Peter - Day One - Travel, Travel and Jetlag

Twenty five hours, that was the length of time it took us to travel to Amsterdam from Sydney. I am quite use to this type of travel by air since I was 2 months, however it is always a different feeling or experience when you are travel with a group of friends verses with travelling with family or by yourself. For me, I just became more aware of wanting to look out of the windows to see life below, observe the fellow travellers jammed with you in their seats, and wondering if your bum has gotten bigger or have the seats shrunk.

On the second length of the journey, I was sat in the window seat, which is quite unusual for me as I am normally an aisle person. But the experience I received from sitting in that seat was absolutely amazing. As I drifted in and out of my sleep, I would look out my window to see the world below, each moment a unique one. The first image I saw was this blanket of cotton fluff clouds, illuminated by the soft dull light of the moon and one cloud illuminated by it's lighting. Then at other time, within the last few hours of the flight, there were patches of city with their streetlights sparkly though the night as such of starfishes. Which lead me to recall of other time, as a child, of how these little airplane window hold behind them such many memories for me. As tacky as this sounds, these windows are "window into my memory."

Finally, we landed, got off, collected our luggage, and off we went to hostel. But not long after we arrived to our hostel did we turn around to a catch a train to Apeldoorn to visit CODA to see the exhibition "Un peu de terre sur la peau". By now it was close 9 'clock in the morning, everyone was out and about. This is nothing new to me, except for the fact that instead of looking out of large vehicle, such as cars, buses and trams, you have to watch out for the bicycles, and they're more dangerous! Never in my life have I seen bicycles be preferred to that of a car, it was truly intriguing. Then onto the the train for one hour to see our first exhibition.

"Un peu de terre sur la peau" was an interesting exhibition, showing the works of contemporary jewellery artist who worked with material that came from the earth, basically ceramics.

After seeing this exhibition, we continued onto another trained ride to Nijmegan to visit Galerie Marzee. The train rides were another point of interest for me, not only to for the views of the countryside but also for the people on train. Since we were wanting to stick together, we're sat in groups on the train, which often lead to someone being trapped by us. However, since we often to lead to subjects of amusement, they were quite happy to sit and blatantly listening in on our conversations, chuckling at some points.

We arrived at Nijmegan, at this point jetlag was starting to kick in, which was not a good thing when visiting Galerie Marzee. The reason was that Galeria Marzee's collection was amazing. It was huge, and had contemporary pieces that I only saw on the web or in books. So one word of advice, come to this gallery not tired and also give a few days to actually look to the pieces in detail rather than rushing it all in one day since it a truly unique experience to visit.

Off back to Amsterdam by train, then eating dinner at the public library, finally off to the hostel to bed. Night.