Gay Pride Amsterdam

Posted on August 5, 2006 at 5:02 pm UK

gaypride06at5 Today is the highlight of the annual Gay Pride Festival in Amsterdam with the traditional day-long parade of boats along the Prinsengracht in the center of the city.

We tend to be there most years but today’s been the start of a work weekend. So I had to give it a miss.

But I did manage to catch some views of the terrific scenes broadcast live by AT5, Amsterdam’s news channel. In fact, I shot a quick 2-minute video clip of the TV broadcast with my Nokia N70 to give you a sense of the atmosphere and the things going on downtown this afternoon. (I’m getting good practice shooting video with this cameraphone.)

Tempted though I was to just post that clip here, AT5 makes it very clear on their website that copyright applies to anything they broadcast. So I’ve dropped them a note asking for permission to post the clip. If they say yes, I’ll post it.

As with previous years, hundreds of thousands of visitors descend on the city for the three-day festival:

[...] More than a quarter of a million visitors are expected in Amsterdam this weekend for the annual Gay Pride festivities culminating in the traditional canal boat parade. “We are expecting to see between 250,000 and 300,000 visitors despite the fact that we got under way late,” organiser Raymond Borsboom told AFP.

In the Dutch capital the high point of the Gay Pride is the canal parade of some 50 boats through the historic canals of the town centre. “This year the theme of the canal parade will be Rembrandt and we already know of several groups that have taken the theme to heart,” said Borsboom, who added that there would be a “Pink Nightwatch”. This year is the 400th anniversary of Dutch 17th century master painter Rembrandt van Rijn.

A pity to miss it. We were last downtown watching the boat parade two years ago (see TypePad photo album) and it really is a terrific spectacle.

[Update 11 Aug] I received an email from Yeliz Bozdag at AT5 giving permission to post the video clip. So here it is…

Two degrees of separation

Posted on July 19, 2006 at 5:11 pm UK

todaystemps Whew! What a scorcher!

The heat wave here in Amsterdam and across much of western Europe that we’ve had for the past week continues unabated.

Here’s the temperature at about 4.30pm today – 32.2 degrees Celsius or 90 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s outside. Inside, it’s almost as hot – 30.2 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).

What are two degrees among friends! It feels as hot inside as it does outside. And in my office, it’s another degree hotter (31). My Dell desktop computer generates a lot of heat so that’s undoubtedly contributing. The PC has five fans which are working pretty hard to keep things cool.

So whew! Surely it must have peaked for today. I really can’t imgaine it getting to 33 or higher. Yet these are not the hottest temps in Europe by far.

Searing summer temperatures used to be something relatively unusual in this part of Europe. Yet 30+ is no longer uncommon.

What on earth are we doing to this planet?

The world celebrates Rembrandt

Posted on July 15, 2006 at 11:41 am UK

Living in Amsterdam, it’s hard to avoid exposure to Rembrandt, the renowned artist and paradigm of the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century.

Impossible to avoid today as it is the 400th anniversary of the birth of the Dutch master – 15 July 1606 – whose full name is Rembrandt van Rijn.

Celebration events are taking place in museums and other locations worldwide, far beyond Holland’s borders. CODART, the worldwide network of museum curators of Dutch and Flemish art, is tracking all events, 85 at the last count.

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has events going on throughout 2006 celebrating Rembrandt. The museum itself is undergoing major restorative work until 2008, but that’s not interfering with the excellent activities, especially Nightwatching:

Nightwatching in the Rijksmuseum is a theatrical installation that uses images and sound around the theme of Rembrandt’s Night Watch. This creation from the renowned director Peter Greenaway sheds an entirely new light on Rembrandt’s greatest masterpiece, in which the visitors are transformed into a theatre audience and the characters from the painting come to life.

Some other links:

Queen’s Day fun in Amsterdam

Posted on April 30, 2006 at 1:54 pm UK

Today is Queen’s Day in The Netherlands (Koninginnedag in Dutch), the day that celebrates the birthday of Queen Juliana, the current Queen’s mother.

As this day falls on a Sunday, the day of celebrations – flea markets and street parties everywhere – took place yesterday, the 29th. As has been the case in previous years, my wife Laura and I were out and about in Amsterdam with a group of friends enjoying the sights, sounds and atmosphere.

I took some 80 or so photos, all of which you can see in this Flickr set. Lots of other people took photos and there are some really great pics of the day and of the Friday evening when “Koninginnedag” really starts. Look under the Flickr tags: koninginnedag and amsterdam.

Weather-wise, it wasn’t a terribly good day to spend five hours wandering around, enjoyable though the day was. Pretty cold with a biting north-east wind keeping the temperature down in the low teens centigrade. But that didn’t put off the hundreds of thousands of people crowding Amsterdam in the areas we were in yesterday.

The flea markets at this year’s Queen’s Day had very tight control by the city authorities and police than I’ve seen in previous years. In our neighbourhood in the Oud-Zuid district, for instance, there was a ban on stands and display areas on both sides of most roads (one side only).

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