of the culture makes for the kind of "themed" experience that you could expect at a theme park.
Here is an example of the orderliness in the Netherlands:
This is at the light rail station information desk. Need a piece of information? If you take a number, everyone will get served equally and promptly.
While walking back home one evening, my friend (who is from Seattle) expounded on the deep-rooted idea of cooperation that is in the Dutch culture:
Amsterdam is built entirely below sea level, on reclaimed land. Early farmers found that soil that was once underwater was rich in nutrients and prime for growing crops, and so built dykes to reclaim greater portions of this valuable land from the sea. In time, so many people were living on reclaimed land that the pumping out of seawater and maintenance of the dykes became of paramount importance -- otherwise, the sea would rush in and ruin everyone's living situation. So, each person had be vigilant for the prosperity of the entire region. These areas were called "polder", which became the DNA of Dutch politics and shorthand for collective decision-making, which informs many aspects of living in the Netherlands, including taxes, welfare, and social norms.
href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCgvCnOv8zKn8KrMp1zW_o9Fv523dmpRfOTWLVvmdnYntJzemRgWOMWt_DlPhPRZcMCfQFvCZe9ElpL50H62YG_jCyzy9J5B5oWDCOPKEdbIsYEcqEKogrn7GApnCog6IZECH-p_KejH1z/s1600-h/a4.jpg">
As a result, Amsterdam is one of the most pleasant cities you're ever likely to visit. Everything is taken care of. The people are extremely friendly. Bicycles are everywhere and have right-of-way over cars and pedestrians (who also have right-of-way over cars.) If you're on unemployment, you get a vacation bonus in the summer (the idea being, if you didn't take a vacation, you'd get really depressed, and then you'd NEVER find a job.) The uniformity of the residential buildings is also a staple of Amsterdam and its cultural model, as seen above and below, the street near Oosterpark where I stayed:
However, according to my friend, there is a dark side to the Dutch culture, as there must be two sides to anything. The dark side is relatively innocuous, but there is an inordinate amount of societal pressure to "be normal". As in, there is nearly no subculture in Amsterdam, and after he pointed this out, I started looking for cliques or "scenes" and they were very difficult to find.
There is also a very Calvinist theme in Dutch culture which is absolutely fascinating: the idea of not having anything to hide. As Steak 'N Shake puts it: "In Sight, It Must Be Right!" This is manifested in, among other things, the quasi-legal and widely-accepted status of weed and prostitution, as well as the phenomenon of everyone keeping their blinds open all the time to show how clean and normal their houses are.
See these hooks on the beams above the houses?
This is fascinating. Every building has one of these. What are they for? Well, the staircases in the houses are so narrow, to accommodate the deep-but-narrow high-density housing, that large furniture can only be moved into the upper stories by being hoisted by a pulley through the large picture windows. I saw a couch being moved in this way. It was ingenious.
While dense, most buildings in central Amsterdam top out at three stories. Reason: too much vertical weight, and the pilings that keep the houses suspended on the silt would collapse and the houses would sink.
A few of the auditory delights that happened on this trip were a raucous drum-and-bugle corps (from a country whose name escapes me, now) practicing in the Oosterpark across the street (at the end, you can hear my friend say "Let's go see them!"):
And, no pictures, but there was a player-piano museum on the West side of the city. Those of you Marshalls or Harveys who remember the player piano back in the day would have loved this place. Players and rolls and rolls and rolls...!
So, there was an avant-garde composer named Conlon Nancarrow who wrote a series of astounding pieces for player piano by punching out holes in systematic patterns on piano rolls, and publishing them. I had studied this guy in college, but never heard one of his pieces. At the Pianola Museum, I happened to see one of his piano rolls (new edition) and I practically bribed the curator to play it on the machine. I only caught the second half. Here it is:
"That's amazing!"
There were lots of other things. I saw a Swedish romantic vampire movie (Let The Right One In, which I wholeheartedly recommend to ANYONE, even those who are not into vampire movies) with some friends from the house with Dutch subtitles. I went to a new music concert on the south side of town (kind of Zappa, really). I saw a bunch of museums of Dutch masters.
I was so happy being on vacation for a week that I didn't take very many pictures, and when I did, it was of architectural oddities, which stand out even more in the primness of the built landscape of the city. So, I hope you will enjoy these architectural oddities and other pictures:
This is a brilliant architectural trick in these modern homes: the "Crooked Frame Window" house:
Canals have their own street designations here:
A side view of how they accomplished the Crooked Frame Window:
Hard Core:
Bike parking at the train station. That is a lot of bikes.
Hearty bread from the local bakery. Yum.
Quick day bicycle trip to the countryside and a spit of land between two bodies of water. Check out the modern version of the windmill, as well as the tall ship hanging out in the harbor.
href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEHJVkoY5fKTcRq0UWV_WTi3i5YTiPK_Pp75578VJ_tghYCyPL6bGcwh47JQGGSCzuIbxRMw0AlLvzQT_MykD3P5ooVAh0c_ihg3gItY7-SeI5zovq96fdHAMrbSe5qQPdQYxHW0uI7Bh-/s1600-h/A32.jpg">
The view from my room. The last day of the trip was my birthday, and I took Adam and his girlfriend Aura out to dinner for putting me up all week. Then it was off for some time at home, which I wanted most of all, but I was sad to leave this extraordinary place.
(Yes, we're back up!) West Bank 1: Hebron
Long hiatus here at the notes while we had the Spring Crunch at school (concerts, musicals, grades, etc.) directly followed by Summer Vacation (sweet, sweet nothing at all). However, there are about 5 or 6 backlogged things to share, with pictures and sound, so I'll pick up where I left off, which was last May and the first of three trips into the West Bank.
