Hank.

 

This is Hank.  Well...Hank's work.  Well...at least I think his name is Hank.

Utrecht has a resident graffitti artist whose work can be seen all over the city.  I first noticed him about three days into my trip but, rather than a simple tag - which I kind of hate because who cares about your name and why do they want it on their property - he instead paints fun little cartoon guys.  And who doesn't love a fun little cartoon guy?

 

 

They all have the same characteristics - like the portfolio of an artist in a museum or a book, but he uses walls, overpasses and basically any flat surface to express himself.

Big head, small ears, hands (if there are any) are attached by curly cue arms, a heart painted on the figure's chest.  I feel like you can understand the mood Hank was in when he painted each one. 

And some seem unfinished, so I always imagine he was interrupted mid-work.

I would have liked to find him, but my friend from Utrecht said he hadn't seen any *new* pieces for about five years.  So, I guessed he'd probably moved on.  

Utrecht was already saturated with his work - he needed a new canvas.

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Bloemen Markt

No account of time spent in Holland would be complete without a mention of flower markets.

I don't have any social commentary for this one, but the pictures might make the bloemen-lovers among you hop on a plane come spring.

** A word to the wise, however.  If you want to share some of the beauty with your friends and family back in North America, perhaps pictures are best.  I sent tulip bulbs to my Mom and sisters - two in British Columbia and one in California.  The bulbs bound for BC were confiscated by Canada Customs despite the gold seal the flower-seller assured me was proof of their safety for North American soil.  Fortunately, the "Princess Irene" bulbs sent to California made it safely through the postal system and my sister tells me that her Dutch Tulips are already sprouting.  Hopefully the Canada Customs agent who stole my bulbs will appreciate their beauty as much as my family would have.

Sky

The Netherlands is flat.

Like. There are no slopes.  No summits.  Few ditches...it's rare that getting anywhere by bike requires effort.  F.L.A.T.

And, as I would know if I were from Saskatchewan or Manitoba, flat land makes for incredible skies.

What I love about the Dutch skies, however, are their intermingling with the densely placed buildings.  Fast moving clouds, pink underbellies from city light, calm-before-storm kind of clouds - they're all painted above and overtop silhouettes of Dutch architecture.

This foreigner spent a lot of time looking up.

Jacques Brel - a Belgian folk singer from the 1960s wrote about the winds that change the skies in Belgium.


He sang in both French and Dutch - and the Dutch have adopted his version as a sort of anthem for their own wind and skies. 

 Jacques Brel's "Le plat pays qui est le mien" - in French

And the lyrics - which will break the heart if they can be understood

 

View over red rooftops - from my room.

  

Centre of Utrecht - Golden Hour

 

From up on high, you can see for ages

               The calf - Mascot of the Netherlands Film Festival - with sky.

Life on Water

The space on earth that The Netherlands occupies wasn't always land.  The Dutch created their country through a complex system of dykes and canals so that, when the rest of Europe was fighting over the seemingly insufficient land provided by mother earth, the inventive (opportunistic?) Dutch came up with a revolutionary idea:  If we're not strong enough to take it by force...we'll just expand what's available and take our share.

The unforeseen byproduct of living in a country dredged from the ocean floor is that living at (and sometimes below) sea level becomes commonplace.  The Climate Change debate exists in the Netherlands but there's not much talk of capitalizing on their water-control know-how - something that, to me, would seem like a natural.

On an aesthetic level, the waterways in the Netherlands are beautiful, even if they were created for utility.  Utrecht is called the Venice of The Netherlands because of its many canals running through the city centre.  These people live on, around, over and next to water all the time. 

In the old(er) part of the city, you can still see the no-longer-used doors that were originally drop-off and pick-up points for goods transported on the canals.  I like to imagine Dutch hobbits going out for a morning dip - opening their personal portal onto the water and splashing in. 

Nowhere to go but out

So, as established in the last post, there's not much room to stretch in The Netherlands.

This affects the communal psyche of the country in a bunch of ways, but one I noticed straight away is the number of kids (pre-teens and highschoolers) who hang out on the street at all hours of the day and night.

I wondered, like many Dutch people do, where are their parents?  Who is looking after these kids and wondering where they are at midnight on a Tuesday?  No wonder there's a problem with hooliganism in The Netherlands - the kids are running around with no supervision at all hours.

At some point I put my crotchety old woman hat in the bottom drawer and put my journalist hat where it should have been all along - on my head.

It seems to me that these kids (and their parents) just want a little space of their own.  At home, especially in poorer neighbourhoods, there's no room to grow or spread out.  If Mom or Dad is watching a show on TV, someone else is cooking dinner and your little sibling refuses to leave your shared bedroom...chances are you're looking for any escape.

I lived down the street from a skatepark - a common meeting place for the teenagers in the neighbourhood to get together and ... be teenagers.  It was loud sometimes and they weren't always super polite when I walked by, but after my little epiphany - and when I remembered I was only there for four months - I tried to cut them a little slack.

The problem is that, if you live in an area where kids are yelling at all hours of the night, playing music and trying to show off for their friends, then your patience may wear a little thin.  The other issue is that most kids who don't want to be at home but don't have anywhere else to go are immigrants and, in the Netherlands, you're automatically a trouble-maker if you come from Turkey, Morocco or Suriname.  Now, it's not only the immigrant kids who hang out on the street...but they're the ones who get the bad name.

And so it went that I was introduced to intolerance for newcomers in a country where they don't have much extra room.  I'll get into that in later posts but, if you want a little insight this right-wing party is getting more votes in every election.

xx
T

Peering in Windows

I lived in Utrecht, The Netherlands from September to December, 2009 and one of the first things I noticed about the flat country was the huge front windows (without curtains!) on every 'house'.

I say 'house' because there's no separation between living quarters...there are 16 million people living in a country half the size of New Brunswick.  That's 400 people per square kilometre...a space reserved for three Canadians back home.  So, the Dutch conserve space, and the result is streets with rows of attached houses, back alleys that run the length of the street and no space to walk from your front door to your back door, unless you traipse through the livingroom.

They're used to having to deal with people around them....all. the. time.  So, I guess it's not so surprising that their idea of 'privacy' is a little slanted from my own.

On my first evening in Utrecht, I went for a long walk around my neighbourhood to get acquainted with the place and stretch my legs after the 30 hour journey from Ottawa.  In the darkening light, I walked a few steps and my eyes were drawn into my neighbour's house where the family was sitting down to dinner.  Half a block on, there was a couple watching TV, the blue light dancing on their mesmerized faces.  And a little further along, a Dad was playing with his little boy on the livingroom floor.

This may seem creepy - the Canadian girl moves across the Atlantic to spy on people in their homes...but, during my short four month stay in the country, I learned that in a place where you don't have any personal space anyway, you embrace the fact that people are watching.

Some don't like it as much, so often you'll see a bit of frosted glass strategically placed at eye level - you'd have to bend down or get up on your tippy toes to see into this abode.  But, generally, thanks be to the Dutch, who allow me to indulge my not-so-inner nosey neighbour.

xx
T