Peter's Tour Diary

Peter's Tour Diary Entry #2
Sent Wednesday the 12th of May

First of all I'd like to apologize for any typos I don't catch. I'm writing on a bizarre French keyboard here in Antwerp - odd because Antwerp is in the Nederlandische part of Belgium, and in Holland they use the English type keyboards. Better get used to it I suppose - I keep typing "q" for "a", "," for "m", "z" for "w", and of course vice-versa... And the punctuation is all over the place! Oh zell; hopefully Iùll cqtch the, qll *chuckle*

On to the absurdly inclusive diary...

Well I've got to start with Amsterdam. When we left off, I'd just gotten there and was enjoying it a lot. I ended up going to the Internet Café (great name for an INTERNET CAFE isn't it? But I do get to use the é key!) every day that I was in Amsterdam, including the Monday when I left.
On Tuesday the 4th I woke up late, and changed rooms - I then kept the new room for the rest of the week. I did a lot of walking around, becoming more familiar with Amsterdam and where my hotel fitted in, and so on. Found a lovely large English-language bookstore [Editor's note: this is Waterstone's, a chain of bookstores (actually quite decent ones) which can be found in most English cities, and various of the bigger European ones; there's one in Boston too], with a great range, but not cheap on the whole. Asked the guy there about comics stores and he told me about two. I went to one in the Jordaan area, past Anne Frank's House. Also found a post office then ;)
The streets were covered in pretty little flower petals being blown all over the place in the wind; of course on Wednesday it started raining and they got sodden...
I also noted that there is a large preponderance of Israeli eateries in Amsterdam. The place is overrun with Falafel joints, some actually rather good, although I prefer Soarma (Shawarma, ie Doner Kebab), especially when you get a free salad bar and they have pickled chili peppers and olives - YUM! But on Tuesday night I went to the Kleine Tel Aviv Pizza restaurant. What's more, it was one of the best pizzas I've had in a very long time - perfect crispness, delicious tomato sauce and
toppings.
Peter's simple pleasures #1 - good food!

Wednesday the 5th - went to the laundromat, which took a considerable amount of time, so I wrote a letter in the meantime. Kept getting growled at in Dutch for sitting on the side-board where the guy wanted to fold the dry-cleaning. Oops.
Then carried my clean washing around while I went up the street first to the post office, and then back a little bit to Lambiek - possibly the best (certainly the most wide-ranging and absurdly well-stocked) comics shop in the world. I spent about 2+ hours there, gawking at everything and trying to take it all in. Not only lots of English-language things, not only lots of RARE English-language things, but piles and piles of Dutch, French, and who knows what other language comics too.
Quite astounding.
I ended up getting RAW Volume 2 nos 1 and 2. RAW was a very progressive comics anthology edited by Art Spiegelman - who wrote Maus, about surviving the holocaust and surviving the holocaust survivors - and cohorts.
Don't remember anything else from Wednesday but it undoubtedly involved walking ;) Actually I think this was the day when I discovered a cool little jazz shop in a lane which had a whole rack of Winter & Winter CDs - the label that came out of jMT's ashes, which my Uri Caine/Gustav Mahler CD (of chamber jazz/ downtown NY klezmer versions of Mahler) is on, for those to whom I've played it...

Thursday the 6th - Well I remember I woke up, went downstairs to have breakfast, then went back to bed! Then I made some phone calls. I talked to my lovely friend Penny's Mum Prue, who lives in Holland now with Penny's Dad, and sounded just like Penny when she answered the phone... and left a message for my old friend Simon Murphy, who rang back later and arranged to meet on Friday - Simon is playing baroque viola with a group (various groups) in Antwerp/Brussels and lives in The Hague.
I spent ages in Boudisque, a great record/CD store (Seb: got the Nothing release of Drum'n'bass for Papa with the three Plug EPs on CD 2, which are even better than the album...)
In the morning I bought from the deli next door to the hotel a punnet of absolutely delicious strawberries and some other fruit, which to some small extent made up for all the Frites mit ketchup and other unhealthy food which is the only take-away that's really available. Well hopefully walking all over the place like mad will mean I'm getting *more* healthy really - I think so!
I discovered on my walks that the hotel was one block away from the Rijksmuseum and very close to the Concertzgebouw and so on. Suddenly I could fit it in with my meagre previous knowledge of Amsterdam.
At this point you're wondering: so when DID he go to the museums? Oops... Well the Van Gogh Museum was closed, and, well I did look at the Rijksmuseum but there was SO much, and not really a great deal I'm interested in... If it had been roomsful of Escher, Bosch, etc then maybe. Sorry folks! Still looking forward to the Modern Art ones in Paris and New York...

On Friday the 7th I circumnavigated the city which was fun, and walked through a number of markets - Interesting to look around, but in the end nothing really to offer that Sydney markets don't have, not a great deal that seemed uniquely Dutch or something.
Also went back to Lambiek and got a big big oversized comic from Chris Ware's ACME Novelty Library series - wickedly funny and beautifully designed.
In the evening I went off to the Hague to have dinner with Simon. He picked me up at the station and I had the pleasure of being given a lift on his push-bike. The Dutch girls make it look easy but I suspect they have considerably smaller asses than me! It was fun, but a little painful after a bit. We chatted for hours over a great Mexican meal, catching up and discussing life in general and the music world, and then I caught a late train back to Amsterdam.
Having walked around all day carrying my duffel coat and my umbrella, I left the umbrella at home. So of course at 1am when I got to Amsterdam CS, the trams had long stopped and it was raining. Luckily not pouring any more, and I walked home with Dom & Roland's dark drum'n'bass on my Discman with my duffel coat over my backpack like a cape and the hood over my head. It was actually an incredibly beautiful and memorable experience.

