I don’t get excited about many things, but I was pretty excited about the prospect of going to check out Theo Jansen’s latest kinetic sculpture on the beach. For the past few weeks I have been checking out his webpage at lunch time at work. I bloody hate lunch here. I feel like the biggest dick not being able to partake in the purely Dutch conversation. So instead of trying to look interested in my sandwich, I kept zoning out to the Strandbeest webpage… dreaming of the day I got to see this work in the flesh.
Anyway, the weekend arrived, I was all set for the sculpture viewing, in The Hague. I got to the beach it was pissing with rain. The wind was howling like a dog. I had met this random guy in the city earlier on, I was a bit cautious of him to begin with. But without his help I probably wouldn’t have found the beach. He also had an electric fold up bike, he was very keen to show me, so the wind was a lot easier to battle with his bike. While this poor guy, battled along my rickety old bike, he also had a real hatred of rain, so every couple of kilometers we would travel he would stop and wipe down his jacket with a reem of paper towel.
Anyway, the rain got to much for my mate, so we farewelled each other and I trundled along on my old bike for another couple of hours, pulling into each beach café to asking some random, weather they had seen a sculpture walking down the beach. Did they know where the beaufort scale was sitting at today? Some very random questions.
Anyway, windswept and cold I gave up on my search for the strandbeest.
haha, now you understand why we love sunny Perth ;)
ReplyDeleteWhat a pity you didn't find it, I've seen his work and heard his talk on TED, great stuff.
Are you taking your bike on to the train in Holland? I thought you had to pay a fortune to do so as I remember, or did that change?
Hey Wilma, yeah I am really bummed I missed seeing Theo Jansens Strandbeest. It cost 6.50 Euro per day to take your bike on the train.. I only do it once in a while. Fold up bikes are free, so i think next time I would invest in one of them.
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