Rainy Day

Woodcutter

I rode around some very industrial areas of Rotterdam for awhile and then around some very rural areas. It was delightful I finally found my way back to Erasmus University, and I was pretty sure I could make my way back to Hotel Baan from there (not completely sure). One of the things I like about getting lost is that I’m forced to examine my surroundings more closely than I usually do, and I often see something wonderful that I would have missed otherwise. Today, I saw a bike that was a little stranger than most, so I rode closer to get a better look. What I saw made me smile for the rest of the day: A newly-wed groom was taking his bride out for a spin on his bike equipped with a big cargo cart. Things like that should happen more often.

The canal tour was lovely. I had taken a tour of Amsterdam’s many canals a week earlier, but the two experiences were completely different. Last week I went on a sunny Saturday, and the canals were jammed with people partying in their boats. We bumped a few people and canal walls, and the driver (captain?) had to take an unplanned route because the usual way was too congested. It actually turned out to be pretty interesting because he also turned off the recorded tour and told us what he knew about the areas we floated through. Today the weather was drizzly and cold, so the canals were considerably less crowded. The iSchool group filled one half of the boat, with Chinese tourists taking up the other half, so we listened to the tour in English and Chinese. The tour was interesting but uneventful (no bumper boats this time). Unfortunately, many of the most interesting things seemed to be on the Chinese side of the boat, so we didn’t get to see all of them as closely as we would have liked. Ah, well.

After the canal tour, I tagged along with Molly to the Hermitage Museum. The museum is a new addition to Amsterdam’s art scene, having opened in its current space in June 2009. Before that, the building was an actual hermitage, a home for many of Amsterdam’s poor, for more than 300 years. The current exhibition contains works of Matisse, Picasso and Kandinsky, along with the works of others from their respective art movements. I was absorbed in colors and lines for more than two hours before deciding to move on.

The next museum I visited was the Verzets Museum, which commemorates the lives of some of the people who were involved in the Dutch resistance during World War II. I came away from the museum both inspired and discouraged. Many of the individual stories of heroism were amazing, but Hitler still controlled the country for several years. More than 100,000 Dutch Jews were murdered during the German occupation of the Netherlands. At the end of the museum was a portion dedicated to the Dutch living in Indonesia during the war. It was interesting to me that the Dutch were deeply engaged in resisting German occupation at the same time their country was occupying Indonesia and committing injustices and brutalities against the people who lived there. A lot to think about there.

The last part of my day was the least enjoyable. Urg. The Netherlands uses a card with an embedded chip for people to pay for travel on public transit. People load money onto the card and tap it on a card reader to pay for trips on trams, trains, subways, etc. It’s all very practical and efficient – except when it’s not. During yesterday’s trip to Hilversum, the card reader didn’t register when I tapped my card at Centraal Station to leave Amsterdam. If you tap the card at one station without a corresponding destination, you’re charged the maximum fare for the type of trip you’re making. For trains, the maximum fare is €20. I didn’t realize my card hadn’t registered in Centraal, so I tapped my card at the reader in Hilversum. When I left Hilversum several hours later, I tapped the card at Hilversum and then again at Centraal when I got there. I thought everything had worked out correctly until I took a tram last night. When I got off, my balance read €2. I had been charged €40 for a roundtrip that should have been about €10. So after my museum-filled afternoon, I went to Centraal and talked to a super nice (and attractive – I think they’re all supermodels here) guy at the service desk. He explained to me that unfortunately, he could not refund any money directly to my chip card; refunds can only be deposited into Dutch bank accounts. I, alas, don’t have a Dutch bank account, so I begrudgingly added €30 to my card balance so I can keep using it for travel. There are several morals to this story, but the one I’ll keep closest to my heart for now is: Make sure you hear a beep when you tap your card.

The building clearly is built for function, but it’s aesthetically brilliant, too. The ceiling is designed to be a sort of 3-D puzzle; if it were rotated and lowered, it would fit perfectly into the “canyon,” or underground portion of the building. Portraits of important names in Dutch radio broadcasting decorate a screen separating offices from the rest of the interior. Colorful etched windows let in light on sunny days (unfortunately, we didn’t visit on such a day). A rainwater-filled pond (that got fuller as we were there) supplies water for the emergency sprinkler system, and enormous fans are in place to suck smoke away from the most sensitive areas.

Such design considerations are crucial, as the archives house thousands of hours of recorded Dutch history. The institute stores media in numerous forms, such as wax drums, vinyl records and digital betamax tapes, among others. It also has the equipment to replay all of the archived media.

