Here is a photo of a mural on the side of Eat Company, a café near the Grote Kerk:
And here is link to the artist Sophia den Breems. Nice work!
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Posts Tagged With: Graffiti
Empty stores (Or: Graffiti on Voorstraat in Dordrecht)
As I mentioned in my last blog post, Marco and I went to Dordrecht about a week ago to do a stadswandeling in Dordrecht (that’s a walk around the city). After that was done, we doubled back to visit Voorstraat. People say Voorstraat is the longest shopping street in the Netherlands. Of course, such an achievement does come with a price in today’s economy: there are some empty stores. Not a lot, but enough to be noticeable.
Of course, what makes it even more noticeable is when someone adds graffiti to each of the shop windows to point out that it is empty:
Here’s an idea for this empty store: a popup cafe with free wifi!
Some graffiti points out the fact that the store has been empty for over three years. But the main purpose of it is to point out what the store could be used as (apparently if the city government cared enough to do something about it – I suspect it isn’t as easy as the graffitist hopes, though). But other ideas for popup stores (always illustrated by graffiti) include music stores, bike rental stores, and a biological store.
More information about the graffiti and pictures can be found here (in Dutch).
Something cute hanging out by the door of a non-abandoned (just closed at the time) store:
Graffiti of Delft (Or: On the way to Ikea)
A few weeks ago, Marco and I went to Ikea in Delft to see if we could buy a bookshelf for me. I originally wanted the narrow, but tall version, in dark wood – but it was way too heavy to carry back on the tram. So we settled for the shorter version which still stores a fair amount.
Of course, I still need to populate it with more than junk (there’s a lot of random papers that I threw in there simply to clear off the nightstand) but it did mean that I was able to set up the earring holder I got for Christmas. Which made me realize I have a lot of blue earrings, but could use some more of other colors…
Some other random news: I started the second half of the B2-C1 Dutch course at Volksuniversiteit. Like the last one, it is 10 weeks and should be done around the third week of March. After that, my Dutch is good enough to sign up for courses (in general, not just at this school) with native speakers. Hmmm…
I’ll leave you with a few pictures of graffiti that I took on the ride over to Ikea. The owl has already made an appearance on this blog, but this picture is a bit better. The other is new.
The graffiti is always more interesting on this side of the pond!
It’s a bird! (Or: Graffiti in Delft)
Last month or so Marco and I went to Ikea in Delft to look for some random supplies. We ended up purchasing funnels for the kitchen (random) and reading lights for the bedroom (intended).
On the way to Ikea (by bus) we went under an overpass which had some really interesting graffiti…
That’s one aggie bird.
More than meets the eye (Or: Shop graffiti in The Hague)
A few days ago Marco and I were walking through The Hague and I spotted this unusual graffiti on a shop barricade:
At first glance it didn’t look that unusual (not that most of the graffiti here can be considered ‘normal’) – but it quickly went from ‘pretty colors’ to ‘Hmmm. What am I looking at again?’
Graffiti (Or: Futurama in The Hague)
Futurama is an American animated TV show which also appears on Comedy Central in the Netherlands (and Pirate Bay, but I digress…). Someone in The Hague is apparently a big fan of Bender, a robot character on the show.
That’s Bender on the right, holding a TV remote saying his trademark phrase: “Kiss my shiny metal …”, with the … included. I’m not sure who the other characters are, but they are not from the same TV show.
Gino’s East (Or: Homer Simpson and pizza)
For the rehearsal dinner, my brother and his bride chose Gino’s East in St. Charles (Illinois). It’s a pizza place, but they also served us penne pasta, breadsticks, and salad. Yum! And that was before another guest broke out the container of freshly homemade chocolate chip cookies…
They had some pretty interesting pizza, from the classic Chicago style deep dish to the thinner crusts. (While they even had a sausage patty pizza, which included a full size patty as one of its layers, I stuck with the thin crust pizza.) The most interesting and delicious thing was the crust, which was definitely seasoned well.
The restaurant decor itself was pretty interesting. The first thing that caught my eye was the Homer Simpson poster above (made up of individually colored elements, though I forget what they were. Probably scenes or characters from the show).
The other crazy thing was that you were allowed to write on the walls. It did provide character to the place. There were a few places that they asked you to not write on the walls, like the bathroom. The sign there said Don’t graffiti here or similar, which of course someone altered to say Don’t gravity here.
Afspraken (Or: A visit to the IND)
Today Marco and I went to our scheduled appointment (afspraak) with the IND to set up my VVR (permanent residency). This also included a meeting with the GBA (…Gemeentelijke Basisadministratie persoonsgegevens!), otherwise known as the department who keeps tabs on every single citizen of the Hague. You are required to register.
The appointment was at 9AM, so we left the apartment around 8AM and took tram 17 to the Statenplein tram stop. (The street we wanted was Stadhoudersplantsoen, 24. Yeah. Who needs to use the space bar.)
gemeente museum in the Hague, near our appointment building. (gemeente = municipality)
The appointment went rather smoothly – as mentioned, we first met with an official from the GBA and I turned over one of the official copies of my birth certificate (don’t worry mom – a long version, not the fragile original version!). Then we waited a few minutes for the IND appointment and got that sorted. I had my fingerprint taken digitally, which was interesting because the machine was rather finicky. Eventually they ended up just trying the index finger on my left hand instead of my right, and it worked a bit quicker.
Then my fingerprint was taken again at a different window, and then it was done. The VVR should arrive in 6 to 7 weeks. I hope!
Raamstraat (Or: A more urban type of art)
Het is vrijdag! (It’s Friday!)
Go on, click the link. You know you want to.
Possible weekend Dutch plans:
1) dutchgrammar.com -> Prefixes and suffixes
2) Rosetta Stone. That thing is so finicky with pronunciation I had to set it to the easiest level and tell it I was male! Of course, my pronunciation needs work, too.
3) Watch some more Dip en Dap videos from Uitzending Gemist (lit: missed broadcasts, I think), a television programming website. This children’s show would be a lot less annoying to watch if they wouldn’t laugh/snicker so much.
Non-Dutch weekend plans:
Prepare chili in a slow cooker – about 10 hours, hopefully – for Sunday’s dinner, and enjoy it in front of the Superbowl. The start time seems later and later each year. 6:29PM EST.
For fun, let’s take a look at Raamstraat (lit: window street) in the Hague. It’ll be a graffiti post similar to this one.
Music (Or: A scene carefully sketched out)
Near the train station in Delft, you might find yourself near this mural, on the side of a random building, in a random place.
A musical mural found in Delft
Although most of the mural is done in black and white, accentuated by the shadowy tree limbs, one can also find rare glimpses of yellow. The most predominant encircles the lamp on the left side, but the glow of night can be seen from most of the windows on the left side of the mural. A figure (Charlie Chaplin-esque) hangs from the middle street lamp. Three lions in the lower right – one with a paraplu* (umbrella), one coming from the garbage can, and another on top of the garbage can lid.
Note also the rider on their fiets (bike) talking to someone else.
* = I love the Dutch word paraplu. I have heard about the Paraplu restaurant in the Hague, but have not yet visited it. Soon…
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