Way out West (incorporating Way up North)

tidying up...

While I've been tidying my flat, I have had cause to indulge in a number of displacement activities, one of the consequences being that I have finally unloaded the pictures off my phone. So in no particular order:

Item 1: an example of the perils of using Babelfish to translate your peerless prose, this text was from a Westphalian hotel menu (on the outskirts of Nurnburg) where we ate, the average age of the guests was in the nineties, and judging by their carriage and demeanour (even when using a zimmer frame), I would beg to suggest they were ex-servicemen. A time when 'don't mention the war' had real meaning, the food was very nice by the way (click on the picture to make it larger).


























Item 2: Truckers shoes; every fuel stop patronised by truck drivers in Europe features large displays of these special clogs, in a variety of anodyne colours. Many truckers wear them too, when I got the Zeebrugge ferry over, I was stuck behind a huge truck from Finland, and I was amused to note that the driver had a special compartment behind the cab just for shoes. Mind you, having noted the IKEA obsession with shoe racks, maybe this is a scandinavian thing?

Item 3: The Anglepoises of Rotterdam (not to be confused with the Umbrellas of Cherbourg); during a somewhat fraught journey into the centre of Rotterdam. trying to find the theatre, we passed this square, with its enormous anglepoises. My colleague, who has played the Schouwburg at least a dozen times, ventured the opinion that they looked vaguely familiar, and that the theatre was nearby. It became evident later that I had actually used the theatre's get-in ramp to turn my truck round on, before setting off again. It was some considerable time later, when he had taken me to a semi-demolished Holiday Inn, that I took matters into my own hands, and started to follow the fingerposts, which brought me back onto anglepoise square, with the theatre occupying one side. The anglepoises, incidentally can be controlled and adjusted by any passerby, I was struck by the notion of replacing the rather insipid lights with giant mirror balls for the festive season, don't quite know how this would go down with the worthy burghers of Rotterdam.

Item 4: The innate creativity of the passerby, it happened to be bins day and I was rather struck by this little street theatre installation round the corner from the Rotterdam Schouwburg.

That's all for now folks, more fluff from the wacky world of European touring later. Apologies if you have seen this posting come and go a few times, Blogger has become part of Google, and they've made formatting and picture editing even more opaque than it was previously, so, gentle reader, if it looks a little scabby that is why.

posted by Lampy @ 3/22/2007 09:04:00 pm