Sewage, Trash, and Priceless Art

The exterior of the sewage treatment plant offices, The Hague.

The Vrijzinnig-Christelijk Lyceum, The Hague

We started out our morning with ordering a taxi to pick us up at our hotel.  Dave had a few sights he wanted to see, they weren't close together or near our hotel, so we decided to have a taxi take us around to them.  This was fun because the taxi drivers in The Hague are impeccably dressed in suit and tie and Mercedes-Benz is the taxi fleet car of choice.  The first place Dave wanted to go was the waste water treatment plant.  After a few moments the driver sheepishly asked if we had a specific reason for going there, and of course we did - there is an MC Escher mural on the exterior of the building!  The driver was excited learn all the fine details about Escher, he said he thought he had seen a lot of things, but this time he learned something along the way.  The second stop was a school (the Vrijzinnig-Christelijk Lyceum), which also had an Escher design on the exterior.  This school was in a very posh area, so that was fun to see as well.

 The pattern from the sewage treatment plant is the same as in Day and Night (XX in orbifold notation) and the flying horses from the VCL have the same symmetry type as 8 heads (o in orbifold notation).  Another interesting Escher printer we saw yesterday is shown above. This pattern (original design from July 1941) is characterized by two gyration points of order 4 (tip of the noses, front right foot) and a gyration point of order 2 (middle of front left leg). This is a fifth type of symmetry pattern possible in the plane, having  orbifold notation 432. 


Our third stop was the central train station where we departed for a day in Amsterdam.. We had a big list of things to see and very happy the weather is continuing to be sunny and 50-60'ish.  We successfully navigated the train station and got on the right train the first time. The train was not crowded until the stop at the airport, at which time a lot of people heading into downtown got on and were boisterous about their plans.

Canal in Amsterdam


A little park near the Rijksmuseum.

Our little lunch place for the day.

We walked from the train station to start seeing some of the sights on our way to the Rijksmuseum. One of the Dutch food specialties are pancakes.  We stopped at a Pancake House to try them for ourselves.  They had a large menu of all types, sweet, savory, meat and dessert pancakes.  I had the caramelsaus and minced nuts and Dave had the apple and raisin.  The pancakes were a cross between what we have for pancakes and French crepes.  But very good!!  A note about coffee - Dave has been disappointed to find that decaffeinated coffee does not exist in the Netherlands.  But I have been enjoying the coffee-it's very thick with foam on top, and the cups are very short, because you don't need much!

 I amsterdam in a park.  The Rijksmuseum is the large building in the background.

While most of the museum is closed for renovations, the main highlights of the collection are all in one building.  We saw a lot of Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Jan Steen, which complements what we saw yesterday at the Mauritshuis Museum.  There was also a great display of Delftware, silver goods and some things from the Dutch East Indies explorations.

Across the park, with the famous I Amsterdam sculpture, is the Van Gogh Museum.  When the Van Gogh Museum closed for renovations a few years ago, they packed up all the paintings and sent them around the world in a big tour of great museums.  Now they are back and installed in 4 floors of great layout and great narration about Van Gogh and his art.  I was unaware that he only painted for 10 years.  The first floor was an explanation of Van Gogh's influences, the 2nd and 3rd floors were mainly his paintings, and the 4th floor painters whose work show the influence of Van Gogh.  Of course, there are mainly of Van Gogh's main works that are in other museums, but there were some great pieces here.

Our next stop was back across town to the Anne Frank House.  We had passed it earlier in the day, but the lines were very long.  Our guidebook had recommended going around 6:00 pm when the crowd thins out for the dinner hour a little bit.  We were in line around 5:00, and the line was about 2/3 less as long as it had been earlier.  I think all American high schoolers read the Diary of Anne Frank at some point, so it was very important to me to see the actual house.  It was very moving.  The house is very well done, and they try to keep the flow moving along so that the small spaces do not get over-crowded, but it is still very slow.  The room she occupied still has the photos she pasted to the walls, there are pages of her actual diaries on display, as well as the cards from their internment in the different camps.

Next we tramped back across town to make sure we visited the Red Light District, which was between where we were and the train station. This was one of the trashiest areas we have visited, both figuratively and literally - there was a lot of garbage blowing around. There are sex shops and places you can buy pot and alleys you walk down to see the ladies.  There are doorways with red lights above them, if the light is on, the room is occupied.  If the curtains are open, there are scantily-clad women on the other side of the glass beckoning to paying customers. There were lots of groups of wild-acting men roving about.  I was glad to head for the train station.

We are back in the hotel having some snacks and watching the Masters golf tournament and planning what fun we might embark upon tomorrow!