Long walks and discoveries: Huis te Vraag

I had a day off yesterday and a sudden epiphany: instead of inviting a friend for a usual socialising, why not treating myself with a relaxed day completely on my own, enjoying long walks and museum (cinema?) without waiting , entertaining, listening or someone draining the energy from me. In the normal circumstances it is a pleasure and joy to hang out with people, but yesterday was one of those days when I thought why not just being in my own company and treating myself with some quality time. Even though it was cloudy and windy, I felt it would be great idea to take a walk to place that I have found locked already twice and it still invites me so strongly. 

"Huis te Vraag" (House of question) is a prettiest little forgotten park right in the middle of elegant Amsterdam's south - apparently it all started when Austrian emperor was here on his way to pilgrimage and he asked the directions for Amsterdam. That would have been in the 15th century and later there was a mansion built on this spot - centuries later it became a protestant cemetery. The cemetery itself closed at certain point but the park is still here and locals passionately refused any meddling by big moneyed companies who would love to erase the place and build apartments here (after all, it is a particularly attractive spot now - it used to be out of town but now its completely surrounded with the buildings everywhere). For many years the park was being taken care of by painter Leon van der Heijden and his wife, who had restored the neglected place and after Leon passed away (sadly, in 2020) it seems that volunteers take care of it. 

I walked there twice and twice found locked door - because it is not open all the time but from Tuesday to Friday. However, it looked spectacularly magical and beautiful from outside and I loved how secretive it is, so yesterday I went there for the third time. Hallelujah, I found it open! It is a beautiful little park with a lot of old tombstones (some of them relatively new, I saw burial date in the late 1960s?) and its been kept impeccably - it could have been a jungle but its actually extremely well clean, neat and organised, all the foliage trimmed nicely and paths are easy to follow, it actually looks much better than some much bigger and better known cemeteries. You can tell this is a place that people love. Yes it is a cemetery but it is not a sad place, I would say it is more meditative. There was a lady at the entrance who greeted me with a friendly smile and I felt that the place had a beautiful energy. I am not the one for protests and demonstrations but if this place is ever endangered, I would go on the barricades to fight for it. It is really a beautiful little corner. Still have not decided will I tell everyone about it or keep it for myself only.

"There is not much else to say about the Mood, it is a complete abstraction and yet a physical reality that can be experienced to the extent that whoever takes even one step inside the gate here, immediately realizes within himself that he is entering a special place. He literally steps into a Mood, which lifts him up and carries him further deeper into the Garden." (from its official web site)

Later I was walking trough Vondel park and in the quiet corner, not far from where I actually work, saw a cute little Tea house - I passed it, than returned back, thinking why not having a cup of tea and resting before I continue to a museum. This turned out another beautiful surprise of the day, because not only the place itself attract interesting clientele but it has a very pretty interior, glass dome and a spiritual bookshop. And apparently there are all sorts of healers and Tarot readers around. I was so thrilled to discover such a nice place in a quiet corner of Vondel park, seriously its like 5 minutes away from my work and I have never ever walked there before. Not only that i love the building (real 19th century villa) but the whole idea of special clientele, its like weirdos of Amsterdam united - obviously all kinds of people are attracted to this spot. All sorts of classes, from yoga to tantra. I really felt as I was meant to come here, to this particular spot and to discover it exactly at this moment, right after I have visited little secret cemetery, its like right time has come.  

Long walks and discoveries: Overtoom

I have just found some beautiful historical pictures of the street where I walk almost daily on my way to town - it is a beautiful, long avenue called Overtoom and its wide, classy, full of interesting houses and has a lot of history behind it. It runs parallel with famous Vondel park but I very rarely walk there, so far it was always more interesting to walk along Overtoom and just admire beautiful houses (and some truly cute little ones). I could never in a million years live on Overtoom because it must be one of the more expensive addresses in town, but love just daydreaming when I'm there.

In a present day, Overtoom is a beautiful long avenue full of stately houses that leads from centre (Leidseplein) to the new art of town (Nieuw West) - end of Overtoom is basically where the centre ends.

