Amsterdam and Den Haag (The Hague)

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Friday/Saturday Feb 22 & 23

The adventure this weekend began with a solo trip to Amsterdam.  I went to check out an audio/visual festival called Sonic Acts that Ed had recommended.  In particular, the group to see was called Signal.  I arrived in time to see two other performances before they began, and they were both quite abstract.  The first one was two grey haired guys playing ambient noises on a large collection of hardware while a film recording of a garden played with no apparent change the whole time it played.  They must have been good, because there was a large round of applause when they finished.  Or maybe people were happy it was over.  Either way, the next act was even more out there.  Leafcutter John was a long haired guy and his girlfriend from London.  They began by squeezing and crackling a water bottle in front of the microphone with a big echo/delay.  Then some crazy screaming sounds and later they strummed a slinky with a microphone attached.  More applause at the end.

When Signal finally came on, I understood why Ed had told me to go. Although they played what most people would call noise, the squelching, static, banging and lack of notes or tones added up to an incredibly pleasing noise-scape.  This was supplementd by black and white, barcode-inspired visuals that were synchronized to the sound.  The result was stunning and mesmerizing and everybody was bobbing their heads.  Adding to the scene, these three German guys (Signal) wore matching white jackets and two of them were definitely about 50. Totally worth it.

At 11:00, I ran out of there to get in line for Escape, one of Amsterdam’s fanciest clubs.  I had tickets to Tiesto.  Now normally I wouldn’t go to this kind of DJ, but I’d heard too much good stuff about him to pass up the opportunity.  The timing (with Sonic Acts) was perfect.  I met up with some Greek girls from my class who I knew were attending too, and we had a blast dancing to the best trance I’ve heard.  I don’t love trance, but this was as good as trance gets.  Even bigger than the sound was this guy’s ego.  Instead of a DJ playing before the big act, they had a huge curtain set up, onto which footage of a big festival that Tiesto had DJ’d at was projected.  He was also on the 10 plasma screens that were at the sides of the dancefloor.  When the time was right, they dropped the curtain, and there was Tiesto at the turntables, pumping his fist, already in the mix.  Quite a show!

I took the train back to Delft at 4am, and fell asleep on the train.  The scariest part of it was that when I woke up, the train was going in the opposite direction from when I had fallen asleep.  All sorts of thoughts went through my head, but a fellow passenger assured me it was ok. I hadn’t missed my stop, I had just slept through a stop that was a dead end (from which the train had to pull out the other way and continue backwards).

After about five hours of sleep, the adventure continued with a trip to Den Haag.  This city sits near the coast, about ten minutes from Delft in the opposite direction from Rotterdam.  It is the seat of the government and administrative center of the Netherlands, and the International Court of Justice is based here.  Again, it was a group of about eight international students that I went with.  We trekked around the city by foot for about five hours in total, taking in the atmosphere of this old center. I had forgotten my camera again

Rotterdam Touristing

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A great trip that we (the international students) organized was to Rotterdam, about 10 minutes by train from Delft.  It involved lots of walking around until... a friend of Juan's picked us up in her new VW Touareg and drove us around the town.  Lia gave us a wonderful tour that included lunch at the New York hotel and a trip up the Euromast (like the CN tower, but smaller).  An interesting side note is that Lia's husband is Ferry Corsten, the internationally famous trance dj and producer. 

Rotterdam has so much energy compared to Delft.  Its very vibrant, has modern buildings mixed among old ones, and tons of interesting cultural events.  I think that I would choose to live here if I am to stay here for the full Masters program.  Its only about 20 mins from the Rotterdam station to the university.   

School!! Technical University of Delft

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I think there are more than 15,000 students at TU Delft.  It is mainly an engineering school, with 8 faculties including Civil, Maritime, Materials, Design, and more.  The Industrial Design Engineering faculty has around 1700 students, with 118 in my class alone.  We're not in Emily Carr any more, that's for sure.  I think the machine/tool shop here is bigger than the entire design area at Emily Carr.  I'm looking forward to using it.

Other buildings on campus are interesting too.  They don't build too many simple shapes here.  The photos describe it best.

Amsterdam with Jeff

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This weekend I took the train to Amsterdam to meet up with my friend Jeff Werner.  He is a classmate of mine from Emily Carr, and was spending some time in Amsterdam before his exchange term at The Design Academy in Eindhoven begins.  Jeff has had an interesting year, having spent a lot of time away from Emily Carr.  He did an internship in the Philippines for four months (I think) working on using indigenous resources for local designs.  That was followed by six months in Bali, working on bamboo technology for all sorts of applications.  While in Bali, he met Toni Tak.  She’s a wonderful woman in her 60s (but acts like she’s 40) who has lived both in Indonesia and the Netherlands.  Jeff was staying at a spare apartment (two floors above hers) that she keeps in the center of Amsterdam. 

Jeff met me at the station and doubled me back to Toni’s place on the back of his bike.  The bike culture here (in the whole of the Netherlands) is unbelievable.  Everybody rides their bike everywhere.  There are no fancy road or mountain bikes, just daily commuters with racks, fenders, built-in wheel locks, swept back handlebars and upright riding position.  At any one time, in any one place, you can see dozens of bikes parked outside stores, homes, stations, etc.  After a short visit with Toni, we decided that it was imperative that I rent a bike so that she could take us on a tour of the city by bike.  With my bike secured, we set off.  Seeing Amsterdam by bike is the best way for sure.  I’ve been here twice before, but didn’t see a fraction of the places we rode past in this tour.  Amsterdam is like Delft on steroids.  Wider canals, taller buildings, more peope, etc.  There is a beautiful big park that was the closest I’ve seen here to actual nature. 

In the evening we met up with two girls from Emily Carr who were studying in Enschede.  Samantha and Kristina.  We had an absolutely amazing dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant near Toni’s place.  I can’t wait to eat like that again.  Then it was off to hang out with Timo, the son of a friend of Toni’s.  He’s 26 and lives even closer to then center of Amsterdam than Toni.  There we were happily surprised to find a small get-together/party in preparation of going out to a club.  All in all there was about 12 of us that eventually went out dancing at a club in the famous Rembrant’s Square.  Fun.

We crashed at Timo’s place and the next day I rode around the city on my own and went home in the late afternoon.  I know I’ll be back there often.

Clubbing in Delft

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This was one of our first nights out in Delft.  A bar called Speakers was hosting a once-a-month club night so we checked it out.  Didn't turn out to be very busy, but its still nice to know that good house music exists within this little city I live in. The low point of the night was that I managed to lose my coat check ticket.  Eventually (after 5 days) I was able to get my jackets back.

The new Home Town: Delft

 
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I arrived in Schipol airport, near Amsterdam, at 7am and found my way to the train.  45 minutes later I was in a taxi in Delft, heading to my new home.  Luckily, one of my roommates was home so I could get in.  My house is on a quiet residential street, only a 5 minutes walk from school.  Its also only 5 minutes from the edge of the town center, where there is a large supermarket called C1000.  We have the top two floors in a typical three story narrow house, and my bedroom is at the top.  I share the house with Martin, Mirthe and Paul, all of which are involved in Design.  Martin is in his last semester of the same program that I'm in (Integrated Product Design in the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering), Mirthe is studying design in Den Haag (The Hague), and Paul works for a company in Eindhoven doing 3D animation.  All in all its a nice household to be part of.