Chasing after trams, don’t laugh – it could happen to you!
The beds here are so comfortable that we all slept till about 10ish. We went out and had lunch outside the Rijksmuseum gardens and then went and spent several hours in the Van Gogh museum.
I really enjoyed it. Lija doesn’t like much of his work, but Lis thinks it’s interesting. I agree. He may not have painted Michaelangelo’s Sistene Chapel or even a perfect picture, but he was always thinking about his works, planning them, he focused on different parts of the painting. The colour, or the texture, the peripheries, not necessarily the ‘reality’. They say he had epilepsy, but like a lot of great people in history, I think he could have had a mental problem more severe. Some of the paintings are so childlike, when he copies other works, he roughly paints the outline and colours in, maybe using up to 3 different tones for an object, where as photo quality paintings can have thousands of different tones.
Van Gogh was actually a fantastic drawer, he seemed better or more realistically talented at sketching than painting. The museum holds over 200 of his 500 paintings and 300 of his 800 drawings. We meandered through town for a bit, and were going to go home but I finally found an internet cafe that had USB ports in use and didn’t double as a hash cafe! So the others left while I transfered photos, only I ended up confused and taking the tram in the wrong direction, because around the Dam (palace) there is only one set of tram tracks on each side with the tram going in different directions depending on the side you get.
So once I realised I didn’t want to be this far into the northern suburbs, I had to get off and find the opposite tram and wait to get back on that one. I sat on the tram bored that the 15 minute tram ride was now about 25 minutes, and so I sat organising the things I bought into one bag that I put next to me on my single seat. When I got off at the hostel, yep as you can probably guess, seconds after the tram doors closed I realised I had left the bag on the tram. So have a laugh at my expense when you can imagine me running down the tram tracks full pelt after this tram that was constantly increasing speed.
Well, I got to the next intersection and checked which way the number 14 went through the ‘T’ intersection. Turned out there were only another three stops so I had my fingers crossed and waited for the number 14 to come back in my direction. No luck, bit there was another coming up with its sign on ‘no service’ so I waved and motioned to the driver that I needed to talk to him, and he opened the doors for me. I explained quickly and the conductor and I walked down the tram to the last section where my bag was still sitting in the alcove next to the seat. I thanked the both so much and walked back to the hostel in shock at what had just happened. A ten minute tram ride had turned into an hour long wild goose chase.
The others already had dinner and they had stopped serving because a large schoolgroup had just come through, so I organised my bags and went back later. We just had a quiet night repacking because we’re back in the bus tomorrow to Berlin.
Tags: Travel
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