…Maastricht shows a nice early-morning portrait across the river.
Archives for February 2010
Carnivale costumes
Despite the weather, there were a lot of creative costumes in the parade this year. Political satire was less evident than last year, and good student entries like the Bob Ross Artists Guild were few and far between. Still, there was color, noise, smiles, and dancing: everything needed to warm a chilly February afternoon.
More pictures on my Flickr page.
I always like the ‘big / small contrasts: when do Dutch kids hit their growth spurt?
Amanda had a great picture of this outfit too: the most colorful horn player in the parade.
Valentines and Parades
Expatica published results of their new survey for Valentines day, revealing that a quarter of women move overseas for love (vs. 11% of men). It tops lifestyle choices, retirement, weather, and culture; no mention of whether it also bests “looking for work”.
And a quick nod to the local best as well; we were all up last night watching the 5000m speed skating on NOS1, wonderful to see Sven Kramer win the gold medal.
In true expat style, I got things bought before going to the US, mailed from Denver, so returned with a clean conscience a week in advance. I’ve got most birthdays and holidays marked out far in advance on calendars: I find that things have to be prepared a couple of weeks in advance if they are going to arrive in time (and that holidays will play out over a couple of weeks as things trickle in from overseas).
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Carnivale kicked off the raising of the MooseWife at the Vrijthof Square and the parade through town from the station to the center over the Stone Bridge. There were some wonderful costumes, as always, and I’ll be a day sorting picture. In the meantime, a few of the spectators lines along the bridge railing were also good sights despite the weather.
Carnivale weekend begins
Carnivale takes off this weekend; the efffigy of the farmer’s wife will be raised tomorrow noon in the Vrijthof Square signaling the beginning of the celebration. Bands are marching over the icy stone bridge every hour, brass-bleats and drum-thumps through the clear cold air.
I was taking pictures of the decorations and one reveler jumped in front for a quick pose. Behind him, a police van rounds the corner with four youth already arrested for disorderly conduct (a bit after noon).
Ah, Carnivale. It makes February bearable.
The decorations are up, the children are out, the costumes are appearing, the bier and oliebollen stands are set up along the streets and in the squares. It should be a fun party.
Back to the Great White North
‘made it back to Maastricht, and wow is it *cold*. And snowy. And grey. It makes me wonder if I took a left passing through Atlanta rather than progressing on across the Atlantic as intended. I half expect to find the McKenzie brothers stocking up on Molson at the AH.
The trip back was uneventful; planes were largely on time despite the weather worries, and, since the flights were empty, I got more sleep than expected. The Dutch were short of trains on arrival so the Intercity from Utrecht to Maastricht was a standing-room-only local pressed into service at rush hour. A Dutch friend tells me that NS has problems with over 70% of their trains, so it’s not surprising that some go out of service when it gets wintery.
The cold feels biting, even through winter clothes; fingers get numb in a minutes without gloves on the bike and the streets are largely deserted. A bit of Bob and Doug’s brew would be welcome.
And, fortunately, there’s exactly that respite beginning all around town.
Distractions
The snow intensified last night as the storm flowed in from the prairies west of Chicago. Our hotel staff was buried in a wave of calls cancelling rooms because their planes to O’Hare were grounded, followed by a second wave of calls requesting rooms because flights out were being cancelled. “It all balances out,” sighed the clerk, four lines on hold.
I retire to the attached restaurant with Stieg Larsson’s new novel and a loose pile of notes from the day’s meetings. Single, I earn a small table in a corner, no room to spread out and write. The television over the bar alternates between frantic snow coverage and frantic political coverage: the clear English hard to ignore.
The waitress arrives to tick off the day’s specials, staring into space. Her listless prosody is nonetheless fascinating just for being linguistically and culturally comprehensible. I order a slab of beef and scribble a quick note to myself to explore “language as melody”. Above the bar, Sarah Palin asks how that “hope-y change-y thing is going” for us. My stomach knots. Why is she so deeply irritating? I pause to add a few words about cynical condescension to my note, then return to my reading.
The book veers from it’s narrative plot to a comment on Euclid’s discovery of a formula for predicting perfect numbers. With great effort, the Pythagorean Greeks discovered four of these numbers: 6, 28, 496, and 8128. I wonder why people seem drawn to “magic numbers”? Lucky numbers, betting odds, sports spreads, five-figure Dow thresholds. Mine tend towards social numbers: Dunbar’s number of 150 friends in a neighborhood, the Pareto 80-20 rule for knowing when a task is completed, the 10-10 goal for introducing products I’d advocated the latter just today: we need ten happy doctors enrolling ten patients each… It sounds big yet practical.
Dinner arrives, and I push the books and papers off onto a chair. The news commentator giggles that Sarah Palin was actually reading notes off of the palm of her hand during the speech. Cameras have caught the words and show her consulting her hand during the Q&A. Karma, indeed: how’s that speech-y thing going for ‘ya? “Energy," “Tax” and “Lift American Spirits”; “Budget cuts” crossed out. All worthy topics, but the news is all about the gaffe, not about the issues and ideas.
A comic recently argued that we’re increasingly living in Huxley’s dystopia. We fail to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions. Food, numbers, weather, Palin. But it’s a snowy night after a busy day at a small table in a noisy restaurant. In my defense, distractions are the drift of the evening, not it’s fabric.