When I was recently changing the address, I kinds accepted it because my new place was walking distance from end of Overtoom, so although the area is completely new and modern, it was still not too far. At the end of the work, I often walk back home and it is a pleasant 30 minutes walk. 

Originally this was out-of-town area and in fact it was called "Heiligeweg" ("holy way") as it led pilgrims towards the centre and the Miracle of Amsterdam. Than you would arrive at Leidseplein and enter the city gate. Because this was area just before the town, all the smelly businesses like tanners and such were situated here. In 15th century there was a canal here, wide enough for the traffic, transport and shipping. This is when they name Overtoom came in use, as it was a wooden ramp used to pull the ships from one side to another. What was previously empty land, eventually became quite crowded not only with shoemakers, food sellers, carpenters, dairy farmers and all kinds of craftsmen but Amsterdamers themselves who would visit here on weekends to enjoy fairs and such. But because this was still area out of town, it was chosen a place for plague house - the plague house was a square building surrounded by a moat, with a courtyard intersected by a moat, so that the sick could easily be brought in by barge.

Trough the centuries this avenue has slowly completely changed the image, it became place for stately elegant houses and indeed if you look closely, some of the wealthiest people of Amsterdam used to live there. There is a still surprisingly large number of tiny houses visible along the way and they give street a completely unique charm, somehow untouched by the passing of time. A beautiful street and I always enjoy walking along there. 

Salinger and Gunda

It is probably realistic that after the first initial excitement over cinemas being open again and all these super-serious subjects I have seen, the rest will not be comparable to such heights. There are simply not enough quality new movies being promoted on the market. True, I could have turned to some tried old classics like "The Third Man" but I have seen most of them already and stupidly I made a mistake of going rather for something new. Well, I got what I deserve.

"My Salinger Year" had Sigourney Weaver and I thought, well I loved her previous roles, she wouldn't be in a bad movie. Wrong. It is a obvious re-hash of "Devil wears Prada" and its so derivative that I could hardly keep still in the cinema. Except that "Devil wears Prada" was witty, campy, sharp and funny - everything this one is not. It is so half-baked that after the movie one wonders, was that supposed to be a comedy or drama or what? And who is the main character here? It could be that the movie suffers simply because its made of a real-life memoirs so damn reverence might have spoil everything. Just like in "Devil wears Prada" here we have a young, frumpy provincial girl arriving in New York and following her dreams - in this case its not a fashion but literary agency and she has to answer the phones and tiptoe around famous writers, the biggest being J. D. Salinger who must never ever be disturbed with any communications or God forbid media - he famously despises journalists and does not do interviews. Joanna (Margaret Qualley) even has to read his fan letters and reply with a formulaic copy & paste answer - this is all quite silly as she has never read Salinger and has no emotional connection with the agency's biggest star. Salinger is never actually shown, which is a effective idea - unfortunately Joanna is and I find her immensely irritating because she basically mooches around imagining herself to be a real artist and authoress but she is not doing anything about it except being nasty to the other people (like her boyfriend) who actually write and at the end of the movie, just as Sigourney congratulates her on a good job, she victoriously quits and show them all. Since all this time she was not writing at all, I almost gleefully wanted her to be jobless and homeless. It was not funny, it was not dramatic, it was just touching the characters but not really going in any depth about them and the worst of all, I found young & fresh faced Margaret Qualley extremely irritating because her character does not really do anything except answering the phone and read other people's letters + most of the time she is just miserable, smoking and pretending to be serious artiste but there is absolutely zero proof she has any talent except imaginary. Its kind of silly girl's idea of how to be a writer - move to New York and annoy other people around you who have concrete life going on. 

"Gunda" was something else completely and still not exactly a success: I kinda knew what I am getting myself into because I saw a trailer, but still it came as a surprise. It is a black & white documentary (I guess) about life of the animals on the farm - it is completely without a narrative and no music, the only sounds we hear are the natural sounds of flies, wind rustling, cows mooing. It starts with a big sow (presumably the title character) gets new baby piglets, than they squeak and follow her around - than there are some chicken prancing around, cows going playfully out in the fields before camera returns back to the pigsty where the sound of the track signalise the farmer is here to collect the piglets - we never see this, only hear it, which makes it even more effective - Gunda don't understand where are the piglets and frantically searches all over for them, there is desperation and shock in her eyes. The End. 