There is a parent at school who is something of a community activist. Born in Scotland to Jewish parents, he makes his home in Israel and works in telecommunications, but his side job is giving English tours of Palestine. What makes his tour business unique is he cooperates directly with the Palestinian communities to let tourists see a side of the Middle East that they would ordinarily not see.
Here is a picture of the West Bank in the spring, taken from the freeway. It is hilly, like Jerusalem, and unlike most of Israel. I believe these are olive groves on the side of the hill, owned by a local farmer:
A zoomed-out picture of the same hill. Note the road coming toward the camera.
This is that same road, but it's blocked to normal freeway traffic by concrete barriers. This is because it's a segregated road for Palestinian cars only -- it actually tunnels underneath the highway we're on and connects the Palestinian villages together on a single road network.
...and there it goes. No cars on this road can get to Tel Aviv, and our car won't get on this road either. This is an example of one of the many barriers used to separate Israeli and Palestinian citizens. I will try not to get political on this blog because I don't understand the situation well enough, but hopefully the pictures will be objective enough.
Check out this verdant valley. In the summer, as I remember, most of this landscape is a chalky red and brown, and not much grows. In the spring, it is a different story.
This is a vendor hawking a variety of things in Hebron. You can see nuts, grains, pots and pans, souvenirs, and a ton of what looks like Lufa! Many stores like this are independent vendors who sell nearly everything.
Okay -- when the Israeli settlers came to Hebron to set up shop, they did so with armed escorts. The housing they occupy is directly above the main market area. Using some logic, I'm pretty sure it's where the vendors themselves used to live. There is netting above the market ceiling, which was put there by the vendors to keep trash from dropping from above.
This is our guide with a couple of the local kids. He had some great jokes which I can't print here.
Here's an interesting picture -- a Palestinian kid hanging in the foreground, with the rooftop security station in the background. There is reportedly an IDF guard in that nest 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Try to spot the security checkpoint. There were two more of these on the crests of two other hills, visible from the same spot.
I think this contains a fire hose, but it looks more like it belongs in the Museum of Modern Art.
Our group in the garment district.
The internal stairwell of a local dwelling. Very small, very sturdy. Stone cools quickly, plus there was nothing else to build with back in the day.
A neighborhood a little further North, near Bethlehem. There is some extraordinary mural art in some of the neighborhoods we saw.
In Hebron, there is a site called the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is a highly venerated site For both Jews and Muslims (for Jews, it is the second-holiest site in the world after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem). Both Adam and Eve and Abraham and Sarah are buried here, and there is both a mosque and a Jewish section in the same building. The access is complicated, but Muslims and tourists may both visit here, though it is surrounded Israeli Defense Forces. Read more about it here.
Inside the Mosque.
Finally, a couple more pictures of the villages near Hebron. Stay tuned...
There is a parent at school who is something of a community activist. Born in Scotland to Jewish parents, he makes his home in Israel and works in telecommunications, but his side job is giving English tours of Palestine. What makes his tour business unique is he cooperates directly with the Palestinian communities to let tourists see a side of the Middle East that they would ordinarily not see.
Here is a picture of the West Bank in the spring, taken from the freeway. It is hilly, like Jerusalem, and unlike most of Israel. I believe these are olive groves on the side of the hill, owned by a local farmer:
A zoomed-out picture of the same hill. Note the road coming toward the camera.
This is that same road, but it's blocked to normal freeway traffic by concrete barriers. This is because it's a segregated road for Palestinian cars only -- it actually tunnels underneath the highway we're on and connects the Palestinian villages together on a single road network.
...and there it goes. No cars on this road can get to Tel Aviv, and our car won't get on this road either. This is an example of one of the many barriers used to separate Israeli and Palestinian citizens. I will try not to get political on this blog because I don't understand the situation well enough, but hopefully the pictures will be objective enough.
Check out this verdant valley. In the summer, as I remember, most of this landscape is a chalky red and brown, and not much grows. In the spring, it is a different story.
This is a vendor hawking a variety of things in Hebron. You can see nuts, grains, pots and pans, souvenirs, and a ton of what looks like Lufa! Many stores like this are independent vendors who sell nearly everything.
Okay -- when the Israeli settlers came to Hebron to set up shop, they did so with armed escorts. The housing they occupy is directly above the main market area. Using some logic, I'm pretty sure it's where the vendors themselves used to live. There is netting above the market ceiling, which was put there by the vendors to keep trash from dropping from above.
This is our guide with a couple of the local kids. He had some great jokes which I can't print here.
Here's an interesting picture -- a Palestinian kid hanging in the foreground, with the rooftop security station in the background. There is reportedly an IDF guard in that nest 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Try to spot the security checkpoint. There were two more of these on the crests of two other hills, visible from the same spot.
I think this contains a fire hose, but it looks more like it belongs in the Museum of Modern Art.
Our group in the garment district.
The internal stairwell of a local dwelling. Very small, very sturdy. Stone cools quickly, plus there was nothing else to build with back in the day.
A neighborhood a little further North, near Bethlehem. There is some extraordinary mural art in some of the neighborhoods we saw.
In Hebron, there is a site called the Cave of the Patriarchs, which is a highly venerated site For both Jews and Muslims (for Jews, it is the second-holiest site in the world after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem). Both Adam and Eve and Abraham and Sarah are buried here, and there is both a mosque and a Jewish section in the same building. The access is complicated, but Muslims and tourists may both visit here, though it is surrounded Israeli Defense Forces. Read more about it here.
Inside the Mosque.
Finally, a couple more pictures of the villages near Hebron. Stay tuned...
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