The institute aims to make its records accessible to the public, so it allows people to make digital recordings from its collection. Dr. Roeland Ordelman of NISV stressed the importance of access and “drawing users and the community into the loop” of archiving its historical records. The institute has even designed an online game to get people involved in tagging audiovisual materials. And they don’t just tag whole works; videos are tagged at different time stamps so people will be able to do fragment searches of the videos’ content.

Everything about the institute spoke of its purpose: giving people access to their archived history. The building itself is inviting, and the archivists are working to give people multiple ways to search and access the information contained within it. I hope such an approach is taken in American archives.

I was especially impressed by the setup of the children’s section. The circular bookshelves create little private areas with sofas and cushions so parents can comfortably read to their children, or children can read to themselves with little danger of being interrupted. I mentioned the book labels earlier; the labels on the children’s books are adorable. There’s a ghost sticker for scary stories, a wizard’s hat for stories about magic, and so on. And fiction books are intershelved with nonfiction books, something that’s rarely done in the United States. Everything seems to be arranged to help kids easily find the kind of books they’re looking for, and maybe even find some they’re not looking for.

After seeing just one library here, I’m not going to proclaim Dutch libraries superior to U.S. libraries. After all, we do have some really great libraries in the U.S., too. But if I keep seeing this kind of quality at other libraries I visit, I’ll definitely be a convert.

Technology does, in fact, change the ways we communicate. Look at the front page of a newspaper — any newspaper you like. Now look at the website of the same newspaper. What stories are given prominence on the printed page? What is the first thing you notice on the website? Every once in awhile, there may be some overlap in top story choice, but often you’ll notice and read completely different stories. The newspaper company uses the technologies (yes, I consider the printed word technology) differently to communicate news to readers. It has to. Newspapers have tried to replicate the printed page experience online, but it doesn’t translate.

Paul explained that there are four perspectives on ICT:

• conservative – ICT as a neutral container
• pragmatic – ICT as a tool
• critical – ICT as technology of control
• radical – destabilizes importance of ICT by deconstruction

All perspectives, Paul claimed, are important and useful.

Going back to my newspaper example, I think it would be short-sighted to claim that ICT is a neutral container, especially in the communication of news. The technology used partially shapes how communication takes place, which changes the reader’s experience in receiving information. Newspapers definitely take the pragmatic perspective: They use ICT as a tool to convey news (and ads — gotta make money). I’ll have to think a bit about how critical and radical perspectives could be taken on newspapers’ use of technology. I may come back to that.

One other quote from Paul that I really liked: “We like to stick ICT into the chicken coop and see how the chickens behave.”

Once our appetite for frites was sated, we walked to Begijnhof, a home for single Catholic women who didn’t want to take the vows to become nuns. The women worshipped in a small, hidden church in the courtyard in the middle of the houses. Begijnhof houses are still reserved for women. Apparently we still needed some churching, because then we went to Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder, or “Our Lord in the Attic” church, and Sint Nicolaaskerk (St. Nicholas’ church). According to Lonely Planet, the church was built in 1661 during the Calvinist era. At the time, it was illegal for Catholics to openly attend a Catholic church, so a wealthy businessman built a chapel in the upper stories of his home. Amsterdam officials turned a blind eye to Catholic worship as long as their church didn’t look like one. Sint Nicolaaskerk most definitely looked like a church, though. I’ll have to look up a little more history to see why it was OK. It was nice to sit quietly inside the chapel before going to our first group dinner as a class.

Greta and I waited at Koffiehuis van den Voksbond for about half an hour because someone *cough*Trent*cough* led the rest of the class horribly astray from Centraal Station. It was actually kind of nice to have a chance to enjoy the funky decor before the rest of the group got there. Supposedly the coffee house (no, not that kind) began as a charitable eating place for dockworkers. It has an ever-changing menu of really good food (some people said amazing, but I wouldn’t go that far). I started my meal with a smoked mackerel, grapefruit and avocado salad that was a perfect balance of smoky, salty and tart flavors. It was the best course of the meal. My main course, asparagus risotto, was nearly perfect, but the rice was just a touch too crunchy. Other than that, everything was cooked perfectly, and the flavor was fantastic. I finished up the meal with cardamom creme brulee, which could have been wonderful. I’ve had too many good creme brulees, though, to be impressed by something that was a little too runny and wasn’t topped with properly caramelized sugar. It was OK, I’ll give it that. Overall, though, I was pretty satisfied with the day.