It is extremely slow - yes, very artsy but if we decide to follow animals rhythm and present it as a movie for humans, it does not work because as a species we are in a completely different plane now. We move fast, we think fast, our entertainment is much faster so when chicken start walking gingerly around, both me and my cinema buddy fell asleep immediately. I mean there is nothing to stay awake for, because the flies are buzzing, the cows are mooing and everything is almost meditative. It is strangely moving and haunting because we knew the piglets from the very start to the end, so its horrible to think they are raised to be somebody's food. We desperately try to infuse them with a human characteristics but it does not really work because they don't really behave like humans - mother sow grunts and almost kill the piglets with her clumsiness  (she actually steps on one and kills him)  but there is a moment just before the truck comes, where we witness something like gentleness between mother and her piglets as she lies at the door of pigsty and her children are sniffing at her affectionately. As a movie it does not really work because its too slow and too unusual - it is more of an experiment , being black & white and scriptless - but it does work as a message that says "look, they are sentient beings who have their own feelings and what we do to them is horrible". 

Volendam

Because my Covid vaccination took place out of town (I decided on the first available date, no matter how far I must travel), my friend & chauffeur suggested we could quickly visit a nearby town where he has never been before (and he is local here). So after vaccination was done, we drove to Volendam just to discover a lovely harbour town that was just waking up. 

The whole area was basically stolen from the sea with a typical Dutch spirit - they have build dam after dam and somehow get dry land (in medieval times) that is still dangerously under the Atlantic sea level but it has all been controlled by the dams. So what I was looking at turned not to be a sea but kind of artificial lake. It is a lovely little harbour town with countless restaurants and caffe bars looking at the lake, with yachts docked there as well. I noticed photo shops offering pictures in the local costumes and quite a few colourful shops, everything seemed very dreamy and relaxed (as opposite to sometimes chaotic Amsterdam with its coffee shops), I would say this is a completely different clientele, people who come here as visitors are probably more into walks around the harbour and nice dinners. Also must say that the place was very well kept, the houses were just beautiful and this pretty spot is only 30 minutes away from me so I will definitely visit again - I can even do it on my own, with a bus from CS. 

“Goddesses of Art Nouveau“ - The Exhibition

As the cinemas opened, so has everything else, including museums. So I have decided to surprise a friend and bring her to The Allard Pierson Museum - which is right in the centre of city but known only to connoisseurs, as majority of visitors focus on handful of the biggest tourist attractions and archaeological museum is apparently not one of them. To be honest, I have also discovered it completely by accident - even though is right in the centre and situated in a very attractive old bank building, it is constantly overlooked because there is just so much going on in the centre.

Right now there is an exhibition called “Goddesses of Art Nouveau“ and this has been something I was really waiting for, as the exhibition was long planned and constantly postponed because of the lockdown. It was really very, very beautiful and all about famous artists from the beginning of 20th century who worked in the Art Deco style, like Alphonse Mucha, Jules Chéret (the father of the modern poster), Henri Privat-Livemont, Hans Drinnerberg, Jan Toorop and their many contemporaries - I had instantly recognised famous Sarah Bernhardt as a subject of some spectacular art and there was a lot of hair blowing in the wind and very artsy half- naked women in the supposedly ancient clothing, but everything was done in such manner that nobody could accuse it of bad taste. It was very, very beautiful collection though after a while it all becomes a blur because it was quite samey. And interestingly enough, we see it as art now but it was more or less created completely in function of advertising, back in the day. You would get a beautiful fairies advertising something mundane as a washing soap or a tobacco. 

There were also several other exhibitions around the building and I particularly loved one in the basement, where there were exhibited some sensational maps of the world, early books, printing machines, etc (I guess that would be about early print?) - there was even a poster advertising a tour of famous  "The Black Patti" (black version of opera singer Adelina Patti) who was actually Sissieretta Jones and one of the earliest black classical singers ever - she worked around the start of 20th century and was touring Europe, where this poster came from. Not surprisingly, she found that Europeans were less concerned about her skin colour and they celebrated her as an artist instead. 

