Trash for treasure

Back in Sydney, one of my favorite times was council clean up time! Mum would drive us both around and we would pull over to the side of the road when a nice pile of junk would tickle our fancy.

We even once wheeled a couch from one end of our street to our house, to the horror of a guy on a bike who stopped to help us!

Call me a hoarder but you will be pleased to know that when Kaushik and I move in to our own place back in Sydney we will have a beautiful green velvet couch, a round breakfast table with orange vinyl spinny chairs, an antique dressing table…..to put it simply I’m set up furniture-wise because of these glorious council clean ups.

Our move to The Netherlands had me wondering (among other things of course) about whether they had council clean ups here and I began having the most amazing dreams about myself coming across a giant stash of goodies outside someone’s house which would have me waking up in the happiest of moods.

I would have this dream about once per week, then a week before my birthday it came true!

Coming home from work on the bus, I eyed off a giant pile of  ’stuff’ outside someone’s apartment, just down the road from ours. As soon as I got home, I greeted Kaushik and told him of the exciting news. He rolled his eyes and told me to call him if I needed help bringing stuff home (which I later took him up on the offer).

I rode down to the apartment and saw people bringing more and more things out, so I asked them if they were indeed throwing all of this out and whether it was okay to rummage through?

“Sure, go for it. Just keep the pile tidy.”

“Of course, thanks! Doing some spring cleaning?”

“No, our aunt died. Just getting rid of her stuff.”

Oh…I felt a tad guilty, getting all excited about this deceased woman’s belongings being thrown on to the side of the road.

“Are you sure it’s okay for me to be going through her stuff?”

“It’s fine, it will be thrown out anyway.”

Hmm…I thought about it for a moment….but then came to the conclusion that if my lazy relatives chose to just dispose of my belongings on to the street, that I would be more than happy to have some excited young lady come along and treasure a few pieces of my life.

As another lady going through her things said to me “Imagine that, your life on the side of the road?”

I did imagine it, such a shame. She was certainly a snappy dresser, which I took advantage of. She was also a doctor because an entire filing cabinet filled with old documents and medical cards from the 50’s or 60’s was included in the things being thrown out.

I gave her clothes a wash and as I was hanging them out to dry, I noticed these little additions she made to the clothes: they were tabs of material with snap buttons on them to make it easier to hang clothes up to dry, rather than using a peg. It made me quite melancholy, this simple yet thoughtful addition to her clothes which her relatives wouldn’t have even noticed. I hope she knows that I noticed, somehow.

Here are some photos of what I scored, thank you Geertje, it was much appreciated! (Geertje is what I’ve chosen to call this lady, it’s an old fashioned Dutch name)

My pile of treasure!

A selection of my favorite pieces of clothing from Geertje

Some agendas (an open up calendar/diary) from 1959!

A letter and envelope set

I pinched a few medical cards from the filing cabinet

Prague in pictures

Our trip to Prague was actually quite some time ago, much before Paris in fact.

I didn’t get around to posting a long-winded story because the film from the trip was processed at different times yada yada then I forgot all together….so because details about the holiday are a little vague, I will just concentrate on photos for this post.

I can tell you though, it was a beautiful place. So old and well preserved, considering the wars it has lived through.

It was snowing too which added to the beauty of it all. We mainly walked around the city, crossing bridges to different quarters and taking in the scenery.

I would have to say that Prague has the largest number of beggars I have come across. They generally sit on their knees with their forehead resting on the cold ground and their hands out in front, ready to grasp any coins donated. Sadly, I got all too used to seeing this sight.

On a nicer note Prague is also famous for it’s jazz, so we visited U Maleho Glena Bar & Jazz Club on our last night there. I would recommend booking a seat because it’s quite popular! We managed to score some seats once a few people left who were strangely not enjoying the music. I don’t see why because it was a very impressive performance; fusion, fast paced type of jazz playing numbers by artists such as Coltrane and Brother Jack McDuff.

Anyway, I will let my pictures do the talking. Enjoy xx

Easter weekend in Paris

I’ve been slack again, haven’t I? Two reasons are that:

1. I was waiting for my films to be developed  2. Slothful behaviour  3. You probably don’t really care (not a reason, just a fact)

Anyway….

Netherlands is such a central place in Europe, I’m not sure if the Dutch understand how lucky they are! You are able to catch a train for about 3 hours and arrive in Paris, which is exactly what we did for our Easter long weekend.

After dropping our bags off at Hotel Vivienne (which has the world’s smallest elevator, it’s pretty much a coffin) we walked around the neighbourhood on what was a deliciously warm and sunny day. Our first stop was the square situated near the Louvre….

…and then towards Pont Neuf which has a view of the River Seine. My first sight of this river is one of the most memorable I have of Paris and I’m afraid my photo does it zero justice!