Saturday the 8th - awoke to a Street Festival going on outside. Watched my third chess game of the week at the Max Euweplein's big chessboard - it's just up from my hotel, and there were some superb games played over the week, most involving this one guy... Went back to Boudisque...
In the evening was desparate for something that wasn't either shawarma or pizza, but wasn't overly expensive. Come off it Peter! Then I saw a "Mr Hot Potato" - perfect! Well it would have been, but guess what item they'd sold out of... Yep, no potatoes. So I had a lovely chocolate milkshake instead, and found a cheapish but good Chinese Restaurant in one of the side streets...

Sunday the 9th - talked to Mum for Mothers Day (which doesn't seem to exist in Holland), watched multiple chess games, almost went to the Rijksmuseum (aren't you um... almost proud of me?) Lateish at night I watched David Cronenburg's highly odd movie Videodrome on BBC. Freaky.

Monday the 10th, checked out of the hotel. Lugged big backpack, cello and small backpack onto tram, then off tram at the Internet Café, one stop before Centraal. No rush to get to Rotterdam. Spent an age in the cafe, talking to Katie on ICQ - Did I mention plenty of chats with Chris B and Mike occurred during the week too (as well as with acb and Dan M, to mention two others)? It seems that basically all the Internet Cafés have ICQ so more chatting should be eventuating in the future too.
Got to Rotterdam, and my room number at the hotel was #5. Oh good, close to ground floor then...? Well sadly the hotel had been designed upside-down and the numbering started from the top. No kidding! So, drag all the stuff up two and a half EXTREMELY steep flights of stairs, and flop on the bed. Bit of a change after Amster, single bed and no TV.
Sadly in Rotterdam one wants a TV, but I whiled away the time listening to the crazy number of Tom Waits albums I seem to have with me ;)
Rotterdam is rather boring - modern and urban, not terribly charming. Got on a random tram, got off at a semi-random stop and found myself on a street full of record stores - how do I do it? Walked back along it and across the road, and found myself in the square we'd spent all our time in last time I was there, with AYO; and there was that cool record store I remembered. Everything was shut though, so leaving it till the next day...

The next day. Tuesday the 11th. Walked a lot, found that there's not a lot to see really, but it's not as concentrated as Amsterdam either. Had lovely fried won tons (Huanh Thonh I think) for brunch. Went to about 7 record stores and bought nothing at all - aren't you proud (and surprised)? Eventually found Internet Cafe for one hour, and felt a bit lonely really. Silly place.

Then Wednesday the 12th, left as early as possible for Antwerp. This is a beautiful place. It's very cosmopolitan, with wide boulevardes with old buildings, as well as small winding streets in the old centre. The people are delightful and very helpful. After collapsing once again at the hotel (that bag is sooo heavy, especially with the cello and the small backpack making it all so awkward), I got on a tram back into town (although actually it's not any more of a walk than the hotel in Amsterdam really).
Walking around, admired the architecture and noticed how quiet and well-behaved the place is, not to mention clean and neat! But I kept getting the map upside-down or backwards in my head and going all over the place.
Then I found a very cool record store (note how I gravitate towards them...) Good range, considerably cheaper than Amsterdam, which was already cheaper than London or indeed Australia. Bought a couple of things (Seb: the new Godspeed You Black Emperor EP, with Hebrew on the front, which is the other side from normal as Hebrew is read right-to-left; also Nicolette's excellent DJ-Kicks double CD).
The guy gave me directions to some other cool places. They're into interesting experimental stuff round here - probably even more in Brussels, where the amazing Sub Rosa label is based. There's also a big Jewish population in Antwerp, as it's home of the world's biggest diamond business or something; Brussels also has lots of Jews, so I'm hoping for some good music on that front too.
Before getting to the other shops, I noticed a "Stripboek" shop... "Hmm, naughty books?" I thought, but I recalled this had something to do with comics. It was in fact an utterly amazing comics shop called Bries, run by this lady called Ria Schulpen. She had some interesting things to say about overpricing at Lambiek and other places, and I bought a whole lot of rather rare small-press stuff for a very cheap price. Most impressed. Again lots of amazing European stuff - if only I was multi-lingual!
Then I went into the Sterephonic Recs shop and didn't come out for over two hours.  Mark: it's a kind of Synaesthesia in Antwerp. Stuff on the shelves I'd heard of but never seen even in mail-order catalogues, and Hans behind the counter piled me up with 12"s and 7"s and CDs to listen to. I ended up getting 5 12"s and 2 7"s, paying around AUD$85 for the lot... He had SKAM, Music Aus Strom, Dot, Markant, Mego, all sorts of experimental electronic stuff. I'll tell those of you who are interested just what I got.

And that just about covers it up to now. Went back to the hotel and got directions to this internet café, where they have all sorts of computer games to play, as well as chess sets and other such stuff. Nice place. I'm off to dinner now, if it's not too late.

Stay in touch everybody, and expect more in a week,
Love Peter.

P.S. If the expectation of more fills you with dread, just ask me to stop sending these messages...

--
Also found at raven@fourplay.com.au
Peter: http://www.fourplay.com.au/me.html
FourPlay: http://www.fourplay.com.au/
Experimental Electronic: http://www.fourplay.com.au/sound.html
 

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