Movies, movies, movies - return to cinema!!!

Yay so the local cinemas have re-opened again, after eight months of lockdown. And since I have supported them and was faithfully paying my membership card even though there were no cinemas open at all, now they surprised me with offer to bring a friend along for cinema - this is as thanks for supporting them all this time - we also get a free drinks in the cinema. So I have returned to cinema with a vengeance and have seen several movies in a row, with a greatest pleasure.

- "Promising Young Woman"

- "Tina" (I have written about these two already)

- "The Dissident" is a political documentary directed by Bryan Fogel (whom I need to research some more because apparently he is already an "Oscar" winner) about murder that was probably planned as a secret operation but it bursted as the main news on the international stage and was followed by every living person on the planet. It turned into a real-life thriller and it was too gruesome and scandalous to be ignored - I remember being very involved in discussions around the time and the new discoveries were unfolding day after day. It is not necessary to repeat the whole chronology here because it is already well known story but what always interested me the most was not the manner of the murder itself but how the world reacted to it, how majority of politicians quickly distanced themselves from Saudi prince except one particular exception and that was the orange man whom I don't even want to mention - the way he was shrugging his shoulders and waving this little hands because financial gains were the priority was just disgusting and at the end all the accusations came to nothing - there was some circus court and alleged punishments but it felt as smoke & mirrors for the media. There was an interesting  look into the way things are connected - tape with video recording of  Jeff Bezos and his mistress becoming public right after he cut the contact with Saudi prince, his subsequent divorce, etc - it was a very gripping documentary and it did felt like a real life "The Bourne Trilogy"  though I left the cinema with a head buzzing from everything. Even though this director is an "Oscar" winner (first ever for Netflix) "the film struggled to find a distributor for eight months and was not able to run on a large streaming platform like Netflix or Amazon Prime Video. It is widely believed this was due to those platforms' fear of offending the Saudi Arabian government and possibly losing subscribers." (from Wikipedia)

- "Judas and the Black Messiah" was something else completely. This was an all-black drama about FBI pursuing "Black Panther Party" and under the direction of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Martin Sheen) arresting, intimidating and executing everybody who didn't toe the line. It is the subject I don't know much about so it was very interesting for me to sink my teeth into the story that was not usually part of the mainstream cinema - understandably - everything was brimming with dazzling talents, from the main roles of Daniel Kaluuya (as a real-life revolutionary) and Lakeith Stanfield (his real-life traitor) to smaller but equally impressive parts by everybody else. It was extremely gripping movie and for me the very first time to see so many Afro-American actors not being part of something funny or romantic or science fiction but actually seriously dramatic story - not entertainment but quite heroic. hell, I wanted to be a Black Panther! And I hated the traitor Lakeith Stanfield from the bottom of my heart - as an actor he did excellent job but it takes guts to play a role that will be so universally vilified from now on. Both he and Kaluuya were "Oscar"  nominated as supporting actors (Kaluuya won) which makes you wonder so is they are both supporting roles, who in a Hell is the main character in the movie? It kind of comes as a cold shower afterwards, because I was thrilled that movie won an "Oscar" but this comes as a backhand compliment.  

"The Mauritanian" was very heavy - in fact, it was so heavy that it surprised my unprepared friend who probably expected cinema as an entertainment. I noticed this tendency to go for serious subjects and was even drawn to posters with latest movies about Alzheimer (Anthony Perkins) and Dementia (Colin Firth) so obviously I am not the one for something lighthearted - now when the cinemas are finally opened, I want to sink my teeth into a real deal. And apparently I got what I asked for, as this was a extremely heavy drama about political prisoner (Tahar Rahim) kept forever in infamous  Guantanamo Bay where he was tortured in order to sign everything that was wanted from him. Jodie Foster is a sharp, tight-lipped defence attorney who is not so much interested in him as much as making sure everything is done by the law and Benedict Cumberbatch is a prosecutor building a case against him. It is extremely gripping and uncomfortable watching, particularly because these are all real life characters who actually still live so to know this is not a fiction gives a completely different feeling and a depth to the story. Everything is done to a perfection and acting its superb, though this was not something that you would like to watch twice.