River Seine

We toddled around more, past the Notre Dame (there was a lengthy queue so we didn’t venture in) then to Place des Vosges which is a beautiful park where people sit around to chat or have a bite to eat.

Place des Vosges

Notre Dame

Kaushik had looked up a South American cafe where they roast their coffee beans right in front of you in the shop so we stopped off there for one of the most delicious coffee’s I’ve ever had.

We also spent some time shopping around for a nice collared shirt for Kaushik to wear for he had booked us a seat at an authentic French restaraunt which surprisingly had vegetarian options. The food was lovely and fresh, albeit the portions. Kaushik’s meal was fit for a small village in Botswana (needless to say Kaushik is not a small Botswana village) and mine was the cliche of a fancy French entree. Desert more than made up for my portion size: we shared an apple tartine and chocolate fondant.

The next morning we walked over to the Louvre and surprisingly didn’t have to queue up for too long to get in.

Waiting in line for the Louvre

We looked through a selection of artifacts from Greece and Egypt which included a real mummy and we also looked through the “classics” which I can only take so much of…I’m not big on neoclassical art, thankfully nor is Kaushik. However we of course had to see that one painting of a very famous lady, or is it a man? Who knows, but it’s true that the Mona Lisa’s eyes do follow you depending on which side of the room you stand on. It was quite funny to see people taking long armed photo’s of themself with the painting and then just walking away without even looking at  the painting itself properly.

Just a side note, on your first Parisian trip you literally tick off things in your head of “ok yep…seen that, what amazing famous structure/artwork/promenade will I see next?”. Well the Eiffel tower was next and I couldn’t wait.

I saw it’s beauty while exiting a nearby metro station. Walking up the stairs to the street I could see the characteristic top of the tower and with each step I got higher, more was revealed and I couldn’t believe I was seeing it for real.

But you know us, hunger was still more important than seeing the Eiffel Tower up close, so we picked up some Turkish haloumi wraps for lunch and then headed to the Park which sits underneath the tower itself. A delicious lunch with a beautiful view of the tower and a little entertainment too; we got to watch con artists at work. These particular cons are girls in gypsy type attire who go up to people, ask if they speak English and then proceed to tell a sad story of their life and then ask for any spare change. It doesn’t sound like a scam until you have read research about these women which explains they live in comfortable homes, but their husbands/fathers force them to beg because quite frankly, it works. When she approached us to ask if we spoke English, our response was “Nee!” which is of course Dutch for “No”.

So we escaped another scam (so common in touristy European cities) and went for a walk further away from the Eiffel tower to try and take some photos. As you can see, it’s hard to have a proper photo with it (especially because my old film camera is already automatically slightly zoomed in) unless you walk quite far away or take multiple shots like these:

Onwards, our next stop was the Arc de Triomphe and then a walk down Champs Elysees where we sang the theme song for this famous stretch of road.

On the Champs Elysees, with view of Arc de Triomph

We then decided to take a boat tour which stretches down The River Seine and took us past even more beautiful monuments and another view of The Eiffel Tower which I never got tired of seeing.

Now I think there must be something wrong with me because I can’t for the life of me remember what we had for dinner that night! Never mind, on to our last day in Paris. A grim way to spend the morning was in Le Pere Lachaise Cemetery in eastern Paris to give Jim Morrison’s grave a visit. Even though I’m a fan of his music,  I wasn’t overly fased and found it all a bit tacky, especially seeing people wer’e standing on other people’s graves to get a better view to photograph old Jimmy’s grave.

Onwards to a much nicer activity of visiting Montmartre; a popular city for working artists and also used to be a hang out jaunt for artists such as Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Claude Monet and Salvador Dali. And if I had done my research properly I would have discovered that the cafe which was used in the movie ‘Amelie’ is also situated in Montmartre.

The Sacre Coeur Roman Catholic church would be one of the main attractions in Montmartre and was worth climbing all of the steep hills and hundreds of stairs to get to. It doesn’t look like all of the usual churches in Europe, it kind of reminds me of a Muslim temple.

We had one last impressive monument to visit and that was the Pantheon, located in the Latin quarter of Paris. It is used as a burial site but was originally built as a place of worship. It is said to be spectacular inside, but we unfortunately ran out of time and had to head back to catch out train home.

Now that we have the general sight seeing “out of the way”, I’m truly looking forward to visiting Paris again to soak up more of the culture and atmosphere. Parisians didn’t live up to their cliche of being rude either. So long as you start a conversation with “Bonjour! Pas les vous anglais?”  (hello, do you speak english?) and don’t just expect people to talk to you in English, then you shouldn’t have any problems. Parisians have a right to be proud of their city, it’s one of the most beautiful I’ve ever visited.